College discusses education, technology

The participants--faculty, staff, and students from every department in the College, along with selected members of the Medical Center and Eastman, Simon, and Warner schools--heard a presentation by Steve Gilbert, director of Technology Projects of the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) on current national trends in educational use of information technology. Participants also had the opportunity to respond to the ideas generated by the presentation and exchange ideas with each other about College teaching and technology issues.

"The College has always wholeheartedly supported individual faculty members as they explored technology," says Frank Wolfs, associate professor of physics and astronomy. "But there has been no coherent plan, no cost- effective way to make the best use of our scarce resources for the benefit of everyone." Wolfs and William Scott Green, dean of the College, are co-chairs of the CTLTR. The Dean's Office formed the CTLTR last spring, in response to a proposal from the Residential College Commission (RCC).

The November forum's aim was to begin discussions among College members about ways to best use technology, Wolfs says. But using technology doesn't mean that all faculty members need to handle highly technical equipment and understand programming languages, he points out. "In the forum, we saw that even simple things like e-mail, list serves, audio/visual equipment, and the World Wide Web can have a huge impact on the ways that we teach," he says. "Teachers and the course materials become more accessible to the students."

Based on forum discussions, CTLTR members will set an agenda for the coming year. That agenda will include such items as guaranteed computer access for all College students, Wolfs says. "Faculty need to know that their students can get to a computer if they are to use the resources fully," he says. The group will also look at the crisis in technical support in the College. "We simply don't have enough manpower to support faculty initiatives," he says.

"The feedback provided to the CTLTR includes issues that can be addressed on a relatively short time scale, and some that will require a longer time scale to implement. In the spring we will report on the status of these issues and hopefully will be able to present solutions to a number of them," Wolfs says.