April 16, 2008
Tech Therapy: Helpless or Hopeless?
A person or animal afflicted with “learned helplessness,” Wikipedia helpfully tells us, “has come to believe that it has no control over its situation and that whatever it does is futile. As a result, the human being or the animal will stay passive in the face of an unpleasant, harmful or damaging situation, even when it does actually have the power to change its circumstances.”
Professors who say they can’t get technology to work the way they want it to might know this feeling all too well. In the latest edition of Tech Therapy, Warren Arbogast, a technology consultant, and Scott Carlson, a Chronicle reporter, talk about the “learned helplessness” that pervades technology use on campus.
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It is not “learned helplessness” to despair when the data projector does not show what it ought to. It is remarkable how poor, inconsistent, non intuitive, and just plain terrible data projection is, despite being a 15 year old technology. As a professor of electrical engineering, I rarely use data projection technology in class, if only because both I and the class have better things to do than fool around with that blasted equipment.
The cell phone has become ubiquitous precisely because it is genuinely convenient, powerful, and the user interface has continued to improve. The modern cell phone is a spectacular bit of engineering which performs a marvelously complex act —- yet the complexity of cell phone’s function is completely and effectively hidden from the user.
How many faculty who despise classroom technology successfully use cell phones? Probably all of them.
Truly wonderful things can be done with technology in the classroom, but make no mistake: data projection equipment is, by and large, very user hostile.
— John Sahr Apr 17, 01:02 PM #