On the road to the next century in higher education an ironic and expensive
contradiction is emerging. At a time when colleges and universities are
investing heavily in digital technology-computers, CD-ROM, high-speed
networks-many faculty are somewhat cautious and skeptical about applying it
to teaching and learning. Indeed, a recent study by the University of
Southern California revealed that less than 5 percent of college and
university faculty use computing to aid classroom instruction or enrich
student learning. Why is this so? What are the likely consequences of such
widespread reluctance by faculty? How can colleges and universities
encourage greater enthusiasm for digital technology in the service of the
curriculum? In the context of their courses, many faculty view digital
technology as the latest collection of gadgets unable to deliver the
educational merit promised by proponents. For these faculty, digital
technology requires too much time and effort, supplies too many
distractions, and yields too little value for the investment. Worse, this
technology delivers only what the marketplace provides, and too often those
provisions do not meet the local curricular needs of the faculty and
students. Given these general perceptions, faculty skepticism about digital
technology in service of the curriculum is no surprise. But increasingly,
people inside the academy (information center directors, trustees,
administrative leaders) and outside the academy (vendors, government,
funding agencies, special interest groups) express hope and expectation that
digital technology will improve higher education and make it more
cost-effective.
One school of thought argues that digital technology can make information
more vivid, more instructive, more focused upon the immediate needs of
students. These people believe that digital technology, by supporting
interactive instruction, will encourage students to be more responsible for
their own learning. They argue that digital technology can help students
learn the elementary and the fundamental, thereby freeing faculty to work
with students on the more complex and interesting aspects of their courses.
They believe such technology can aid assessment of learning more
effectively, more efficiently than traditional means have, and improve the
feedback of assessment into educational design. A second school of thought
argues that digital technology will help reduce the costs of education.
These people believe that electronic communications, expert systems, and
distance learning will afford cooperation among colleges and universities.
They argue that this cooperation can effect consolidation of resources,
programs, and missions that will attain considerable savings.
If faculty are skeptical about the first school of thought, they are
downright resistant to the second. They conclude that reducing costs with
the aid of digital technology translates into reducing the number of faculty
and increasing student-faculty ratios. Faculty argue that machines may be
able to aid teaching and learning, but they must never replace the essential
human engagement that infuses all good teaching and makes learning more than
merely a mechanical act.
Nevertheless, marketplace pressures, student interest, the influence of
professional organizations, and the example of colleagues are persuading
faculty to employ digital technology in their teaching and scholarship. To
use digital technology effectively, faculty must learn to operate
sophisticated hardware and software while they sustain mastery of the
central issues and pedagogy of their courses. Where will they find time to
learn how to use digital technology effectively? How will they adjust their
courses so that students can apply computers in the classroom and in the
work beyond?
What is a reasonable balance of emphases between acquainting students with a
system design and informing them of central disciplinary issues in a course?
How large a role should digital technology play in the classroom, and how do
faculty cope when machines fail or the unexpected arises? And finally, even
if they meet all of these challenges, will the system of promotion and
retention recognize the value of their work and reward them accordingly?
Thus far, personnel committees, curriculum committees, and college
administrators have responded minimally to these questions and the result is
faculty, particularly junior faculty, are understandably reluctant to
experiment with digital technology in the curriculum. Yet many colleges and
universities are spending heavily on digital technology to support
sophisticated applications in faculty offices, in classrooms, in
laboratories, in libraries, and in dormitories. Someone must be expecting
educational returns on these investments that are commensurate with the
costs of their installation and maintenance. Isn't it time to reconcile the
aims of this investment with policies that encourage faculty to make that
investment work?
Colleges should support formation of local faculty communities that share
experience and provide assistance for mastering challenges of technology and
pedagogy. Colleges should encourage educational uses of digital technology
that can be assessed for their effectiveness, and that testify, at promotion
and tenure time, to one valued aspect of a faculty member's work. These
incentives, thoughtfully applied, will increase the informational reach of
students across the curriculum and equip them to explore digital forms of
information after they graduate.
To attain these ends, colleges need to find imaginative connections among
curriculum, pedagogy, technology, and administration. In these connections,
faculty are key, for they are the people who fuse the substance of their
disciplines with the skills and techniques that make digital technology
serve the curriculum in depth.
To accomplish this end, colleges must challenge existing patterns of work
and specialization on campuses. They must ask faculty who use digital
technology to work with other faculty who are just beginning and to share
their pedagogical experiences with people in their college information
centers. Colleges must support this cooperation by supplying essential
digital resources and expect tangible curricular results from the
application of those resources. They must invite realistic assessment of
digital technologies for their leverage and their burdens. They must
encourage communication across disciplines of common and effective
pedagogical design. They must use digital technology to urge academic
departments and faculty to think more and work more as communities.
Until now, digital technology has invaded our campuses in haphazard fashion,
evolving in academic departments and in information centers much the way
that older technologies did. But this technology is too powerful, too
capable of changing the ways we work and manage to abandon to such
unstructured development. Digital technology delivers the potential for
enriching the curriculum, for helping students reason and learn, for
applying pedagogical design more effectively, for connecting the offerings
of departments and the curriculums of different colleges. It is too
important a resource to be left to accidental development.
Robert DeSieno is professor of computer science in the Mathematics and
Computer Science Department at Skidmore College.
© 1995 Educom.