I’ve been reading Syllabus magazine for quite some time, not always agreeing with everything in print, but I found good stories on instructional technology, case studies, review of technology that faculty use.
But all that has been flushed. Syllabus has morphed to “Campus Technology”
…the complete resource for leaders in higher education. Campus Technology offers an expanded coverage of academic and administrative computing as well as articles from strategic planning to practical tips.
Let’s see the first issue articles…
- IT Spending: Where’s the Value?
- Enterprise Technology: Selling the Vision
- Telecommunications: Can Cisco Answer the Call?
- Faculty & Technology: Rewarding TET
- IT Directions: What’s Next for Windows?
- Smart Campus: MPEG-4 and the New, ‘Flat’ World
- The Web: Reading Between the Lines
Not to mention the centerfold, a 18 page HP “Higher Education Contracts Guide”, a read less thrilling then the phone book.
The closest article related to teaching, Faculty & Technology: Rewarding TET offers a strange theory that faculty can lose their chances of tenure by spending too much time using technology:
The time he spent on the use of TET—an as yet unvalidated tool—simply took away from his more serious teaching endeavors. The time involvement also detracted from his scholarly research; he made fewer scientific discoveries and received no grant money because of it.
Syllabus was aimed at faculty, tech support, and administrators (tens of tens of thousands or more of potential audience readers) to something aimed at the top tier of administration, Presidents and CIOs (thousands of potential audience readers??)– so I am left to guess it is not about creating a publication for a larger audience of readers, it is about creating a publication for an audience that spends large amounts of money.
So speaking of not wasting time, I can go through this new magazine in less than 4 minutes.
They did one thing, at least the old URLs to Syllabus articles were maintained.
I dunno, I’ve already had a sneaking feeling that they were a bit evil, I mean: “Enterprise Technology: Selling the Vision”… shudder!
Cheers, James