We are still very much in the exploratory stage. I doubt that
all the reasonable possibilities have even been tried yet, and
the technology is making more possibilities testably feasible
every few months. (By "reasonable" I mean with some prima facie
theoretical guess that they'd be useful.)
I'd be willing to say though that there are a few not entirely
obvious things that seem to turn up from the explorations done.
(1) Communication channels, not just information access, are
essential for successful mediation. (2) Personal styles and
preferences differ sufficiently that there must be provision for
substantial customization by/for users. (3) The formation of
new and ad hoc discussion groups or forums, and more generally
a fluidity of group-interactional structure, adds a lot. (4) Most
experiments "fail" to scale up because of poor support infrastructure
for faculty. (5) Local innovations that are specific to particular
needs and constituencies work better than generic template systems.
(6) Students adapt and embrace these innovations more readily than
do faculty, and faculty have a better sense of both the obstacles
and the opportunities than do administrators.
Perhaps others can add to this list, which is incomplete but
certainly summarizes what I think I have learned from observation,
including one fairly systematic institution-wide, interview-based
study I've done (but not published).
My sense of what is most needed is a cadre of techno-angels to
bear individual (or small groups of) faculty members up to the
heavens of cyberspace and support them in their idiosyncratic
endeavors to do whatever they want to try doing.
Next most useful is to collect a wide range of successful models
of what can be done and make them available to would-be innovators
or those looking for possibilities.
I'd be very interested to hear anecdotal reports on successful
ideas and systems.
JAY.
PS. I thought about the value of reports and examples of
things that _didn't_ work, but my intuition is that in this
domain, at this stage of its development, studying the negative side
is not going to be productive commensurately with the time it
would require -- at least not compared to the strategy above.
I have seen an infinity of well-intentioned cyberjunk, and while
I can figure out retrospectively what was wrong with it, there are
too many possible reasons for failure, and as Latour notes in
_Aramis_ too much contextual contingency for reliable retrodiction
(or prediction). But while what works may _not_ necessarily
generalize, it does seem to inspire other good ideas.
JAY LEMKE.
City University of New York.
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