Teaching with Technology: Rethinking Tradition

Citation

Rowley, J. (2003), "Teaching with Technology: Rethinking Tradition", Journal of Documentation, Vol. 59 No. 5, pp. 621-621. https://doi.org/10.1108/00220410310499663

This book is an interesting collection of 28 papers on the use of technology in the classroom. The perspective taken is that of teachers using technology to deliver or reinforce the content in which they are experts. The papers cover a range of academic disciplines, and explore a number of managerial, cultural and pedagogic issues associated with the use of technology in learning. Unfortunately (for this reviewer), the editor has prepared only a very short preface and does not orientate the reader by explaining the basis for inclusion of the individual chapters, their sequencing, or key themes that might form a basis for practice or further research. Both the reviewer and any readers need to delve into the individual chapters in the book in order to discern what each has to offer. Accordingly, I will take the license to comment on some of my favourite chapters.

All of the chapters except one describe the situation and innovations in Universities in the USA. Naturally, therefore I made for the chapter on “Positioning web‐based learning in the higher education portfolio: too much, too soon?” authored by Steve Flowers and Steve Reeve of the University of Brighton. This chapter (actually chapter 10) would have made a good opening chapter. It starts with a description of a scenario of a future for learning in which students are guided by clusters of staff in call centres; courseware is leased from one of the prestigious providers. The university has students all over the world and is licensed to confer degrees of several leading academic institutions.

This is a cheap to operate “distributor” university. Academic staff now earn their living as call centre managers, employees of major courseware development houses or researchers. The authors discuss the factors that will drive the learning technology revolution in higher education in terms of the adoption rationales for learning technologies. They explore the three leading rationales for the pursuit of online approaches: access, effectiveness of delivery, and the enhancement or automation of teaching and learning within higher education.

Next my attention was captured by the an early chapter on “Technology and classroom design: a faculty perspective”. This chapter explores faculty preferences for classroom design, and offers a list of recommendations for technology classroom design. These include recommendations concerning general issues such as standardisation, and costing, as well are issues relating to equipment control, lighting, projection and video, acoustics, laptops, and quality enhancement. The overriding principle is that classrooms should “work” form the perspective of both students and faculty.

Various other chapters offer interesting insights. A valuable little gem is hidden in a chapter entitled “Is IT worth it?”. This is a report of a study of student evaluation of Listserv e‐mail discussion groups and Web pages. An important outcome is “the instructor is the most significant factor in determining whether students found these technologies valuable”. A chapter on “When less is more: some ergonomic consideration in course page design” works through a checklist of usability issues. General usability issues include: optimizing download times, using frames, graphics, animation and multimedia effectively, supporting minimal scrolling, and enhancing readability. Considerations that are specific to online learners include: determining purpose and audience, building predictability into course pages, revealing the overall organization of the course pages, designing for on‐screen reading and hard copy, determining an optimal size for a course page, construction useful navigational aids, and finally, building trust.

Many of the later chapters focus on specific themes. There are four chapters specifically on distance learning, but many of the chapters explore different ways in which technology can be embedded in “traditional” delivery, either as part of, or in addition to the classroom experience. These chapters focus on different disciplines, including law, finance, languages, education, architecture, humanities, and information systems.

The account of “Electronic lawyering and the academy” is particularly interesting. This suggests that the whole approach to learning of law needs to be revolutionized; the Web course experience is very close to the real thing, with students forming from their home or office computers just like real lawyers. They engage in collaborative learning via private and group e‐mail messages, about the impending assignments, like real lawyers in real practice. They have unyielding deadlines. The use of e‐mail, a course Web site, and access to law literature are described. JURIST: Law Professors Network, is a valuable resource since it provides access to educational Web pages of law teachers all over the world. In a different discipline, the chapter “Teaching structure through multimedia: interactive exploration of structural concepts using digital technology” demonstrates how the use of multimedia offers an opportunity for a radically different approach to the teaching of the structures or engineering component of architecture courses. This approach allows closer coupling between design and engineering concepts, through visual enhancement and contextual treatment of the subject.

In conclusion, this book deserves a place on the shelf of any practitioners, educationalists, or staff developers interested in the application of technology to learning in higher education. Its numerous case study illustrate and explore many of the practicalities. They report on staff and student response, and they explore both practical and theoretical pedagogic issues.