Technology & Learning
Community

From the Facilitator

November 1997

Putting a Little TLC into Community College Technology Use 
by Mark Milliron, Vice President and Chief Operating Officer League for Innovation in the Community College and Co-Web Facilitator, TLC

You may have suspected that the use of the initials TLC for this Website is not a coincident, and, indeed, it is not. In putting together the site, the development team focused on bringing a human dimension to the electronically-facilitated resources of the Technology and Learning Community. We wanted TLC to attract not only people deeply embroiled with instructional technology on a daily basis, but also people like one of my favorite community college instructors, someone I'll call "Steve."

I met Steve at a small community college in the mountains of North Carolina. He was what one student called, "the hippie psych teacher that everyone loves." It was not uncommon for students to enter his class and find their normally sterile, straight-rowed learning chamber transformed into a much more comfortable place--chairs arranged in a circle, lights turned down, and soft music playing. I vividly remember nursing students almost everently explaining Steve's belief that they had to sit on the floor in their early childhood development course if they wanted to understand "how children see the world." These unconventional and effective teaching methods, combined with his unbending devotion to helping students create a life, not just make a living, made Steve one of the best faculty members I've ever met. But perhaps like many of the best educators on your campus--or even you yourself-- Steve was a merciless critic of technology. Steve loudly echoed a sentiment articulated by Dr. Edward Hallowell during his keynote at the American Association for Higher Education's Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable Institute. Dr. Hallowell, a professor and psychiatrist with the Harvard Medical School, noted the irony that today's technology affords us more contact capabilities than ever before, yet our "sense of connectedness" and the depth of our relationships may be at an all time low.

Technology's tendency to accelerate the ordinary and make more superficial our daily communication leaves many of us feeling tired and empty. Steve and those sharing his "techno-skepticism," remind me that "technology makes our life better" is still a tenuous statement, advanced by groups ranging from evangelical true believers to thoughtful and talented practitioners, and resisted by groups ranging from the irrationally fearful to incisive and caring critics.

The statement "technology makes our teaching better" is no less controversial, and just as hard to prove either way. These reminders guided my input into the development of this Website, input based on my framework for the use of technology in instruction-- a framework built on the principles of Technology, Learning, and Community, or TLC.

Technology 
The technology available to educators is impressive. The tools to increase communication with students through e-mail, bulletin boards, listservs, kiosks, electronic forums, and real-time chats give us new and interesting options to reach our increasingly transitory and busy  students. In addition, the technologies for presentation--PowerPoint,ToolBook, World Wide Web, CD-ROMs, and multimedia carts--are becoming standard teaching tools necessary to reach the TV generation with ore stimulating visuals that bring curriculum to life. Several colleges are investing millions of dollars in the creation of Smart Classrooms to integrate this technology into the infrastructure of any room targeted for instruction.

In addition to communication and presentation tools, course management technology is enabling faculty to create dynamic syllabi available over an intranet or the Internet. Telephone registration, online counseling, electronic financial aid forms, and interactive student information kiosks expand our ability to serve a larger and more dispersed student population. Computer adaptive testing, virtual teaching assistants, integrated student databases, and online course staging technologies challenge educators to manage information in new and useful ways for themselves and for students.  Students share this challenge as they struggle with new technology for research, reference, and production with which they must become familiar to survive in the workplace or in other institutions of higher education.

Library databases, virtual textbooks, and the World Wide Web leave the Dewey Decimal system behind and enable students to search for and manipulate information in ways only dreamt of by their predecessors. Once this higher-order research is complete, students can use other technology tools to produce professional quality print publications, multimedia presentations, interactive CD-ROMs, and custom Web sites.

Learning 
Impressive possibilities notwithstanding, do these information technologies improve learning? Data from the American Association for Higher Education's Crossroads Project, the League for Innovation's Information Technology Initiative, EDUCOM's National Learning Infrastructure Initiative, and research on over 200 teaching excellence award recipients at the 1997 National Institute for Staff and Organizational Development's Teaching and Leadership Excellence Conference suggest that when used well, they can.

The connection capabilities made possible by information technology can enhance interactive and collaborative learning. Sophisticated presentation technologies and skillful management of information by instructors help stimulate different learning styles and make clear the most difficult concepts. Sophisticated student support systems enable colleges to point motivated students in the right direction and to intervene appropriately when students are struggling in their courses.

Students' use of the powerful technology tools to access and analyze information can foster critical thinking and the construction of knowledge. Also, as the Crossroads project points out, students become "invested learners," spending much more time and energy perfecting their prose for posting on the class Electronic Bulletin Board than they would for a paper to be turned in only to the teacher.

Community 
Still, Steve's concern about the effect of information technology on people is etched in my mind. As technology literacy programs and the use of technology in instruction become commonplace, I am driven to join those who question what these "advances" do to human beings, their interpersonal relationships, their social groups, and their organizations. Some answers can be summed up in a series of community-focused double Cs.

First, the technology push creates a set of Confounding Conditions that confuse and heat discussions about  technology and learning--for example: (1) the persistent myth that technology will save money; (2) the lack of technology support for faculty, staff, and students; (3) the use of technology for novelty rather than instructional uality; (4) the common fear that surrounds technology; and (5) the true believers that put off mainstream faculty and staff with all-or-nothing technology sermons. If these conditions weren't enough, Confusing Computers soak up our precious time with unfriendly platforms, dysfunctional networks, instantly obsolete software, complicated hardware that mystically breaks down just as class begins, and system errors only one person on campus can fix.

In addition, our Complex Context--at-risk, part-time, older, or single-parent students interacting with our multidimensional mission to prepare college transfer students, produce technical workers, and provide training for the local workforce--makes our struggles with technology and its effectiveness in instruction unique in higher education. Simply requiring students to purchase laptops their first term to ensure equal access, as schools like Wake Forest University do, is virtually impossible in the community college. This context also makes it imperative that we use Careful Communication, as one unintended inflection read into an e-mail sent to a community college "virtual student" can quickly make him or her a nonexistent student. Moreover, teachers have come to rely on nonverbal communication--the confused look or the unfocused stare--as a gauge of student learning and teaching  effectiveness. What are the telltale communication signs of confusion or effectiveness in an online course?

Community building in these conditions requires a new focus on Continuing Connections, building bonds with students from first contact through the day they have reached their goals with the college. Early adopters of online and other asynchronous methods of instruction have found that orientation, advising, and student service support is still necessary to help technology-enabled students succeed. Moreover, the college must break through the impersonality of technology and continue to cultivate a Caring Community that focuses on the needs of people. In a caring community, student and organizational learning and a clear support for and celebration of student success are at the center of all college procedure and process; technology is put in its place as a servant to these ends.

A Little TLC 
Put simply, in the community college, an effective confluence  of technology and learning flows only on the riverbed of community. Fortunately, faculty like Steve--those thoughtfully concerned about the flood of information technology rushing through our institutions--help us go with this flow and understand the importance of the human touch in the information age.

That's why we invite all points of view--evangelists or skeptics, leading edge or bleeding edge, veterans of the platform wars or technological newbies--to use this site as a sounding board for your concerns, suggestions, critiques, and success stories. Let's use this tool to investigate together how we can make best use of the Technologies  available to promote the Learning that is possible and create the Community that is the hallmark of the community college. 

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