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.
FGCU faculty members say that teaching via the Internet — using e-mail, chat rooms and other electronic means — is a demanding proposition for professors.
“When you have twenty students emailing you all the time, it takes a lot of work,” says Roy Boggs, an associate professor of computer-information systems at FGCU. “Some professors find teaching distance-learning courses to be an enormous amount of work, much more than teaching in a classroom.”
And the workload isn’t the only faculty worry over the new so-called distance-learning techniques. Among the others:
* Some professors say they remain unconvinced of the method’s effectiveness for some students — particularly younger, less motivated ones. The reason, professors say, is that in distance-learning classes, students often still do traditional text-based assignments, but discuss the assignments via e-mail or electronic bulletin boards — usually sending in comments at different times. That gives students greater freedom to do lessons at their own pace. But for less disciplined students, it can offer an invitation to fall behind, some professors say.
* Faculty also caution that distance learning practices may be ill-suited to courses that require hands-on training, such as some health-care courses.
* Some professors worry that distance learning may be stealing their control and ownership of their courses. In a traditional class, the syllabus and lecture notes often are largely the professor’s domain. But in distance learning, the software used is jointly produced by the professors and university software designers. Such intermingling of talents — particularly on university time — could mean that the resulting product belongs to the institution.
Recent surveys of FGCU’s 170 full-time and 98 adjunct professors brought home the concerns to administrators. In one of the surveys, administered this spring to half the faculty, professors and other instructors were asked whether they tended to agree or disagree with various statements — including, “FGCU should offer more distance-learning classes.” According to a university summary of the results, 55 percent tended to disagree.
In response to another statement, “At FGCU, distance learning is an effective alternative to traditional instruction,” 54 percent tended to disagree.
But despite her reservations, Howard’s Thomas-Haysbert says that she tries to embrace new technology.
“If it is used correctly,” she says, “the students can learn more and better meet the specific needs of the classroom.”
Jason Bodie is a student intern. The Associated Press contributed to this report.
COPYRIGHT 1998 Cox, Matthews & Associates
© Copyright 2005 by DiverseEducation.com
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