Electronic teaching spurs skepticism - Education

USA Today (Society for the Advancement of Education), August, 2003

University educators largely extol the wonders of teaching through technology, but skeptics question whether something is lost when professors and lecturers rely too heavily on electronic media or when interaction with students takes place remotely--in cyberspace rather than the real space of the classroom. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, the Albert Guerard Professor of Literature at Stanford (Calif.) University, is one such skeptic. "I think this enthusiastic and sometimes naive and [often] blind pushing toward the more technology the better, the more websites the better teacher, and so forth, is very dangerous--[that it] is, indeed, suicidal," he indicates.

However, Gumbrecht cautions that there are few, if any, studies either supporting or rejecting the hypothesis that traditional pedagogy is superior to teaching via the Internet or with a host of high-tech classroom aids. He says that he could point only to his "intuition that real classroom presence should be maintained and is very, very important," and emphasizes the need for educators to examine critically where technology serves a useful pedagogical function and where it does not.

Yet, Gumbrecht allows that, for courses in which knowledge transmission is the sole purpose, electronic media probably can do the job well enough. Indeed, given the 20th century's knowledge explosion and the increasing costs of higher education, using technology as opposed to real-life teachers for the transmission of information is probably inevitable, he concedes. In any case, knowledge transmission should not be the core function of the university, he maintains, noting that the Prussian statesman and university founder Wilhelm von Humboldt, sociologist Max Weber, and Cardinal John Henry Newman all held that universities should be places where people confront "open questions." Gumbrecht points out that "Humboldt even goes so far [as] to say--and I full-heartedly agree with him--[there] should ideally be questions without a possible answer." He asserts the university should be a place for "intellectual complexification" and "riskful thinking."

"We are not about finding or transmitting solutions; we are not about recipes; we are not about making intellectual life easy. Confrontation with complexity is what expands your mind. It is something like intellectual gymnastics. And this is what makes you a viable member of the society."

Moreover, discussions in the physical presence of others can lead to intellectual innovation. "There's a qualitative change, and you don't quite know how it happens. Discussions in the physical presence have the capacity of being the catalyst for such intellectual breakthroughs. The possibility of in-classroom teaching--of letting something happen which cannot happen if you teach by the transmission of information--is a strength."

Gumbrecht argues that the way in which students interact with each other in the classroom, as well as to the physical presence of their professor, can invigorate in-class discussions. "I know this is problematic territory, but I think both the positive and negative feelings can set free additional energy. I'm not saying the physical presence makes you intellectually better, but it produces certain energy which is good for intellectual production."