For 25 years, higher education has wrestled with one question: If students can learn online, why come to campus?

The answer: on-campus learning isn’t disappearing—it’s transforming to do what online cannot.

Content Delivery Is Moving Online

Online platforms and AI tutors have become the most efficient way to deliver information. Lectures, readings, and examples thrive in digital spaces where students can pause, rewind, and revisit.

The campus is no longer the best place for one-way information transfer.

On-campus courses will thrive by providing experiences that cannot be digitized:

• Hands-on labs with specialized equipment
• Design studios and maker spaces
• Collaborative team-based work
• In-person research with faculty
• Real-time problem-solving under guidance

The future classroom looks less like a lecture hall and more like a studio, lab, or incubator.

The Campus’s Strongest Differentiator: People

For most students, the real value of campus has never been the lecture—it’s been the people:

• Belonging and connection
• Clubs, teams, and organizations
• Faculty mentorship
• Friendships and peer networks
• Leadership and service opportunities

AI can personalize instruction, but it cannot replace human relationships.

Athens State as a Use Case

My employer, Athens State University, serves a geographically dispersed, working-adult population as a predominantly online institution. Yet the campus remains vital—not for lectures, but as a specialized space for high-impact, hands-on learning.

Computing students come to campus for experiences that cannot be replicated online: cybersecurity labs, IoT and networking environments, undergraduate research, and deeply interactive experiences that complement flexible online programs.

Hybridization Is the Default

The false binary of “online vs. on-campus” is evaporating. What emerges is hybrid by design:

• Lectures watched ahead of time
• Class time for application, coaching, and creation
• AI helps students practice and simulate
• In-person meetings during critical learning phases
• Flexibility during less critical weeks

My CS 318 (Computer Science 2) course exemplifies this: lectures are asynchronous and recorded; class meetings are live-streamed for in-person or online attendance. A significant minority perform better with direct interaction. We use class time for structured programming labs, with plans to add code reviews and breakout activities.

AI Raises the Bar

AI tutoring makes it easy for students to master procedural content independently. This shifts the question:

Why attend in person if an AI tutor can explain the content 24/7?

The answer must be compelling. In-person courses must emphasize:

• Creative synthesis and judgment under uncertainty
• Real-time collaboration and improvisation
• Peer critique and feedback cycles
• Experiential learning with real consequences

Campuses must deliver the parts of learning that require being alive, alert, and in the room.

The Campus Becomes Professional Infrastructure

In applied fields, the campus functions less as a place for listening and more as a place for doing professional work:

• Running experiments
• Configuring hardware, networks, and security systems
• Building prototypes
• Practicing industry-standard workflows
• Working in labs and studios

Future students might take 70% of their content online, but complete 100% of their professional practice in hybrid and in-person environments.

Enrollment Economics Will Reinvent Campus

As flexible online pathways become standard, institutions will restructure their physical spaces:

• Fewer traditional lectures
• More active learning classrooms and labs
• More spaces for team projects
• More tutoring and success centers
• More events and community engagement

Campuses evolve from information centers to creation and connection centers.

Dreamscape Learn as an Example

Dreamscape Learn (https://www.dreamscapelearn.com/) exemplifies this transformation. A collaboration between Hollywood storytellers and academic leaders, it brings cinematic-quality VR into higher education. Originally developed with Arizona State University, Dreamscape creates immersive, narrative-rich VR environments where students work together in shared virtual worlds.

These VR labs turn complex subjects—biology, physics, environmental science—into interactive simulations requiring investigation, collaboration, and problem-solving. The campus becomes the gateway to high-impact, immersive learning that cannot be replicated online. VR laboratories become collaborative hubs where students form communities around exploratory challenges, demonstrating how physical spaces can offer deeply interactive, emotionally resonant learning that fuses storytelling, simulation, and teamwork.

So What Is the Future?

Not extinction. Transformation.

Online education handles:

• Content delivery
• Self-paced mastery
• Flexible pathways
• Practice and basic tutoring (via AI)

On-campus education focuses on:

• Human connection
• Judgment, creativity, and synthesis
• Teamwork and communication
• Studio, lab, and project-based learning
• Identity development and mentorship

The campus becomes a premium experience—not the default, but the valuable. Students show up not because they “have to,” but because something worth experiencing happens there.

Conclusion: The Future University Is a Network

The future of higher education is networked—a connected ecosystem where AI provides constant support, online platforms provide flexibility, the campus provides community and practice, faculty guide through mentorship and design, and students move fluidly between digital and physical experiences.

In a world where almost anything can be learned online, on-campus courses will thrive by becoming deeply human, intensely interactive, and uniquely experiential.

Three Key Insights

1. Physical Affordances Matter—But Only if They’re Superior

Labs, equipment, studios—things that cannot fit through a screen. But this only works if the equipment is meaningfully better than what students could access elsewhere. A basic computer lab isn’t defensible; a VR development lab or cyber range is.

2. The Campus Becomes a Premium Tier

Real-time collaboration, mentorship, peer learning. Even when only a minority perform better with direct interaction, those small percentages matter when competing on outcomes. The campus shifts from default tier for everyone to premium tier for students who need high-touch interaction.

3. Human Social Capital Appreciates in an AI World

In an AI-saturated world, human social capital becomes more valuable, not less. The network you build in college may be worth more than the skills you learn, especially as skills become commoditized by AI.

Selah.

Thoughts on the passing of the old year and starting of the new year.

It’s January 1st, 2015: New Year’s Day 2015 C.E. The start of a new year if you follow the Gregorian calendar. A time of renewal and starting fresh.

Yet…

It’s not really a day I use as a milestone. Other events have more significance in my life. From a work standpoint, it’s the Graduation ceremony in the Summer term that marks the passing of another academic year. In my personal life, it’s always been Homecoming events at Sewanee (or, as we called it in my more callow and younger days: “Fall Party Weekend”) that have marked off another year since Graduation forced my departure from Percy’s “Arcadia”.

So, while today may notch another click in the years component in the odometer, it’s not much more beyond that for me.

Selah.

The supreme end of education is expert discernment in all things — the ability to tell the good from the bad, the genuine from the counterfeit, and to prefer the good and the genuine to the bad and the counterfeit.
— Samuel Johnson

I enjoy teaching and have done it for several
years, both in academia and industry. The main subjects in which I have gained teaching experience include Computer Architecture, Computational Science and Scientific Computing, and Information Technology. I have experience teaching students at all levels, from teaching introductory class for non-Computer Science majors, to teaching upper division classes for Computer Science students, and to mentoring both undergraduate and graduate students in independent studies. I can teach these subjects with utmost ease and look forward to an opportunity for teaching these as well as other related subjects.

In a recent article in Sewanee, the quarterly magazine for
alumni of The University of the South, Dr. Joel Cunningham, Vice
Chancellor Emeritus of the University, addressed the question “What is worth learning?” In his remarks, Dr. Cunningham related a conversation he had with a recent alumnus of the University about Andrew Lytle, a noted author of literature about the American South. The alumnus recalled that Mr. Lytle took the position that the modern focus on “What do you do?” is wrong. Rather, Mr. Lytle thought it to better to ask “Where do you come from?”, “Who are your people?”, and “Who are you?”. As educators, we must, through scholarship, strive to guide
our students towards an understanding of these questions and aid our students in their search for their own answers to said questions.

The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching defines
scholarship in teaching as being built from three components:

• discovery: research and performance that adds to
  a knowledge base and intellectual climate of an institution,
• integration: drawing together and interpreting
  diverse kinds of knowledge, and
• application: applying knowledge to practical problems.

Scholarship of discovery means we strive to create a sense of discovery and wonder in our students whether we are in the classroom or the laboratory. The experience goes beyond classroom and laboratory; for as we enable our students to absorb concepts through experience, they provide us with new insights into the subject. This inspires us to teach in more creative
ways by exploring alternative approaches.

By fostering a sense of discovery in our students, we build
enough foundation and kindle enough appetite in them that they
realize that they are capable of scholarship of integration upon their own volition. Today’s students pull information from many sources and it is my task to incorporate traditional teaching tools, hands-on experience in labs, and non-traditional teaching tools from the Internet such as social media to provide the best possible learning environment. In particular, complementing the in-person classroom experience with an on-line presence and research opportunities helps the student link coursework with practical real-world experience.

Effective learning requires the student to be able to apply knowledge taught in the classroom to practical situations. I accomplish this by highlighting how the subject being taught plays an important role in our daily lives, the applicable commercial products and specific companies producing hardware/software in that area, and promise and challenges of that subject in the coming years. Laboratory exercises, programming assignments, and classroom lectures in my classes are designed with the
objective of linking material in the classroom environment to practical application. This fosters independent, logical, and analytical thinking into my students so that they learn how to solve problems on their own. As my students devise their own approaches and bring novel ideas in being, I learn from them in turn.

In higher education, we have two goals towards which we must
strive. First, we must be able to answer Mr. Lytle’s questions for
ourselves so that we can answer without thought or hesitation: “This is who I am!”, “These are my people!”, and “This is me!”. Then, we have to answer to the most difficult challenge: coaxing, convincing, and with just a little bit of forcing those whom we teach to be able to answer those sorts of questions for themselves with the same sort of verve and elan that we expect of ourselves.

Fall is starting to arrive here in South Louisiana… the temperature is finally dropping into the 70’s during the day and everyone is breaking out the winter clothing. Hey, it’s South Louisiana – you have to be careful to avoid splashing hot oil on your legs when you’re wearing shorts while you’re frying your Thanksgiving turkey.

People down here describe this weather as being “gumbo weather”. So, in that spirit, here’s my favorite gumbo recipe. It’s adapted from one that John Folse included in one of his cookbooks. It’s a bit complicated but mais, cher’, it’s good. If you can’t get good oysters, feel free to use shrimp.

Duck and Sausage Gumbo

Stock
4 (1 ½ pound) mallards or similar ducks
4 ½ qt. water
3 ribs celery, cut into chunks
1 carrot, cut into half
15 peppercorns
4 bay leaves
1 ¼ t. salt
1 t. dried thyme
¼ t. garlic powder
¼ t. red pepper flakes
Gumbo
¾ c. all-purpose flour
¾ c. vegetable oil
2 c. chopped onions
2 c. chopped celery
1 c. chopped green bell pepper
2 carrots, sliced
1 T. chopped garlic
1 lb. andouille or similar smoked sausage, cut into slices
2/3 c. oyster liquor
1/3 c. port
2 bay leaves
½ t. freshly ground black pepper
¼ t. cayenne pepper
2 doz. Oysters
½ c. chopped green onion tops
¼ c. chopped fresh parsley
steamed rice
File’ powder

Stock

Combine the ducks and all other ingredients in a stockpot. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 3 to 4 hours or until the ducks are tender. Remove the ducks and chop, discarding the skin and bones. Strain the stock into a container discarding the solids. Chill until the fat has congealed on the stock. Remove the fat and reserve for other purposes (Potatoes fried in duck fat, while quite deadly from a coronary aspect, are quite tasty).

Gumbo

Make a roux with the flour and water in a large heavy pot. Add the vegetables and garlic. Cook until vegetables are tender. Add 3 quarts of the duck stock, reserved duck meat, the sausage, oyster liquor, port, bay leaves, black pepper, and cayenne pepper. Bring to a boil. Reduce the heat and simmer for 1 hour. Stir in the oysters, green onion tops, and parsley. Cook for 10 minutes longer. Remove and discard bay leaves. Ladle the gumbo over steamed rice to serve. Sprinkle with file’ powder if desired.

This collection of pages is a reflection of my personal interests and experimentation. I tend to use these things two ways: trying different funky HTML things and as sort of an extended “Bookmark” file. So, pardon the mess and feel free to use this page as jumping off point to lots of neat places

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