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PICTURE COLLEGE IN the year 2010: Charlie lives in Des Moines, but he's getting his B.A. from a college in Ohio, with credits from six different universities that offer courses on the World Wide Web. He studies ancient Greece at Harvard-on-the-Web with the renowned historian, Seymour Microson. For French Literature he travels to the Sorbonne Online, and for environmental studies he clicks on the University of California's Electronic Extension. Charlie sends in his completed course assignments and exams by e-mail, and he participates in online discussion groups with fellow students scatteredaround the country. There is no face-to-face interaction, no hands-on guidance, no spontaneous discussion in the hallways, and no campus community.
Professor Microson, who is embroiled in a legal dispute over royalties to his Web material, thinks about his colleagues who left academia when the growth of online courses reduced demand for faculty. He misses the days when a college was a campus community, not a cost-cutting franchise operation spread around the country like fast food.
No one really knows how education on the World Wide Web will be structured in the decades ahead or how it will affect learning. But new technology is already bringing academic resources beyond the confines of a campus and changing the way teachers and students work. "Colleges and universities need to radically reexamine their roles," says Robert McClintock, director of the Institute for Learning Technologies at Columbia University Teachers College. "They may need to significantly examine entrance requirements and the structure of finances."
But fears that Web-based instruction will replace worthwhile lectures and faculty are unfounded, say many, including Nicholas Turro, professor of chemistry at Columbia and a pioneer in the use of Web-based material for teaching organic chemistry. "My course is not a course on the Web," says Turro, "I use the new technology as a supplement -- an adjunct to enhance the course."
This past summer, Turro and his colleagues investigated about 500 chemistry Web sites to find the 50 or so that use graphics and animation in interesting ways to help students better understand basic principles. "It was enormous work," he says, "like indexing a library for the first time." Turro also helped put a CD ROM slide show on the Web that allows students to review textbook material interactively.
Columbia's Arts Humanities core course is another place where the World Wide Web is used as a tool to expand, not replace, traditional teaching methods. In place of the grainy black-and-white prints previously used for studying artwork, students now have easy access to sharp color images on the Web. And
because having multiple images is crucial for understanding architecture, the University's Media Center for Art History is focusing on architectural applications for the Web, beginning with a live video and computer- simulated model of Amiens Cathedral. In the Amiens Project, core course students and others use the World Wide Web to access maps of late-medieval Amiens, architectural plans, slides, music, and documents in Latin, French, or English translation. Its latest addition is an interactive sculpture program that links the sculpture of Amiens with art, biblical passages, and medieval literature, so that when you see the Virgin Mary, for example, you can also hear what she has to say. "Student response has been overwhelming," says Stephen Murray, director of the center.
At most universities, however, Web-based activities get mixed reviews from students, because departments are still experimenting with new technology in very preliminary ways. "Last year, my students hated building Web pages," says Randy Bass, professor of English and American Studies at Georgetown University, who is spearheading efforts to integrate new technologies into cultural studies and literature. In experimenting with the use of e-mail, hypertext, and student research on the Web, he has learned that students prefer
new technology in small doses. To help American studies teachers use worthwhile resources on the Web, Bass runs a Web site called The Crossroads Project, which includes a "dynamic syllabus" section showing course materials that use technology in a way that transforms how the course is taught.
The trial-and-error experimentation taking place in many departments is an important first step toward eventually assessing the value of new technologies in teaching, according to Josh Reibel, director of consulting and evaluation at Columbia's ILT. He says that evaluating Web-based programs will require new assessment techniques because, "for many disciplines, what faculty see as their educational mission is changing." Traditional evaluation techniques compare different styles among programs that are similar in content. As new media become involved in programs, the content objectives of a discipline are also changing, so new evaluation tools are needed.
But the real difficulty with putting new technology to good use, in Reibel's view, is that large university courses, such as Columbia's Arts Humanities core course, are often team taught by a group of faculty and graduate students. "You might have a head professor or a couple of faculty who really run with it, but getting the rest of the team to make Web applications useful may be very tricky," he says. "You have to rethink what you do in every class assignment. Faculty have a huge number of different commitments, so universities will have to find ways of rewarding their participation."
John Unsworth, English professor at the University of Virginia and one of the first to win tenure based on works in electronic, rather than printed, form, advocates following draft guidelines of the Modern Language Association, which state, "Computer-related work, like other forms of curricular innovation, scholarship, and service, should be evaluated as an integral part of a faculty member's dossier, as specified in an institution's guidelines for reappointment, promotion, and tenure."(1)
On the other hand, should faculty worry about putting courses on the Web that could some day replace them as teachers? "If you can be replaced by a computer, then you should be," says Unsworth. "Technology can support better teaching, but computers themselves don't learn or teach."
1. Modern Language Association Committee on Computers and Emerging Technologies in Teaching and Research. Evaluating Computer-Related Work in the Modern Languages. Draft guidelines, June 1995.NANCY HENDERSON is a free-lance science and education journalist based in Washington, D.C. Her work has appeared in U.S. News and World Report, Money, Medical Economics, and other publications.
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