Message From The Director

In today’s digital electronic information environment, Students arrive on the campus of UC Santa Cruz with varying knowledge levels and multiple learning styles. The Internet, Virtual Reality, Cyberdocks, Convergence Technology, Broadband, Wi-Fi, and Digital Hubs are dramatically changing communication options for higher education. Faculty and staff must face the challenge of individual student assessment, the vast array of instructional technologies, and multiple measures for assessing student performance. New technology creates incredible opportunities for new approaches when responding to individual learning styles.

Psychological research has generated a tremendous amount of information regarding individual student learning styles. The ability to present educational offerings using Internet and Convergence Technologies will more effectively respond to the visual, auditory and kinesthetic learner. Individual learning modalities are more clearly understood and technological applications are being developed to support learning in the student's preferred mode. Most important, in the many changes that will impact university education, is the realization that all students do not learn in the same way.

Computer and video technologies have rapidly become a standard feature of university operations. Internet technology is now an integral component of higher education and is currently capable of including live audio and continuous streaming video. Rapidly emerging Internet applications include web casting, archiving and video on demand in networked and wireless environments. As the Internet changes technologically, the potential for delivering distributed learning using this technology is expanding at an incredible rate.

The UC Santa Cruz community faces a great educational and technological frontier. Partner with UCSC Media Services to create this new educational cyberscape. We have the opportunity to touch lives and facilitate optimal learning experiences for UCSC students never before dreamed possible in the history of humankind.