Computer-mediated Communication in the Ideal University

Computer-mediated Communication in the Ideal University Peter Theodore, Southern Illinois University Edwardsville, 2002

The following is an excerpt from a dialogue between Architect (in the general sense of one who brings something into being) and Philanthropist. Philanthropist donated the money to found a university, which Architect was commissioned to create.

Architect: If we are pursuing knowledge, and we recognize our individual fallibility, then we look for ways to make knowledge, if not absolutely certain, at least more solid. I think the dialectical process demonstrated by Plato in his Dialogues is similar to what I am getting at here. We test our knowledge by entering into mutually challenging conversations. We find the flaws in each other's thinking, and, after a while, we have some ideas that have held up pretty well. They seem right to us, and when we try them out in dialogue with others they continue to seem right.

Philanthropist: What about the lonely voice that is ahead of its time?

A: Knowledge is like anything else. Balance is necessary. As Whitehead said, "There is a ditch on both sides of the road." We have to be on guard against "group-think" as well as individual error. One way to do that, I think, is to allow as much freedom of thought and expression as possible. If an individual in the community has a radically new idea, we don't try to squelch them or discourage them from expressing it. On the contrary, we want them to express it, to get it out into the ongoing conversation that is the life of the university where it will be tested by the thoughts and responses of others.

P: Then there are no ideas that you would want to discourage?

A: No, there are some ideas that would be so offensive, so troubling, so contrary to the morals of the community, that we would probably discourage them in some way. Nothing of that sort has come up, but I imagine it could. Generally, though, I think the solution to bad speech is more speech. I have faith that truth will tend to win out if the conversation is allowed to be open and free. Those people we think of when we think of really offensive ideas-the Nazis for example-one of the first things they did was to try to control the content of the conversation. They burned books.

P: What do you do here to nurture the conversation?

A: Ideally, everything we do is aimed at nurturing the conversation, but one thing in particular that I'd like to tell you about is what we've been doing with technology.

P: Computer technology?

A: Yes. Computer-mediated communication, to be precise.

P: It seems to me that computers interfere with communication, that they are diminishing the conversation. People interact with their computers instead of each other.

A: That can happen. On the other hand, computer networks can provide powerful new ways for people to communicate with one another. Let me give you an example that one of our professors told me about recently.

We have an introductory humanities seminar for first-year students. A group of about a dozen students meets with a professor as a class, and four such classes make up a cluster. Each class in the cluster is taught by a different professor. The four professors meet together to plan and discuss the seminar, and all four classes are connected by a computer-mediated bulletin board discussion. Each class also has its own individual bulletin-board discussion for ongoing conversations relevant to just that group.

The professor who told me the story teaches one of these classes, and a few weeks ago his class was engaged in looking at the relationship between the philosophical and religious ideas of a culture and the kind of art that culture produces. They were examining such things as the influence of Zen on Japanese sumi-e painting and the influence of Greek mythology on classical Greek sculpture. On her way back to the dorm after a class discussion about the Greek myth of Perseus, one of the students apparently began to think about the emphasis of fate in the myth and the serenity she has seen in the faces of Greek statues. When she got to her room, she logged onto the bulletin board shared by the cluster and posted a message. I can show you the message. Though only the students in the cluster, and the four professors, can post to this particular bulletin board, it is one of many we have that are publicly available for reading. Here's a terminal-this will just take a second . . .

Here it is.

It just occurred to me today that so many of the Greek stories we have talked about in class emphasize the inevitability of fate, and that the faces of Greek statues seem so still and calm. I wonder if the sculptors were trying to portray a quiet strength that accepted whatever life threw one's way. What do other people think?

Between the time she posted that message and the next class meeting, all of the other students read what she had to say, and several of them posted responses. One of these students included a link to a Web site in his response that had pictures of some Greek sculpture they had not yet been shown in class. The pictures on the Web site seemed to provide additional support for her idea. The four professors read this discussion during their planning meeting, and decided to bring some selections from the Stoic philosopher, Epictetus, to the next session of each of their classes. Though Epictetus is a later figure and could not have been an influence on the art they were studying, the professors thought that the time had become ripe to introduce the Stoics and discuss whether classical Greek ideas about fate may have had a long-lasting effect on the history of thought. The professors entertained the possibility of assigning Thomas Hardy's fatalistic novel, Tess of the D'Urbervilles, later in the semester. Last I heard, they're still considering it.

Since the student posted her message in the common bulletin board, the discussions in the next meetings of all four classes had that message and the bulletin board discussion that had followed it as a starting point, and moved on from there. A connection to the Internet in the classroom enabled each class to bring up the Web site that had been introduced in the bulletin board discussion and consider some of the images there in relation to what had been going on in class.

Not only was the discussion, and thus the content, of all four classes enriched, but the bulletin board provided for a more collaborative learning process. In this case, the student who posted the original message and the one who responded with a link to a Web site both had a hand in setting the direction of the class.