Technology and the Educational Process By Sharon Kelly

With the convergence of technological changes and the shifting nature of the text, we have a phenomenon which has the potential to transform education as it is currently known. School Administrators certainly see the potential of reducing face-to-face contact and possibly budgets using electronic means of communicating between students and instructors. And it does seem inevitable that "tools as powerful as networked computers are going to transform human communication" (James J. O'Donnell). The ‘sage on the stage’ may well be "decentered" to the ‘guide on the side’ if the use of hypertext becomes commonplace in the educational process.

Thomas Haney Secondary in Maple Ridge has already transformed the way it delivers educational services to students. There, students are provided with current computer technology (laptops) and flexibility in setting and achieving their own learning goals. The teachers have literally become guides rather than ‘front and center’ teachers who set goals for the day and deliver materials. The students work in small groups (learning communities) and use, in addition to several other resource types, the Internet and hypertext to complete many of their assignments. This school achieved the highest overall average in the English provincials written this past January: 80 % compared to the provincial average of all schools, public and private at 69 %. (The Province, Feb 16, 1997).

Haney Secondary has essentially changed the cornerstone of the classroom from the autonomous, self-reliant, and authoritarian teachers to the provision of current technology and the formation of learning communities. The introduction of hypertext to the process of learning in a classroom, virtual or live, changes the context of a traditional classroom where the instructor, especially in the post-secondary system, lectures and the students are supposed to sit up, take note, and learn. In "Hypertext and Multivocality," Landow asserts that: "[H]ypertext does not permit a tyrannical, univocal voice. Rather the voice is always that distilled from the combined experience of the momentary focus, the lexia one presently reads, and the continually forming narrative of one's reading path." The role of the instructor changes dramatically. Rather than being the "tyrannical, univocal voice" who knows all and shares according to what he or she deems most important, this instructor becomes one who serves in order to assist students in their quest to meet their own learning goals. Instructors must be much better prepared than when they merely deliver information previously deemed important. This is exactly what the teachers at Haney High report. Not only is the role of the insructor impacted, but so to is the role of the learner.

Landow also asserts that hypertext "provides an infinitely re-centerable system whose provisional point of focus depends upon the reader, who becomes a truly active reader." Thus, students are free, sometimes within predetermined boundaries, to set their own learning goals and move through the network of lexia according to their own needs and interests. The reader (student) "decides whether to return to the main argument of the text, pursue some connection by link which the author suggests or search his or her own connections not suggested using other capacities of the system." As a student who has done all of this the old fashioned way - by going down into the "stacks" to pursue a line of thinking - I believe this kind of active search is considerably easier on the Internet where many of the references are embedded in links right in the primary document. The drawback is that because the use of virtual text is comparatively easier to access than text written in ink, the student could easily only draw on material that has made it on to the Internet and miss out on some excellent material available only in print.

This new-found freedom or ease of jumping from the main argument to some other connected theme could, for many students, be rather disorienting. A similar form of disorientation did, in fact, occur at Haney High. When traditional classrooms were first dismantled and learning communities with individual students setting their own learning goals took their place, students’ performance plummeted before most students began to soar. According to Zhao, O'Shea, and Fung, "a higher degree of learner control, while allowing the learners to accommodate their individual differences, might cause the problem of cognitive overload." The dramatic shift in the way text was used in the delivery education at Haney initially caused what could be considered cognitive overload. Moreover, some students, particularly those with fewer or less defined learning goals could remain overwhelmed by the technology and the range of choice. For these students in particular, but likely for all students, it is important for the instructor to structure the learning experience to some extent with the provision of course specific resources with strong rhetoric of departure from the course’s home page. The results of the Zhao, O'Shea and Fung study indicates that "labeling links explicitly with the semantic relations has a positive influence on learning outcomes, especially for learners with lower learning prerequisites". This finding is important to keep in mind if educators plan to develop hypertext learning systems.

This shift from ink to "the electronic word challenges all our assumptions about artistic, educational, and political discourse". In terms of the effect of this shift on education, the shift from teacher-centered to learner-centered education is either extremely promising or rather threatening depending on each individual’s point of view. This is as true for educators as it is for students. Some instructors truly and only want to be leading the parade and some students would like nothing better than to follow. The promise is, however, that self- directed learners are more successful workers in our rapidly changing global economy, able to successfully chart their way through the myriad of choice and obstacles posed in today’s world of work. Technology and, in particular, hypertext will certainly have an impact on the educational process. Moreover, it can be used to enhance the learning process if it is thoughtfully and skillfully applied. At its worst, however, it will only serve to alienate and isolate learners who may become so frustrated with the challenges and glitches encountered when using the technology that they will simply turn off and drop out of the process. At this rate educators will only serve to widen the gulf between the "have" and "have nots" of yesteryear and the "know" and "know nots" of today. If the instructor remains as a vital part of the process as the "guide on the side" however, particularly with with a focus on creating positive communication that forms the foundation of good teaching, this potential can be mitigated.

James O'Donnel's point is simple:

Tools as powerful as networked computers are going to transform human communication. This transformation will bring with it both loss and gain. Every revolution in communication has both added to the power and range of what is communicated, and taken away some of the intimacy ...(Hypertext) is a potent new form of communication [which] is so transformative that it creates a new economy of knowledge that is larger, faster, and much wealthier than what has come before, and so simply swamps objections and objectors.

Hopefully, technology-enhanced instruction will be applied in such a way that it improves the learning process and not just the "bottom line". I believe it will take dedicated, visionary, creative and caring intructors and administrators to make this happen.

Works Cited

Gordin, Douglas N., Louis M. Gomez, Roy D. Pea, Barry J. Fishman. "Using the World Wide Web to Build Learning Communities in K-12." (Feb. 12, 1997) http://www.covis.nwu.edu/Papers/k12web.html

Landow, George P. "Hypertext and Multivocality." Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Theory and Technology. (Feb. 12, 1997) http://calliope.jhu.edu/press/books/landow/multivoc.html

Landow, George P. "Hypertext and Decentering." Hypertext: The Convergence of Contemporary Theory and Technology. (Feb. 12, 1997) http://calliope.jhu.edu/press/books/landow/decenter.html

Lanham, Richard A. The Electronic Word: Democracy, Technology, and the Arts. (Feb 12, 1997) http://ccat.sas.upenn.edu/jod/texts/lanham.sample

O'Donnell, James J. "Teaching with Technology." Penn Printout. (Feb 12, 1997) http://gopher.upenn.edu:80/pennprintout/html/v11/5/teach.html

The Province, February 16, 1997.

Zhao, Z, T. O'Shea, P. Fung. "The Effects of Visible Link-Types on Learning in the Hypertext Environment: An Empirical Study." Computers in the Schools. (Feb. 12, 1997) http://wwwcoh.modlang.arizona.edu/inst/edp512/gousseva/nine.html.

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