College Happenings

This is where it’s happening on campus

20 Innovations That Have Radically Changed The College Experience

Filed under College, Technology

red bull energy drinkThe college experience is fundamentally different today in comparison to even just twenty years ago, thanks to the mass adoption of revolutionary technological developments such as the Internet and cell phones. College students have many more ways to use their time now (should I play Halo 3 with a buddy in Japan, browse Digg’s popular tech stories, Skype my girlfriend, look at Internet porn, watch a bittorrent movie, or search the ‘net for the perfect term paper…due tomorrow)?

Whether used for good or bad, technological innovations have radically shaped the way college life is lived and the way education is done. From taking classes online to texting your friends during a boring lecture, this ain’t your grandfather’s pencil and paper education.

So without further ado, here are 19 technological innovations that we believe have radically changed the college experience. While you’re reading through, take a moment and consider what college life would be without them!

  1. Cell phones. Call up a friend from practically anywhere – including the college library – if you’re having trouble studying, or simply need a sympathetic ear about how you bombed that major test. Of course there’s also the dreaded scolding from a professor when your phone goes off during a lecture;-)
  2. MMPORGs. Massively-MultiPlayer Online Roleplaying Games (MMPORGs) such as World of Warcraft, and even Second Life in a sense no doubt take up many hours for some students – allowing them to chill out that pent up rage from compulsory Chemistry midterm they bombed on.
  3. Digital Video Compression- Whatever your favorite format, digital video downloading is one of the most popular pastimes for college students these days. Compression technologies made digital video downloads possible in a reasonable amount of time. In addition to movies and tv shows, students can also download and consume class audio or video, lecture recordings, etc.
  4. VoIP. Spent all your money partying it up and can’t afford long distance calls home? With VoIP, you can sometimes call free or very cheap. Skype is the most popular free VoIP technology, and there are many good paying options like Vonage. Some systems allow you to take a local phone number with you on the road. That way mom doesn’t have to pay a long distance bill.
  5. Google/Search. If you need to find information for a term paper fast, Google is a good place to start searching, especially Google Scholar. Whether we like it or not, a large number of term papers are now “derived” from already existing online work. For this reason, Google also serves as a way to check for exact phrase plagiarism.
  6. The Internet. Most professors or their assistants now publish lecture notes, assignments, and info about additional reading material on their class website. There are also many library and study resources online. [On the entertainment side, the Internet's obviously useful for finding music (U.S. only) and video to relax with. And beyond these two uses (study, entertainment), there's the chance of earning money online in the blogosphere.]
  7. Textbook DVD/ CDs. Many college textbooks now come searchable on disc, making it that much easier to find that obscure information the professor mumbled about at the end of the lecture. Ideal for reducing study time.
  8. The iPod - There was a time when you could count on the majority of students wearing jeans to class. Now you can count on the majority of students wearing iPods to class. iPods and other digital media players also provide the opportunity to listen to lectures for reinforcement.
  9. File Sharing Applications – Napster became huge because of college students. Then it got shut down and resurrected as a paid service. No worries. Plenty of alternatives have popped up and file sharing (illegal and legal) continues at a rampant pace, though the record companies are fighting back with futility.
  10. Laptops. Laptops make it possible for everyone to have a mobile office. Papers can be started in your dorm room and finished in the library, all on the same computer. Plus, if you type fast, you can actually take legible notes in class. No more scrawled notes, and it’s easy to pass them on to friends. Or, plug in an external microphone and record class. Sure there are lots of makes to choose from, but we like our Alienware laptops…what’s college without some hard core gaming anyway?
  11. Printers. Affordable, good quality printers have made many a student happy, not having to trudge over to the local Stinko’s, or worse, the college library (waiting for some labor union employee to fix the jammed laser printer). While ink cartridges are now often more than the printers (some are free after rebate) total cost per page is a lot less. Perfect for when you have to write a term paper.
  12. SMS texting. Don’t want to make a racket in the college library but need a friend’s help? Send them a query via SMS and get an answer fast, without looking around sheepishly when your phone rings.
  13. Touch Screens. Both PDAs and Tablet Computers are increasingly popular technologies for taking class notes digitally. Rather than scribble notes on paper, or type frantically at the keyboard, touch screens enable natural hand writing, which is converted to digital text. Adoption of these touch screen systems seems to be rising amongst college students.
  14. Virtual learning environments. E.g. web applications such as Blackboard and Moodle have not only helped make learning easier but have also enabled brand new educational opportunities such as distance learning and Internet bulletin board discussions.
  15. Web applications. There’s a huge list of categories that students can benefit from. Here are a few:
    1. Web word processors such as Zoho Writer or Google Docs.
    2. Calendaring, To-do, and organiztion tools such as Google Calendar, Neptune and Backpack.
    3. Project management tools such as Basecamp or Mercury Grove‘s free Web Groups – both of which can be used to manage team term projects, even if someone goes away for the weekend.
    4. Always-on web chat clients or chat rooms, such as AIM and Campfire, for easy access to a friendly chat or coordinating with all the team members on a project. These days recreational instant messaging is a mainstay of college life, and for many students, it is a comforting distraction. Sometimes too distracting!

    All of them offer easy access to files and project info from wherever you can get an Internet connection.

  16. Wi-fi. Wireless internet access in the college library means being able to walk around with your laptop and work from any cubbyhole you can find – especially important during exam time.
  17. Mini coffee brewing machine. Not just a coffee pot, but a full blown mini brewing machine, grinders, etc., for banishing that mental phantom zone around exam time.
  18. Energy Drinks. Speaking of coffee. Now you can get a full dose of caffeine plus other energy enhancing ingredients in drinks like Red Bull. These have become the staple of late night studying.
  19. Myspace and Facebook. If you can find a college student who doesn’t use Myspace or Facebook then you deserve a prize. These two social networks have revolutionized the way people interact and meet each other online.
  20. Time and Location shifting TV. With busy schedules, many college students can’t watch their favorite shows at the time of broadcast. But that doesn’t mean they miss their favorite shows. There are several methods for students can use for watching shows when they want.
    1. Record To A Computer Hard Drive: Set up your home computer with a TV capture card. Program it to record TV shows at specific times to a high-capacity external hard drive. Then watch shows when you go home on weekends.
    2. Subscribe to a Service: TIVO is the most popular way of watching shows when you want.
    3. Location-shifting: Technologies like Slingbox and Orb allow you to catch your favorite sports team from back home, even when you are hundreds of miles out of the area.

Reader Suggestions Prize:
Photocopier (now why didn’t we think of that!)

Reader Suggestions Prize 2:
The Taser – “enforcing homogeneous behavior, one tase at a time”

Discussion

There are 38 comments battling for the truth! Have your say!

  1. I can’t believe that the photocopier didn’t make this list!!!

    Words by Andrew on October 4, 2007 at 10:28 am | #

  2. While I agree with some of these being a college student myself, I would argue that a lot of these nothing more than trends that are followed by our age group. I would highly doubt that the invention of Red Bull and energy drinks has a major contribution to the “change” in college students.

    Good post though.

    Words by Kyle Eggleston on October 4, 2007 at 10:38 am | #

  3. Wow…ths is a very obvious list. I was expecting a little more insight in this article. Oh, and give yourself a prize, ’cause I never used LameSpace or Facebook in college, because they’re for teenagers. 20-somethings using social-networking sites is, contrary to popular belief, sad and pathetic.

    Words by Grof on October 4, 2007 at 10:42 am | #

  4. Good post though.

    Words by fitness66ww on October 4, 2007 at 11:14 am | #

  5. It’s astonishing that all of the above are being used in middle schools and high schools across the nation as well. I’ve had experience with 3rd, 4th and 5th graders that use ipods and cell phones.

    Words by Michael Winkler on October 4, 2007 at 11:17 am | #

  6. Is that all cell phones are good for in school? In my school we get our grades texted to our phones, as well as any class cancellationsor god forbid emergencies. Also we receive assignments and notes via e-mail and our school library will scan articles and e-mail it to us free of charge within 2 days!

    Words by jlan on October 4, 2007 at 11:21 am | #

  7. As somebody who was in college back in the late 80′s, it amazes me as to what is available to the student today. We had to work in computer labs and sign up for time in order to work with Visicalc spreadsheets, and write our programs in Cobol. My roomate had a “wordprocessor” that was nothing more than a keyboard with a 3 inch LCD screen and had a massive 128 Megs of RAM to write papers. The internet ALONE changes the college experience from what I had.

    Words by musicMaven on October 4, 2007 at 11:30 am | #

  8. Powerpoint / digital projectors?

    Grof, just because you hate facebook doesn’t mean it shouldn’t be on the list. When the common way to hookup with someone after meeting them is to facebook them, it’s a valid method.

    Words by mikael on October 4, 2007 at 11:32 am | #

  9. I agree, pretty obvious stuff. Sure, if you go back 20 years its like night and day. But go back 10-12 years when the internet was dawning, and its not so impressive.

    I know many people who were in college in the late 90′s and laptops were fairly common even then. Ever hear of No-Doz? Jolt Cola? Same product, just some more fancy dancy marketing and packacking, and you call it “Red Bull” and now you have an a whole new generattion of caffeine junkies.

    The products have changed, but the experience has remained pretty much the same.

    Words by Phiber Optik on October 4, 2007 at 11:35 am | #

  10. Photocopiers (Xerox copiers) predate the ’20 years or so’ that the list is focusing on, by a lot. Access to photocopiers was pretty common by the 60′s. Indeed, there may well be LESS demand for them now, as there is so much of the info online, can just ‘copy and paste’, rather than run to the Xerox machine

    And if anything, I would say that this list WAY undervalues the huge revolution that the computer/word processing/laser printer combo brought to education, as well as business. A decade before the Internet got popular, these tools shook things up quite a bit.

    Words by Yasha on October 4, 2007 at 11:39 am | #

  11. What about note and test sharing websites like…

    UniversityNotes.net

    This thing has taken off at my school. Everyone seems to be using it now.

    Words by Kyle on October 4, 2007 at 11:40 am | #

  12. where’s Aderol?

    Words by Brian on October 4, 2007 at 11:41 am | #

  13. I graduated in ’88. Using a computer as a word processor was considered cheating by most professors. There was one phone in each dormatory, a pay phone. We spoke to our parents once a week, maybe. There was one television in each dormatory.

    Possibly the biggest change is the ability to get into a bar. Regardless of drinking age, which has changed, one could easily get into a bar and drink, no questions asked. Now, the drinking remains but with out the social confines that a bar provides.

    Words by Thos on October 4, 2007 at 11:41 am | #

  14. you forgot tasers

    Words by Hank on October 4, 2007 at 11:45 am | #

  15. I’m a college student myself and run a website for college girls. I couldn’t agree more with this – college students today have so much technology available – it really makes life so much easier.

    Of course, we’re all young so we don’t really care at all how much harder things used to be back in the day…

    Briana
    collegefashion.net

    Words by Briana on October 4, 2007 at 11:51 am | #

  16. “’cause I never used LameSpace or Facebook in college, because they’re for teenagers.”

    Funny how Facebook was originally made for college students. At first, only students of Harvard could get an account.

    Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facebook

    Words by Phillip Ridlen on October 4, 2007 at 11:52 am | #

  17. the condom.

    Words by themanonbass on October 4, 2007 at 12:12 pm | #

  18. don’t forget ebooks. a lot of my college reading materials were provided as pdfs or some other eformat. it saved my school a ton of money and also made sure we had the newest and best available.

    gordon
    http://www.ebooklvr.com

    Words by gordon on October 4, 2007 at 12:15 pm | #

  19. Kind of along the lines of google search are the digitalization of academic journal articles, newspapers, and other forms of written media. Instead of having to spend hours in the stacks looking for one stupid article, all you have to do an online search from any computer with internet access. And even better your school picks up the multi-million dollar bill haha.

    Words by Chase on October 4, 2007 at 12:20 pm | #

  20. The World Series of Beer POng

    Words by Duncan on October 4, 2007 at 12:26 pm | #

  21. I’m a current student at Indiana University, and while I would agree that the cell phone has not only affected college students but also the entire populous in a very severe (and convenient) way…I can’t believe that the internet is so low on the list…and that Google is higher than it?!

    Am I wrong or would we not have Google, MMORPGS, VoIP, or the need for digital video compression without the internet? Not to mention the fact that students pretty much rely solely on the internet for research needs outside of their text books?

    I would have to say that the internet is not only the most important innovation to change the college experience but also the most important innovation to change our society in the past ten years! The internet has lead almost 3/4 of that list into either being as necessary as they are or into existence period.

    Words by John on October 4, 2007 at 12:45 pm | #

  22. I have to agree with ebooks and digital projects.

    ebooks are great because they save me a couple hundred dollars. Instead of buying the book, I can just go online and print the chapter I need.

    digital projectors are great because you can implement power point, video, and print-outs into your oral presentation.

    Words by Ian at College Colosseum on October 4, 2007 at 1:18 pm | #

  23. Grof: So the millions (and they’re undoubtedly in the majority) of college students on Facebook are “sad and pathetic.” But somehow you’re not?

    Words by BobH on October 4, 2007 at 1:23 pm | #

  24. I’d say email is more important than text messaging – especially where actual schoolwork is concerned. When I was in college and grad school, 1999-2005, we lived with our email and sent everything from papers to music to schedules etc. True, we didn’t have the cloud-based options, but we never thought of sending a text either.

    Words by scott on October 4, 2007 at 1:25 pm | #

  25. Likewise, as a student returning to post-grad studies after an absence of almost a decade or so I would have to state that the Internet is one of the most influential changes. When I was first an undergrad in 1993, my university had just finished setting up an email service on Unix. No internet access for other than specific research labs. Library with dewey decimal cards and DOS based catalogues and indexs. Find an article, look in basement archives not through Google. Before, to attain knowledge was to seek and read in the stalls. Now, it’s different.
    Apart from the social revolution of ubiquitous cellular phones and what not, the sheer services and resources available for students be it in emotional counselling and social networking is far beyond what we had access to. Computer Science classes in high school in the 80′s were about BASIC programming and typing tutorials. What a difference.

    Words by Gordon on October 4, 2007 at 1:34 pm | #

  26. Um, The Pill? Hello?

    Words by Benavin Stanchiano on October 4, 2007 at 2:06 pm | #

  27. Bad part is all the Java, C#, etc languages – no one learns how computers really work.

    Words by ancient on October 4, 2007 at 2:29 pm | #

  28. The 3 biggest changes:

    Co-ed

    integration

    and rise of the self-hating prof who acts it out by attacking America

    Words by Ugly American on October 4, 2007 at 4:11 pm | #

  29. WHAT ABOUT THE BONG…THE BONG HAS HAD A HUGE IMPACT ON COLLEGE LIFE FROM AS FAR BACK AS THE 1960′S

    Words by Ross on October 4, 2007 at 4:16 pm | #

  30. The condom.. it sure improved college for me.

    Words by Lovechild on October 4, 2007 at 5:52 pm | #

  31. you forgot to mention aderol and ridalin

    Words by Jack on October 4, 2007 at 5:56 pm | #

  32. New education loans from the government and new load products from lenders. More people are going to college these days because of such loans.

    Words by AZ on October 4, 2007 at 8:05 pm | #

  33. adderall anyone?

    Words by Dustin on October 4, 2007 at 9:16 pm | #

  34. Without a doubt, the single largest technological impact on College and learning has been a single technology that changed the way students are taught and learn.

    Standardized tests.

    No “innovation” has changed College more.

    Words by Tristan on October 4, 2007 at 9:59 pm | #

  35. Video recordings of lectures are great … The one thing I couldn’t imagine being without are lecture notes being posted on the subject website :-)

    Words by j7labs on October 5, 2007 at 6:00 am | #

  36. I add Palm, streaming, messaging.
    Cool this list.

    Words by Ricardo Garay on October 5, 2007 at 3:16 pm | #

  37. I add iPod

    Words by Tuta on May 29, 2008 at 6:36 pm | #

  38. as far as i know energy drinks dont have caffeine, i know that red bull at the begining had that but now it doesnt anymore

    Words by Claudio on June 7, 2008 at 6:01 am | #

Have your say