Reviewing CW2K: It's 2001, and We're Off To Teach the Wizard: A Dialogue about (and with) Asynchronous Learning Networks

Texas Tech's Fred Kemp, Susan Lang and Becky Rickly presented and analyzed some of their email thinking about TOPIC and faculty development. It was so early on Saturday that there is no session designation for this presentation. The grit of the session was figuring out how "hybrid" works when you offer Web based resources that need a strong faculty "buy-in." Fred Kemp described resistance from some English Department members as "an audible humming of bad vibes" and overheard one department member claiming that Fred would have to pry his cold, dead hands from a book. Becky Rickly framed the issue with her desire to see instructors use TOPIC supportively without feeling trapped into using it. Her goal for the the Web resource is that it help to provide "consistent, positive experiences" but her problematic analysis of TOPIC may have been a bit myopic about some of the difficulties. Susan Lang emphasized her desire to "blend the best of what we can do in all instructional phases." There was some good audience discussion about training teachers to like teaching with technology. The session underscored our need to understand faculty resistance to innovation in pedagogical, institutional and human terms.

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