Martha Crunkleton, dean of the faculty at Bates College in Lewiston, Maine, said computers have a social as well as an intellectual impact. In fact, some of the most reserved kids talk a lot more in the class because they've been talking so much on the computer. Sondra Lazarowitz, associate professor in the department of microbiology at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, agreed. Technology allows you to create communities where communities never previously existed. It expands and changes the learning process in fundamental ways.
Many students are well ahead of their faculty in embracing new technologies.
Orville Chapman, associate dean for educational innovation and professor of chemistry at UCLA, said faculty members often go through a four-stage process to catch up. The first stage is denial and rejection of the new technologies. Third is developing new applications that exploit the special power of computers. Finally, faculty members turn students loose to do things they have never done before, with the instructor serving as guide and mentor in an ongoing process of discovery. In this fourth stage, the computer becomes a tool that students use to engage in their own research.