Tuesday, July 30, 2002

Blackboard's Chairman Edits a Scholarly Work on the Internet and Higher Education By BROCK READ The trick colleges face in adopting online learning lies in wedding traditional principles to new technologies, according to Matthew Serbin Pittinsky, chairman of Blackboard Inc., the educational-software company. "E-learning is really about the oldest notion that higher education has ever known, which is to build a living and learning environment that's open 24-7," he says. In a new book that he edited, Mr. Pittinsky examines e-learning's principles, its technological needs, and its financial viability -- "all the different aspects of putting in place a successful environment, from the pipes to the policies," he says. Mr. Pittinsky built his guide, The Wired Tower (Financial Times/Prentice Hall, 2002), around lectures delivered at a conference on online education he attended last year in Washington. He asked five speakers at the event to adapt their comments for the book, then added an essay by a college information officer and his own introductory and closing remarks. The Wired Tower's eight chapters cover a considerable amount of ground, opening with discussions of industry issues and building to essays about starting an online-education program. "The book's strength -- and probably its weakness -- is its breadth," says Mr. Pittinsky. "There are so many angles to e-learning, and I wanted to touch on those equally." A key perspective, Mr. Pittinsky argues, is that of the online-learning industry. In one chapter, Greg Cappelli, a senior equity analyst for Credit Suisse First Boston, examines e-learning as an economic phenomenon. In the next, Martin Irvine, associate vice president for technology strategy at Georgetown University, considers colleges' roles in the global distance-learning business. Later in the book, Donald Z. Spicer, chief information officer for the University System of Maryland, offers a view of the day-do-day activities of a technology administrator at a university heavily involved in online education. Mr. Spicer says that his contribution, written a year ago, was intended as a warning to "presidents with dollar signs in their eyes" who are excited by the prospects of e-learning but unsure how to develop it. "I wanted to ground things much more in reality: If you're going to go into this marketplace, here are the things that you've got to be aware of if you're going to do it in a quality way," he says. Quality is also a concern of Neil Postman, who wrote the book's final full chapter, "Questioning Media." Mr. Postman, chairman of the department of culture and communications at New York University, offers a skeptical view of online learning, challenging college administrators to determine what problems the new technology solves. "Mr. Postman has such a provocative view on questioning technology that I wanted it in the book," says Mr. Pittinsky. The Wired Tower is "scholarly work rather than industry work," says Mr. Spicer. Mr. Pittinsky, who is completing a Ph.D. at Columbia University, agrees. "My No. 1 goal is that the compilation will allow bite-size chapters that could be used either in higher-education or business-education classes," he says. But Mr. Pittinsky hopes the book also appeals to college administrators -- not just technology experts, but presidents and student-life coordinators as well. "I would hope administrators [who read the book] will walk away a little bit inspired and having a few interesting thoughts put in their minds," he says. Easy-to-print version E-mail this article

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