Can Computers Play a Role in My Course?
Some Preliminary Considerations

Earlier this year, in an article for the Sheridan Center's Teaching Exchange, I quoted the Nobel Laureate Octavio Paz who, in 1967, wrote:

"The worship of the idea of technology involves a decline in the value of all other ideas."

Certainly one of the ideas, the value of which technology seems to address in sometimes hostile tones, is teaching. In this presentation I hope to insinuate that the worship of the idea of teaching doesn't involve a decline in the value of any other ideas, technology included, and that teachers will always do best to keeping their experiences and expertise in teaching firmly in mind when they consider the purposes and circumstances for/under which they would be interested in using computers in coursework.

Five Warnings about Computers and Education

• "The property of being a piece of technology is not a physical property but a teleological property. It is not given but acquired with purpose." Israel Scheffler, from "Computers at School?," Teachers College Record, 87, no. 4 (1986)

• In the 20th century the history of each classroom technology (e.g. radio, film, television and now perhaps computers) has been accurately described by Cuban (in Teachers and Machines, 1986) as a cycle:
  exhilaration --> scientific credibility --> disappointment --> teacher-bashing

  One important cause of this cycle of failure has been top-down implementation of and enthusiasm about these technologies.

• The reception, transmission and analysis of "information" is a terribly impoverished notion of what happens in classrooms.

• "The worth of educational change is never self-evident; it is something that goes to the core of the purpose of education in a particularly society and must be confronted as such. Conviction is no criterion for determining worth." (Michael Fullan, from The Meaning of Educational Change, 1982) And the introduction of computers in your course necessarily results in educational change(s).

• Computers make it easy to do things well that, before the advent of computers, were not considered worth doing at all. Similarly, whereas good curriculum may err on the side of caution, the Web almost always errs on the side of More.

Five Good Reasons for Computers in Coursework

• Whether in arts education, or traditional academic subjects like History, basic computer technologies (e.g. digital cameras and desktop computers) have been used to develop students' sophistication about images (and thus sign systems generally) while fostering an expanded sense of self-expression. Examples: The Rosendale Odyssey Project (http://www2.stg.brown.edu/edu/rosendale/), and the Mass Media Project (http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/2000/ps111/.

• Computers have made sophisticated production and research tools widely available to teachers and students across grade levels as well as disciplines, and have successfully transformed curricula in areas as diverse as art and mathematics. Examples: CASS systems in undergraduate calculus (e.g http://www-cm.math.uiuc.edu/), Tom Banchoff's World (http://www.geom.umn.edu/~banchoff/projects.html), and the Color Theory component of VA10 at Brown (http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/VA10/HTML/).

• Computers have been used to give students access to, and opportunities to contribute to, professional academic research. Example: The Geographer's Craft (http://www.Colorado.EDU/geography/gcraft/contents.html and The Victorian Web (http://landow.stg.brown.edu/victorian/victov.html).

• Computers have been used to connect classrooms to larger communities in substantive and stimulating ways. Examples: The Geographer's Craft and The Augustine Seminar at Penn (http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/augustine.html).

• Computers have been used in courses to provide (uncoerced) opportunities for and reenforcement of collaborations between students on substantive, purposeful work. Example: The Educational Software Seminar at Brown (http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/)

Five Questions to Consider Before Integrating Computers and Coursework

• Are the computers to be an aid to existing curricula and classroom practices or an engine for changing them?

• How do you imagine yourself and your students becoming comfortable and adept at using the computers as well as they use technologies like the book and the telephone?

• Will the computers be used to allow you to successfully teach a broader, and not just a different (or the same old), high-achieving group of students?

• How much of the school day/week/year do you imagine yourself and your students spending with the computer to successfully complete work for your course.

• What is the difference between the ways you imagine yourself and your students using the computer as part of your course?

Information, Communication and Experience: Why Faculty Use Computers

• Information: the computer as a just-in-time/distance/asynchronous/tele-learning dissemination machine. Example: Chemistry 21 at Brown (http://casey.chem.brown.edu/).

• Communication: the computer as a means of expanding and enriching communication. Examples: Math 8 (http://www.math.brown.edu/~banchoff/ma8/), Bio 20 (http://www.brown.edu/Courses/Bio_20/index.html), and CS92 http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/2000/cs92.syllabus.html#weekly).

• Experience: the computer as a means of expanding and/or enriching the experience of studying and learning the course materials. Examples: PY0027: Visual Perception (http://www.cs.brown.edu/courses/cs092/2000/py27/applets.html), IT102: The Decameron in English (http://www.brown.edu/Departments/Italian_Studies/dweb/dweb.shtml).

Writing about The Geographer's Craft in 1997, Ken Foote wrote:

"The Geographer's Craft is organized somewhat differently than other introductory courses in GIS. It is a two-semester, eight-credit course (GRG 859A and GRG 859B) comprised of lectures, discussions, labs, and small-group meetings. Its principal difference lies in the way students gain experience with geographical information systems, spatial analysis, cartography, remote sensing, and field methods. Rather than teaching these methods separately, the Geographer's Craft employs a problem-solving approach in which students learn these techniques, sometimes concurrently, as they address realistic research topics. The idea is to use engaging topics to teach broader lessons about how researchers and practitioners conceptualize theoretical and practical problems and then approach them with appropriate methodological tools. The real goal of each project is to sharpen the students' analytical reasoning abilities while building their proficiency in a variety of technical skills."

In Foote's project, and in many of the examples I've cited in this presentation one can see how a change in the organization and character of course materials and exercises, facilitated by technology, can lead to significant change in the experience of the course, for the teacher as well as the students. This is something we (at least at Brown) have known since the 1980s, when Bob Scholes, and Beeman, Heyward, et al at IRIS, wrote about their pioneering work in teaching with hypertext systems. It is perhaps the first thing to consider in deciding whether/when to use computers in your course.

© 2000 Roger B. Blumberg