Posted by: plinius on: oktober 14, 2006
Enter the dragon. From print to web in library education. In: Przestrzen informacji i komuniukacji spolecznej [The area of information and social communication]. Cracow: Jagiellonian University Press 2004. p. 280-288. Festschrift for Wanda Pindel, former Deputy Head of the Institute of Information and Library Science at the Jagiellonian.
Goodbye Gutenberg
Throughout the world, teaching institutions are moving from a paper based to a web based form of teaching. Old and familiar technologies – pen, chalk and print – are gradually replaced by a wide range of digital tools and media: word processors, spreadsheets, e-mail, presentation programs, image editors, SMS and the ubiquitous World Wide Web.
At some point in their career, every teacher must decide what they could, should or must do to cope with this massive technological change. Some are fascinated by technology and move ahead as fast as their skills and institutions will allow. Others mourn the decline of the book and defend the beleaguered Castle of Gutenberg to the bitter end.
As a person I can appreciate both camps. I have always loved books, libraries and reading. But I am also fascinated by technology and its social impact. Literature and hi-tech are both forms of escape. They open the door that is hidden in the wall. They lead us to imaginary gardens. They splash purple and azure on a world in black and white.
In this article, I look back at my experience with digital technology
in library teaching. I discover, with some surprise, that I have socialized
with computers for more than forty years. As a young student, I punched Hollerith cards and tended the cool machine monsters that swallowed them.
Today, the web is my paper and Dreamweaver my word processor. I am
not a programmer or a systems analyst. My main job has always been in
academic teaching and research. Information technology has always been a side-line. For the last twelve years I have taught library subjects
full-time. Earlier, when I worked in peace research, I taught information
retrieval on a part-time basis.
But my interest in computers is more than a hobby. Digitalization is
a massive process. Like industrialization in the 19th century, it touches
our societies and our lives at many levels. I want to understand – and
to enjoy – this force that transforms our life-world. Schools and universities are conservative institutions. Ways of teaching change slowly.
Bill Gates was right when he said: - in the digital field less happens in two years than we think. But in the long run, even teaching institutions must adapt. Gates added that – more happens in ten years than we think. In this article I look at the concrete and specific steps teachers typically take when they start their long and troubled march towards web-based teaching.
For several decades, computers had no real impact on how we taught. It
is only now, as the Web has reached its early teens, that ordinary teachers feel the pressure. The educators that embrace the Web are still a minority. The path from print to web is longer than most teachers realize. We have been deeply socialized into the technology of print. Our concepts and our practices are grounded in the Gutenberg galaxy.
The web is a different universe: vast, chaotic, uncanny. The web demands different skills, attitudes and practices. It changes the relationship between teachers and students. It changes the nature of teaching and learning. Since I am a library teacher, I draw my examples from libraries and library education. I believe the digital change favors the library profession. In a web-based learning environment library institutions become more relevant and library skills more crucial. But we have a long road in front of us.
In Norway, library education was for many years an Oslo monopoly. The
College of Library Studies remained an independent institution until 1994. In that year, all vocational colleges were reorganized on a regional basis. More than twenty different professional schools – from accountancy to teaching – were brought together in Oslo University College. Within the college, seven faculties were set up. Thirty library teachers were reluctantly paired with 15 sceptical teachers of journalism – to form the new Faculty of Journalism, Library and Information Science. The honeymoon was stormy, but the match worked well. Today the Faculty is diversifying. Our subjects are perfect for the post-modern world. And we are developing new specialties: shorter courses on web publishing, archivistics and museums, and a full bachelor degree in media and communications.
I started to work at the College in 1992, and one of my first tasks
was to develop a post-degree course in reference work. The World Wide
Web had just been released. The potential impact of the web on library
services and on teaching was already evident – at least to people with
an understanding of technology and its social impact. But our culture
is humanistic rather than (natural) science oriented. It is only now,
more than a decade later, that most libraries and teaching institutions
are beginning to face the long-range consequences of web technology for
their professional practice. It will take another ten to fifteen years,
I suspect, before our institutions have fully adapted to the new state
of affairs.
But why the delay? Librarians are not technophobes. In the 1970s and
80s bibliographic databases were welcomed and adopted throughout the library world. In the cultural sector librarians were true pioneers in the use of mainframe computer technology. But the web represents a much deeper challenge. The introduction of databases went smoothly because it did not change underlying concepts and routines. Databases were instruments of reform. They vitalized existing practices. For 150 years librarians have worked with card catalogues. As students, candidate librarians receive intensive training in the logic of cataloguing. They fight with catalogues during the day and dream about them at the night. But the card catalogue is essentially a database on paper. If you master the one, you can master the other. Databases are domestic animals. They just provide more power. Let us call them horses.
‘Most librarians link their professional identity to their role as gatekeepers. The librarian mediates between users and information systems. The introduction of databases strengthened the gatekeeper function. Databases made the systems more complex as well as more powerful. The value of specialized library skills increased. The librarian remained in control. Her expertise could not be dispensed with. The average user never understood retrieval
beyond the most basic one word searches. She was baffled by Boolean logic.
Numerous studies studies of database searches came to the same conclusions. Users failed to understand the retrieval systems that
system engineers and librarians had designed for them. The OPACs remained opaque. From the user`s point of view system engineers and librarians failed to design user-friendly systems.
The web, on the contrary, puts the user in the driver`s seat. On the
web information producers must compete for attention. Here, usability
is more than a nice gesture – it is the road to survival and profit. In
the world of e-business and web portals, the transfer of control from
producers to users is clearly visible. We see the same trend in the library
sector. The virtual dimension of libraries is growing in range and depth.
Web discussions, seminars and professional articles signal major changes. The web is a revolutionary tool. It undermines the established order. If databases are horses, the web is a dragon.
With time, users start to behave differently. Web access is taken for
granted. The web is becoming an ordinary utility, like phones, MP3-players and electric light. Producers behave differently. Their awareness of the business environment changes. Web services are seen as essential. Firms switch resources and strategies towards the new medium. For organizations, the turning point is reached when executives define the web, rather than paper, as the primary route to their customers. Amazon is the trail-blazer. But many libraries are moving towards that point. Beyond the cusp the real web world begins…
In the world of teaching, the process of restructuring is much more
recent. Librarians, I said, were happy to introduce computers. Teachers
hesitate. The reason does not lie in different attitudes to technology
as such. Librarians and teachers are cultural twins. As professions they
are shaped by humanistic rather than by scientific, technological or economic paradigms. To understand the difference in the reception of technology, we must look at activities rather than attitudes. Librarians
welcomed databases because they could think and work as before – only
faster. But teachers face the web rather than databases. They move slowly because the web challenges the very nature of teaching. The dragon can not be tamed like a horse.
I am not saying that teaching is purely social. All teaching is influenced
by technology. And teaching technology is not neutral. The text book turned students into readers rather than rhetors. The medieval art of disputation only survives – barely – at the doctoral level. In education, the web is slowly displacing the book. Whether we like it or not – volens nolens – the web will change the way we teach and the way students learn. But the question is how?
The web is truly different from paper. Technology is a formative force.
Web authoring is different from ordinary writing. I suspect we need another
generation to fully understand the web as a communication medium. But
we can at least start to reflect on its impact. This text presents
one teacher`s encounter with the dragon: my personal experience with the
web as a tool and a medium for teaching.
My first meeting with web-based teaching occurred, as I said, in 1992.
The new reference course consisted of four modules, each lasting two full
weeks. The second module, which was offered in the spring 1993, was devoted
to the technical aspects of retrieval. In addition to data base searches
we included, for the first time, web based methods of retrieval. And we
took one further step: the course participants learnt enough HTML to create
pages with hyper links. The tools were primitive and clumsy. But the thrill
of making your own hyper links was important. The first step from web
user to web producer had been taken.
Four years later, the web was no longer a curiosity, but a major force
for change. In 1997 Netscape ruled the browser market – and Altavista
shared the retrieval market with Yahoo. The great majority of users were
still happy amateurs. We were playing and experimenting with our new and
shiny toy. But many decision makers had discovered the crucial importance
of the web. Governments and corporations and politicians financed big
strategic studies. Microsoft switched its whole development strategy from
proprietary information systems to the open web. It started work on Internet
Explorer and purchased the web editor FrontPage.
In 1997-98 my main course was library management. With
120 teaching hours, this is one of the central subjects during the third
(concluding) year of library studies in Oslo. Around us, PCs had become
widely available to students. And some of our classrooms had been equipped
with video cannons. You may remember the early ones: expensive, cumbersome,
three-eyed monsters. And I started to transfer the course from paper and
plastic overheads to the web. I taught this course for two more years,
increasing the web content step by step. Due to other commitments, I had
to transfer the course to my colleague Robert Vaagan in the summer of
2000. But since he is conversant with web publishing, and the whole course
was fully documented on the web, the transfer went without a hitch.
Teaching webs, in other words, are movable objects. Since they consist
of many small, but hyperlinked components, they are easy to update. Lecture
notes on paper are usually highly personal. Teaching from another teacher`s
notes is rare – and would probably be extremely frustrating. But on the
web, notes are written with an audience in mind. If a course web is well
designed, with a clear structure and good navigation tools, the whole
network of didactic texts can be reused by other people.
By that time, the technological environment had matured, and I decided
to take a bigger leap into the unknown. In the autumn of 2000 I abandoned
Word for FrontPage. From now on I would write web files rather than text
files, and publish on the web rather than on paper. The leap was not dangerous.
HTML files can (relatively) easily be converted to Word files – and vice
versa. I could always go back. But I have never regretted that particular
leap. Two years later I switched from FrontPage to the more powerful -
and more demanding – web editor DreamWeaver.
In the library management course we use the web as a teaching tool. During
the last seven years I have also taught web publishing
and web based teaching as subjects in their own right.
At Oslo University College we see a growing demand for further education
courses in these areas – from librarians, from teachers, and from other
professions in the cultural sector.
Our FE courses combine intense teaching periods on campus with on-going
web based upervision of project work. I have had no experience with pure
distance education, without face-to-face contact. I treat the web as a
support – almost as a partner – in tightly structured social encounters
with groups of students. This is likely to be the case for most teachers.
The web is brought into the physical learning space -
class rooms, libraries, workshops and lecture halls. Here, a wide range
of established practices hold sway. But if we accept it as a partner,
it will gradually modify our working routines and our understanding of
the learning process.
My encounter with the new teaching technology has been highly positive.
I started teaching mathematics – on a part time basis – more than forty
years ago. Since then I have tried out many educational tools. I have
concluded that teaching, as well as learning, is more a matter of attitude
than of technique. To the sincere student, says Confucius, every day is
a suitable day. The sincere teacher does not depend on technology. Aristotle
taught while he walked – in the cool garden of his friend Akademos. The
followers of Aristotle were called peripatetics – which
simply means “those who walk around”.
But that does not mean that teaching and technology are incompatible
entities. We live in societies where most of our work and most of our
leisure activities involve advanced technology. We interact with books
and electric light, with cars and electronic media, on a daily basis.
Education is no exception. We cannot conduct most of our teaching in gardens.
But educational technology has been reasonably stable for a long time.
Now, the rate of change accelerates.
Digital technology does not impose particular ways of teaching and learning.
In this field, directives come from the politicians. But technology allows,
invites or seduces us into change. Today, it is twelve years since I first
made a hyperlink of my own. It is seven years since I started to produce
teaching materials for the web. It is four years since I became a web
rather than a paper writer. It is two years since I started with DreamWeaver.
And I can see many steps ahead.
Stripped to the core, people can relate to technology in two ways. They
can follow the School of Descartes or the School of Sartre.
The Cartesians are cogitators. You should think about and discuss the
consequences of the new technology before you act. Attitude precedes technology.
Cartesians look before they leap. Essence precedes existence. The School
of Sartre is pragmatic. You should allow your experiences to shape your
thinking rather than vice versa. You should probe before you ponder. Technology
precedes attitude. Existentialists practice first and reflect afterwards.
Existence precedes essence.
As a web teacher, I still feel like a novice: 30% amateur, 40% dilettante
and 50% self-made man. I am not an absolute beginner anymore. The road
has taught me a trick or two. But I am certainly no expert. Many opportunities
remain untried and many roads untrodden. In such a young field it can
hardly be otherwise. If you want web teachers with twenty years of experience,
you must wait till 2020.
Technology can not compensate for attitude. Ultimately, real education
must be limited to those who insist on learning (T. S. Eliot). This
is also true of the web. But I must add that the web is deeper, wider
and more surprising than any other tool or technique I have played with.
Time consuming administrative tasks – like messaging and hand-out production
- are simplified. The element of fun increases. But the main feeling is
one of space. There is so much more we can do, as teachers and as learners.
The limits and barriers to action recede. Our horizon expands.
The web is a mass medium, a group medium and a medium for personal communication
- at the same time. The participation barriers are low. I can produce
my web pages at home – or anywhere in the world – and still publish them
to the college web server. So can the students. Bringing the web into
teaching is not done overnight or in a single year. The process is better
described as a ladder with many separate rungs.
Politicians are happy to speak about the information society, full of
broadband connections and lifelong learning. They speak less about the
will, the persistence and the sheer hard work that is needed to climb
the ladder. When innovation requires new technology, many practical problems
must always be solved. Computers are complex beasts. The new equipment
must be selected, evaluated, financed and installed. When the tools are
in place, they must be supervised on a day-to-day basis. Service and support
is often left to the teacher. - It was your bloody idea, wasn`t it?
Students and teachers must learn to use new hardware and software. We
need to train ourselves before we can teach others. Maintenance and training
often comes on top of a full teaching load. There is also a cultural resistance
to change. Teaching institions tend to be conservative. The innovators
I know tell the same stories. Usually they have some support from above.
Management is positive – in principle. But the full innovation costs are
seldom covered. The institution may pay for a training course – if you
do the work in your own spare time. Colleagues tend to keep a low and
non-committed profile. New ways of teaching disturbs established practices.
Do not expect standing ovations as you stagger towards the goal posts.
At best you gain a diploma and a scattered applause. Benign neglect is
more likely.
In the mid nineties, when the story starts, our working environment was
already digital. There were PCs in every office. Local and global networks
were in place. And the rearguard fight against e-mail was clearly a lost
cause. Like all my colleagues, I had integrated word processing into my
daily routines. First we used WordPerfect – later we were all shepherded
into the MS Office Suite and switched to Word. The more adventurous teachers
experimented with Excel and PowerPoint. But while our writing tools were
digital, our products remained analogue: lecture notes on paper, stacks
of handouts, and transparent foils for ythe overhead projector. We still
lived in the world of Gutenberg. Below I describe the first five steps
on the ladder that leads to the web. In my case they cover the years from
1997 till 2002. I must add that step five was an important turning point.
At that stage I had to change my image of “the good teacher”.
The first step was administrative. We used the web to distribute administrative
information to our students: curricula, reading lists, time schedules,
past exam questions, etc. Teaching went on as before. But some of the
dull and dreary routines that surround teaching were simplified.
This step is only possible, I would say, when students can consult the
web on a daily basis. If not, teachers must manage two production lines:
one on the web and one on paper. To be fully effective, it also requires
direct access to a web server. The teacher must be able to write, to publish
and to revise web documents. He or she must master at least a basic web
editor (like FrontPage Express) – or have access to the web through an
institutional publication system. To go through another person or department
makes the whole process inefficient and costly.
Since full scale web editors (like Dreamweaver) are rather more demanding
than word processors, many organizations are now turning to publication
systems instead. Such systems let people publish standard documents to
the web without knowledge of HTML, CSS or image processing. But they were
not available seven years ago.
In the next stage we started to use the web as a source of subject
information. In 1998-99 WWW was already rich in relevant materials
for library management. As a teacher I spent much time trawling the web
for case materials, policy documents and theoretical articles. Most of
it was in English. The students prefer materials in their own language.
But restricting the search to Norwegian sites would limit its potential
unduly.
The web is a global medium by its very nature. Our students are expected
to master English. Through the web we meet the international library world.
In terms of population, Norway is tiny – about the size of New Zealand.
For every single Norwegian there are a hundred native speakers of English:
we are outnumbered by a veritable flood of Americans, Englishmen, Canadians,
Australians, Scots and New Zealanders. The relative size of professional
communities must be rather similar: a hundred anglophone librarians for
every Norwegian one.
In Oslo, we have a decent library, with a broad range of publications
in English. In the management course, I always tried to include some English
language readings in the curriculum. But I find it much easier to trace
and select interesting materials through the web. Basic textbooks are
not a problem. But our students also need brief, clear, fresh and provocative
statements about the field today. Here the web excels.
Libraries tend to be rule-bound. There is no shortage of authorities
and final answers. Control is more available than creativity. I believe
library students must be exposed to conflicting opinions.
When authorities differ in public, they open up a space that allows other
people to think for themselves. The web tends to be strong where libraries
are weak: in the access to current documents and discussions.
Here we find policy papers, plans and proposals. The web is less formal
than print. Here people think aloud, argue and shout in CAPITAL letters.
The web is also a place where libraries present themselves and their
services. Paper documents offer a filtered reality. Editors put a screen
between us and the real world. As we all know, the real world is a jungle.
On the web we bypass the screen. Students can go on virtual trips, visiting
institutions in Norway and abroad. For me as a teacher, step 2 involved
surfing, mapping, evaluating, selecting and annotating a great variety
of web resources made by other people. A few of them were originally designed
for teaching, but most of them were created for other purposes, in other
contexts. The annotated links were published on the course web and integrated
into the curriculum, as readings, as places to visit (virtual tours), and
as supplementary material for students with special interests.
The third step involves web publication – in other words conversion
- of existing teaching materials. We start to use the web as a distribution
channel for our own writings. But we do not start from scratch. Any committed
teacher is surrounded by his own products. His shelves and drawers are
stacked – not only with printed books and articles – but with original
teaching notes, exercises, illustrations, student evaluations and all
the other paraphernalia that teaching generates. And every committed teacher
has the same dream: a time will come when everything will be put in its
right and proper place.
Step 3 is that time. Modern teaching involves complex interactions between
teachers, students, colleagues, administrators and innumerable pieces
of paper. As long as we deal with paper, our intellectual products can
only be ordered by heroic self-discipline. I admire – but cannot join
- those who rise to the occasion. But in step 3 we convert our existing
materials from paper to web. After conversion, we can clean out the drawers.
Our archives have finally been moved. They have not yet been structured,
ordered and categorized – that belongs to step 4. But they are ready for
the great day. On the web even ordinary people can put their notes in
order.
From a digital point of view, we are simply converting Word files into
HTML. But from a psychological point of view, conversion means that we
say goodbye to the world of paper and enter the world of the web. As an
activity, word processing is directed towards products on paper. We may
work on screens, but we plan for print-outs. The underlying digital files
are only vaguely present, like ghosts in the underworld. We remain attached
to the forms and traditions of paper objects. The printed document is
still experienced as the real thing.
Step 3 is a transitional stage, however. Files that are written for paper
bear the mark of their origin. The converted object is shaped by the logic
of paper. The full transition to the web occurs only when our texts are
designed for the new medium. Genuine web writing only develops when we
internalize the new medium. We must produce for the web.
Once the files are on the web, we find ourselves in a different working
environment. As we learn more about the new medium, we discover that the
rules of the game have changed. Reading on the web differs from reading
on paper. Writing for the web is different from paper
writing. Here we are concerned with texts for teaching. In step 4 we start
to produce web documents specifically designed for learning in the new
medium.
Educational texts are tools rather than ends in themselves. As working
documents they serve as scripts and occasions and building blocks rather
than as objects of silent contemplation. Good teachers design and support
learning processes. Teachers using the web need to be educational designers.
Either we write web documents that promote active learning. Or we take
(parts from) existing documents and reframe them for learning purposes.
The move from step 3 to step 4 is bigger than most teachers realize.
The inner characteristics of the new medium are not visible at once. It
takes several years, in my experience, to understand the nature of the
new medium. On the computer screen, web documents look much like Word
documents. But web documents live in a faster and more transparent universe.
Word documents belong to the world of paper. They represent, it seems,
the final generation in the Gutenberg galaxy. But print on paper will
remain important for a long time yet. The recent shift from analogue to
digital printing does not matter. The modern world-system is deeply linked
to the technology of moveable types and multiple copies. As long as paper
objects remain important we belong to the world of Gutenberg.
Printed documents are only loosely coupled. They relate
to other printed documents through quotations and references. The web
of paper is real enough – and vast. But tracing the connections between
documents can easily take weeks and months and years. The house of science
is contructed out of such relationships. And scholars are accustomed to
this slow and stately pace. But students, politicians and the sensual
man-in-the-street must take the underlying scaffolding on faith.
In contrast, web documents are tightly coupled. They
relate to other web documents at the speed of light. Writing has always
had a double nature: deeply individual and deeply collective at the same
time. But when we write on paper, the collective nature of writing is
hidden. Paper is inherently private. Publication requires a major
effort. The web, on the contrary, is essentially a collective medium.
When we write to the web, we must struggle to avoid being
read.
The web medium, in other words, supports a high level of intertextuality.
Web readers and web writers have instant access to the whole web. This
changes the basic context of teaching and learning. On the open web I
can follow the activities of other teachers through their course sites.
Geography disappears. The web is a lateral medium. It allows constant,
real time awareness of what other teaching institutions are doing. I can
keep in touch with tools and trends and bright ideas from my own desk.
I can observe, reuse and transform what I find. Since I publish to the
web, I give as much as I get. The relationship is reciprocal. I am wired
to the world.
The same applies to my students. They can be exposed to a much wider
range of professional texts, cases and discussions. They can see what
other students in their field are creating. And I ask them to put their
own contributions on the web. They need not wait for formal approval.
It is helpful if drafts and other unfinished products are identified as
such. But I believe the learning process is supported by low barriers
to web publication. Quality is important, but the web as such cannot be
controlled. Web technology puts the power of print into the hands of the
general public. There it should remain. To support quality we should rather
develop quality mechanisms (“stamps of approval”) when and where
they are needed, inside the web itself.
Step 5 starts from the fact that the web is ubiquitous. On the web we
produce teaching materials and create learning situations that can be
accessed from anywhere. The web is an interactive medium. We can create
virtual classrooms, where teachers and students use the web for all types
of learning activities. Virtual teaching may be combined with physical
teaching – or offered as an independent option to off-campus students.
As a teacher I found step 5 deeply challenging. So far I have not taken
the step into purely virtual teaching. But I had to accept the idea that
students could follow my classes without entering the class room. This
went against thirty-five years of conditioning. Teachers resemble actors:
the response from the audience is our greatest reward. It took a real
effort to abandon that idea. I did not stop teaching. But from now on
I also took care of the students who were absent. Through the web I made
it easier for them to continue their participation without turning up
in class. The rules of the game had shifted. I had to accept that people
could attend or work at home as they placed. This was really a new pedagogical
world. I was, one could say, competing against myself.
Traditional teaching activities revolves around the teacher – like planets
around the sun. Old-fashioned teachers constantly receive attention. Moving
to the web starts a Copernican revolution. The teacher no longer shines
in the middle. Now the web – or rather the network supported by the web
- moves into the center. We cut down on lecturing – no more strutting
and fretting upon the stage. Primadonnas exit to the left – while designers
and advisors enter from the right. It is a time for learning-oriented
web design, process design, and student supervision.
It is easy to argue for the change in retrospect. The web does not discriminate
between the physical audience on campus, the virtual audience elsewhere
- or random visitors from anywhere in the world. The library school attracts
mature students – including people who live far from Oslo. Many of them
are married and have children. Many – probably too many – have part-time
jobs. Some prefer to study on their own. Some would prefer not to study
at all. But they are all in my care.
The traditional lecture is a blunt teaching instrument: one size fits
all. Through the web we can start to design learning processes for all
creatures and conditions. It will not be easy and it will not go fast.
But the web will insist. If a book store like Amazon can adapt its services
to the particular needs of every single customer – so can universities.
Step 5 ends a tradition that has lasted for five hundred years. Medieval
university teaching was mainly oral. Modern university teaching combines
oral and written interaction. Lectures and discussions in the class room
are combined with books, articles and written assignments outside the
class. But web technology is able to handle both oral and written exchanges.
Full broadband interactivity is not in place yet. But this is a matter
of years rather than decades. In 2010 the average student and the average
teacher should be able to communicate digitally in real time, by text,
sound and moving image. I am not suggesting that class rooms, group rooms,
lecture halls and labs will disappear. But we will be more selective.
There will still be a campus. But I expect a much greater awareness of
function. We will still gather in physical space – but only when we need
to meet.
