We are living in an age when technology pervades virtually every facet of our lives. In recent years, there has been an enthusiastic push to make use of Intelligent Technology (IT) for the enhancement of teaching and learning because of the advantages derived. There is, however, the danger that in their eagerness to cash in on IT usage, teachers may be tempted to employ IT under circumstances in which it would be totally unnecessary for, or perhaps even detrimental to, teaching and learning. What is desired is a balanced view of IT and its applications.

Uses of IT

The numerous advantages of IT are pretty obvious. For example, by simply accessing a website, information can be obtained at the click of a mouse, saving the student much precious time walking to the library to reserve or refer to a book. IT nowadays also provides easy access to materials through, say, e-books and e-journals. Online discussion forums between lecturers and students are also possible.

IT is able to perform many functions that the lecturer is unable to fulfill. For example, it can be used to demonstrate animated examples of certain machinery (in the case of engineering), without which the lecturer would need to arrange for the students to visit a mechanical plant. In the absence of the lecturer after office hours, students can still communicate with him or her, as well as with each other through IT facilities. This enables education to free itself from the confines of the classroom.

Nowadays, there are online courses made available to interested parties from all walks of life, eliminating the need for students to travel to a specific location for lectures. They can even be in other countries. For instance, in Europe such courses attract students from many other European countries. In the US, MIT is trying to put all their courses online so that students from all over the world can subscribe to them under a distance-learning scheme. The students however may need to go to MIT once in a while when it is really essential or the lecturers may need to go overseas to teach their foreign students occasionally. Such online courses are also ideal for very large classes that are too huge to fit into a lecture theatre. Students can access online lectures at their own convenience and learn at their own pace. Moreover, it allows for the inclusion of additional material and animated demos, and may end up more interesting for the students. Even remote-controlled practical laboratory sessions are possible with IT and these have been conducted in some advanced countries.

With IT, lectures can be repeated in exactness, and teachers and students can easily review and evaluate such and such a lecture at will. PowerPoint presentations are permanent records that are convenient to edit and send via the Internet. Video conferencing saves money and time in travelling and globetrotting on the part of the participants. There are so many other uses of IT—the list is almost endless. So, does this imply that the lecturer is redundant?

Limitations of IT

Despite the fact that PowerPoint presentations are extremely popular and attractive, many top universities in the US discourage their use for teaching and learning. One of the reasons is that the lecturer’s train of thought could be restrained by the prepared presentation, hindering flexibility and on-the-spot reaction to changes in circumstances. Students have often complained that such presentations are too fast for them to follow and assimilate. A certain amount of personal touch and sense of ‘live performance’ is also lost. Lecturers themselves admit that by flashing facts and figures using PowerPoint presentations actually squeezes too much of the syllabus into a short space of time. Using transparencies on an overhead projector has a more human touch and students can follow the lecturer as he changes transparencies. Moreover, PowerPoint presentations take ages to install and are practically useless during an equipment or power failure, requiring a backup on transparencies in any case.

Although websites are generally powerful tools for gathering information, not all websites are well designed or user-friendly. Those that are complicated end up wasting the surfer’s precious time. Students sometimes complain that such and such a website is more confusing than educational. As for web casting of lectures, the impression that students get when using these is that they feel that they are communicating with a machine rather than with a person. It has been found that distance-learning students from other countries or other universities accessing online courses tend to drop out more frequently than those within the same university for the simple reason that they just do not feel part of the learning community.

Conclusion

All IT programs are limited in scope, and therefore are inflexible beyond their capacity. Judicious use of IT has its advantages. Still, it is up to man, who created IT, to know how far it can be harnessed for the purpose of teaching and learning.