Reading the statements from all of you has made me think a lot more about the costs of technology than I am typically prone to do. I have been very fortunate to be on the receiving end of a large amount of technology-related funding: in fact, our department has raised close to a million dollars in outside funding for technology initiatives in the past five years, an effort in which I have been a principle investigator. So, I've usually kept my mouth shut when "costs" were discussed. Charlie, I think the first time I really confronted this issue was after reading your chapter in the Selfe & Hawisher anthology Passions, Pedagogies, and 21st Century Technologies (USU Press, 1999). Yes, as you so aptly describe, the costs are real and they can often hurt. Sometimes the allocation of funds is grossly unfair or misguided, such as when administration sees technology as a way to avoid paying the real costs of education: whether that is the cost of bricks and mortar or the cost of instruction. Quality is all-to-often left out of the equation. Tharon's example of the biology department's cookie-cutter approach to online writing instruction springs to mind. I'm sure that such an initiative did not come cheap. Certainly, on the other hand, Tharon can also point to many technology initiatives at Clemson that were extremely successful and resulted in the highest quality of instruction, as I'm sure we all can. That's the gamble and the challenge. We need to both weigh the costs and hold ourselves accountable to results of the highest quality.
– Christine Hult
chult@english.usu.edu