We already appreciate the benefits of computational technology for scientific research and for the conduct of our administrative practices. However, the relatively recent transformation to a distributed computing environment, with campus backbone networks and access to global information exchange over the Internet, has substantially amplified the potential impact of information technology on how we conduct our academic affairs. The initial assault occurred when I was provost at Northwestern University and became engaged in long-term planning for the library. Essential considerations in that exercise were that increasingly the information acquired by the library was in electronic form and that the library was serving increasingly as a provider of information in electronic form. Extending this line of thinking to pedagogy, multimedia technology now permits the delivery of lectures to a home computer sitting almost anywhere.
Software permits electronic discussion groups.
And we are developing interactive, multimedia software tools, which permit a teacher to construct a course for delivery over a network. There are enough believers in this trend for the National Education Association and the American Federation of Teachers to have identified it as a potential threat to employment. Dismissing this possible future because it is unattractively impersonal is too facile a response. Consider the following story. Two years ago a professor reported to me that, for extraordinary but justifiable reasons, he would be unable to hold any office hours for his course.