On 5 Oct 98, Brett Lorenzen wrote:
> and we'll hold the rant on how pathetic universities are
> at web site stuff
Oh that's OK, I'll rant for you <g>
I've noticed this consistently in my years on the Web, how teachers
specifically and educational institutions often don't seem to "get" the Web.
Which is ironic, because academics were the original power users who
drove the evolution of the Internet and later the Web in the first place.
But the fact remains that in 1998, many academic sites are noteworthy
for their stodgy, ill-organized content and appearance.
(BTW, I know that some list members are academics; please don't take
offence at my comments here. They are general observations, not
specific criticisms. I know that some academics do indeed make
exceptionally good use of the net in their jobs; just not enough of them.)
Part of the problem, I suspect, is that universities tend to be run by
committee, as are government bureacracies. This generates large
amounts of inertia. Decisions are reached in an atmosphere of courtly
gentility, slowly and with elaborate pretence at "consensus-building", or
whatever the buzz-phrase-de-jour happens to be. (Although in reality,
universities are hotbeds of positively Balkan rivalries, sniping and
backstabbing, but that's another topic.) In any case, there is a rather
paradoxical conservatism at the heart of many post-secondary
institutions, at least as the management level. This seems to be reflected
in the lame Web presence of so many of them.
Another issue, nicely explored in a US Congressional study for which I've
unfortunately lost the URL, is the nature of the pedagogic profession
itself. Teachers and professors are by definition people who are the
authorities in their daily working lives. If the teacher-student relationship
is working "right" then the teacher holds all the cards, dispensing pearls of
knowledge from on high to the grateful unwashed. This indeed is the
framework upon which their ability to discipline and control their students
is often built. The teacher knows the curriculum thoroughly, and the
student doesn't. So the student had best defer to the teacher.
The Internet -- with its potential for instant access to vast stores of
information and opinion -- threatens this classroom hegemony. When a
teacher knows that his students can listen to a lecture/lesson, go home,
and within minutes find 20 dissenting (and perhaps equally authoritative)
views on a topic, then that teacher's authority is diminished. His
curriculum becomes suspect, his omniscience questioned. Or so the
teachers perceive it, many of them. There is, in the words of the study I
mentioned above, "fear and resentment of the unknown".
Anecdotally, I see this syndrome at work in two people close to me, my
sister and my ex. Both are public-school teachers, and both (by all
second-hand accounts I hear) are very good ones. And yet they are the
only two members of my family circle who are not on the Internet.
When I question this, their reasons are vague: "Oh, it's a fad... my
students just use it for games and chat and so on... it's filled with
pornography... it's... it's..." Not terribly persuasive :) Ultimately, I
suspect it's all just too much for them; that they have a general sense of
Something Big going on, something that their students understand but
they don't, and they don't like it. And perhaps they feel that by getting
on the net themselves they're somehow "selling out". I dunno.
Anyway, I have a miserable cold and am running out of mental steam. Will
leave this here. Again, no offence intended to any list members from
acdemia.
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Brent Eades, Almonte, Ontario
E-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
[EMAIL PROTECTED]
Town of Almonte site: http://www.almonte.com/
Business site: http://www.federalweb.com
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