Conference Looks at Pros And Cons of Technology

More than two hundred faculty members and students from across the United States and Canada came together in Montreal to explore the implications of these programs for higher education. Paul Jones of the Canadian Association of University Teachers worried about pressures on academics, especially financially insecure adjunct faculty, to sell the rights to their course materials to online programs. This practice, he argued, undercuts faculty control over university courses and curriculum. "If you sell your course content," he said, "you sell your job."

Steven Lerman of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that his institution understands that professors offer much more than course content. "Course materials are not what an MIT education is about," Lerman said. If MIT set out to replicate electronically the experience students receive on campus, "the costs would actually be more than what they now are," he said. He reported on an MIT initiative, Open Course Ware, that encourages faculty to place course materials on a publicly accessible university Web site, where others, including academics from developing countries, can benefit from them. The initiative grew out of a cooperative effort to determine how best to use technology to support the institution’s mission. Those involved— trustees, administrators, faculty members, students, and alumni—concluded that MIT’s strength lies in bringing people together physically in a learning community. Open Course Ware is not a distance education program, he stressed. Faculty decide which materials to post, and they retain ownership of them. Lerman said MIT hopes that its initiative will inspire other universities to think about technology use in light of their institutional missions.

Ingrid Banks, professor of black studies at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, regretted the loss of face-to-face contact that results from online delivery. She stressed the importance for her students, most of whom come from white communities, of seeing an African American woman teach in the classroom. An online version of her course would permit students to avoid dealing with issues of race in such an immediate way, she said. Josiane Basque of the Téléuniversité du Québec à Montréal agreed that physical clues such as facial expression are lost in the online environment. But, she said, online courses give students practice in writing, and they make timid students more comfortable participating in class discussions. "The research on online education is just beginning," she commented, "and we are just learning about the new possibilities it offers." In the conference’s workshops, faculty shared ways to introduce online interaction in courses that meet in traditional classrooms.

Participants readily agreed that faculty must demand a voice in how technology is used on their campuses. Several speakers explained how their unions had negotiated issues such as online class size, intellectual property ownership, workload, and compensation. Faculty members from Acadia University, which touts its "fully wired classrooms," noted that their union had successfully bargained to compel the administration to demonstrate the pedagogical value of new technological initiatives.

An overriding goal for faculty, Larry Glenn concluded, is to show that professors provide a unique and valuable process—not simply content that can be bought and sold. "So long as we can articulate this fact," he said, "we need not fear using whatever technology furthers teaching and learning."

The AAUP cosponsored the conference with the Canadian Association of University Teachers, Fédération Québécoise des Professeures et Professeurs d’Université, and the Canadian Federation of Students.

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