Virtual Office Hours and Technology in the Classroom

A new report by CDW on how students, faculty, and IT staff at universities use and want to use technology is out. Ars Technica also has a post discussing the findings. The report is called "The 21st-Century Campus: Are We There Yet? Challenges and Opportunities for Campus Technology". Some of the key findings are that nearly all students state technology is critical to their education (might this be because nearly everyone uses a laptop or, at the least, a word processor now?) and that the biggest problem is professorial lack of technological knowledge. The report notes the underuse of Wikis, blogs, podcasts, and web conferencing in the executive summary as important failures. On this point, I agree with John Timmer, an Ars Technica poster, who writes:

Some of the figures highlighted by the report—91 percent of
students don't use videoconferencing, and 73 percent don't use Wikis,
for example—seem almost irrelevant, given that a clear use for these
tools in the classroom isn't necessarily obvious. The whole idea of
videoconferencing seems a bit silly in a context where students are
spending vast sums of their parents' money in part due to a promise of
personalized attention.

The report also notes: "Given technology’s importance and faculty access to tools, campuses should advocate daily use of technology in classrooms." This recommendation seems advocacy of technology for technology's sake, not for any clear pedagogical reason. I love to use YouTube, my course website, shared online document folders, and online grade reporting in my course, but I don't need to use them every day. I think trying to fit in some daily dose of technology would just get in the way.

So, there's a clear bias in the report, but some of its findings I do agree with. One, for instance, that notes a large percentage of students want professors to hold virtual office hours. Timmer argues:

As someone who will be holding office hours later this evening, I
personally don't think the students recognize what they're asking for.
Again, they're paying for personal attention, and there's nothing like
seeing the mixture of bewilderment, embarrassment, and frustration on a
student's face when they still don't get something after the second
time through. Chat may help them avoid the embarrassment part of the
equation, but only at the price of their understanding.

While I take his point that face-to-face interaction is important in learning, there's also something to be said for being more available at more times for students. Months ago I asked my university's IT department to consider providing an IM server. Using AIM, Yahoo, MSN, GoogleTalk, etc. has a number of problems. The first is that it becomes harder to separate one's personal and professional online lives. I would need to start a new account with a responsible-sounding profile name. The second is related in that a university-run IM network would appear more professional and allow integration into other technologies on campus (say, embedding it in a course website, for instance).

For instance, I'm on Facebook, but I don't advertise this fact to my students. If they find me on there and add me as a friend, that's fine (and I try to keep my profile relatively free of political and religious positions, wild party photos, etc. as a result), but it's still a largely informal site. Maybe I'm being too concerned about appearances, but I also don't want to sacrifice the boundary between my leisure time online and my work time, especially since the majority of my leisure time is spent reading blogs.

But, despite these pitfalls, I do think the report is valuable in a few ways. If nothing else, it highlights some technologies that faculty might not think about using, like podcasts, wikis, etc. I know some in my department have experimented with wiki essays. I haven't investigated the results enough to see how successful and valuable the experience has been, but that seems a lot like a more lengthy, technologically-enabled paper showcase and revision workshop. If that's the case, then it could be quite valuable. The report also makes it clear that there's a real desire on the part of students to see technology used. While it's, of course, up to faculty to determine the pedagogical value of these tools, it sounds like some professors could use a nudge to make the leap.

I doubt, however, that's true of many here on HASTAC. So, I'm curious, what uses have others found for technology in the classroom? What has worked? What hasn't? In particular, if things failed or succeeded wildly, why?