Professors Rejecting Classroom Technology

Posted by samzenpus on Monday February 11, 2013 @07:00AM from the get-off-my-lawn dept.

CowboyRobot writes "The January edition of Science, Technology & Human Values published an article titled Technological Change and Professional Control in the Professoriate, which details interviews with 42 faculty members at three research-intensive universities. The research concludes that faculty have little interest in the latest IT solutions. 'I went to [a course management software workshop] and came away with the idea that the greatest thing you could do with that is put your syllabus on the Web and that's an awful lot of technology to hand the students a piece of paper at the start of the semester and say keep track of it,' said one. 'What are the gains for students by bringing IT into the class? There isn't any. You could teach all of chemistry with a whiteboard. I really don't think you need IT or anything beyond a pencil and a paper,' said another."

1 of 372 comments (clear)

Min score:

Reason:

Sort:

Re:The funny thing at my university by Anonymous Coward · 2013-02-11 08:40 · Score: 5, Informative

We are unimpressed *and* actively impeded by the University bureaucrats.
I want to post a lot of things in a web-accessible fashion for my students: most of that is static, so the assorted CRMs are overkill (not to mention the giant PITA it is to post static content via the CRM *without* bullshit CRM dressing all over it), and for the content that has a *real* dynamic component (not just "I blogged again, teehee" dynamic), the CRMs are a nightmare.*
Yet, if I want to just deal with rolling my own? Good luck with that. Uni. (and occasionally even Dept.) IT will not only be of no assistance, they will *actively thwart* attempts to do this sort of thing.
*Maybe people accustomed to having their hands tied can tolerate that sort of treatment long enough to learn it, but not me.