by Catherine Barnes Stevenson, Dean of the Faculty

The Jan. 9 New York Times Education Life supplement posed the question: "O.K. Schools are Wired. Now What?" The article presents various points of view on the advisability of introducing computers into elementary classrooms and the effect of computers on learning. The article points out that K-12 education has often rushed to acquire the equipment without prior critical planning about how such technology can facilitate the learning process.

The University of Hartford has taken a more financially conservative and learning-centered approach. Faculty and administrators have invested in technologies that serve the desired learning objectives of courses and programs. Faculty recognize that technology is only an instrument toward a higher goal -- the skills and knowledge that faculty want students to possess. The University of Hartford's careful introduction of technology into the curriculum, calibrating the type of technology employed to the learning goals of the course has received support in the past five years from both national foundations and federal grants.

What types of issues should be considered when planning the incorporation of technology into the classroom?

To start, faculty must realize that "the technology revolution" has not altered several challenges that faculty continue to face.

First, most students entering college are still at the same level of intellectual development and maturity as those of 20 years ago. For the most part, incoming freshmen are concrete, rationalist thinkers who lack highly developed analytical and critical thinking abilities. It is our challenge to develop these skills systematically over the four short years in which we have contact with our students. We are now at the point where we can ask the question -- how can technology help us in this endeavor?

One piece of technology we are now evaluating is the latest edition of the Office Suite from Microsoft. Office2000 includes not only the newest versions of popular programs such as Word, Excel, PowerPoint and Access, but also a feature called "Discussions." This feature allows faculty and students to interact by inserting remarks into one document that is then stored on a local file server. By storing files in this manner, students will have access to their documents from any computer on the network at any time. Faculty will then be able to provide feedback on the document through the use of these embedded remarks or students can collaborate in responding to or editing passages of the original document. Additionally, whenever the document has been updated, the server will e-mail the student and/or the faculty member to alert them that the file has been revised. By using this type of feedback, faculty can more easily guide the student through the process of writing a better paper.

Second, even in this new millennium, faculty must still be concerned about the social and emotional contexts in which learning takes place. Recent educational research has underscored the extent to which learning is a social act. And anyone who has ever taught first-year students knows how important it is for them to find a supportive peer group and feel comfortable about articulating and sharing ideas with diverse groups of people.

What are some of the issues faculty must confront as a result of changes in student learning brought on by the "technology revolution?"

Today's technologically literate student has more highly developed visual skills and much less patience for purely text-based learning. The multimedia and Internet explosions have empowered educators with the tools to pull together picture, sound, motion and text into highly effective teaching modules that can be delivered virtually anytime, anywhere. This is most beneficial to those students who may respond best to aural or visual information.

Moreover, the explosion of information that has taken place in various fields, coupled with the great connectivity of the Internet, means that enormous amounts of primary materials (including historical documents, full texts of literary works, architectural models of historically important buildings, museum collections and scientific data) are now available to students with just a few clicks of the mouse! Educators in this information age need to find ways to assist students in navigating through this glut of data, to help them develop the critical analysis skills they will need to evaluate the information presented on Web sites, and to identify materials appropriate and relevant to course projects. To ensure that faculty are best equipped to meet this challenge, the University's new Faculty Center for Learning Development brings together professors and information specialists (like librarians and information technology staff) to develop strategies for equipping students with these crucial skills.

Since the networking of the majority of the campus, including the residence halls in 1997, faculty have been experimenting with e-mail and a WebBoard as technologies that encourage student discussion, student-faculty interchange, and allow peer editing and sharing of papers outside the constraints of the classroom. WebBoard is being used with great effect in the "FIGs" (First Year Interest Groups) program currently funded by the Fund for the Improvement of Post-Secondary Education which joins two or three classes together to create a learning community. Students and faculty in these courses engage enthusiastically in dialogue and debate about substantive issues outside the classroom, right over the Web! This approach is particularly helpful for reticent students who want to offer their input and welcome the relative "safety" that the online discussion provides.

How do faculty members develop the technological expertise to take full advantage of the state-of-the-art tools that are available to them?

A need is developing in higher education for individuals with faculty backgrounds who understand issues of research and student learning and can serve as mentors for other faculty, as they try to adapt to this brave new world of information technology. We have such an individual in David Demers, who is director of our new Faculty Center for Learning Development. Before coming to Hartford, he was an assistant professor of biology at Springfield Technical Community College, where he played a key role in developing a distance learning program that enables students to take courses from their home computers.

Since the new Center opened last Oct. 1, a number of faculty members have attended workshops and made use of the equipment and expertise, as they incorporate the new technology into enhanced learning opportunities for their students.

What will the future bring?

The University is currently at a crossroads. Faculty have worked hard to identify key areas in which technology can make a positive impact on the learning experience of students. Now the University needs to decide how best to implement and fund the acquisition of new technologies, with the full awareness that technological innovations in the classroom will become obsolete at a dizzying rate. We are now challenged with identifying potential sources of funds to create a technologically accessible and effective University of the future.