At the risk of showing my age, I confess that I remember Pogo, Walt Kelly's acclaimed political cartoon satire about creatures residing in the Okefenokee Swamp. Pogo the Possum and his friends have been gone from the nation's newspapers for some time. Pogo's wisdom survives. Offered as insight about life in the swamp, it also provides insight into other organizations and cultures, including academe. Certainly expectations play a role.
Employers expect college graduates to have technology skills.
But in between these expectation factors resides a huge set of curriculum aspirations, great hopes that technology will engage students, enrich the curriculum and enhance learning. In between reside the vast majority of faculty and administrators who simply are struggling to assess the appropriate role of technology resources in their scholarly work, in their instructional activities and in the priorities of their programs, departments and institutions. Concurrently, institutions and academic programs have also invested significant dollars to encourage faculty to explore ways to bring IT into the classroom and into the learning experience. Courseware development programs, academic support centers and technology development initiatives reflect yet another component of the IT infrastructure at many institutions. Indeed, data from the 1998 Campus Computing Survey reveal well over half of all US colleges and universities have IT support centers and institutional development programs.