Technology and Changes in Higher Education Zane L. Berge, Ph.D. Director, Training Systems University of Maryland Baltimore County Baltimore, MD 21228
Economic and technological changes are occurring at an accelerating rate in our information-based society, making lifelong learning for most adults a necessity. There is, however, a relative imbalance between the demanded pace of change for students and faculty compared to that in the curriculum and institutions of higher education. This paper suggests that technology needs to become as interwoven in institutional strategic planning and educational delivery as it is in society-to become an integral part of teaching and learning throughout the student’s life-long learning environment.
Changing Society Economic and technological changes are occurring at an accelerating rate in this turbulent transition period from industrial production to an information-based society. The confluence of technology, demographics, and work/family requirements make lifelong learning for most adults a necessity. The demands for training and retraining is increasing as the workforce struggles to adapt to new job requirements, or to those of new careers. This, added to new knowledge about teaching and learning, demands concomitant changes in the roles of students, faculty, the curriculum and our institutions of higher education. Higher education has yet to accommodate to this significant shift in the characteristics of its student populations (Gentry and Csete, 1991). With family and job responsibilities, these students would like their education, training, and retraining to be available at their convenience. The number of other non-traditional students, such as persons with disabilities, women, low-income and minorities is growing, too. In order to accommodate the special needs and schedules of these students, colleges and universities will need to develop learning environments and support systems that are significantly
Mauri P. Collins The Pennsylvania State University Calder Square, PO Box 10002 State College, PA 16805
different from traditional, residential educational environments.
Changing Technology Not only is the ubiquitous use of technology causing societal and cultural change, the use of computers, telecommunication, and other emerging technologies allow educators to design instruction for delivery in ways never before possible. Yet in a time of increasing demand from students for such things as alternative, distance, and distributed learning, there are still major delivery problems. We need to change the way we think about technology in higher education. While technology alone is not enough (Reinhardt, 1995), it can be used to create learning environments that boost student achievement, improve student attitudes and self-concept, and enhance the quality of student-teacher relationships. Ehrmann (1995) concludes that: Ordinarily what matters most is: not the technology per se but how it is used, not so much what happens in the moments when the student is using the technology, but more how those uses promote larger improvements in the fabric of the student’s education ... Yet without technology we cannot meet the access needs of, nor improve the quality of higher education for tomorrow’s students (Twigg, 1994).
As the learning environment becomes more technologyrich, faculty can encourage and guide students in using information resources that are available and toward appropriate, collaborative work with other students (Twigg, 1994). Given this, tomorrow’s students may learn in ways more like today’s researchers and develop qualities of increased independence and self-reliance. It is likely that there will be more technologically mediated interaction and less face-to- face contact between learners and teachers in the educational
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institutions of the future. Twigg (1994) considers one of the explicit goals of the design of technology-rich learning environment to be that students will learn more independently, using materials that meet their own individual learning needs, abilities, preferences, and interests, spend more time in small discussion groups or working on collaborative projects with their peers (when appropriate).
Teachers often seem to take the attitude of “prove that technology will work for me, in my classroom, and I may give it a try (if I have time).” While those persons whose mission it is to promote technology in the classroom try their best to demonstrate its capabilities to faculty, success takes, as we will discuss later, support and direction from the highest levels of institutional administration. Integrating technology into course delivery involves shifts to unfamiliar materials, creation of new types of assignments, and inventing new ways to assess student learning (Ehrmann, 1995) often using new techniques and devices. While it is almost impossible for an individual faculty member to find the time and resources to implement the changes needed, they must take a more proactive approach to changing their roles and teaching style. Yet as the role of faculty member changes from expert and controller to facilitator and coach, the teachingAearning process can move out of the direct control of the faculty member, an oft times painful and disconcerting change. So much so that veteran teachers might resist the technologies that allow more natural learning and that can accomplish important goals for students (Jette, 1994). Technology can help faculty members manage their most valuable resource-their time. They can have virtual meetings with students, extend their office hours to times convenient to both parties in many cases, or allow students who have missed classes to review materials, online notes, or demonstrations. This “timeshifting” permits learning and instruction to take place even when the teacher and student are not in the same place, nor necessarily communicating at the same time (Klaphaak, 1994). Many faculty are concerned about changing their teaching methods as , in most cases, the instructor alone can no longer develop all the learning materials and activities in a technology-rich learning environment. It
takes a team of people, usually with the instructor (i.e., subject-matter expert) directing and guiding the team. While frightening in some ways, this is analogous to a model of using technology that is quite old in education. Even though teachers can write, most of them do not develop their own textbooks, videos etc. Why should developing multimedia be different?
Changes to curricula can be facilitated by a technologically rich learning environment. For example, Ehrmann (1995) points out that professors are more inclined to ask students to “do it over again.” When technology lessens the mechanical effort, the instructor is free to use models that permit students to edit, revise, and try again-that is, to take a more authentic approach to problem-solving than before (Berge & Collins, 1995). Example problems can become “messy” and use more realistic demands for calculations. When using project-and problem-based learning, technology helps the problem to be situated in context(s) and students can then work in stages to plan, draft, discuss, redraft, and submit. Each of these stages offers a chance for students to rethink, expand, rearticulate and generally improve upon their problemsolving efforts. In this way technology may enable important changes in the curriculum and program without changing the content. Wordprocessors, databases, spreadsheets, communication and presentation packages are tools enabling students to plan and revise complex projects, conduct team discussions, and gather resources from around the world. It is when a technology-rich environment exists across all problem-solving and project areas, available to be used in a seamless way throughout a student’s education, that the power of technology to change the curriculum will be realized. When students begin to practice what experts in the discipline do each day, the true nature of curriculum change due to technology will be seen.
In far too many cases, administrators and leaders in higher education have not examined the role technology plays in institutional change-at least not in the strategic planning for applying technology to the problems of changing learning and teaching (Ehrmann,
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1995; Twigg, 1994). Using technology for place-based and distance teaching, is generally brought about by the efforts of individual faculty members, for individual assignments or for an individual course. It will take more of a reengineering effort on the part of higher education administrators at the highest levels to have their institutions reflect ongoing technological and socio-cultural changes.
A couple of examples may help illustrate this idea. Technology can make it possible for students to study when and where it is convenient for them. But at most traditional institutions, students and faculty members are virtually imprisoned by the lockstep system of quarters, semesters, and class standing that has historically been used (Klaphaak, 1994; Twigg, 1994). In its most stultifying form, this decrees that an academic year of two semesters will contain a course in a particular sub-area of a particular subject discipline. The course may be for “upper division, majors only,” and will meet for 53 minutes every Monday, Wednesday, and Friday beginning at 9:06 AM with Professor X in a particular building at a particular city, state, and country-i.e., at a fixed time and place. The notion of letting learning time vary according to the needs and abilities of the student is not new. What is new is the societal demand for all persons to be more highly skilled and trained, while making it difficult, if not impossible, for them to attend place based institutions on a full-time basis. Technological capabilities make it possible to take education to learners if institutional barriers are modified or removed. As another example, Zelmer and Zelmer (1993) d’lSCUSS the “eternal dilemma of how to make good use of classroom space on weekends, evenings and in the summers.” The role of the institution’s physical plant will diminish as resources are technologically linked. While the role of faculty members will continue to be significant, they will move into new roles as mentors, group project leaders, and creators of learning environments instead of solely as expert and content deliverer (Twigg, 1994). Because the need for face-toface interaction will lessen, and due to changes in student’s needs and other factors, the imperative to “come to campus” will be greatly reduced. Unless attendance is for a specific purpose, the periodic changing of classes on campus will decrease significantly, until it is no longer seen as a “matter of routine.”
These institutional changes go beyond freeing up parking, office and laboratory space. Some of the current space taken for classroom purposes may be converted into development and production facilities for learning materials. Resources such as laboratories may be scheduled by students for specific uses. Even so, many institutions may cooperatively arrange for laboratory space at an institution better equipped for such use or closer to the student’s “home” location. Alternatively, there will be more and better computer simulations developed that may make hands-on, reallife laboratory work a very specialized experience or exclusively for research work (Zelmer and Zelmer, 1993).
In essence, technology needs to become as interwoven in institutional strategic planning and educational delivery as it is in society-to become an integral part of teaching and learning throughout the student’s lifelong learning environment. This change cannot be forced from the grassroots level by the student or individual faculty member or even a department or college. This use of technology as a strategy for learning needs to be part of the strategic plans within and among institutions of higher education. To do otherwise is to let the technology support the status quo. Is that what we want?
To work toward changing models of teaching and learning is important. It takes courage to move away from the idea of classroom lectures of stable content, delivered by expert teachers to students who are homogeneous, passive recipients and who work alone as they learn. Technology can provide networked access to worldwide information, collaboration with other people, multimedia, and powerful computer simulations and create learning environments where students are encouraged to explore and learn in teams, where there is sensitivity to the diversity of students, and which places teachers and other experts as mentors, guides, and collaborators in learning new and ever-changing content. Certainly there are barriers to technologicallyrich learning environments: faculty reward structures, high front-end costs, training, equal access, student support, administrative, technical issues, copyright issues, and faculty resistance to name a few. But the major barriers to the use of technology involve the culture of our institutions and people within them. The
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type of structural changes required for facilitating changing roles are those most resistant to change. How will technology affect the changing roles of students, teachers, the curriculum and our institutions of higher education? While we can’t predict all these changes, we must surely have an influence upon them.
Berge, Z. L. & Collins, M. P. (1995). Computermediated communication and the online classroom: Volume II Higher Education. Cresskill, NJ: Hampton Press. Ehrmann, S. C. (1995). Ehrmann on Eval. (Parts 1-3). Asking the right question: What does research tell us about technology and higher learning? [Online] Post to AAHESGIT on January 13. (Archived at listproc @list.cren.net). Jette, R. (1994). Adopting Educational technology. [Online]. Post to AAHESGIT on August 17. (Archived at
[email protected]) Klaphaak, K. (1994). Why invest in info tech? [Online] Post to AAHESGIT on December 5. (Archived at listproc @ 1ist.cren.net). rdt, A. (1995). New ways to learn. Byte. March. pp: 50-71. Twigg, C. A. (1994). The need for a national learning infrastructure. Educom Review. 29(5) pp: 17-20. Zelmer, A. E. and Zelmer, A. C. L. (1993). Distance education: No apologies. Paper presented at TELETEACHING ‘93. Trondheim, Norway.
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Table 1. Summary Of Changing Roles and Dimensions of Students, Teachers, Curriculum and Institutions CHANGING STUDENTS’ ROLES
0
0
0
0
0
0
0
0 0
0
CHANGING TEACHERS’ ROLES 0
0
CHANGING CURRICULUMMETHODS
from students as passive receptacles for hand-me-down knowledge to students as constructing their own knowledge student success-becomes more flexible, creative, and innovative rather than each student having access to only factual knowledge more activities in which students refine their own questions and search for answers more collaborativekooperative assignments with students working as group members increased multicultural awareness students working toward fluency with the same tools as professionals in their field more emphasis on students as autonomous, self-motivated manager of their own time discussion of students’ own work in the classroom emphasis knowledge use rather than only observation of the teacher’s expert performance of the teacher or just learning to “pass the test” emphasis on learning how to learn strategies (both individually and collaboratively); teachers’ role changing from oracle and lecturer to consultant, guide, and resource Teachers become expert questioners, rather than providers of answers teacher provides structure to student work from a solitary teacher to a member of a learning team (reduces isolation sometimes experienced by teachers) from teacher having total autonomy to activities that can be broadly assessed from total control of the teaching environment to relinquishing some control to student as learner more emphasis on sensitivity to student learning styles move from discrete steps to cumulative problem-solving multi-disciplinary, teaching for depth vs. breadth in a problem-based approach, emphasis on multi-perspectives and a variety of explanations for a phenomena, not always just one right answer project oriented, experiential, task oriented apprenticeship model; authentic, real problems; motivating (e.g. learning interwoven with work) more emphasis on the learning process with a goal of exploration and discovery (i.e., as opposed to product)
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CHANGING INSTITUTIONAL ROLES
move from delivery of place-based services to multi-sites multicultural move from access time to education being set by the institution to just-in-time learning set by the student universities demanding more flexibility in accreditation more inter-institutional collaborative efforts, while competition among institutions increases more attention to learners, especially those persons with disabilities and special needs recognition of greater needs for lifelong learning (retraining and continuing education) i n society more flexibility in structuring faculty rewards, promotion and tenure
Zane Berge is Director, Training Systems, at the University of Maryland Baltimore Count Two of his research interests are computer-conferencing and electronic publishing (berge@umbcl .umbc.edu) Maw1 Collins consults and writes in the area of computermediated communication Together with Dr Berge they co-edited a three volume set of books, Computer-Medcated Communccatcon and the Online Classroom (Hampton Press, 1995). (mauri @ cac.psu.edu)
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