Tharon Howard, Clemson University
Like other participants in this forum, I'd like to begin my closing statement by thanking Mike for pulling this group together and for posing such challenging questions. I'd also like to thank Michael, Christine, Charlie, and Donna for sharing their insights and expertise; I know you all certainly stimulated my thinking about these subjects, and I'm grateful that you all pulled me along with you in this conversation.
As far as advice for WAC/CAC program directors is concerned, I'd certainly endorse the recommendations that have already been made by the other participants in this forum. The resources Christine listed and the examples of "best practices" Donna and Michael cited certainly deserve closer study. So rather than trying to add to what is already an excellent list, I'd like to join Charlie's concerns about paying attention to our motivation for integrating technology into WAC/CAC programs in the first place.
My advice to program directors is to build your program on the foundation of bridging the digital divide and to start soon. Now, I don't mean to trivialize the discussion by sounding like Nike's "Just Do It" commercial, but I don't think many people realize just how urgently we need to address ourselves to this problem nor do we realize how well positioned WAC/CAC programs are to address it.
In September of 1997, the US Commerce Department issued a report titled "America's New Deficit: The Shortage of Information Technology Workers." The report warned that the growing shortage "could hinder the nation's economic growth" and it estimated that 190,000 information technology jobs are going unfilled nationally. And more recently in June of 2000, the Commerce Department issued another report entitled "Digital Economy 2000" which stated that they had actually underestimated their "optimistic" growth projections. One statistic from the Executive Summary of the report is particularly revealing; stating that "By 2006, almost half of the U.S. workforce will be employed by industries that are either major producers or intensive users of information products and services." It also states that "Wage gaps between workers in IT industries and all other workers continue to widen" (see http://www.ecommerce.gov/ede/summary.html).
The "Digital Economy 2000" report also found that worldwide Internet access increased 80% from 1999 to 2000 reaching an estimated 304 million people. It found that in the last 3 years there has been a 10-fold increase in the available content on the World-Wide Web so that today there are over 1 billion discrete web pages available with over 1 million new pages being added every single day. In terms of the U.S., the National Telecommunications and Information Administration's report "Falling Through the Net: Defining the Digital Divide" found that 49% of U.S. households had at least one PC, and it found that Internet access among U.S. households increased from 26% in 1998 to 43% in 2000 (see http://www.ntia.doc.gov).
My point here should be pretty obvious; if you're a WAC/CAC program director and you haven't begun the process of integrating technology into your programs, then you risk putting your students on the wrong side of the digital divide. Healthcare services, government processes, educational opportunities, business products, and even good old-fashioned entertainment activities are going online at a rate that has caught even the most optimistic technophiles among us unaware.
You have to start now if you intend to expect to take any responsibility for helping your students to bridge the digital divide. Consider the fact that it will probably take a year to put an effective and informed technology program in place. That means that by the time a freshman entering your program graduates from a traditional 4-year degree program, almost 50% of the U.S. workforce will already be employed by industries that require information technology skills.
Charlie's right when he warns that we must be concerned about the costs of information technology, but if you're a program director, you can use the same arguments I've used here to convince your administration to begin providing the resources you'll need to get started. But if you expect to remain relevant to the education of people who will work in the "digital economy," then you have little choice but to start. Indeed, start now.
– Tharon Howard
tharon@hubcap.clemson.edu