These days there aren’t very many discussions about the future of higher education that don’t at some point come around to the topic of money. Financial concerns and uncertainties are pervasive for virtually every “stakeholder” whether that interest be salary levels, tuition costs, or necessary investments (for example, in instructional technologies!), future state or Federal support to institutions and students, etc.
Higher education finance is my profession yet I have come to that profession from a liberal arts background (philosophy and political science). In the course of my career I’ve tried to use spreadsheet and database technologies to clarify, simplify and otherwise make complex higher education finances understandable to “lay” audiences (i.e., others without a financial background). Those efforts are driven by both a sense of stewardship and a belief that the best solutions to complex issues can be arrived at through the broad involvement of diverse constituencies.
I’ve found much in our readings to date that supplies underpinnings of research and scholarship to what I have experienced as a technology user, developer and advocate. And so as I have contemplated our peer teaching assignment my idea has been to use technology to show how the use of technology can make complex finances understandable to broad audiences and in turn empower those individuals (viz., my peers in this class) to fully participate in the financial allocation and policy decisions that will be impacting each of our professional lives for the foreseeable future.
Some years ago I oversaw the design of a web-enable financial reporting system designed for use by a land grant university, Oregon State, for which a colleague developed a Camtasia Studio presentation. Camtasia is itself a very flexible tool for both demonstrating software and providing a repeatable, visual “how-to” record of software and screen activity. In this case the demonstration is of a unique financial software application.
I’ve written about this application here and others have also written about it, here for example. What I am specifically interested in researching is how technology can be utilized to expand group decision processes by providing all participants within the process with an equivalent knowledge base. Perhaps since I was not trained in accounting or finance yet have come to understand it well enough to teach other professionals in my field, as I have done for many years for professional associations, I believe that such an understanding for others can be facilitated by the thoughtful use of technology. While my concern is specifically with higher education finance, I believe there are other areas of economic life where technology can serve to both demystify and democratize realms of policy that benefit from expanded involvement.
Though I am not a teacher I do regularly conduct workshops for higher education audiences including professional colleagues and boards of trustees. Remarkably though I’ve done that for years I’ve not thought explicitly about planned learning outcomes. Please don’t tell anyone! For my peer teaching assignment my planned outcome would be to evoke a sense of the possible – if you can understand your checkbook and even “mostly” grasp your personal finances, you can understand complex financial matters most all of which have parallels in everyday experience. And, you can add insights into financial discussions that frankly no one else can provide. As we strive and struggle as a people to grapple with unprecedented financial difficulties, that participation matters now more than ever. We have the tools of technology needed to meet the challenge.
— Gil Brown
Hi Gil,
Appreciate the response back. Sometimes wonder if anybody is out there!
I can speak from experience that the specialized knowledge that is “out there,” is tough to access and not very reliable sometimes. After retiring from PwC I now practice law “of counsel” to a small law firm. One of the biggest differences is access to resources. Our small firm doesn’t have the access to technical research resources which are very expensive. On top of that while we can access the law and some support, we can’t get real expertise based on hands on knowledge. Internet information is spotty at best. For example, if I get a client project which requires me to get up to speed quickly I can find internet resources, but it mainly can just point me in the right direction, and still requires a lot of work to get to the conclusion.
What I do find is that a lot of smaller practitioners in any field, although I am most familiar with law and accounting, tend to rely on very general information and “shoot from the hip.”
Bob
Thanks Bob, that’s very interesting. Of course PwC is paid by the hour for its specific expertise on a broad range of topics! The training library you describe would seem to me to hold the potential to serve as a vast specialized knowledge store that itself would add value to the enterprise by only being available to PwC consultants. Of course that would require significant effort to develop and maintain. I’m curious if, instead, you see internet resources (including peer to peer communications) serving that same purpose for who might otherwise be prospective clients. Is there sufficient specialized knowledge “out there” for people with sufficient time and sense to acquire knowledge they’d otherwise have to purchase from PwC?
Thanks for commenting!
Hi Gil,
One of the efforts we were attempting to implement at PwC was “just in time” training in particular financial subjects for our staff. While I am in the tax field, specialized knowledge was important to deal with specific technical issues. To get teams working on a project up to speed, we were in the process of developing a library of online training courses. The goal was to get everyone on the team up to speed on the basics of the subject of the project. The learning tool was an accessible on line training program with built in screens of text, links to relevant references, periodic questions which required answers and then provided the correct answers, followed by an online test which required a certain score to pass before joining the project team. It seemed like a great idea. The problem was to develop the library of training topics and the significant cost in technology and in time commitment (we get paid by clients by the hour, not for administrative costs, like building learning tools).
Bob