By
Richard P. Richter
When CAPE began in 1993, few schools,
colleges, or universities had a strategic vision of
information and telecommunication technology (ITT)
for their academic future. They nevertheless went on
in the intervening years to invest many millions of
dollars in equipment and staff, trying to keep ahead
of the perceived need to "wire up" and be
"state-of-the-art."
"Now, it's
like indoor plumbing," said a CAPE-member
president recently. "It's expected by the
students—no big deal."
Yet, as ITT
continues to penetrate K-12 and colleges and
universities, strategic visions in most institutions
remain a bit blurry. It is necessary to keep asking
what the deal really is. What is the frenzy of
technological innovation essentially doing for
education?
The
most meaningful insight I've found so far is that it
is expanding the way the participants in education
relate to one another.
For the most
obvious example, we have only to cite the way digital
videconferencing now allows students and instructors
to be in different places and yet communicate
"face-to-face." This innovation has given
continuing education a whole new look.
Indeed, when
CAPE started, most educators typically thought of
continuing education as the main beneficiary of
technologically mediated learning. They did not see
it at the core of the mission in basic or higher
education.
By now, they
have to acknowledge that ITT is penetrating every
aspect of educational endeavor. Throughout, they see
the pervasive effect that ITT is having on
relationships between and among students and faculty.
And as relationships among people change, they are
affecting the structure and style of their
institutions. A new "ecosystem" of
education in schools and on campuses is evolving,
which interconnects the world of learning as never
before. And the content of learning itself, as a
human product, is taking new shape in this ecosystem.
Think of
students. Increasing numbers of high school students
are relating to college professors and college
students through the introductory college courses
that they are now taking online. Through email and
websites for their on-campus courses, college
students are relating virtually to their professors
and classmates as well as face-to-face. Partnerships
among colleges, made possible by technologies, are
enabling students on different campuses to share
learning experiences and to learn from different
professors. Using the World Wide Web, students doing
research are gathering information from the websites
of scholars anywhere in the world.
Think of faculty
members. Most of them by now have incorporated in
their on-campus style of life a new kind of
relationship with students and colleagues through
daily email. Through the World Wide Web, they have
easy access to the scholarship of fellow
practitioners in their fields. Often they have an
informal email relationship with them as well.
Faculty members find virtual relationships with
diverse colleagues through institutional alliances or
discipline-based networks of scholars, thanks to the
Internet and videoconferencing. That brings them into
touch with broadening perspectives and new knowledge
as well as with potential partners in course
offerings. Their participation on listservs keeps
them in the swim of current conversation about their
fields with fellow professors everywhere. (CAPE is
facilitating faculty-to-faculty relationships through
such services as its listserv, searchable database,
and virtual get togethers.)
Then think of
the way librarians are deepening resources for
students and faculty by connecting them
electronically to research resources worldwide.
Such
far-reaching changes in people-to-people
relationships are only the early signs of a
far-reaching systemic change in the way we educate.
Educators need to continue searching for the full
power of the new "relationship capital"
conferred by ITT. Only by doing so will their
strategic visions for their institutions sharpen and
point the way to a clearly outlined future in a
connected world.
Richard P. Richter
has been a consultant to CAPE since he became
President Emeritus of Ursinus College in 1995 after
18 years in office.
