adobe case statement
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A STATEMENT OF PURPOSE FORADOBE IN HIGHER EDUCATION: COLLABORATION, COMMUNICATION AND CREATION
OverviewScholarship was once a solitary event, confined
to a relatively small number of well educated
individuals, whose knowledge was limited to
the bound volumes in a library. Knowledge was
expensive to produce, difficult to obtain, and limited
to those who had the time and means to acquire it.
Fast forward to today, as we experience life during
the “knowledge revolution,” when new information
is growing at a dizzying rate and a thought, a Tweet,
or a video can travel around the world in a few
seconds.
“…Technology provides the means to access,
process and distribute vast amounts of data and
information than ever before imagined, but this
remains an almost meaningless activity without
processes of knowledge management to translate
data and information into relevant knowledge which
can be productively utilized (Clarke, 2001, p. 192).”
Vartan Gregorian, while serving as President and
Professor of History at Brown University stated,
“One of the greatest challenges facing our society
and contemporary civilization is how to transform
information into knowledge” (1993, p. 605).
Knowledge generation and transmission are
the core business of higher education. The leading
universities of tomorrow will be those who:
• can transform information into knowledge,
• understand how to harness the power of
technology to create and disseminate new
knowledge,
• build collaborative interdisciplinary learning
communities,
• apply new knowledge to solve some of the
world’s most pressing issues while educating
the next generation to use the technological
tools at their disposal to reach higher and
climb further than today’s faculty ever
thought possible.
Statement of the IssueToday’s faculty are in a transitional stage between
the paper and/or computer-based modes of
scholarship they perfected in graduate school and
the new and ever changing demands of scholarship
and teaching in the digital age. While many faculty
strive to keep abreast of technological advances, the
sheer pace of change, the proliferation of software
tools, and the increasing use of mobile devices in
higher education allowing students to learn anytime,
anywhere present significant challenges to faculty.
Multiple demands on their time and varying
levels of accessibility to meaningful professional
development opportunities, make it difficult for
faculty to experiment with and adopt promising
new digital tools to create, communicate, and
collaborate with one another and their students. As
a result, change is incremental in the adoption and
diffusion of technology in higher education.
As a dean of one of the largest urban public
Colleges of Education in the United States, I asked
myself, “How can I break this cycle?” What can I
do to spur the adoption of digital tools that show
promise of enabling faculty to perform their core
functions as scholars and teachers? How can we,
for example, unleash the power inherent in Adobe
Acrobat X to help faculty easily access, modify,
synthesize, and compile content from numerous
sources and apply that to the real-world business
of educating today’s college students – including
millenials and mid-career changers? How much
richer would the educational experience be for
our students if they could easily create electronic
portfolios showcasing their abilities as future
teachers? How could the teaching/learning
process be enhanced by providing both faculty and
students with the tools to help them design rich
media content and share it easily within a learning
community? How beneficial would it be for faculty
to communicate and collaborate as readily with a
colleague on another continent as one down the hall
using Adobe Connect? If faculty members cannot
connect in real-time for a student’s dissertation
defense, could they accomplish the same purpose
by meeting via Adobe Connect? How could the
classroom experience be enlivened by having leading
scholars make guest appearances or practicing
professionals contribute their expertise in dialogues
with students using Adobe Connect?
While digital tools such as Adobe Creative Suites,
Adobe Acrobat X, and Adobe Connect can easily
help faculty perform their core functions and
enhance the learning process for students, higher
education is also facing the same difficulties as
many other businesses – we are literally drowning in
paper and we are running out of space. Certainly,
technology has allowed us to reduce our reliance on
paper, but too much time and too many resources
are still being wasted purchasing, copying, printing,
filing, faxing, retrieving, shredding and/or storing
paper. Our dependance on paper transmission of
information in higher education is costly, time
consuming, and inefficient. In addition, it robs
us of the opportunity to empower our staff to think
differently about how we do business. Many of my
staff members are eager to learn how to use Adobe’s
new digital tools, have creative ideas to solve the
business systems/workflow problems we face in higher
education, and would welcome opportunities for
professional development and to share solutions with
other staff in a learning community. My leadership
team is receptive to experimenting with digital tools
to create, collaborate, and communicate because
they realize that higher education cannot succeed in
the 21st century unless we adopt more effective and
efficient means of transforming information into
knowledge and empowering our faculty, students, and
staff to become more innovative.
“Going Green” initiatives are becoming more
common in higher education. Many colleges and
universities are responding to the call to become more
environmentally conscious.
“The University of South Florida has become
one of a small number of universities nationwide
whose efforts to build an environmentally-conscious
campus and advance sustainability efforts through
research have earned a “gold” rating from the
Association for the Advancement of Sustainability
in Higher Education, the nation’s leading advocacy
group for the green campus movement” (Maddux
Newswire, February 3, 2011).
As a college and university, we simply can and
must do more to be responsible stewards of our
environment – and that involves going paper-free
to the maximum possible extent. The cost savings
and other efficiencies businesses have experienced in
reducing their excessive reliance on paper provides
an additional impetus for higher education to
experiment with Adobe Acrobat X to streamline our
workflows and design more efficient digital scanning
and document retrieval systems. Reducing carbon
emissions by holding meetings online via Adobe
Connect also appeals to universities in their efforts
to “Go Green,” and helps reduce costs during these
difficult economic times.
Proposed Project: Collaboration, Communication, and Creation with Adobe Acrobat X, Adobe Connect, and Adobe Creative Suite
We will implement in the USF College of
Education Adobe Acrobat, Adobe Connect,
and Adobe Creative Suite as our standards for
collaboration, communication, and creation.
We will document the development of a model
and evaluate the perceived effectiveness of Adobe
tools to solve problems related to instruction,
administration, and business operations of a large
urban college. We will use Adobe assets such as
Adobe TV and Adobe Educational Leaders to
prepare faculty, staff, and administrators in the
College of Education to effectively use Adobe tools.
We will also use Adobe Educational Exchange to
create a community of learners in which our faculty,
staff, administrators and students can collaborate
with one another regarding their use of Adobe tools.
BenefitsThe USF College of Education will serve as
an incubator for selected Adobe digital tools for
collaboration, communication, and creation.
Faculty, staff and students will use these tools to help
them be more successful, effective, and efficient in
performing their roles in the academic enterprise
whether that be as a faculty member, a student, or
a staff member performing key tasks that support
student success and faculty productivity.
The model/demonstration project we propose
will provide Adobe with an objective evaluation
of the effectiveness of transforming a large urban
College of Education from a paper-based, partially
computerized system of operation into a digital
environment. Through our partnership, based on
a shared vision of how technology can enhance
teaching and learning and a commitment to
evaluation in real-world settings, we will provide
higher education with the tools needed to succeed
in the 21st century. The insights and lessons we
learn by asking ourselves, “What if…” and “How
can we….” use Adobe’s creation, collaboration, and
communication tools to revolutionize teaching and
learning in higher education will provide a road map
for other colleges and universities to follow.
Colleen S. Kennedy, Ph.D.
Dean & Professor
College of Education
University of South Florida
References• Gregorian, V. (1993). Education and our divided
knowledge. Proceedings of the American
• Philosophical Society, 137(4, 250th Anniversary
Issue), pp. 605-611.
• Thomas C. (2001). The knowledge economy.
Education + Training, 43 (4/5), pp.189 – 196.
• USF Sustainability Initiatives Earn Coveted
‘Gold’ Rating. (2011, Feb. 3). The Maddux
Report News Wire.
LEE WILLIAMS / ASSOCIATE VICE PRESIDENT / 4202 EAST FOWLER AVENUE, ALC100 / TAMPA, FLORIDA 33620t (813) 974-4502 w UNSTOPPABLE.USF.EDU
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