We are all coming to face the facts: the computer revolution has come
to the humanities. The revolution has been digitized. Whether we were at
the barricades or strolling around in the park minding our own business,
it happened, and now the world is . . . different. We are probably too close
to decide if it is immeasurably better or worse, but we know for sure that
it is different.
And slowly, but in many ways faster than our colleagues in other periods,
we medievalists are starting to consider the pedagogical possibilities for
using computers, CD-ROMs, the Internet, and the World Wide Web to enhance
our teaching, our presentation of this world (often so alien to our students)
in and out of the classroom. More sessions at conferences are starting to
discuss these possibilities; whole conferences now discuss the use of computers
in the humanities.
I am one of those who is excited and optimistic about the new electronic
media and specifically about their pedagogical applications. Though I am
not a "techie" by any means, I have experimented with using discussion
lists, the Internet, and the World Wide Web in teaching Chaucer, the Beowulf
to Milton survey so many of us teach, and other courses. But I am only cautiously
optimistic, for I have found that, pace the utopians like George Landow,
computers by themselves cannot change anything; it is still the imagination,
experience, and skill of the teacher that makes any teaching medium work
well for students, and still the financial and institutional support of
the institution that enables the teacher to work well. And I have often
found that even the best teacher can be hamstrung, unable to use this new
technology to its real potential - and, in fact, doing a worse job than
if there were no computers at all.
So I'd like to offer a few caveats to those who are thinking of diving into
computer-assisted pedagogy and are unsure of how to do it, or where they
should begin, or how things might turn out once they begin.
1) Make sure you have decent support, both technological AND human.
Take a trip to your academic computing office; tell the people there what
you would like to do and how you think electronic media might help you.
The techies will be able to tell you whether you can accomplish your goals
on the campus: whether they have the hardware and soft- ware to access Netscape,
whether students will be able to have access 24 hours a day, and so forth.
(One hint: dream large. Often, I'm told, professors come in asking for much
less than current technology can accomplish, simply because they don't know
how advanced things have become. If you tell them you want the moon - say,
simultaneous Chaucer classes with three other universities, with video and
audio hookups - they might be able to do it. If they can't, they back you
down until they come up with what they can do. But if you ask for the minimum,
they may not know what you really want to do.) While you're there, size
up the human support as well. If you or your students have trouble, will
there be people around to get you out of the inevitable snafus? Do they
seem excited or resentful and overworked? I have found that, without excellent
human support, the most exciting computer classrooms can crumble into chaos
when the glitches do arise. And nothing - and I mean nothing - will turn
students off to computer pedagogy faster than glitches which remain unfixed.
A student who can't get access, even though she has done everything right,
a student who loses three hours of effort because the system crashes through
no fault of his own, a student who can't even get on the system because
there aren't enough terminals available when she gets off work - these
are students who will just say "the hell with it" and give up
on technology for good.
2) Know the software or medium yourself fairly well before trying it
out on your students. We all have the experience of teaching a text
we've never taught before: we race to stay ahead of the students, reading
a few days ahead of them. We've become adept at this, and have learned how
to do it from time to time. I've found that this is dangerous when using
a new electronic medium; you can get into glitches and not be able to get
out of them, or just hang yourself and the class in a weird back alley and
blow a class period. (See above for how students respond to this.) If you're
going to try one of these in class, spend a semester or summer playing with
it on your own first. Learn where the glitches are, where the shortcuts
are. Your students will thank you.
3) Plan intensive, timely, and time-consuming training periods for the
students at the beginning. We tend to think of students these days as
completely computer- literate, and so we imagine that they don't need much
training before they get started. I have found, to my chagrin, that this
just isn't so. Upper-middle class students may all have computers, yes,
and have had them for years; working-class and lower-class students often
have much less experience with computers than you might even imagine, and
even those students with computers are learning something new. If you find
yourself telling students that "Control-J" means "hold down
the Control key while you hit the J key," or if you find students writing
down every command in a notebook, then you are dealing with novices who
have a high level of anxiety and difficulty, simply because they are unaware
of things you and I now accept as second nature. Each new piece of software,
each a new piece of technology, can be as baffling as their first foray
into word processing. Thus, the schedule needs to allow for time when you
(and preferably a techie) work with the students until they feel comfortable
with the new media and software you are using.
4) These media work best - and in fact, have their best chance of transforming
teaching and learning - when students are encouraged to "play":
to surf and find out things they can't easily find in other media; to explore
the questions they have, rather than the ones we teachers ask; to frame
new questions based on the huge amount of information newly at their disposal.
I think what this means is that we need to come up with new sorts of syllabi,
ones that will reward this new sort of play and free exploration. And perhaps
that will transform the classroom itself in new ways. I won't attempt to
prescribe ways that teachers should reward this sort of play; I simply call
your attention to it. As you plan your syllabi, think of new ways of grading,
assessing, and rewarding students' free exploration.
5) However, students won't take to this free exploration until you force
them to do so. No matter what the utopians say, fallen human nature
is stronger than technology. That is, students are like the rest of us -
they will rarely take on new duties, stick their necks out, until they are
forced to do so and find out that it is fun and worthwhile. I have learned
to have several required assignments, graduated in difficulty, and graded
sternly, early in the terms, to get the students going. Once I use the stick,
the carrot takes over: the interest and fun of using electronic media begins
to provide its own rewards.
If you are unsure about using the new technology, I would encourage you
to start small. Try using a bulletin board or discussion list in your class
first. This is a way for students to bring up questions, discuss texts,
explore different ideas, do things that you didn't have time for in class.
This is not a complex technology, and students learn a great deal from it.
They learn that they can come up with questions and topics on their own;
shy people learn that they can speak; they learn how to cite evidence to
defend their points and how to speak to and persuade an audience that is
not "there" in front of them; they learn that, in the best of
classes, class is never "over" but the conversation goes on twenty-four
hours a day.
When you see this start to work, you will start to see other uses for the
bulletin board: students can try out paper ideas, report on research, give
historical background "lectures" to each other, even turn in their
papers electronically so that the whole class can read and evaluate them.
And as you and the students gain confidence, soon you might be asking your
techies for images of manuscripts, snatches of chant, or views of Islamic
cities in Spain.
Can computer technology - the Web, the 'Net - completely change teaching,
democratizing the classroom and academia? No, I don't believe it can. Until
every school has the financial resources of a Harvard or a Yale, and can
thus buy the latest technology and software, this will never happen. And
since I don't believe my school will ever have the financial resources of
a Yale or UT-Austin, I don't see that happening. In fact, computers and
software, because they are so expensive to maintain and update at the rapid
rates necessary, may only increase the differences between the haves and
have-nots. For example, at my institution, someone had the foresight, way
back in 1987 (the Jurassic era in computer time), to lay fiber-optic cables
to every office and dorm room, and to provide a "computer" to
every faculty member and student. It was proudly called - and still is today
- "The Electronic Campus", the "first of its kind in the
nation." Today, at this moment, I am working on the ancient Digital
VT125 terminal that was installed in this office in 1987, using word processing
software that was out of date the minute it was installed. Why? Money. The
legislature has not yet freed up the money for campus-wide installation
of "Electronic Campus Plus," which will (we hope) put laptops
in place of these horrible terminals.
Still, the stuff works, and my students can get access to the Internet,
the World Wide Web (using Lynx), and the bulletin board I have set up for
them, all from their dorm rooms. We haven't democratized the world, but
I do believe we can improve our teaching - in some ways - with a bit of
creativity and ingenuity.
Department of English
Northwest Missouri State University
The World Wide Web is an easily-navigated network of resources, probably
the most user-friendly area of the Internet. You need a browser (a software
program) to enter the Web. Using a program like Netscape, you can view texts
and images (of illuminated medieval manuscripts, for example, or maps or
charts) and hear recordings of speeches or Gregorian chants. But you can
also explore the Web using a text-only browser like Lynx. Ask your local
system operator what's available to you and your students.
The medievalist's first stop on the Web is Labyrinth
<http://www.georgetown.edu/labyrinth/labyrinth- home.html>, a project
sponsored by Georgetown University and co-directed by Deborah Everhart and
Martin Irvine. Labyrinth provides organized access to more than a million
files located all over the world p; medieval texts in English, French,
Italian, German, and Latin; pointers to resources on medieval cultures,
Arthurian Studies, pedagogical resources, databases and projects (including,
for example, the Beowulf Project); and links to professional associations
and journals. The image of the labyrinth on the home page is now "hot,"
which means you can click anywhere on it and be taken to another page. You
could be happily lost for hours here. For those who prefer a more methodical
approach, Labyrinth provides an organized menu. Be sure to visit, directly
or through Labyrinth, <http://rodent.lib.rochester.edu/camelot/teams/tmsmenu.htm>
to preview a few of the volumes in the TEAMS Middle English Texts Series
(courtesy of the Camelot
Project at the University of Rochester).
E-mail: Each of the classes I teach at Calvin has its own local e-mail discussion
list. My students and I use it to discuss readings and ideas, to share questions,
and to continue discussions begun in class. I wonder what might happen if
we expanded our list to include students in other classes at other schools.
But there are already bigger circles for scholars.
Medievalists were pioneers in organizing global electronic discussion groups.
As a subscriber, you receive a copy of every message posted to the group.
You can reply to the group or to the individual who posted a message. Such
groups can be sites for lively debate, for soliciting opinions and ideas,
for sharing appropriate announcements, for seeking advice. They can also,
at times, spawn tangents (look for "TAN" in the header) and fruitless
chatter. Subscribe sparingly: any one of these groups could drop a dozen
p; or twenty p; messages a day into your mailbox.
Space permits me to suggest only a few groups here. List veterans, let me
know about your favorites and I'll include them in future issues of this
newsletter.
MEDTEXTL (Medieval Texts: Philology, Codicology, and Technology). To subscribe,
send a message to LISTSERV@ vmd.cso.uiuc.edu. Leave the subject header blank,
and type "SUBSCRIBE MEDTEXTL" in the body of the message.
MEDIEV-L (Medieval History). To subscribe, send a message reading "SUBSCRIBE
MEDIEV-L" to listserv@ukanvm.cc. ukans.edu. Leave the subject header
blank.
ANSAX-L (Anglo-Saxon studies, with some medieval traffic). To subscribe,
send a message reading "SUBSCRIBE ANSAX-L" to listserv@wvnvm.wvnet.edu.
Leave the subject header blank.