Educational Technology in the University: Moving from Stage One to Stage Two (1993)

Today we stand at the cusp of remarkable changes in the ways our society communicates, does business and commerce, and relates to its citizens. One need not subscribe to all that futurists predict to witness the earth-shaking change occurring on virtually every front. The seismic effects are already creating severe economic and social dislocation within highly developed nations, and the pace of change seems to be quickening, allowing little time for assimilation or adjustment. The principal driving force behind these changes is the unstoppable development and deployment of new technology into every sector of activity. Nearly every facet of our lives is already affected, and it is still too early to predict or envision a place of future stability, of rest amid the pace of change. Education at all levels thus faces a new multi-faceted challenge. Indeed, amid this flood of technologically induced change, the university, among the creators of this technology, has already experienced significant change. The organizational structure of the university, still rooted in the continental models of the last century, has expanded to accommodate new audiences, new subjects, new approaches for that discourse between faculty and students we call higher learning. Many of the lingering doubts that were the fallout of the technology inamorati of the 1960's are now resting with the emeriti of that generation. The expensive, clumsy technologies that encumbered the media classrooms of that era are long since relegated to the technologic garbage bin. Technology still remains rather frightening to some of the older generation of scholars who reached their professional maturity without resort to word processing, access to networked data-bases, or continuous asynchronous student office hours. These otherwise unintimidated colleagues are quick to cite the earlier unfulfilled promises made about educational technology. They do not trust those who would free this beast for further depredation within the academic community. But today, a new openness exists among students and scholars increasingly accustomed to the desktop microcomputer, word processing, and communicating by modem. If technology is for some the loose tiger of our age, then we are becoming more alert and imaginative in seeking to engage and tame it. What we see now in higher education is a breakneck deployment of connections and equipment that allows for speedy personal dialogue among academic colleagues. Campuses are wired to accommodate whatever transmission capacity and velocity technology might soon introduce. Dormitories are rigged to allow students to sit in their rooms and communicate directly with their professors, with the library, and with extensive external databases. Asynchronous communications allow messages to be sent, received and answered at any time of the day or night. Even given the current degree of use and assimilation of technology, this technology tiger is by no means tamed. Instead, all of the assumptions about the size and shape of technologies's boundaries within the university structure are about to be challenged. Until recently, we have assumed that technology would be captured and caged within a very traditional university structure. We have planned, until now, that the existing structure, an amalgam of the values and practices of the land-grant university and the residential liberal arts college, would remain largely unchanged, as a process of pacifying, domesticating and absorbing each new technology unfolded. But what this technology tiger is about to cause in higher learning is extensive and disruptive structural modification. Just as corporations, once places of steady employment within an established factory community, have faced drastic and abrupt changes in their long established and comfortable practices, so the university will need to change more rapidly in order to remain socially and economically viable in a world where technological development proceeds rapidly and sometime chaotically. …