Higher education institutions should adapt to new technology and students’ learning styles because of budget challenges and to remain competitive, said Donald Bobbitt, UA system president, during a Nov. 13 speech at The Clinton School of Public Service in Little Rock.

Bobbitt, who succeeded B. Alan Sugg in July, said he came to the UA from the University of Texas at Arlington with a vision: a “robust, inclusive, comprehensive and cost-effective system of higher education.

“We need to figure out a way to meet our mission, which is to educate, with our resources, by becoming more innovative and efficient,” Bobbitt said in a telephone interview.

The revenue and federal budget concerns facing higher education institutions makes online classes vital for the UA, Bobbitt said.

“Very few institutions claim to be adequately funded, and there is not a lot of hope that that situation will change,” Bobbitt said.

Tuition and fees account for 43 percent of the UA’s education and general budget, according to the chancellor’s website; the state of Arkansas accounts for 45 percent.

There are many demands on those funds, Bobbitt said.

“Tuition can’t be increased enough to make up for the flattening in education revenues,” he said.

In the 1976 fiscal year, the maximum Pell Grant of $1,400 covered 72 percent of the total cost to attend a four-year college. In the 2009-2010 school year, the maximum Pell Grant covered 36 percent of the cost to attend a typical four-year college, according to an article from the Federal Education Budget Project.

“We can look at other industry leaders, who are no longer industry leaders, and get a pretty good idea of what our fate will be if we don’t meet the challenges,” Bobbitt said during his Nov. 13 speech.

“We have to adapt to those challenges,” he said, “or go the way of the auto industry.”

Technology, both in the classroom and through online classes, is in the future of higher education, Bobbitt said.

More than 30 percent of higher education students now take at least one course online, according to a 2011 study by The Sloan Consortium, an online education organization.

Additionally, 65 percent of the more than 2,500 higher education institutes surveyed said that online learning is a critical part in their long-term strategy.

Online education can be the integration of technology in a classroom “face-to-face” setting, distance learning from across the state or globe, or any “hybrid” of the two, Bobbitt said.

“Technology might be a way, if we can mend it and mold it into the institution, to help us educate more students in a cost-effective manner, better than we are now,” he said.

Hybrid teaching in classrooms is the new expectation on college campuses, said Elaine Terrell, instructional designer with the UA Faculty Technology Center.

“Students expect it,” she said. “Those students have grown up with the expectation that, if the technology’s there, then why wouldn’t you use it?”

Classroom technology is important for students, Terrell said, because most students will use similar technology throughout their careers.

“Our students, when they graduate and go out in the real world, they’re going to be working with a lot of this technology, and the sooner they experience it and get comfortable with it, the better,” Terrell said.

Integrating technology allows instructors to connect with students in new ways, making learning easier for more people, she said.

“We’ve had this [linear] model for the better part of a century, where we’re expected to learn by paying attention to the person talking at the front of the room,” Terrell said. “Studies on learning styles have shown that not many of us are good at that way of doing things.”

Instructors can meet the needs of more students with hybrid and online teaching, Bobbitt said, compared to traditional methods.

“The online experience can be organized so things can be reviewed several times before moving on [to new material],” he said.

Learning styles differ greatly, Bobbitt said.

“There are some students who benefit from face-to-face instruction,” he said, “and there are other students who benefit quite dramatically from the online experience.”

It is important for teachers to realize that students have different ways of processing information, said Linda Jones, associate professor of instructional technology and director of the Language Learning Center.

“We as teachers need to find ways to teach our courses where it’s not just [uniform], it’s not just one way all the time, but instead we provide students with other redundant venues for processing the information,” Jones said.

Students in online learning environments perform better than students in traditional learning environments, according to an unattributed online article in The New York Times.

“On average, students in online learning conditions performed better than those receiving face-to-face instruction,” according to the article.

Connecting with students on a level they understand is important, Jones said.

“All of our kids today that we’re teaching are already using technology. They’re already familiar with it, they’re very used to it. It is their primary way of getting information,” she said.

The technology necessary to solve most of the problems facing higher education institutions is available and ready to use, Bobbitt said.

“[The] technologies available right now don’t have to be invented to solve most of these problems,” he said. “If the educational environment will embrace it, and I think there’s ample evidence that that is indeed occurring.”