Old Email Archive

digest 1997-10-27 #001


10:20 PM 10/26/97 -0800
From: "Society for Literature & Science" 

Daily SLS Email Digest
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Date: 26 Oct 1997 15:36:49 -0700
From: wu10@cornell.edu (Ted Underwood)
Subject: Re: Time for a little controversy?
If UCLA is only creating sites, and not forcing people to use them, I
don't
know that I would have any problem with that.
My teaching would be better if I had the time to create/bring in
more audiovisual support.  But in the absence of incentives to do so, I
have a strong tendency to fall back on discussion, a blackboard, and a
piece of chalk -- especially because the academy's existing incentive
structure encourages me to direct my efforts elsewhere, i.e., to
research.
I don't see anything wrong with giving people like myself a strong nudge
to
encourage innovation in teaching as well.
Ted Underwood
University of Rochester
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Date: 26 Oct 1997 16:17:22 -0700
From: Joseph Duemer 
Subject: Re: Time for a little controversy?
It's interesting to read what Joe Amato and Stuart have posted in
response to
Wayne Miller's discussion of UCLA's web policy. I teach at Clarkson, a
small tech university, and we have something like the opposite problem.
I'm glad that our administration, while encouraging web development for
course purposes, has not issued any decrees. Quite a few of us are
using
the web, though, and our problem is lack of decent technical support.
The problem is two-fold (at least): as is everyone, we're strapped for
money, so equipment is not cutting edge, though we're better off than
many small colleges; but the real problem is a supreme lack of interest
on the part of our computer people. This goes beyond lacking a
"customer
service" approach, which is what they claim they want to offer,
and
approaches a fortress mentality. I've talked to folks at other
colleges,
and the story is often the same--a small group of techies doling out
computer resources in such a way as to insure their own continuing
importance. The most outrageous example of this I've experienced
personally is the attitude toward web page editors.
Personally, I have been unwilling to get deeply involved in web course
development until I found reasonable software to help me out. Coding
HTML is just not a good use of my time; and yet when I asked our
computer people about supporting Microsoft FrontPage, there were a
flurry of reasons why it couldn't be done. I currently run my web pages
off a commercial ISP; I'm told we'll be supporting FP extensions
"pretty
soon." It's even worse down the road at St. Lawrence, where my
wife
works in the art gallery: the computer people have told the gallery
they'll just have to learn HTML or go suck an egg.
At Clarkson, the result of our computer center's attitude has been the
defacto decentralizing of computing at the university. The School of
Business was the first to set up their own network, then Technical
Communications (I run some stuff there too.), and now others are
getting
going in this direction. Perhaps this isn't so bad, but it makes for an
incoherent environment. All our students are stuck with the central
network and server, but many of their professors are using different
servers with different configurations, so everything is ad hoc. It's
like doing business in Viet Nam (where I was this summer): every
negotiation starts from scratch; there is no body of precedent or law
of
contracts to use as guidance. So we have a situation where two
different
academic units, for instance, are buying licenses from different
divisions of the same vendor, and getting different prices, etc. We
have
no clearing house.
So, while there are surely ethical and practical problems with top down
centralization, there are most certainly problems, too, with
balkanization of computer resources and support.
___________________________
___________________________
Joseph Duemer
School of Liberal Arts
Clarkson University
Potsdam NY 13699
315-262-2466 / 315-268-3967
Fax: 315-268-3983
duemer@polaris.clarkson.edu
http://web.northnet.org/duemer
___________________________
"Poets are like baseball pitchers.
Both have their moments.
The intervals are the tough things."
-Robert Frost
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Date: 26 Oct 1997 18:38:14 -0700
From: amato@charlie.cns.iit.edu (Joe Amato/Kass Fleisher)
Subject: Re: Time for a little controversy?
what joseph duemer is referring to hits at the problem:  i'm a proponent
of
using online resources, have been for years, will continue to be... but
i
remain wary of what we as faculty will have to 'pay' in order to get
access
to the equipment we need... it's clear that computers, from an admin
pov
(not to be black & white about it, but---), are a way to increase
'productivity,' monitor our work, etc... all of the corporate-dystopic
items we're all only too familiar with...
so one of the things i try to do (not w/o it's problems on my campus,
given
our relatively impoverished low-tech "high tech" situation) is
get the
students involved, get them online as i can, and hope that they'll come
to
see the value of and in this sort of activity/exchange, and take it
from
there... that is, i think we need to turn the students loose some, and
help
them to see that having a say in their own educations can turn on
something
other, more vital than simply making money, having careers etc... i
would
think that bringing remote classrooms in touch with one another would
help
here---the advantage of the computer in crossing institutional and
geopolitical boundaries all too evident...
of course if i require that my students be so involved---isn't this in
some
sense equivalent to admins requiring that I BE?... i mean, what's good
for
the goose etc... so my advice to pressures to comply---albeit i think
that
academic freedom for us is not translatable, as it were, to student
"freedom" (my aim is to push my own point)---is to turn the
situation to
your advantage... to wit, 'very well then, if this is what you want,
then
put up or shut up'... and see if you can't wrench control of the 'you
must
put up a web site' mentality by thinking past these jokers... at the
same
time, those who are wedded to older instructional technologies are
probably
gonna have a hard go of it, either way... so i guess it's up to the
folks
(ok, like me) who are hot & heavy into it to argue, on the one hand,
that
colleagues should be permitted to come around as they may... and on the
other, to give colleagues a hand in coming around...
i sound so positively cheery at the moment, i know... must be looking
for a
kinder, gentler exchange, the wind out here in chi-town just clocked at
59
mph off the lake, rain, 30s, it's a nastyass day...
best,
joe
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Date: 26 Oct 1997 19:43:23 -0700
From: Wayne Miller 
Subject: Re: Time for a little controversy?
>I have written on the UCLA situation in particular (see my letter in
the
>26 September issue of the _Chronicle_) and about the impact of
>technology on teaching more generally (see my letter in the
"Colloquy"
>section of _Academe Today_--forthcoming as a letter in the
_Chronicle_).
> The issue is the top-down management style, and the increasing
>resemblance between higher education administrators and corporate
>management.
Hi,
I've read the contributions in the Chronicle Colloquy, and found the
discussion extremely interesting. Nevertheless, I feel that the
_Chronicle_
did everyone a disservice by formulating the question in a way that
misrepresented UCLA's situation and that set up something of a
strawman.
>Many of us in higher education are there because we didn't
>want to hold jobs in sales or manufacturing, and we resent being
managed
>as though we were in such fields.  Moreover, anyone with a
humanistic
>perspective and a sense of history has an uncanny sense of deja-vu,
the
>Supreme court's decision notwithstanding, when it comes to words
such as
>"revolutionary" or "new and improved."
I would count myself as an anyone with a humanistic perspective. I also
share a suspicion of "revolutionary" claims. But I do not
doubt that
revolutions occur, often misrecognized by the participants and often
obscured by the torrent of reports, claims and counterclaims that
accompany
change. I believe that computer mediated communication is at least as
"revolutionary" as the telephone was earlier in this century
and that it
has the potential of being as "revolutionary" as the
television has been in
the latter half of the century. Like these revolutions, it will not
sweep
aside earlier forms of communication and interaction. But it can
nevertheless change fundamental aspects of our social interaction. For
the
better or for the worse.
>A website is my choice or not as a pedagogical delivery option.  It
most
>certainly is not something I am obliged to create, as though it were
a
>syllabus or some other fundamental piece of pedagogical
information.
To be very clear: all the web sites at UCLA have been created by staff
members and then opened to the faculty for their use. In the Humanities
Division, we have also employed 15 graduate students to help the
faculty
understand what the web sites offer and what they might do to help
faculty
in their instruction. There is no "top-down" repercussion for
not using the
web site. It is being provided in a similar spirit as the provision of
an
office telephone -- to facilitate the mission of the faculty.
I think all of that is true, but don't misunderstand me -- I know that
there are politics involved in any decision like this. This initiative
puts
pressure on the faculty, without a doubt. But that vague pressure is a
long
way from a denial of academic freedom, it seems to me, and not
fundamentally different from the pressure many faculty feel to use
slides,
overheads, handouts, notetaking services and other accoutrements that
students have come to expect.
>  To
>force me to create a site is a fundamental denial of my academic
>freedom.  Not that an administrator stiving to garner good pr would
>care:  at my particular institution, the only thing that prevents
the
>administration from applying the leverage that UCLA did is lack of
>financial resources and infrastructure.  That's a rather sad
commentary
>on a good deal above and beyond the particular issue that you
raise.
The administrators involved in this effort (many PhD'd and faculty
members
to boot) are not shy about the good PR they hope from this. But they
are
not quite as cynical a lot as you might assume. Some of them see the
modern
university in peril of seeming irrelevant and not efficient enough -- a
dangerous perception that will emerge not from within but from without.
All
the decision makers I know undertook this experiment in more or less
good
faith. I think the assertion of eventual irrelevance is arguable. But I
can
see why administrators do not feel they have the luxury of ignoring the
social changes swirling around the old ivory towers.
Wayne
/-------------------------------------------------------/
Wayne Miller                   
Manager, HCF Academic Services   /   Asst Adj Professor
Humanities Computing Facility      343 Kinsey Hall UCLA
Germanic Languages                2326 Murphy Hall UCLA
(310) 206-2004                      Fax: (310) 825-7428
/-------------------------------------------------------/