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 The
Professional TeacherPeter J. Denning |
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© Copyright 1998-99 by Peter J. Denning (pjd@gmu.edu) The right to make additional exact copies, including this notice, for personal and classroom use, is hereby granted. All other forms of distribution and copying require permission of the author. |
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Section Three:
It will require real thought and tough work to evaluate when automated systems are effective or to remove institutional impediments to effective coaching. Rather than tackle this, some outspoken faculty blame their administrators for defects in automated systems and for institutional inertia. They say that administrators are all too glad to increase revenues while placing greater burdens on the backs of the faculty and students, and that administrators don’t get the behavior they want from faculty because of poor "reward systems." There is too little space here to enumerate and review all such anti-administrator claims. Suffice to recall current realities that cast doubt on them all. Consider, for example, the notion that university administrators are the driving forces behind the movement toward more technology in education. In fact, the number of people involved is enormous. It includes politicians of all stripes (from the President, through the Executive Branches, the Congress, state and local governments); faculty from university and public school systems; business leaders from myriad companies; and parents everywhere. The agendas and interests of these groups vary widely and often conflict. To suggest that they are engaged in conspiracies stretches the meaning of this term beyond recognition. Behind this broad interest is the pervasive and ubiquitous Internet and personal computer. Internet users number 80,000,000, twice the number of a year ago. E-mail and Web addresses appear routinely on business cards, stationery, and advertising. Commerce by Internet is burgeoning. The government is redoubling its research budgets in security technologies to protect the telecommunications infrastructure. The world, not university administrators, is the source of the pressure for "Internet literacy". Legislators have had, in many ways, a larger influence than university administrators. In 1994 and 1995, well over half the states froze or cut their higher education budgets (over strong objections of university administrators, it should be noted). Some legislatures permitted or required tuition increases to offset some of the losses. All the while, assisted by editorial writers in the press, legislators spoke frequently about their dissatisfaction with the responsiveness of modern universities to societal needs, especially those relating to workforce, economic development, and technology transfer from research to industry. Since 1995, the states have begun to restore higher education funding, but with strings attached: engage with high technology, workforce, and technology-transfer initiatives. Many have actively promoted "technology literacy" and hands-on training as aspects of modern curricula. Consider the notion that university administrators are seeking new revenue by expropriating the research results of the faculty. Federal research budgets, especially for basic research, have been under siege for most of the 1990s, despite intensive lobbying from university and research groups. Politicians have openly expressed their dissatisfaction with return on investment for federal dollars in university research. They have strongly encouraged universities to form alliances with businesses as a way to pursue research agendas and they have re-channeled research funds into mission-oriented programs. Universities that have succeeded in selling licenses have done so in collaboration with the faculty inventors and have plowed the revenues back into supporting their research programs. In many cases, it was the faculty who pushed for the university to support licensing of technology they invented. In fact, the very notion that university administrators have an animus against faculty is itself hard to accept. Most university administrators, especially the key decision-makers such as presidents, vice presidents, provosts, deans, and department chairs, are faculty. They have home departments, they teach courses, and they advise students. It’s hard to believe that these people don’t appreciate, respect, and look out for the interests of faculty and students -- that they would switch from being friends of their colleagues to enemies on taking their administrative posts. The notion that faculty are being forced to use digital technologies for teaching is likewise hard to accept. In my experience, it is often the other way around. Many faculty are annoyed that their administrations have not moved fast enough to support technology in education -- with their students, they complain about too few dial-in lines, inadequate bandwidth, inadequate server capacity, too little technical support, too little Web page design support, inadequate reward systems, too little training in use of the technologies, and the like. Resource-strapped administrators have found it hard to respond at the pace the faculty would like. A widening group of faculty are engaged in experiments to find the effective mixes of technology, practice, and plain old tender loving care of their students. Large numbers of faculty routinely use e-mail to increase the number of hours they are available to answer student questions; they use web pages as distribution centers for class policies, handouts, homework assignments, and other course materials; they provide software packages for their students to use as tools. This has happened without coercion by their department chairs and deans and without modification of the "reward system". Next Section: Shifting
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