Academic Matters assesses the impact of technology on higher education

TORONTO -- E-learning has not lived up to the claims of its proponents, argues Athabasca University's Heather Kanuka, in an article in Academic Matters: The Journal of Higher Education. In fact, recent research shows that e-learning has been a disappointment, both in pedagogy and cost effectiveness, she says.

Kanuka, a distinguished Canada Research Chair, says we need to become skeptical of the "unbridled enthusiasm" for e-learning and demand "credible and trustworthy" evidence about e-learning's advantages. "The schism of opinion between the techno-optimists and the techno-pessimists has created a deep divide about the direction of higher education in
Canada," Kanuka warns.

In their article, Carleton University professors Heather Menzies and Janice Newson describe their research into the impact of technology on faculty, which reveals that, far from freeing academics' time, the computer has compressed it to stressful levels. The majority of faculty no longer have enough time for the depth of reading and reflection that produces thoughtful teaching and research.

American scholars Cliff Bekar and Richard Lipsey, for their part, argue that although new technology means profound changes for higher education, the university, armed with centuries of success and self-esteem, will look much the same as it continues to concentrate on its traditional tasks of teaching and research.

And in an essay lamenting the poor state of science education in North America, a Nobel Prize winner in physics, Dr. Carl Wieman from the University of British Columbia, writes that the cure is the scientific method, meaning teaching methods should be based on rigorous, objective data about student learning.

Academic Matters is published by the Ontario Confederation of University Faculty Associations. This accessibly-written journal is the first publication of its kind in Canada, exploring issues facing higher education here and abroad and featuring contributions from talented newcomers as well as distinguished veteran scholars. This issue, Winter 2006, is Academic Matter's fourth.

http://www.ocufa.on.ca/AMWinter/content.htm