SEPTEMBER 17, 1998-vol30n4:Technology in the classroom: unusual? No, it's the norm

VOLUME 30, NUMBER 4 THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 17, 1998

Technology in the classroom: unusual? No, it's the norm

By SUE WUETCHER
News Services Associate Director

Although universal access to computing will not be implemented officially until next fall, use of technology in the classroom is prospering at UB.

Faculty members are using technology in a variety of ways, ranging from creation of Web sites on which instructors post course materials, to listservs to facilitate class discussion, to accessing the Web during class, to use of software packages designed by faculty members to complement specific courses.

In fact, use of even the simplest technology-posting course materials on the Web-has become so commonplace that several faculty members contacted by the Reporter doubted that what they are doing can be called "innovative."

"I assume these practices are common around the campus," notes a member of the Department of Sociology.

Mary Flanagan, assistant professor of media study and a member of the working group developing guidelines for faculty use of technology in the classroom, says that use of technology in class instruction has become "an accepted norm."

"I see a lot of work being done that is promising; faculty are getting into technology," says Flanagan, who uses technology extensively in her own classes.

She points out that while she is a relatively new member of the UB faculty-she came to UB in Fall 1997-she senses that "a lot has changed" already at UB during the past five years in terms of faculty use of technology, and that "five years from now, UB will be a very different place."

Although statistics on the number of faculty members using some kind of technology in the classroom are not available, a "sizable component of the faculty already has begun to move in this direction," says Joseph Tufariello, senior vice provost for educational technology, adding that there are certain disciplines, such as chemistry, where use of technology is "fairly extensive."

Tufariello calls universal computing access and the use of technology in the classroom "the wave of the future," with many universities beginning to move in this direction. Although UB is not the first university to require universal access, it is "running with the front of the pack," he says.

Among those UB faculty members who have been in the "front of the pack" on campus is Jack Meacham, professor of psychology.

Meacham, who has published articles on the use of technology in the classroom, has been using listserv discussions in his large lecture classes since 1994. He and Lara Bushallow-Wilbur, former assistant librarian in the Undergraduate Library who now works at the Johnson Center Library at George Mason University, developed a Web site for students that provides links to course-relevant Internet sites, as well as links to resources on how to conduct successful research on the Internet.

He also plans to use the electronic reserve that has been initiated in the Undergraduate Library.

Meacham notes that while his teaching skills have not improved just because he is incorporating computers into his lesson plans, thinking about how to use technology in instruction has, indeed, improved his teaching.

"Thinking about how computers and technology might be used in teaching has made me think more carefully about what the learning goals are for the students in my classes," he says. "I'm making more deliberate choices now about what to teach with technology and what to teach without technology."

Although he was an early convert to the use of technology in the classroom, he cautions that technology cannot be adapted into every classroom situation.

"Teaching with technology will be the right thing for some courses, for some topics, for some faculty, and for some students, but it will be entirely wrong in other cases," he says. "Indeed, in most cases, a small class in which faculty and students can listen to each other with respect and have a sustained, in-depth discussion of the course material is likely to lead to far better teaching and learning than anything that is done with computers and technology.

"I believe that we have a lot of work to do at UB in the next couple of years as we learn what are appropriate and productive uses of technology in teaching and what are not," he says.

One faculty member who has been able to adapt successfully the use of technology into her teaching-in fact, one arts and sciences faculty member has called her the "nerve center" for such activity-is Flanagan, who teaches visual art.

With the assistance of Christopher Egert, a doctoral candidate in computer science, she has created a Web site and software to facilitate the electronic submission and class critiquing of student multimedia projects.

The software "creates the setting of a seminar on the Web," says Flanagan.

It gives students direct access to course material on the Web and allows them to submit material to the site without going to a server or worrying about different file transfer protocols, she says.

"They can concentrate on the content, not get bogged down with technical issues," she adds.

Moreover, since students must post their work on the Web site-a more public place than just circulating the work in the classroom-they may spend more time on it, she notes.

Critiquing work via the Web also may benefit students who are more quiet and prefer time to compose their comments, rather than speaking off-the-cuff in class, she says.

An informal, unscientific poll by the Reporter has unearthed many other faculty members who use technology extensively in courses they teach. The number is too numerous to detail in one story. But among the most noteworthy are:

-Scott Grant, assistant professor of learning and instruction, who has developed an "Observation Simulation" using CD and Internet technologies to help students learn how to observe a school setting and to take raw and expanded field notes. The simulation allows students to post notes they've taken after viewing a series of videotaped segments on a CD to a class page on the Graduate School of Education server. Students then can print each others' notes, critique them and bring them to class for discussion.

-Joseph Conte, associate professor of English, whose course "Multimedia Literature" integrates the teaching of literature with multimedia, on-line and digital resources. Students read fiction, poetry and critical essays in both print and electronic formats; participate in classroom multimedia exercises using IBM-, CD-ROM- and Ethernet-equipped teaching stations; participate in an online discussion list, and develop a Web site devoted to an author or literary-electronic topic as part of a final research project.

-Robert Allendoerfer, associate professor of chemistry, who has developed an electronic curriculum for his introductory chemistry course. The e-text, which was available on the Web in the Fall of 1997, is now available on CD-ROM. His VizQuiz software program tests students taking the general introductory course. Students have been using the "electronic homework" component of VizQuiz for two years.

-Barbara Avila-Shah, assistant professor of modern languages and literatures, who, along with other UB Spanish instructors, uses a software program called ATAJO in all elementary and intermediate language courses. The online program, accessible through the UB mainframe, provides a basic English-Spanish/Spanish-English dictionary, a vocabulary section and verb conjugation. It also allows the instructor to print a "log" that shows work done by students using ATAJO.