I appreciate the clarity Patrick Finn brings to the discussion of problems and issues associated with information technologies in university classrooms (“Technology in the Classroom is more than Fun and Games,” Bulletin, October 2007). As important as the issues Finn raises are, it seems to me most discussions involving laptops and other forms of IT in the classroom ignore the social implications of Marshall McLuhan’s fourth law of media which states that the unbridled use of any technology has the opposite consequence for which it was intended.

Indeed, I would argue that much of the legal discussion surrounding IT in university classrooms is itself a symptom of a much deeper and far more significant issue facing universities — that is, the shift/crisis in their institutional identity. Few would argue that the unbridled use of all manner of IT outside the university is transforming how humans in technologically-developed nations communicate, as well as how we see and experience all manner of human relationships. Our campuses are not immune to these developments.

We would do well to pay attention to the findings from the 2007 ECAR (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research) study of undergraduate students and information technology. The ECAR study is an attempt to inform discussion on what the ever-increasing use of IT in the classroom by students and faculty means for teaching and learning.

It has long been a badge of honour for universities (and schools at all levels) to have IT equipment donated by corporate and community partners, often in the name of the “progressive enhancement” of research and student learning. This, along with the steadily declining cost of all forms of IT for personal use, is transforming our classroom communications in ways that enhance, disrupt and in many cases even directly oppose the type of face-to-face learning that has long been the hallmark of a truly liberating, liberal arts education.

As Chris Dede of Harvard University’s Graduate School of Education asserts in chapter two of the ECAR study, the current IT revolution is forcing the academy to rethink the very “creation, sharing and mastery of knowledge.”

My fear, if we put this issue on “call waiting” for very much longer, is that our university classrooms may soon become little more than ivory-tower versions of Internet cafes.

David Long
Sociology
The King's University College

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