Higher education almost completely ignored Marshall McLuhan’s central insight: new modes of communication change what can be imagined and expressed

Higher education almost completely ignored Marshall McLuhan’s central insight: new modes of communication change what can be imagined and expressed. “Any technology gradually creates a totally new human environment. Environments are not passive wrappings but active processes… . The ‘message’ of any medium or technology is the change of scale or pace or pattern that it introduces into human affairs.” Print is not advanced calligraphy. The web is not a more sophisticated telegraph. Yet higher education largely failed to empower the strong and effective imaginations that students need for creative citizenship in this new medium. The “progress” that higher education achieved with massive turnkey online systems, especially with the LMS, actually moved in the opposite direction. The “digital facelift” helped higher education deny both the needs and the opportunities emerging with this new medium. — Gardner Campbell on higher education’s lack of progress on digital fronts.