This document consists of a 35-page summary and discussion of
the data collected two related questionnaires. It also includes a summary of the concluding chapter of my dissertation. I am
deeply indebted to the 191 participants from 55 institutions (listed
in Appendix 2) for taking the time and allowing me the time to
complete the dissertation before authoring this report.
| 1) | a method of assessing levels of involvement of important stakeholders in crucial sets of issues, |
| 2) | (as a model) a situated analysis of current and future involvement levels at MTU, and |
| 3) | a process for determining points of intervention into the complex techno-social fray of technology-rich facility design and support. |
| * | the type of institution |
| * | the existence of technology-rich facility |
| * | the longevity of the computer-supported facility(ies) at the institution |
| * | the number and names of scholars interested in technology studies who work in English Studies programs. |
Using the RFP, I was able to collect the names of 248 interested contacts at 221 post-secondary institutions. At each institution, I established a contact person, a colleague interested in the relation of technology to teaching. They were asked to recruit individuals at their institution who would represent, at least in my initial conception of this process, the eight roles played out in and around technology-rich facilities. Those recruited player/stakeholders in turn became the object of my second, more substantial, questionnaire.
In the second questionnaire, I originally asked each person to speak from the primary role they played in relationship to their facility. To that end, each institutional contact person was asked to forward the second questionnaire to at least one of the following types of respondents:
| * | a student who has used the facility for class work |
| * | a teacher who has used the facility for instruction (whole class or partial, full time, or periodic) |
| * | the facility administrator |
| * | the primary technical support person (if different from the facility administrator) |
| * | the department head or chair |
| * | a student facility worker (graduate or undergraduate): monitor, consultant, or technical assistant |
| * | the administrator of central computing, instructional technology or instructional technology development (whichever is most important to the running of their facility) |
| * | if different from the above administrator, the chair or member of a campus-wide computing committee |
An unexpected consequence of the research process was that approximately 40% of respondents chose multiple roles for themselves as they shifted their relationship to the facility or facilities being discussed. As a result, the term "player" seemed appropriate for people who often role switched as they worked, taught, and helped maintain technology-rich (TR) facilities.
These questionnaires were an attempt to recruit participants who
could help me begin mapping the institutional, professional, economic,
and technical influences that TR facilities were experiencing
in ES disciplines.
| 1. | student | |
| 2. | teacher | |
| 3. | technical staff | |
| 4. | facility administrator | |
| 5. | program administrator | |
| 6. | student worker | |
| 7. | other |
A total of 301 roles were claimed by 191 players. Individuals
were then assigned a single role based on the highest
numbered role chosen.
Table 1.
Respondent Count by Highest Role Chosen
| Rank | Role | |
| 1. | student | |
| 2. | teacher | |
| 3. | technical staff | |
| 4. | facility administrator | |
| 5. | program administrator | |
| 6. | student worker | |
| 7. | other | |
|
Total |
Rank ordering the "assigned" role of a stakeholder was, of course, a decision based on my own understanding of the importance to be placed on each role (Notice the importance placed on student workers. See dissertation, Chapter 3, for further explanation). When tallying results from the questionnaire, respondents' answers were assigned to the highest ranked role.
Technological Enthusiasm
To get a sense of how enthusiastic respondents to this questionnaire were, they were asked to rate themselves as a type of technology user: 5 representing the most enthusiastic and 1 the most reluctant. The results indicate that this was a relatively enthusiastic lot: 4.53 was the average for the entire group. The following shows technological enthusiasm by assigned role. Note the relatively subdued enthusiasm expressed by students and student workers.
Table 2.
Level of Technological Enthusiasm
| Rank | Role | |
1. | student | |
| 2. | teacher | |
| 3. | technical staff | |
| 4. | facility administrator | |
| 5. | program administrator | |
| 6. | student worker | |
| 7. | other | |
| OVERALL AVERAGE | ||
| 1. | The challenges and benefits that computer-supported facilities afforded students, teachers, and departments. |
| 2. | The types of communication technologies that are liable to influence ES programs in the near future. |
| 3. | The financial or material basis for these facilities and their support. |
| 4. | The institutional relationships that are necessary to maintain these facilities. |
| 5. | The role(s) that students and student workers play in the running of technology-rich facilities. |
| 6. | The instructional goals of these facilities. |
There is little room in the question sets for respondents to focus
on the specific types, vendors, or versions of hardware and software.
There are two reasons for this. The most obvious is that technology-specific
models are too quickly out of date to be of much use in a published
document such as a dissertation. Technology planners are better
served by abundant on-line and periodical reviews of hardware
and software and descriptions of instructional uses of specific
technologies, which are also available, though much less frequently
published.
Choosing Technology-related Questions Sets
Previous publications and conference presentations on computer-supported facilities, indicate that three of the six areas of concern listed above (1, 2, & 6) seem obvious and important to most scholars. Almost every issue of Computers and Composition includes several articles that touch on these areas of concern (c.f., Ygelslki & Powley, Fey & Sisson, or Hafer, 1996). These areas of concern, however, have rarely been framed in terms of the technology support they imply or assume. Nor do current publications often address the impact of these technical practices on agents across the educational hierarchy. Our profession's blind spots seem to center on human, economic, and institutional infrastructures necessary to support our instructional goals.
NOTE: If we retain our traditional, narrow focus on the technology
itself or even the instructional possibilities associated with
that technology, it does not bode well for the development of
a citizenry capable of the critical, humanistic assessment of
technological developments, an assessment to which the ES disciplines
have a great deal to add.
The Gender Dilemma
This study includes a number of gendered voices from across the
social spectrum. A numerical review of the respondents to this
survey indicates strong female participation but, not unexpectedly,
that male voices (including my own) dominated. The breakdown by
category of respondent by gender for this technology-related questionnaire
looks like this:
Table 3.
Respondent Count by Gender
| Category | |||
student | |||
| teacher | |||
| technical staff | |||
| facility administrator | |||
| program administrator | |||
| student worker | |||
| other | |||
|
Totals |
Since there was no specific effort to recruit female respondents, the only real surprise in this breakdown is the predominance of male teachers. It was no surprise, based on my past experience, to see more men representing technicians or facility administrators. That does not mean that we should not be concerned about these imbalances. For over 10 years, the difficult and persistent problem of a male-dominated technical staff has existed in the facility that I help run, in spite of serious efforts to recruit female technical assistants to our facility. This nagging dilemma points to subtle forms of initiation or environmental factors that may act to exclude women from technical positions:
| * | the tradition of relatively dangerous late-night work habits for technical support staffs, |
| * | the gaming community that seems to pervade technical groups and the male-dominated nature of interactive gaming systems: for instance the game "Doom" (not to mention the clearly sexist nature of a good deal of gaming graphics (cf., Gerrard, 1996), |
| * | the necessary commitment to extensive work hours (many of which occur after five o'clock and are, in our facility, often volunteer hours) in an educational environment that offers women with technical experience other, paid opportunities, |
| * | the intimidation by the technical elite of new, young technology users (often women) through technical jargon being tossed about, |
| * | the code of solitary problem-solving that seems endemic to programming specialists: "Struggle on your own to find solutions to technical problems, admit failure (translated as the need to collaborate and ask questions of those who are often solving similar problems) only as a last resort." This code may work against apparent female work habits observed in other work (c.f., Gerrard, Turkel) |
The following data summary is nothing more than 1) a glimpse
into attitudes of major players, 2) a review of the material basis
or economics of these facilities, and 3) an outline of the institutional
relationships that all help define this unique site in ES departments.
It is, however, an important beginning, nothing less than an attempt
to begin assembling an ecological understanding of the process
of integrating communication technologies into ES curricula.
| * | safe, supported work environments on adequate workstations during convenient hours |
Teachers want in addition
| * | "rhetorical" workshops (why this media, when, to what end?) |
| * | support while learning, planning, and implementing TR instruction |
Technicians must provide
| * | secure, controlled, and authenticated access |
| * | planned access that avoids bottlenecks |
Administrators want sustainable systems that consider
| * | amortized budgets |
| * | hiring priorities |
| * | technology support for teachers and staff |
| * | and even |
| * | changing tenure and promotion guidelines |
These are all appropriate concerns. This list illustrates the
need for open-ended, informed negotiations between representative
players involved in the access issue if we are to address the
problems in a manner acceptable to all.
1. What are the primary benefits to students, faculty, and departments that result from their use and support of this facility(ies)?Students better instruction (108) technical expertise (124) collaborative communication experiences (124) critical, evaluation of technology (61) valuable experience teaching fellow students (77) Explanation or other options: (50)
Faculty new instructional techniques (125) better instruction (80) less work (16) professional development (103) potential research projects (69) Explanation or other options: (39)
Departments professional status at the institutional level (68) national level (57) better instruction (91) hiring leverage (36) curriculum development (81) student retention (50) interdisciplinary project development (44) Explanation or other options: (24)
In the "Explanation or other options" responses, the importance placed on collaborative experiences for students, was, frankly, surprising. Students mentioned that
| * | They felt freer to say things to teachers and other students and that it (synchronous conferencing, in one case) was not as threatening as oral discussions |
| * | Through conferencing (asynchronous and synchronous) they were able to focus on "the whole class instead of the teacher and loud students" |
| * | Assignments were more project-centered and collaborative and sometimes included people from around the world |
| * | There was an increase in communication between the teacher and student in and outside of class. |
Implied Benefits
At least three implied benefits surfaced as I reviewed the data from this questionnaire.
| 1) | Students were, in some cases, involved in local technical and pedagogical decision-making within many facilities, and that with a concerted effort students can be made much more aware of the potential that teachers and facilities hope to maximize. |
| 2) | Technology-rich (TR) environments, whether intentionally or not, can serve as a programmatic center piece: as a physical, central meeting area around which communities of teachers and students in a program can coalesce. |
| 3) | At some institutions teachers, since they haven't the time, are forced to encourage students in their classes to become "the experts" and to let them help evaluate a wide range of technologies. These student tutors, facilitators, and evaluators can become instrumental in the operation not only of the class, but of the TR facility itself. |
| One-time or Opportunistic Sources of Income | |
| * | private and public foundation grants |
| * | state and federal grants (i.e., federal Title III grants) |
| * | money from the Information Technology or Central Computing department |
| * | discretionary dollars from deans and provosts |
| * | presidential grants (within the institution) |
| * | university research funds (within the institution) |
| * | long-term, low interest university loans |
| Ongoing Sources of Income | |
| * | student lab fees based on major |
| * | lab fees based on computer-intensive courses |
| * | grants from alumni associations and foundations |
| * | fees from workshops offered at the institution through technical communication departments |
| * | line item budgets from several programs using the same facility (e.g., at one site the technical communication program, composition program, and writing center) |
| * | charge-back systems for individuals and project groups using the facility |
| * | charging systems for disk usage and "extra" printing. |
3. Describe the process for purchasing new equipment and software and for hiring support personnel?
I made a few general observations from responses provided:
| 1) | Students know little about purchasing and hiring processes. | |
| 2) | Purchases of different types occurred through different processes.. | |
| * | Major purchases are funded from outside the department and minor purchases are made locally. | |
| * | Hardware and software purchases are made from different accounts. | |
| * | Existing equipment upgrades may come from local resources while new purchases are made with external moneys. | |
Many facilities seemed to depend on outside or institutional grants
for major purchases and for operational expenses, but departments
usually followed a purchasing process that led through a chain
of command and stopped at different levels of the hierarchy.
Table 4 is a summary of where respondents indicated that the purchasing/hiring
process appeared to stop. If we look at the descriptions of budgetary
process from this vantage point, these institutions seem to be
rely heavily on local administrators for budgetary decisions.
It appears to point toward a much more locally controlled set
of processes than the previous numbers suggested.
Table 4.
Where the Financial Buck Stops!
| Roles | Number who indicated that the financial buck stopped with this player |
| department heads or local computer committees | |
| facility administrators | |
| central computing unit (Information Technology) | |
| a central institutional committee or Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (a program developed and promoted by the American Association of Higher Education) | |
| deans | |
| a vice president or provost | |
| the general fund budget process | |
| or a state-wide process |
Only about 25% the respondents made at least minimal comments about hiring processes (47). Instead most respondents either failed to respond or indicated that they followed hierarchical chains of command similar to those above. Central computing departments and personnel offices, in particular, had a good deal of control over the hiring of staff and student workers. Perhaps more interesting is that students and student workers (largely through committee representatives) often had representation in this process.
We should be trying to understand how the local budgeting process works, when it works, and who traditionally influences that process, along with understanding what alternative bureaucracies exist. All these understandings make it more likely that local agents will effectively intervene in these institutional patterns. But in the case of these respondents, either they were not immediately aware of local financial issues or they were holding their budgetary cards close to their chests, playing each card carefully in the changing economic environments of higher education. Either way, this state of affairs has substantial negative implications for encouraging stakeholders to be active critical, technically literate citizens.
| * | the need for diplomacy and persistence |
| * | a respect for others' concerns and skills |
| * | a sense of informality and easy sociability. |
Respondents described the need for generous, communicative networkers (person to person as well as on-line) who were willing to share resources of all types. I would suggest that these qualities probably need not reside in any one individual.
Most respondents answering this question indicated that committee meetings of many types (local, central, TLTR, elected, and system administration councils) were the most popular venues for doing the collaborative work necessary for maintaining facilities and the networks on which they depend. The second most mentioned mechanism involved some sort of informal schmoozing (via corridor meetings, workshops, coffee breaks, hall talk, e-mailing, informal surveys, memo writing, phoning, and bulletin board posts). Most formal processes were a function of reporting procedures already established at the institution: tenure and promotion processes, curricular reviews, as well as a few institutions that required yearly technology reports and planning documents.
4. What challenges or problems are associated with these relationships? lack of respect _____ between (30) lack of communication _____ between (59) budgetary competition _____ between (51) disciplinary competition _____ between (18) lack of authority (14) Explanations or other challenges: (32)
Lack of respect, ineffective communication, and increased competition appearing in many forms across their institutions:
| * | between disciplines as they try to compete for students, prestige, access to teaching facilities, and technical support |
| * | between Humanities and more technical departments working under different philosophical and educational assumptions |
| * | between small and large departments |
| * | between those TR facilities requesting support for one platform or another (usually Macintosh versus DOS/Windows platforms) |
| * | between local technicians and technicians working for central computing units |
| * | between major players at a site with differing visions of how communication technologies should be used (for instance, distance learning initiatives based on differing models: 1) video broadcast models of learning to hundreds, even thousands of students at a time versus 2) interactive, Internet-based instruction requiring substantial numbers of teacher/student electronic contact hours) |
4. Should additional institutional connections be initiated and maintained? With whom? Why? [Yes] (47) [No] (33) [No answer] (101)
Additional Relationships (summary of suggestions)
Within a program or department
| * | student literary magazine and newspaper production groups |
| * | the underground of "determined users" and other user groups |
| * | departmental writing and critical thinking programs |
| * | departmental committees responsible for yearly computing reports |
| * | student workers |
| * | groups of "early adopters," teachers willing to experiment with new technologies. |
Within the institution
| * | distance education committees |
| * | Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtables (TLTR is a program promoted by the American Association of Higher Education.) |
| * | adaptive technology groups |
| * | other electronically active academic departments |
| * | Writing (and Communicating) across the Curriculum units |
| * | trusted administrators regardless of their positions on computing committees |
| * | all policy making committees that deal with information technologies on campus from the bookstore, to dorm organizations, to privacy and security committees. |
Outside the institution
| * | alumni |
| * | K-12 connections off campus |
| * | other peer English literature, rhetoric, composition, or technical communication programs |
| * | technical support and user groups accessed through the Internet |
| * | corporate sponsors and advisors |
| * | state legislatures |
[The comments that identify why additional relationships should be initiated can be found in Chapter 8 of this dissertation]
Question Set 5. Are students educated about the process of supporting the facility itself?
[Yes] (88 or 46%) [No/no answer] (104 or 54%)
5. Are they involved in
budget decisions? (32) technology decisions? (54) policy decisions? (51) access decisions? (54) instructional decisions? (43) training decisions? (38) Other Involvement? (11)
Explain how they are involved.
[No answer] (93)
To encourage critical, technical literacy practices, we must involve students as well as all other stakeholders in an effort that does more than provide basic technical instruction. To step beyond basic technical instruction, we must provide these folks with access to the processes of decision-making in TR facilities, an effort that many ES programs currently do not normally consider central to their mission. These numbers indicate that at some level students are involved in decision making in approximately half the cases (Theoretical justifications for this paragraph can be found in Chapters 1 & 2 of this dissertation).
5. Do students participate in the process of running the facility?
[Yes] (139) [No/no answer] (52)
5. If so, what are the institutional mechanisms for their education:
no education/training provided (19) classes (16) workshops (16) internships (45) volunteer positions (39) ad hoc committees or groups (18) Other mechanisms: (57)
Of the respondents, 72% report that their facilities make use of students to run the facilities through work-study programs and combinations of volunteer tutor/consulting programs, with internships or assistantships, as technical teaching assistants, and through communication-oriented student organizations. Current levels of student involvement at these institutions is encouraging.
5. How are students selected or how do they self-select themselves for these educational experiences?
[No answer] (71)
Student Uncertainty and Apparent Ignorance
Though they often help run technology-rich labs and classrooms,
however, the enthusiastic students recruited for this study did
not seem to be involved systematically in other important aspects
of facility management and design. I make this claim based on
student responses (and lack of response) to several question sets.
Instead of listing entire question sets, I have summarized in
Table 5 the patterns of responses relevant here. In the first
instance, many students and student workers seemed not to be aware
of goals or assessment processes.
Table 5.
Question 3, 4, & 6 % of students and student workers not responding or providing "Don't Know"answers
| Question 3, 4, & 6 Summaries | % of students and student workers not responding or providing "don't know" answers | |
| 3. | Who handles finances? | |
| 3. | What's the budgetary process? | |
| 3. | Who consultants on budgets? | |
| 3. | Where does the money come from? | |
| 3. | What is the budget breakdown? | |
| 4. | What institutional relationships exist? | |
| 4. | How are these relationships maintained? | |
| 4. | What challenges are associated with them? | |
| 4. | Should additional relationships be initiated? | |
| 6. | What are the facility goals? | |
| 6. | Who develops those goals? | |
| 6. | Process for assessing goals? | |
Without this background information, how might they respond to scenarios reported by a facility administrator?
[Not educating students] is a major problem. Students don't know that they pay a computer lab fee to help maintain labs. The fee is buried in general tuition. There is a movement now initiated by several depts. (math, biology, geosciences) to reallocate computer lab fees into a general fund from which depts. may obtain funds by proposal. If this passes, our open labs will lose funding. Students have no input in the process.
Question Set 6. What are the instructional goals of the facility (general)? Who is involved directly in forming, pursuing, and assessing these goals?
Goals Who's Involved
The most common goals were the following:
1. Developing effective computer-intensive instruction 40%
2. Increasing basic technical literacy 22%
3. Providing access to technology 17%
4. Improving writing and communication skills 15%
5. Staying current with new technology 09%
Responses could also be broken down into these four categories:
Technocentric Goals
Several of the goals were clearly and appropriately technocentric. Notice that three of these four goals were included in the top five, most mentioned goals overall:
| * | improving basic technical literacy |
| * | making technology accessible to as many students and/or faculty as possible |
| * | staying current with an expanding range of new technologies |
| * | providing technical working-world skills for students. |
| * | providing students' with a technical facility over multiple platforms |
| * | developing a multimedia design studio |
Student or User-oriented Goals:
Respondents used TR facilities to improve
| * | critical thinking skills |
| * | a student's sense of audience and the writing process (revision) |
| * | students' fluency or amount of writing taking place in classes |
| * | lifelong learning skills |
| * | collaboration skills, both in the sense of collaborative writing projects and collaborative discussions with local audiences and audiences world wide |
| * | an understanding of the influences that communication technologies have on our working and writing processes so as to graduate thoughtful users of communication technology |
| * | graphic skills and visual literacy |
| * | a sense of the aesthetic and humorous uses of communication technologies |
Facility-oriented Goals
Because of the nature of the questionnaire, some respondents, not surprisingly, were interested in setting goals for effective working environments. These respondents suggested that we try to provide
| * | user-centered consulting, tutoring, or coaching |
| * | a range of writing and publishing opportunities |
| * | social contexts, venues, or environments for communicating with live, responsive audiences through the print publications developed within the facility or via connections to electronic publications |
| * | interactive forums both synchronous and asynchronous in nature |
| * | facilities that allow students to make changes to the lab and classroom environments that fit their working styles |
| * | a pleasant writing environment |
| * | opportunities for students to manage and maintain the communication technologies they were using. |
Departmentally-oriented Goals
There were also goals that focused on the departmental use of facilities as well. That is, respondents wished to
| * | encourage research into innovative uses of technologies |
| * | develop justifications for more facilities |
| * | encourage writing-across-the-curriculum programs through these facilities |
| * | support current degree programs (particularly technical communication and graduate rhetoric/composition programs) |
| * | develop strategies for running facilities efficiently (configuring the space, servers, hardware, software and the network for these sites) |
| * | recruit talented new faculty and staff to support educational goals. |
6. What institutional mechanism is involved in the process of goal formation & assessment?
As a whole respondents indicated that these groups were involved
in forming goal statements:
| No answer, or expressed ignorance | |
| Students | |
| Student workers | |
| Teachers | |
| Technical support people | |
| Facility administrator | |
| Program administrator | |
| Department (in general) | |
| Committees | |
| Information Technology group on campus | |
| Deans |
Only 87 respondents suggested ways that goals were assessed. It was done primarily by committees
| Committees (general) | |
| Department | |
| University/college | |
| TOTAL |
Besides those that claimed that little or no assessment was carried out (11), respondents described several other mechanisms for assessment:
Established Mechanisms
| * | (as part of) newsletter articles |
| * | bi-yearly review of goals |
| * | continual assessment |
| * | current mission/curriculum design process |
| * | employee evaluations |
| * | national accreditation process |
| * | program review process (benchmarking) |
| * | recruitment numbers (students) |
| * | student employment prospects/placement |
| * | tenure and promotion processes |
| * | TQM processes |
| * | users surveys |
New Mechanisms
| * | 5 yr. plans (fiscal and strategic) |
| * | amount of volunteerism |
| * | annual unit computer plans |
| * | central campus computing committee |
| * | consultant meetings |
| * | faculty workshops |
| * | proposals to teach in TR environments & accompanying reports at the end of the term |
| * | informal meetings |
| * | retreats |
| * | staff meetings and workshops |
| * | student-use patterns |
| * | students' requests and complaints, Unit planning |
| * | suggestion boxes |
| * | TLT roundtables |
| Budget Categories | |
| Hardware | |
| Software | |
| Salaries and wages | |
| Expendables |
One caution: the figures supplied by respondents did not indicate clearly whether they were amortizing equipment over its lifetime and budgeting accordingly or simply paying off immediate debts. The cases represented here are likely to be some combination of both scenarios. My experience, however, indicates that amortized budgets are much more reflective of the actual costs of doing business in TR facilities over time.
One thing that is suggested here is that hardware and software considerations frequently receive the bulk of attention in ES scholarship and probably in local departmental discussions as well. This budgetary breakdown, however, points to the expense and importance of human workers in technology-rich environments above and beyond the hardware or software involved in those systems. We may be seeing, in these numbers, one of the reasons for the current and impending "support crisis" that Steve Gilbert of the AAHE has popularized through his many presentations (Gilbert, 1997).
A second observation has to do with the interrelatedness of these budget categories. Software concerns, for instance, have a substantial influence on the functionality of TR facilities. The importance of software choices may not be measured accurately in budgetary terms alone. If we also consider the installation, troubleshooting, teacher training, and off-content teaching (all human responsibilities) that occur, those choices will have a substantial impact on the functionality of our facilities and the amount those facilities pay in salaries and wages.
Again, either the bulk of these players were not immediately aware
of local financial issues or they were holding their budgetary
cards close to their chests, playing each card carefully in the
changing economic environments of higher education. Either way,
this state of affairs has substantial negative implications
for encouraging stakeholders to be active critical, technically
literate citizens.
CONFIDENTIALITY FORM
The following is the confidentiality form that respondents were asked to sign or not. About half signed the form giving me permission to use their names and institutions, but after writing the dissertation, in which I quote extensively from the comments of many players, I decided not to use names and affiliations unless the comments were positive and reflected well on the institutions. I did this because I couldn't predict the long-term consequences of a public, widely distributed document of this sort. In addition, as I put the entire database on-line (on the WWW in fall of 1997?), I will identify institution types and the self-selected roles of participants but withhold individual and institutional names.
CONFIDENTIALITY FORM
Research Participants,
Feel free to use my name and institution in any material you develop as a result of this questionnaire. This includes databases, reports, charts, articles or books that result.
Name to be used: _____________________________________
Institution: _________________________________________
I understand that if I do NOT return this Confidentiality Form or return it blank, that my name and institution will remain strictly confidential but that the information in this questionnaire can be used in subsequent research and publications.
Final Note: If you or any of you colleagues are interested in pursuing the interpretation of this "data" or in following up on the recommendations suggested in Chapter 9 of this dissertation, please contact me at
| Dickie Selfe <rselfe@mtu.edu> |
| 138 Walker |
| 1400 Townsend Dr. |
| Michigan Technological University |
| Houghton, MI 49931 |
| 906-487-3225 |
| Chapter 1 | Technological Dilemmas and Underdetermined Spaces in English Studies Departments | 1 |
| Chapter 2 | Theoretical Agency & the Technology-Rich Facility | 34 |
| Chapter 3 | Method & Methodological Theory | 66 |
| Chapter 4 | Technological Forecasting and Goal Setting | 97 |
| Chapter 5 | The Technological Fix: Challenges in TR Facilities | 135 |
| Chapter 6 | Issues Important to Students and Teachers working in Technology-Rich Facilities | 146 |
| Chapter 7 | The Economic Issues and Dynamics of Departments Supporting Technology-rich Environments | 168 |
| Chapter 8 | Institutional Dynamics | 188 |
| Chapter 9 | Strategies and Tactics for Managing Essential Dilemmas | 206 |
| References | 250 | |
| Appendix 1 | Initial Survey: Call for Participation | 264 |
| Appendix 2 | Technology-related Questions about Computing Facilities | 267 |
| Appendix 3 | Data Summary from 1996 Technology-related Questionnaire | 274 |
| Appendix 4 | Michigan Technological University/ Humanities Department Instructional Computing Goals | 281 |
| Appendix 5 | Humor and Bonding in the Center for Computer-Assisted Language Instruction at Michigan Technological University | 283 |
NOTE: This dissertation will be available on microfilm or paper through Dissertation Abstracts International compiled by University Microfilms International (UMI) Dissertation Services
| 300 North Zeeb RD |
| PO Box 1346 |
| Ann Arbor, MI 48106-1346 |
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http://www.hu.mtu.edu/~rselfe/diss/prematter.html
| Dickie Selfe <rselfe@mtu.edu> |
| 138 Walker |
| 1400 Townsend Dr. |
| Michigan Technological University |
| Houghton, MI 49931 |
| 906-487-3225 |