Mastering Technology's...

Colleges encourage faculty to go high tech
By Ronald Roach

T o get students proficient and comfortable with the Internet and the latest information technology, Morris Brown College officials have required its undergraduates to participate in a laptop purchase program this fall, one of the first ever such initiatives at a historically Black institution. Through campus-wide wireless Internet connections, the laptops provide their owners constant connectivity to the World Wide Web, a move that is sure to increase student use and awareness of the Internet.
At the same time, the college donated individual laptops to Morris Brown faculty in a gesture to encourage them to establish online learning opportunities for their students. "We wanted to reward our faculty and provide them an incentive to incorporate information technology into their courses," says Dr. Charlyn Harper Browne, dean of faculty at Morris Brown College in Atlanta.
Morris Brown College officials believe they are taking a pragmatic approach to motivating faculty to embrace the use of advanced information technology. Such pragmatism recognizes that faculty are needing as much — if not more—attention than students with adapting to new technology.
The devotion of resources and special attention to faculty also means that institutions are asking their teachers to shoulder the greatest burden as information technology gets incorporated in the classroom.
Nationally, surveys document the steady increase of information technology in the college classroom. The Campus Computing Survey, undertaken annually by Dr. Kenneth C. Green, a
visiting scholar at the Claremont Graduate University in California, reports that more faculty members are incorporating technology resources in their courses. Three-fifths (59.3 percent) of college courses include the use of electronic mail, up from 54 percent in 1999, 44 percent in 1998, and 20.1 percent in 1995. More than two-fifths (42.7 percent) of college courses now incorporate World Wide Web resources as a component in the course. In 1995, Web use was 10.9 percent, 33.1 percent in 1998 and 38.9 percent in 1999. Nearly a third (30.7 percent) of all college courses have a Web page, compared to 28.1 percent in 1999, 22.5 percent in 1998 and 9.2 percent in 1996.