Van Dusen, Gerald C. (1997). The Virtual Campus: Technology and Reform in Higher Education. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report 25, No. 5. Reviewed by James JF Forest National Center for Urban Partnerships and Boston College April 24, 1998 Introduction The attention paid to the role of technology in higher education seems to grow by the week, the topic of an endless sea of conferences and institutes, publications, courses, and political speeches. Clearly, there is much to talk about. In a new ERIC monograph, The Virtual Campus (1997), Gerald Van Dusen provides a useful review of the literature on the relationship between technology and higher education, in addition to focusing our attention on several key dimensions of this relationship. The term "virtual campus" is put forward by the author as a metaphor for the electronic teaching, learning and research environment created by information technology. However, throughout the book, technology is seen as a means to an end, not an end in of itself, which indicates that the author is not your typical departmental technology enthusiast on a rant. This approach allows Van Dusen to provide an analysis of the relationship between technology and higher education which is both insightful and accessible to a broad audience. Additionally, a common complaint one hears about publications on technology is that they are difficult to read unless one is already somewhat familiar with the terminology. As relatively few people can carry on a meaningful conversation about bandwidth, Java, or the importance of firewalls in electronic commerce, a wide range of current magazines, articles and books inspire a relatively small readership. Perhaps owing to his background as an English professor, as opposed to information technology professional, Van Dusen's monograph provides a more accessible discussion of these issues than one may find most elsewhere. Instead of jargon and confusing acronyms, the author provides a valuable service in making a discussion on technology accessible even to those respected colleagues who inadvertently post private e-mail messages to public Listserv discussion groups. The monograph itself is well-organized and a good read. The author is to be commended for avoiding another common pitfall in these sorts of publications - trying to say too much within a limited number of pages. Instead, Van Dusen focuses his remarks on the connections between technology and three primary areas: teaching and learning, scholarship, and organizational change in higher education. Technology and Issues of Teaching and Learning Within the time it takes you to read this sentence, a hundred new websites have just become available online, and another hundred will go online seconds later. The amount and range of information resources available on the Internet are increasing at a dizzying pace. The technologies which provide access to this information are also multiplying rapidly and becoming more sophisticated. By some accounts, the Internet has doubled in size every year for the past six years (Cerf, 1997). The Internet can provide access to essentially unlimited sources of information, organized in increasingly useful ways. Just as there are phone books and information directory services in every city, there are a wide variety of Internet directories and search engines with which you can find online resources concerning an area of particular interest. However, flexibility and ease of providing information on the Internet has led to quality control issues. The resources one finds on the Internet are of varying quality, from highly sophisticated scholarly research journals to forums for the distribution of the most vile propaganda. While a good deal of information available on the Internet is useful and timely, individuals in various corners of the world are taking advantage of this new, relatively free medium to promote their own views, however falsely based. Teachers of all educational levels are thus faced with a new and daunting challenge of "dis-information damage control." For example, how does a teacher respond to a student who, upon viewing a few select websites, declares with strong conviction that there is no way the Holocaust ever took place. Most college and university faculty pride themselves on their "critical thinking" skills, as evidenced by occasionally dramatic debates in departmental faculty meetings. And yet, one of the most common criticisms of higher education today is that we have done a poor job of equipping our students with these skills, which are sorely needed in the workforce. It has always been paramount in higher education that we teach our students to critically evaluate the merits of any source of information. With the emergence of the Internet, we must re-commit to our responsibility of teaching students how to judge analytically the sources of their information, and to seek multiple perspectives on issues before deciding for themselves what is fact and what is fantasy. Van Dusen's monograph explores these issues by first describing technology's role in a shift in modern approaches to classroom teaching and learning, from an instruction paradigm - with its focus on the teacher - to a learning paradigm, where the focus is on the student. This paradigm shift is to some degree a result of information technology and is vital to the improvement of learning in higher education. To this end, he argues, we must further exploit the potential of new technologies in ways that improve the interaction and intellectual engagement between teachers and students. Van Dusen refers to the predominance of lectures in higher education classrooms, and suggests that "attempts to change the classroom focus from "sage on the stage" to collaborative learning are likely to fail without a substantial commitment to professional development. His view is that advances in learning theory and instructional technology have helped define learning in terms of how we construct knowledge. While some faculty prefer to transmit the canon to the students--the "empty vessel" perspective of teaching and learning, others view learning as an act of internal growth--or knowledge construction--guided by activities that strive to "shape" or "grow" the student's cognitive abilities (Fox, 1983). Many of Van Dusen's observations and recommendations are supported by his implicit assertion that this philosophy of constructivism is superior to other approaches to learning, and thus we should strive to create learning environments in which allow students to most effectively interpret and make meaning of the world around them. To be sure, construction is an important part of learning, but it is not the only part. Learning involves complex interactions between a variety of activities, including the presentation ideas and the construction of meaning. However, for the purposes of this author's discussion, constructivism blends nicely with the form and structure of the Internet-related technologies. The Internet provides teachers and students the opportunity to design their own learning environment. However, while online technology provides a certain amount of freedom and flexibility, this places new responsibilities on the learners. Technology can be used to aid students in constructing their own meaning of the ideas presented, by enabling certain forms of information exploration and linkages. Frameworks must be created to guide and structure the learner's progress, but the learner must also be allowed to create associations and follow related pathways and ideas - in essence, there must be embedded into any technology- related exercise enough flexibility to allow a student to create his or her own meaning. The two primary activities most faculty and students engage in are lecture and discussion. Technology has a significant history and a promising future in both of them. Lecture The roots of technology's relationship with lectures run deep. From the expansive distance learning enterprise at the University of the West Indies (Fergus, 1998) to the local cable access channel at De Anza Community College, technology has been used for decades to deliver lectures beyond the classroom walls. Recent years have seen the development of ambitious new initiatives in this area, such as the Western Governors University, which Van Dusen refers to as a "true virtual university." (p. 87) Technology has also played an important role within the classroom for decades, where faculty have come to rely on tools such as overhead projectors and wireless microphones. The author describes how new technologies can further enhance the traditional lecture, through integrating presentation software, video, graphics, animation, and computer simulation. Computer simulations are particularly useful, as they allow the teacher to focus students' attention on critical aspects of a demonstration, even allowing for a dramatic pause-and-repeat effect to drive home a particular message. For example, I recall several years ago in graduate school, a professor made use of a video laser disk to show social structure in a seemingly chaotic 1st grade classroom. When viewed at normal speed, our group seemed to agree that anarchy reigned supreme in the classroom. Yet, when viewed at a single frame per second, it became clear that several social arrangements governed how the children interacted with the teacher, as well as how they interacted with each other. Through the use of this technology, our class was able to clearly see how young girls, particularly those from lower income families, consistently deferred to the young boys, and how the teacher unwittingly facilitated these repeated interactions. Clearly, technology offers lecturers a variety of ways to create powerful presentations for their students. However, technology's potential for improving learning rests more squarely in the ability to facilitate discussion across time and distance. Discussion Drawing on several studies of teaching and learning higher education, Van Dusen observes that discussion--and particularly small group interchange--has greater potential than lectures for developing skills that require students to integrate knowledge into existing frames of reference and to apply conceptual knowledge to situation-specific problems (p. 35). Through technology, and particularly the Internet, students are now empowered to "determine the venue of their learning." (p. 33) Not only can students and the teacher carry on a dialogue far beyond the classroom walls and scheduled meeting hours, but student can explore their ideas with faculty and students at other institutions, even in other countries. Technology can facilitate educational "field trips" to places that teachers have never before been able to take their classes. Through their computers, children can engage in conversations with members of an archeological dig in Egypt, the leader of an expedition in Antarctica, or astronauts aboard the space shuttle. Van Dusen also argues that technology enhances learning by supporting collaborative learning, "a pedagogical strategy designed to give students direct experience with peer teaching, peer learning, motivational feedback, and higher-order thinking. Small groups work together in a structured process to enhance their own and each other's learning and social skills" (p. 36) Collaborative learning involves a great deal of interaction between students and teachers on several dimensions, from setting learning goals and expectations to designing, assessing, and improving the course - activities not possible when the lecture is the only method employed (Panitz & Panitz, 1998). Summary There is indeed a great deal of potential in new technologies to alter the way we think, learn, remember, and communicate information. The Internet demands that the user be an engaged agent, searching for information and then managing or manipulating whatever is found: solving problems, buttressing arguments with evidence, and exploring new, unknown terrain. Certainly, educators should be more accepting of Internet technologies than with television, as it provides more opportunity to fashion creative ways to present information to students. Van Dusen joins a growing chorus of scholars who recommend that teachers encourage their students to use the Internet for their research. We should also encourage each other to use these technologies for enhancing our own scholarship. Technology and Issues of Scholarship Following an exploration into current issues related to academic research, including an eloquent discussion of Boyer's influential Scholarship Reconsidered, the author spends an unfortunately small amount of time examining the role technology plays in promoting new approaches to scholarship. Van Dusen supports the claim of other scholars that the Internet has the potential to "substantially restructure the pursuit of knowledge" (p.60). Web pages provide faculty with timely and useful information for developing curricula and research agendas in virtually any field of discipline. Online contact databases (for example, see the American Educational Research Association's website, at http://aera.net) help scholars make connections with other faculty who share their research interests. E-mail discussion groups and WebBoard conferences help faculty stay connected and explore ideas collaboratively. Further, these online messages can be archived, providing a searchable database for both ideas and people engaged in scholarly work that meet your interests, as well as providing a unique record of how ideas can evolve over time. Technology has already had a dramatic impact in the world of academic research. Quantitative research studies used to require the kinds of computes that filled a whole room; now, we can conduct highly sophisticated statistical analyses on a laptop. Over the past decade, the Internet has offered increasingly new and greater opportunities for online scholarly communication and collaboration (Silberger, 1995). Researchers now have access to library resources, government document archives and online databases 24 hours a day. New developments in technology and telecommunications and the growing importance and accessibility of information is influencing both the representation of knowledge "content" and the facilitation of knowledge "reproduction." Students no longer rely on text for their sources of information. Indeed, we now have a generation of college-bound students who have been exposed from birth to rapid, entertaining video images. Obviously, this does not bode well for the makers of college textbooks. Indeed, publishing houses throughout the world face an alarming decline in the number of books they can sell, and the resulting increases in book price (to meet the bottom line of expenses at the publishing firm) have forced the industry into a supply-cost-demand spiral which has already seen several casualties. Smaller firms are being bought up or closed altogether, the opportunities to publish one's work are growing fewer, and there is a noticeable dissatisfaction from both students and professors at the rising costs of items at their local bookstore. There are many important dimensions in the relationship between new technology and scholarship, only some of which are addressed in this monograph. However, rather than delve into all these many dimensions, Van Dusen provides a comprehensive review of the literature which points to the need for drastic changes in our approach to academic research. Within this discussion, the author addresses perhaps the most important current issue on this topic--the need for collaborative forms of scholarship. Drawing on the important work of Austin and Baldwin (1991) and others, Van Dusen observes how collaborative scholarly communication and collaboration can revolutionize our approach to scholarship. Changing the way we look at academic research to include a more collective process - as opposed to work which is individually produced and rewarded - significantly expands our opportunities for developing and applying "original, discipline-specific, analytic tools of research; to cultivate new working relationships with scholars around the globe; and to explore subjects of mutual scholarly interest beyond disciplinary and institutional boundaries." (p. 65) The author then proceeds to provide a sense of how organizations might change in ways that would effectively address this important issue. Technology and Issues of Organizational Change Following the author's discussion of technology's role in three critical areas of teaching, learning and research, the monograph leads us on an exploration of the many possible contributions for organizational change in higher education. Despite a brief diversion into the merits of "academic TQM," the author provides a useful analysis of how technology can aid efforts to assess and improve the ways in which higher education institutions carry out their individual missions. The main point that Van Dusen makes at this point in his monograph is that technology can contribute to a range of activities within both the bureaucratic sphere and the academic sphere of our higher education institutions. The Bureaucratic Sphere Van Dusen's discussion on this topic melds nicely with the work of other scholars, such as Kuepper's (1997) discussion on how information systems and flexible management are necessary for the transformation of universities, or Massy's (1997) essay on how information technology will shape institutional futures. Indeed, Van Dusen would surely endorse Massy's conclusion that "information technology will improve colleges' and universities' production processes and economic structure, and the quality of faculty's work life." (p. 16) However, there are several important issues related to whether higher education institutions will rise to the challenge of integrating technology into their work in meaningful and useful ways. Van Dusen argues that administrators and governing boards must focus considerable efforts in developing a strategic planning process that address important issues of governance and finance. Indeed, the author argues that "no aspect of educational technology is more critical yet receives less attention in the literature than budget and finance considerations." (p. 105) He admonishes us to factor in issues of computer replacement, future demand, and continual infrastructure development. There are other issues related to cost management which, while not mentioned in the monograph, are noteworthy. For example, strategic financial plans must account for the cost of security for all hardware and software investments. Theft can happen with any piece of equipment, from the small (memory chips) to the large (scanners, color laser printers, etc.), and illegal software duplication is a widespread problem. There is also a critical need to ensure the security of confidential record databases. Another significant - and often overlooked - cost management issue concerns the need for software upgrades. As the clever folks at Microsoft, Apple, and elsewhere continue to develop newer and more efficient ways of doing our work, departments are annually faced with requests from their staff to purchase the most recent office productivity software, operating system upgrades, and much more. Clearly, there is a wide variety of cost management issues concerning technology integration on our campuses. It is no surprise, then, to find a booming market in professional technology consulting, which many higher education institutions have come to rely upon for guidance and support. There is also a newer, and thus smaller, field of consulting related to solving the many technology-related dilemmas in the academic sphere. However, the issues here are no less perplexing. The Academic Sphere Van Dusen reminds us that in developing our technology integration plans, we must keep in mind the needs of the learner. He also reminds us of the inherent complexities involved with the widespread diversity of our students. "Colleges and universities are serving a more heterogeneous clientele, with diverse educational backgrounds and needs." (p. 45) Clearly, strategic planning for technology integration must pay special attention to the changing needs of higher education's clientele. These needs place considerable demands on the faculty, and underscores the need to improve our programs of professional preparation in academe. Among the many barriers to the adoption of technology in educational organizations, one of the most common is lack of training (Blurton, 1994). To make matters worse, the technology- related demands placed on faculty are becoming increasingly complex. In a recent essay on the role of information technology in higher education, Massy (1997) advances the notion that "technology will shift the professor's role from that of mainly a content expert to a combination of content expert, designer, manager, and mentor." (p. 16) If this is to be the case, then clearly our current modes of professional preparation for future academic generations are in dire need of reform, particularly in terms of computer and technical skills proficiency. Unfortunately, a cursory review of departmental training materials finds that most often they are focused on the technology rather than on how to make meaningful use of it. As Blurton (1994) observes, "there is a critical need for instructional materials focused on the uses of the Internet for specific disciplines. Instructional materials should include discipline-specific examples of resources available on the Internet that can be used within a faculty member's body of skills, knowledge, and practice." (p. 206) Indeed, as stated earlier, effective use of technology in higher learning can only occur if faculty are prepared to see technology as a useful means to an end, rather than an end to itself. The academic department - as the hub for both teaching assignments and connections with peers in your discipline - becomes the primary arena where technology integration discussions must take place. Indeed, it is widely suggested that only through effective collaboration and cooperation between instructors, students, and administrators can technology play an effective role in the future success of a higher education institution. Van Dusen wisely reminds us to recognize "the power of collegial encouragement" (p.122). Where a community of trust exists, technology can greatly enhance communication throughout an academic department, if not the entire institution. Van Dusen rightly points out the importance of bringing all stakeholders to the table in deciding how to approach the integration of technology into higher education institution, and recommends that we encourage faculty collaboration in teaching and research. The author makes a convincing argument that for technology to play an increasingly effective role in enhancing higher education, we must avoid pitting traditionalists against technology enthusiasts, and instead focus on institution-wide collaboration. Certainly, adoption of technology cannot come from administrative edicts nor from faculty computing zealots. Efforts driven by the entire community of faculty, administrators and support staff of an institution are bound to achieve considerably more success than any other approach. Taken further, it may be that the most effective means for integrating technology into classroom instruction must include a significant effort towards building a real sense of community within our departments and institutions. Summary Faculty worldwide are not very pleased with the available technology for teaching. according to a recent international study of the academic profession (Boyer, Altbach & Whitelaw, 1994). While no study has been conducted to date, it can fairly safely be assumed that faculty worldwide are also not very pleased with their available resources for learning how to make the most effective use of their institution's technology resources. Thus, institutions of higher learning face several important challenges if they are to remain competitive in the global marketplace. Investment must be made in infrastructure development, equipment, software for learning and productivity, and most importantly, faculty training for using these tools in the most effective manner possible. Further, these investments must be guided by a strategic plan that accounts for the changing needs of today's learners, cost management issues both present and future, and the effective engagement of all campus constituencies to ensure proper integration of the technology into the daily work of the institution. Van Dusen's monograph is a recommended resource for grappling with these complex and interwoven issues. Concluding Remarks In today's rapidly changing world, writing about technology often carries a significant amount of risk. Due to editing and publishing cycles, the technical aspects of a book can become outdated before it even reaches the shelves, as the emergence of new computers and programs can lead to an entirely new technology paradigm. Van Dusen avoids a fair amount of this risk by concentrating on how information technology in general provides a tool for new approaches to pedagogy, scholarship, and organizational change, rather than on the technical aspects of the tool itself. The material presented in Van Dusen's monograph is well-organized, and provides a fine introduction to many important and timely issues concerning the impact of technology on teaching, learning, scholarship, and organizational change. As well, to his considerable credit, the author makes the issues of technology accessible even to those faculty and administrators to whom e-mail is still a mystery. Overall, the book would make a fine addition to the shelves of scholars and students of higher education, as well as institutional administrators and policymakers. However, there are several dimensions to the relationship between higher education and technology which the author does not address. To his credit, Van Dusen accepts the necessary limitations of his monograph, and avoids the common mistake of trying to do to much in too small a space. However, his arguments could certainly be made stronger by addressing some of the issues and doubts raised by our less technologically-enthusiastic colleagues, including the protection of intellectual property rights. Technology presents the classroom instructor with a new twist on the old problem of cheating. Plagiarism has never been easier - in fact, the selling and distribution of ‘college-level' term papers through the Internet is a booming market. The amount of information being offered on the World Wide Web, both academic and otherwise, offers the unethical student a world of opportunities. The information is in electronic form. No need to photocopy or re-type the article out of some library journal—now you can simple "cut-and-paste" right into your word processor, slap your name on it, and in fifteen minutes you're ready to go out on the town with your friends. Certainly, a college or university professor who suspects plagiarism of their students can call them out, challenge them to defend the argument in their paper or to more thoroughly demonstrate that the product is truly theirs. However, identifying one of these "cut-and-paste" jobs is becoming increasingly difficult, as a simple visit to any of the more sophisticated online term paper warehouses will demonstrate. Unfortunately, if one were to hazard a guess, relatively few college or university professors are Internet-savvy enough to know where to locate potential sources of these kinds of papers, although chances are some of their students are no stranger to them. Technology can provide students and faculty with a "public voice." Indeed, perhaps the best thing about the Internet is its enabling power. It can facilitate the sharing of knowledge across a remarkable range of interests and it can enable group interactions among geographically dispersed participants. However, this power can also be used for less than noble purposes. Take the instance at Cornell University a few years ago, when a misogynistic e-mail message produced such a backlash that new policies were developed at institutions across the country for "appropriate online behavior." Strategic planning must account for all these and other issues before launching full steam down the technology integration path. As stated previously, community and collaboration provide the kind of academic environment in which these issues can most effectively be dealt with. Finally, if we have consistently learned any one thing from the history of technological development, it is to never focus solely on what is possible today. The paradigms and constructs of our current technology-based activities must not constrict our view of what's possible in the short-term and long-term future. Room for imagination and flexibility must therefore be built into any strategic planning efforts. Thus, as many have observed, people are the most critical element in organizational change. Indeed, it is not the computers or the wires that connect them, but rather the people that allow technology to play a significant role in our educational activities. In particular, the people that design and control (to a considerable degree) the ways in which students are introduced to technology have a particularly important responsibility. Certainly, how university teachers and administrators respond to the challenges and opportunities of new technologies will have a considerable effect on the course of higher education in the next decade. References Austin, A. & Baldwin, R. (1991). Faculty Collaboration: Enhancing the Quality of Scholarship and Teaching. ASHE-ERIC Higher Education Report, No. 7. Washington, DC: The George Washington University, School of Education and Human Development. Blurton, C. (1994). Using the Internet for Teaching, Learning, and Research. In Halpern, D. and Associates, Changing College Classrooms: New Teaching and Learning Strategies for an Increasingly Complex World. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, p. 191-212. Boyer, E., Altbach, P., & Whitelaw, M. (1994). The Academic Profession: An International Perspective. Princeton, NJ: The Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Cerf, V. (1997). The Cerf Report. Web Week, 7/27/97. (http://www.webweek.com) Fergus, H. (1998). From Experiment to Enterprise: Distance Teaching at the University of the West Indies. In Forest, J. (ed.) University Teaching: International Perspectives. New York: Garland Publishing, p. 345-360 Fox, D. (1983). Personal Theories of Teaching. Studies in Higher Education, 8, p. 151-163. Kupper, H. (1997). Management systems and structural changes in universities. (in German). Beitraege zur Hochschulforschung, 2, pp 123-149. Massy, W. (1997). Life on the Wired Campus: How information technology will shape institutional futures. (Publication #6310-93). Stanford, CA: National Center for Postecondary Improvement Panitz, T. & Panitz, P. (1998). Encouraging the Use of Collaborative Learning in Higher Education. In Forest, J. (ed.) University Teaching: International Perspectives. New York: Garland Publishing, p. 161-202 Silberger, K. (1995). The Higher Education Electronic Infrastructure: The impact on libraries and computer centers. In Berge, Z. and Collins, M. (eds.), Computer Mediated Communication and the Online Classroom. Volume I: Overview and Perspectives. Creskill, NJ: Hampton Press. About the Reviewer James JF Forest is technology specialist for the National Center for Urban Partnerships and research associate for the Boston College Center for International Higher Education.