Using Technology in Teaching: We Need to Exercise Healthy Skepticism

Chronicle of Higher Education, June 19, 1998, pp. B4-5.

In recent years, colleges and universities have put increasing pressure on their faculty members to use electronic technology in teaching. College administrators--and state legislators--believe that using technology will somehow make professors more productive. They also hope that it will broaden access to higher education, cheaply. At the same time, producers of hardware and software are aggressively promoting their products on our campuses, adding even more momentum to the drive to use technology in teaching. These pressures have resulted in such absurdities as administrators' requiring all faculty members to post their syllabi on the World-Wide Web, or requiring all students to demonstrate competency in computer use, whether or not it is relevant in their fields. For instance, art majors who will use computers primarily for graphics purposes do not necessarily need expertise in the use of data bases.

However, most faculty members have not responded as quickly or enthusiastically as the promoters of technology had hoped. This has caused much consternation among deans and manufacturers' representatives, some of whom have accused faculty members of laziness, obtuseness, or even "Luddism." As a teacher and educational consultant, I am distressed by this name-calling, because it strikes me as an ugly symptom of unwarranted hysteria in favor of technology and as an insult to the professionalism of faculty members. I believe that the vast majority of college and university teachers are not against technology but simply have a healthy skepticism about its efficacy in every kind of instruction at every level of education.

If we examine the history of instructional television in the 1960s and '70s, when the last wave of technology washed over higher education, the parallels with our current situation are striking. In the 1960s, college administrators were dazzled by the hype surrounding instructional television, and spent millions on closed-circuit systems and production facilities. Eager proponents of the new technology, such as Judith Murphy and Ronald Gross, in their 1966 book Learning by Television, predicted that "the future will probably see something like 20 minutes out of the hour given to television at the elementary and secondary levels, and 30 minutes at the college level," and that "as much as 50 percent of the college degree program will be available for credit via television."

But instructional television failed to fulfill the hype about changing the face of education, and it is now used only in limited ways in most college classrooms. Videotaped lectures in the 1960s were dull, uninspiring, and--by definition--non-interactive. In distance education today, we have added computer graphics and special effects to lectures on video, making them somewhat more exciting, but their function remains the simple delivery of information and "distance explaining." Even in live televised lectures with two-way audio and video, the quality of interactivity rarely approaches that of a real classroom.

The fundamental error in the experiment with instructional television was that, typically, no one asked faculty members how this technology might serve their instructional methods or contribute to better learning by their students; teachers were simply told to get on the bandwagon. In a rational world, the teachers them selves would make the decisions about whether and to what extent they and their institutions should invest time and money in technology. If we assume that professors, on the whole, know how to teach, and that they are reasonably successful in this enterprise, can we not also assume that they are capable of judging whether a new method or new technology will help or hinder them?

Most faculty members are slow to adopt new technology simply because they are not convinced that using it will improve their students' learning.

In fact, right now we have little empirical evidence to show that using electronic technology actually does improve learning, and teachers have a right to ask if their investment in time and effort in learning how to use the technology will produce significant benefits for their students. Much of the comparative research on teaching with technology focuses on the students' reactions ("they liked it"), secondary characteristics ("the program had students working in small groups, so they must have learned something"), or students' mastery of simple factual content.

Instead, we should be asking the same kinds of questions we use to assess any instructional program: What did they learn and how well did they learn it? Did students simply acquire factual information or did they learn to analyze, synthesize and exercise critical judgment about the subject matter? Did they learn to write clear, grammatical, logical prose? Did they learn tolerance for other viewpoints and how to defend their own opinions in a rational way? Can they apply what they know to other areas of their work and life? Did their learning persist beyond the end of the course? Most faculty members are capable of assessing the instructional outcomes of their courses, and if they are given time to experiment, they will eventually determine the appropriate ways to include technology in teaching.

Another reason why many faculty members are skeptical about the pressure to use technology in education is that its proponents often seem to equate learning with the transfer of information from professor to student. In this "hydraulic model" of education, knowledge is like a liquid that can be poured from one vessel into another. Those who adopt this model always prefer more information to less, and because the Internet provides access to an enormous amount of information, they believe that teachers should be required to use it in their courses.

Unfortunately, most of those comfortable with the hydraulic model have never taught a college class. This model supports the notion that learning is a commodity like cheese or potatoes, something that can be "delivered," rather than an experience that one must undergo in order to derive any benefit. Instructional television was also based on this idea, and that is why it failed. Ironically, in contexts beyond the discussion of technology, much of the current rhetoric in higher education is hostile to this idea of a master simply handing down information to disciples. Yet the passive transfer-of-knowledge model seems to be what many advocates of technology would settle for.

Experienced faculty members know that learning involves a very complex set of interactions between teacher and student. Many prefer to follow a "coaching model" in which the teacher sets tasks for students and corrects their performance until they master particular intellectual skills. In this model, the amount and kind of information available to the student are not dominant. Fundamentally, the teacher's role is not to teach the content of physics or history or biology, but to teach students how to think about physics or history or biology.

Some faculty members are also put off by the artificial urgency of the whole campaign to adopt technology, especially with regard to distance learning. "Adopt now, or die!" seems to be the prevalent sentiment. They note that many of those who are urging the immediate adoption of technology are not teachers, but people with a professional stake in the outcome, such as software developers or college administrators who believe that technology will allow more students to be educated for the same amount of money--or less--than is now being spent. Pundits in higher education tell us that institutions such as the University of Phoenix and similar institutions are going to steal our students; even the management guru Peter Drucker (who should know better) are predicting "the end of the university" within 30 years. Faculty members sense that this hysteria has little basis in reality, and there is evidence that they are correct.

Projections of enrollment in higher education from the National Center for Educational Statistics indicate that the number of people aged 18 to 24--the age group that includes traditional college students--is expected to increase by 16 per cent over the next nine years. On the other hand, the number of people aged 30 to 44--who, if they seek postsecondary education, are likely to be more interested in distance and other non-traditional methods of learning--is expected to decrease over the next nine years (30-to-34-year-olds by 19 per cent, 35-to-44-year-olds by 8 per cent). Thus it appears that there will be a considerable market for traditional higher education in the future, while there might be a somewhat reduced demand for non-residential educational programs.

In addition, faculty members understand that the success of distance learning in adult education does not mean that we can or should adopt the same methods wholesale in undergraduate programs. Much research indicates that social interaction in traditional residential programs contributes substantially to the intellectual and ethical development of undergraduates.

Like instructional television in the 1960s, the new electronic technology has great theoretical appeal for addressing educational issues, such as how to teach more students at lower cost or how to reach non-traditional students. Even those goals are not easily achieved through the simple application of technology. Yet although higher education is under stringent fiscal constraints, money for technology is abundant.

Eager vendors, hoping to corner the educational market, provide cut-rate products and services. Legislators pass budgets with large sums for educational technology, because they fear that students will be unprepared for the future unless they use technology every day in school. As a result, well-meaning administrators often seize upon technology as a solution to their budgetary problems. No doubt, some administrators also see technological initiatives as a route to their personal success, a way to make their mark on an institution and advance their own careers.

Faculty members are the ones who have to implement new technology, and they should decide whether or not to experiment with it or adopt it. Yet often they are not consulted about the practical problems and barriers they confront when they do want to experiment with using technology in their courses. They need effective assistance--of the type they desire, no what software providers deign to provide--to determine which applications yield the best results. Proponents of technology should concentrate their efforts on gathering evidence to demonstrate real, sophisticated benefits of the new hardware and software, rather than trying to force reluctant educators to adopt new methods of teaching that have not yet been proved effective for their curricula.

Today, many teachers use videotapes in their courses, and closed-circuit television systems are common in such areas as medical education. That is, the elements of instructional television that educators found useful and effective have survived. Ultimately, the same process undoubtedly will occur with the new electronic technology.