COLLOQUY Responses
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COLLOQUY Responses
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 Technology is not a good unto itself; rather, it serves to magnify human strengths or weaknesses. And it magnifies these attributes in contexts that are more or less appropriate. A well-set-up car in the hands of an expert rally driver is a tool that testifies to the skill of the driver in that context. The same car in the hands of a rageful driver stuck in rush-hour is a weapon. The analogy may seem far fetched, but the run of faculty in a large research university includes those with technological savvy and sizzle, and those without. To force all concerned to adopt a particular technology without regard for differences of personality and contingencies of context seems ill conceived. The U.C.L.A. mandate may be defended as an extension of existing format requirements governing course materials. These must be typed or word processed, must be handed out by a date certain, must clearly state certain department, college, university policies, etc. But the mandate goes beyond the issue of format: it impacts the way that instruction is delivered, and that is an academic-freedom issue. Academic freedom means not merely having the right to take an extreme position in the pursuit of knowledge, but also having the right to adopt the instructional method of choice in that pursuit. The U.C.L.A. mandate, while not debarring other methods, does impose one. One final thought as to the use of chat rooms in light of the issue of academic freedom, among other issues: to allow students the right to collaborate and exchange information freely, and the dissever the web-page requirement from any notion of a faculty workload increase, the format should include not one chat room, but two. One of these would be for students only. There, they would forge an extended, virtual learning community, work collaboratively on anything from small issues to term projects, and have the right to vent about the course and the instructor. The other chat room would include the instructor, whose expertise and ability to reframe and reformulate, as well as broad-based knowledge, would be most welcome. An additional benefit would be to decrease student show-boating and focus the instructor's efforts on those students really seeking her/his feedback. It seems that with every new technological advance in information systems and management, we see ever more clearly that western history is not only a footnote to Plato in general, but to the "Phaedrus" in particular. It all begins with writing, as this writing now ends.
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