Educators contemplate the appropriate use of technology in the postsecondary environment

While most of today's students, are eager to use technology, many faculty members approach it with tepid enthusiasm. Some professors still prefer ink and paper to a keyboard and screen.

The new technology "requires really a cultural change on the part of faculty and staff," says Dr. Roy McTarnaghan, president of Florida Gulf Coast University. "For traditional institutions this is pretty hard to do. A lot of folks are comfortable in the seventeenth century."

However, much of the discomfort with technology held by many scholars has nothing to do with the tools of the trade and more. It has to do with the way those tools are used and what is being lost in the process.

Clorice Thomas-Haysbert, an assistant professor for hospitality programs at Howard University, see several dangers posed by the new technology -- not the least of which is the diminishing physical contact between students and instructors.

Thomas-Haysbert worries that professors will have a harder time discovering who the student really is, and what he or she is really about, because there is no personal contact when classes are taught over the Internet.

"Seeing a student every day is important. Some students have different skills and needs that must be dealt with on a daily basis," she says.

Another key concern for Thomas-Haysbert is that too often students raised in the age of the Internet do not question the information they get online. Many of them, she says, do not realize that not all information on the Internet is factual.

Thomas-Haysbert urges professors to take the time to teach students how to discern between good and bad online information, and then help them find where the most reliable resources are on the Internet.

Her concerns are shared by the faculty at Florida Gulf Coast University, which was built as a testing ground for Internet-based instruction.