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Opinion
To Ephiphany--and Beyond!
4/1/2004
Of course, these simple strategies fail to address complex quality issues or
key outcome measures, such as student engagement and learning.
Enter technology. Like others, I know, really know—in my head
and heart—that technology makes me more productive. When I gave up my
typewriter for a personal computer more than two decades ago, the technology
provided a competitive advantage: I could write (and rewrite) papers and proposals,
create graphics, develop and update project budgets, and prepare conference
materials better and faster than without the computer, and better and faster
than my peers who did not use a computer.
And technology as an instructional resource? Here’s where things get
messy. Yes, technology—from film and television to online content and
interactive simulations—can aid and enhance instruction and learning.
But we do not have a clear definition for instructional productivity or precise
methods to measure student learning and outcomes. At the classroom, program,
and institutional level, we do not have firm definitions and consistent measures
to assess what we do with IT resources or the impact of institutional IT investments
and deployment efforts.
The absence of consistent metrics and definitive research—comparable
to the data used by economists to measure productivity or pharmaceutical companies
to document the benefit of new medicines—means that we occupy an ambiguous
gray zone. We are left, knowlingly or not, citing former Supreme Court Justice
Potter Stewart’s 1964 opinion on pornography; he couldn’t define
it, but he knew it when he saw it.
So while we many not be able to define academic productivity, we know it when
we see it, or more precisely, when we experience it. In other words,
we have evidence by epiphany.
Unfortunately, evidence by (individual or institutional) epiphany fails to
provide the much-needed data and documentation required to respond to questions
about the impact and benefits of technology in instruction and institutional
operations. We need more than a voice vote of the faculty senate to confirm
that IT makes a difference.
For me, the conceptual map charting the impact of IT on instruction and curriculum
was published more than a decade ago. Writing in Change magazine (Jan./Feb.
1991), and summarizing five years of research on IT and the curriculum for the
National Center to Improve Postsecondary Teaching and Learning at the University
of Michigan, Robert Kozma and Jerome Johnston were ahead of the curve (and the
Web!) in their discussion of key IT issues affecting the curriculum and the
continuing IT challenges affecting faculty, academic programs, and institutions.
Their 1991 article, “The Technological Revolution Comes to the Classroom”
also calls for “systematic assessment” focused on what, in 2004,
continues to be the need for evidence about “which innovations make a
difference in teaching and learning” and the “need to understand
the connection between educational computing, learning, and teaching.”
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