Author

Dan Faltesek, Associate Professor of New Media Communication - Spring 2023

A Liberal Arts Perspective

There has been much in the news about the impact of new technology on educational processes. Some universities are making snap decisions that will seem silly in retrospect, after all, technology changes constantly. Typewriters, calculators, and search engines did not change the core of our educational practices. Notebooks, slide rules, and card catalogs were not as essential to education as we once thought. Advances in search engine technology do not require a new academic integrity policy. Instead, we should revisit the underlying ideas about why, how, and when we teach.

Students need to do their work. Every element of an assignment or process is part of reaching an educational outcome.
Accountability is important. Often, we don't know what we don't know. Misusing tools can cause students to lose key downstream knowledge. We have professors to provide accountability and to provide the structure of thought that students lack. We are all one team with different roles. Accountability goes both ways.
Learning which tools are appropriate for different tasks is educationally essential. The tools we use change, and those tools may change how we think. Knowing which tools to use when is an important part of learning to be an adult working in a complex and changing world. Banning important tools is reactionary and counterproductive, this choice actively decreases our educational potential. Choices to limit options can be valuable education constraints (such as limiting the use of color in a painting) but they must be carefully considered. Imagine banning Google in 1999 because only AskJeeves was an adequately mediocre search engine...
Education is a process art. We are committed as educators to provide a framework where students can learn. We are not here to witness moments of genius, but to actively create the conditions for knowledge to grow, hybridize, and thrive. Enhanced technologies open up new creative possibilities.
Teachers need to embrace change. If what amounts to a search query result can satisfy an assignment, the assignment likely needs to be updated. Misconduct and genius limit our educational potential, so too does banking pedagogy. Accountability on the instructional side may mean different assignments and grading practices. New tools are allowing our students to move beyond tedious tasks more quickly. The fact that a woodworker today does not make their own screws does not detract from the beauty or utility of a table they produce. Better fasteners mean better construction; better search engines mean stronger papers.

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