Across the globe, Internet access is taken for granted and cell phone service is everywhere. Gone are the days of dial-up and families gathered around radios for their nightly news and entertainment. It has become easier to "friend" someone on Facebook than befriend them in real life, texting is more common than calling and when a question is asked the immediate response has become, "Google it". It can no longer be argued that media has invaded every aspect of day-to-day life.
Many colleges and universities are struggling to keep up. Whether they are media schools, liberal arts colleges or even public universities, faculty and staff are challenged in their efforts keep courses relevant in this environment of constant change and technical advances.
"The biggest problem schools have is that they've all been slow to go into multimedia. They've trailed, as academia usually does," said Mark Tatge, the Eugene S. Pulliam Distinguished Visiting Professor of Journalism at DePauw.
Tatge believes that students are given insufficient multimedia training in their college years and find themselves unprepared for the tech-heavy work environment after graduation.
"If you're going to work in this world you're going to have to be somewhat technically proficient and universities in general do a pretty poor job of preparing people," Tatge said.
Hans Meyer is an assistant professor at Ohio University who teaches a number of different multimedia classes. In a phone interview, Meyer said that the current media lag in the world of academia is exactly the opposite of what he would like to see.
Meyer would prefer college students and professors take advantage of the learning environment they occupy and be the ones taking risks and trying innovative things with multimedia while they are still in school, instead of experimenting afterwards.
"Really innovative things; things that aren't going to work, but that fail in a way that is not only going to inform other colleges but that will inform the industry itself," Meyer said.
It seems that students themselves are starting to have a big voice in the current push for the integration of media into college classrooms.
"They're starting to ask, 'why is this so old?'" said Tatge.
Meyer said that students are the ones who want to understand technology the most, as demonstrated by their proficiency in social media. Professors would benefit from utilizing student's knowledge in this specific realm of media as well as teaching them how to use important programs such as HootSuite, InDesign, Sony Vegas, among other technologies.
"Media is still struggling with how to use Facebook and Twitter, but our students have used those almost since they came out," Meyer said. "They're really good at it-I'm not sure they need us [for social media]."
With students at the forefront of this technology driven world, Tatge believes that colleges are going to have to take a serious look at what they're offering students, and whether or not it's still relevant.
"With each freshmen class that comes in here, they're more mobile, they started with technology at an earlier age and we're still offering them the same menu of stuff," Tatge said.
Tatge was hired in an effort to update DePauw's own multimedia ventures. He teaches media classes and works with the Media Fellows, but, he said, this is not enough. His "philosophy" is that multimedia should be integrated into every part of the modern college curriculum, and he warns away from the current "pen and pencil" style of learning.
"It ought to be taught like English, or basic writing skills," Tatge said. "You have basic composition skills, you have basic match skills and you have your basic multimedia skills."
However, even journalism schools are a long way from approaching this type of learning.
Nancy Day, chair of the journalism department at Columbia College, in Chicago, said in a phone interview that the college has recently approved a curriculum change. This change would transform a number of classes, such as "Digital Storytelling," from electives to requirements starting in the fall semester of 2013.
"Part of that change was made to infuse more multimedia into the core learning of each of our students no matter what specialty he or she may be considering," said Day.
This focus on multimedia will be taking place in both the graduate and undergraduate programs, and she has already started seeing results from the "Digital Storytelling" course-even though it is still currently optional.
Just weeks ago Day spoke with a graduate student who seized the opportunity to secure film footage of a protest against gay marriage. Though this student is training as a print journalist and arrived on the scene by chance, she was able to pull out a camera and use the skills she had been taught in a digitally focused class to add video to the print version of the story that would be posted online.
Though this experience speaks mostly to the important of digital learning for modern journalists, Meyer stressed that multimedia skills are increasingly important to employers in all fields.
"The skills [students] are learning even in basic journalism classes translate well to a real world context."
The biggest problems universities and colleges of all types seem to be having is the integration of multimedia. If it has taken the School of Media Arts at Columbia College this long to make classes concentrated on video a requirement how much longer will it take schools like DePauw?
With changes in the technical world occurring as fast as they are, Tatge worries that "we are taking baby steps when we need to be taking big steps." The key for colleges will to take these big steps and ensure that multimedia and college classes are in sync.
"If [DePauw] is going to continue to serve the students, it's going to have to evolve," said Tatge.