Appropriate Technology and Journal Writing: Structured Dialogues That Enhance Learning
Journal article by James Longhurst, Scott A. Sandage; College Teaching, Vol. 52, 2004
Journal Article Excerpt
Appropriate Technology and Journal Writing: Structured Dialogues That Enhance Learning. by James Longhurst , Scott A. Sandage Abstract. Of the many available options, instructors should choose "appropriate technology" that meets pedagogical goals with minimum disruption. Student journal assignments follow many teaching "best practices" but consume time and energy; we recommend e-mail as the most appropriate choice for journal assignments. E-mail encourages fast and personalized feedback, clear application of course materials, and active learning, and it offers a "structured dialogue" that encourages student-faculty interaction within pedagogically and logistically appropriate boundaries. Choosing pedagogically appropriate technology with the lowest support requirement and the simplest learning curve encourages faculty adoption and student learning alike. In the few past few years, instructors and students dents have witnessed an explosion in the number and variety of tools for electronic communication. These range from commercial software for managing and delivering course content to packages made for the office but adaptable for the classroom to original programs created by techno-savvy instructors. The third category mostly involves physics, computer science, and design faculty members who create programs that meet their own special needs. In fact, all three options tend to produce software best suited to business, scientific, or technological presentations. Software designers, being trained in the sciences themselves, usually are less familiar with teaching demands and communications styles within nonscientific disciplines--the humanities in particular. Although the reasons for this may be obvious, solutions for instructors in the humanities often are not. The disconnect between technology and pedagogy--or between computer geeks and word geeks, if you will--places an additional layer of confusion atop an already bewildering array of instructional software options. Popular course-content programs such as Blackboard and WebCT offer a hodgepodge of communication tools, including virtual blackboards, group and student Web pages, chat rooms and messenger (or "instant messenger") programs, bulletin boards, digital drop boxes, instruction modules, narrated slideshows, streaming video, online quizzes, distribution lists, and, last but not least, e-mail. Far from the least popular tool, e-mail may be the best of all available solutions for structured dialogues between students and teachers (Wagner 1995). By "structured," we mean not only regular e-mail conversations that are built into a course but also exchanges that are defined and formatted to avoid increasing the burdens on the time and energy of both parties. In this article, we borrow a concept from environmental studies--"appropriate technology"--to discuss a solution that is available in plain sight. Specifically, we consider how a valuable but usually labor-intensive assignment--student journals--can be enhanced using appropriate technology. Schumacher's Model The field of environmental studies occasionally makes use of a concept known as "appropriate technology," which may illuminate the pedagogical dilemmas of instructional technology and point to a solution with few obstacles and many advantages. Coined by British economist Ernst Friedrich "Fritz" Schumacher, the term "appropriate technology" describes an approach to international development aid implied in the title of Schumacher's Small is Beautiful: Economics as if People Mattered (1973). In that work, Schumacher advocated choosing technology that disrupts societies and environments the least, requires minimal outside expertise for construction and maintenance, and has the lowest learning curve while still surpassing the efficiency and productiveness of traditional methods. This would be an intermediate technology, somewhere between the complex technology of the developed world and the low technology of the developing world: |
The intermediate technology would also fit
much more smoothly into the relatively
unsophisticated environment in which it is
to be utilized. The equipment would be fairly
simple and therefore understandable....
Simple equipment is normally far less
dependent [on support] ... Men are more
easily trained; supervision, control, and
organization are simpler; and there is far
less vulnerability to unforeseen difficulties.
(Schumacher 1973, 193)
| Although still controversial among international aid experts and economists, Schumacher's ideas have inspired "new-age"-ish movements worldwide, such as former California governor Jerry Brown's short-lived Office of Appropriate Technology. Founded by Schumacher, the Intermediate Technology Development group today continues to promote his development model internationally, defining "appropriate" technology as "one that enables people to satisfy their basic needs while making the most of their time, capabilities, environment and resources" (Intermediate Technology Development Group 2003). What does appropriate technology mean for you as a teacher? Again, we speak to the disconnect between technology and pedagogy. As anyone who has struggled to re-master his or her word processor after "scheduled upgrades" of soft- and hardware knows, computing professionals prefer the best available (newest and most powerful) technology. This sometimes saddles users with far more capacity than the job ... |
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