Educators contemplate the appropriate use of technology in the postsecondary environment
While most of today’s students, are eager to use technology, many
faculty members approach it with tepid enthusiasm. Some professors
still prefer ink and paper to a keyboard and screen.
The new technology “requires really a cultural change on the part
of faculty and staff,” says Dr. Roy McTarnaghan, president of Florida
Gulf Coast University. “For traditional institutions this is pretty
hard to do. A lot of folks are comfortable in the seventeenth century.”
However, much of the discomfort with technology held by many
scholars has nothing to do with the tools of the trade and more. It has
to do with the way those tools are used and what is being lost in the
process.
Clorice Thomas-Haysbert, an assistant professor for hospitality
programs at Howard University, see several dangers posed by the new
technology — not the least of which is the diminishing physical
contact between students and instructors.
Thomas-Haysbert worries that professors will have a harder time
discovering who the student really is, and what he or she is really
about, because there is no personal contact when classes are taught
over the Internet.
“Seeing a student every day is important. Some students have
different skills and needs that must be dealt with on a daily basis,”
she says.
