COLUMN: Education technology and the future of college

From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98 From Michael Pereira's, "Vox," Fall '98Technology affects the way we live and learn. Guttenberg's press and the vernacular Bible facilitated development and differentiation in Europe in the early modern period. Newspapers and other print media have forged a powerful sense of community within nations. Information has built consensus and fostered dissent, depending on time, place and presentation. Here at Penn -- specifically in the College of Arts and Sciences, as opposed to Wharton or Engineering -- learning and technology have not really proceeded apace. Most classes are conducted as if the past two decades never happened, willfully excluding advances in technology from the regular, degrading cycle of lecture and multiple-choice test. This is the kind of educational omission you wouldn't notice until you're exposed to its benefits; afterwards, you wonder how class happened without it. Perhaps because he's new to the school and not yet grounded in stale pedagogical traditions, Political Science Professor David Rousseau has become a pioneer in the integration of education and technology. I talked to Rousseau about his interests and experience with educational technology, his teaching methods and their reception and his projections for the future. Learning, he says, is not a unitary process. It can be passive -- for example, reading a book, watching a video or listening to a lecture -- or it can be active: discussing articles, asking questions, probing readings and debating issues. To Rousseau, the latter constitutes the heart of a liberal arts education. It is the development of critical thinking skills that counts; the rest is background -- necessary, but not sufficient. Education technology presupposes this philosophy -- and thereby facilitates a more efficient allotment of resources, the most important of which is class time. The real strength of education technology, Rousseau says, is that it allows faculty members to clearly separate passive and active learning. For example, in his undergraduate class International Political Economy, a whole matrix of class-related information is posted on the course's World Wide Web site. This includes static information -- unchanging items such as the student list, syllabus and general Web links -- as well as dynamic items which are updated every week: overhead slides for upcoming lectures and weekly written assignments. The theory behind this is that providing students with an outline of lectures provides a framework for notetaking and a foretaste of the information to be discussed. Students can interrogate the content of lectures rather than simply trying to transcribe what's said. The course Web page also expands the purview of the class. Every item mentioned in class -- and even some related items implicit in course readings -- can be explored from the Web page and brought to bear on discussion. The volume and variety of related material that the Web page makes accessible works reciprocally with assigned readings: it enables students to make their own research schedules, to explore those subjects that interest them and to gain access to the most recent scholarship and information. Links from the course site include recent newspaper or journal articles published after the course pack was created, short video clips, Web pages associated with organizations under discussion, historical data (in tabular or textual format) and primary sources ranging from Census documents to diplomatic correspondence. People, and students, tend to fear novelty. But Rousseau's Web page is designed to accommodate students at any level of computer literacy. In a feedback form filled out after a midterm, 84 percent of his students said the use of technology greatly or somewhat aided the learning process. Informally, many students commented that having overhead slides available before class makes note-taking much easier. In effect, the course Web page and the interactive lecture format is analogous to having a small Rosengarten Reserve dedicated to the class, available at a few clicks of the mouse. So what are the drawbacks? Why, if there are so many benefits, are there so few teachers capitalizing on the educational opportunities of technology? Rousseau attributes this to a supply and demand problem: Across the country universities are just beginning to tap the potential of emerging educational technologies. Demand tends to be quite low because faculty members are simply unaware how the general technology can be used in their specific classroom. Once students and faculty start to demand video on course pages, and once faculty begin to realize the Web's potential -- when they learn, for instance, how simple server-based scripts can be used for surveys, quizzes, interactive exercises, etc. -- the demand for scripts, Rousseau says, will explode. Political Science Department Chairperson Ian Lustick corroborated this supply and demand hypothesis in a recent conversation. His efforts to incorporate his Windows-based evolutionary models into his lecture schedule for next semester have left him searching for an adequate classroom. The College, it seems, does not yet have the resources to accommodate the inevitable evolution in teaching. For example, Rousseau's teaching assistant, Bruce Newsome, had little assistance in his successful initiative to post exemplary material on the Web. Though staff at the School of Arts and Sciences Faculty Prep Center and SAS Instructional Computing were available to help Rousseau digitalize video and develop scripts, most machines on campus do not have speakers or sound cards. Most students have had to scramble to a number of locations to find multimedia-capable machines. The best place to go seems to be the SAS Multi-Media Education Technology Services located in the David Rittenhouse Laboratories. The supply and demand problem can and should be remedied to prepare Penn and specifically the College for a teaching revolution that seems both imminent and inevitable. The administration should consciously create demand by exposing students and faculty to the potential of the electronic medium. This can be done, Rousseau suggests, by disseminating information: A Web page that displays examples of educational technologies; brown bag talks by faculty using new technologies; presentations at departmental meetings; and outreach to specific faculty requesting assistance. Indeed, some of these activities are underway, but Penn could also benefit from the example of other institutions. At Penn State, for instance, "Web teams" comprised of students are set up to help faculty transform the lecture format of large introductory classes. These teams act as conduits of institutional knowledge -- archives of what was done in past semesters -- and provide essential skills and labor. At Wake Forest, the administration has accelerated the demand for new technology by investing directly in faculty development. Fostering demand requires addressing the supply side simultaneously. SUNY-Buffalo offers what Rousseau calls an ideal model for dissemination and supply functions: the "Web pool." Comprised of both students and regular staff, the Web pool would have skills ranging from the ability to create simple course Web pages to the ability to write complex Java applets. Faculty members requiring specific assistance would be assigned a student with appropriate skills. Like Penn State's Web teams, the Web pool develops and retains institutional knowledge. On top of that, it has the advantage of a low fixed cost: students are paid on an hourly basis, so more students can be hired in response to increased demand and there will not be a lot of idle capacity when demand falls. The presence of technology adds value to classes like Rousseau's. Its full potential has yet to be realized on campus, but as innovations inevitably happen -- as the integration of teaching and technology becomes more seamless -- the demand for technology's benefits will become everywhere apparent.