Thursday, November 8, 2001

LOGGING IN WITH . . . Larry Cuban Computers Have Had Little Impact in College Classrooms, Stanford U. Professor Argues By SCOTT CARLSON Larry Cuban has logged plenty of time in the classroom, having spent 25 years as a high-school teacher and school administrator, and 20 years at Stanford University as a professor of education. In that time, he's taken an interest in the mostly unfulfilled promise of technology in school reform. His recent book, Oversold and Underused (Harvard University Press, 2001), examines the large investment that American education has made in computers and technology -- and the reasons that those innovations have been underutilized in the classroom. Q. What does the title of your book mean? A. The "oversold" comes from the idea that these machines and software would transform teaching and learning. The other kind of goal that promoters pushed was that it would make teaching and learning more efficient. Now, "better" and "efficient" are two different things. Those that wanted to transform the classroom wanted to use computers for projects, to get away from the reliance on lectures, and to get away from teacher-centered kinds of instruction at the university and schools. The "underused" part comes from when I looked at what was going on in K to 12 and universities and found that these machines are used heavily outside of school, but in the institution itself, these machines were not used for instruction directly. Q. Have computers and technology been sold to schools and colleges unnecessarily, or have instructors just not caught up with how they should be used in the classroom? A. It's never any one thing, to be sure. It's clear that they've been oversold, because the promoters of technology for instruction in schools and universities have said that if you increase access, teachers and professors will use it in the classroom, and the desirable outcomes will occur. Now, the fact that technology is underused by people who use it outside of the classroom tells me that it's not the teachers' lack of preparation or technophobia or any of the usual excuses that we've heard. I did not find professors and teachers that were opposed to the use of technology at all. Q. So what's the problem? A. The larger issue, I think, is that the promoters of technology have very little sense of what it's like to teach at any level, [or of] the organizational and political factors that shape what people do in classrooms. Ignoring and neglecting these factors have created great disappointment, and the disappointment corrodes into blaming teachers for not using these splendid machines. Q. Can you give an example of the organizational factors that are an obstacle? A. I looked at Stanford University in one chapter. I found that professors and students had anywhere from one to four computers each. The access issue was moot, because all of the students and professors were using the computers. The professors used them for creating handouts and so forth, but mainly they used them for their own research. One of the institutional issues that professors have to cope with is that all the incentives run toward the production of research rather than excellence in teaching. Although there is no question that teaching is important, it is still subordinate to research. Therefore, if professors are expected to spend a lot of time learning to use machines for instruction in their own classrooms and their seminars, then they're not going to spend that kind of time on that, because that's time away from doing their research. Q. What are some of the ways that computers can transform the instruction of a typical liberal-arts student -- more than just becoming a fancy typewriter? A. At Stanford there was a professor who did a simulation of 17th-century England that deepened the awareness of students and was a beautiful piece of software. There are professors, but not many, who have developed software or have thought of different ways to use the Internet in class. Obviously, the use of projects in class, the interactive pieces of software, are available to some professors, but they have to learn to reorganize their teaching. And that takes an enormous amount of time. Q. Do you think that liberal-arts students should learn some basic programming skills? A. No, I do not, and the history is pretty clear about that. In the early '80s, when computers were becoming available, the experts advised that people learn the programming language BASIC. BASIC fell off the edge of the table. HTML and other kinds of programming languages come and go. But to use the computer for purposes of teaching and learning, you don't have to be an expert at all. You pick it up in four to eight hours, you are as computer literate as you need to be for teaching and learning. Q. Some people within the computer industry or within school systems lobby hard for the inclusion of computers in classrooms. Should they also devise learning programs or context for teachers? A. Well, that's a nice, loaded question, and the answer is yes. Most software that has been used in schools and universities was initially made for businesses. There haven't been enough pieces of software that have been designed for teachers and kids that meet the requirements of the curriculum or that have at least been beta-tested on students at all. So you get all of these bugs that develop in the software, and as a consequence it turns a lot of people off. Q. Should colleges and universities curb their spending on technology, or should they spend more energy training professors to use technology in the classroom? A. Well, they've tried that. Pushing professors, training professors -- that's offered on most university campuses now. Still, the use of computers for instruction to transform teaching and learning hasn't occurred. So it's not a lack of opportunity for professors to develop their technical skills -- all of those opportunities already exist. All the machines exist. What you're looking at is the basic systems of rewards and penalties that exist in a university. That's what's driving use, not access. All the rewards flow to those who are productive scholars. There are some rewards that flow from good teaching, but tenure and promotion are hooked to research productivity and quality. That's where professors, like any rational being, will spend their time. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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