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VII. Conclusion
At the beginning of e-learning in the 1990s, it was common to claim that online
distance learning tools had begun a revolution in higher education; more recently,
it has been widely recognized that what has begun is really an evolution. The
fitness of this metaphor has implications. Evolution succeeds by trying and
testing many small, successive modifications. The E-team believes that Augsburg
should find, create, and adopt e-learning tools that pass the test of good pedagogy,
and resist those that merely represent good engineering or impressive technological
leaps. E-learning should become another standard tool in the faculty toolkit
for developing and enhancing student learning opportunities.
At the beginning of our work this past summer, the E-team group read Blackboard
founder Matthew Pittinsky’s book Wired Tower, and paused at its
ominous warning that e-learning may well threaten the very “survival”
of small liberal arts colleges with small endowments and large adult weekend
programs. The subsequent months of reading and research, however, have convinced
us that e-learning represents far more opportunity than it does risk. In fact,
the real risk posed by e-learning is that its agendas and rapidly changing technologies
will be used to drive pedagogy, rather than pedagogy and our own institutional
needs driving technological innovation. We believe that e-learning will be an
excellent servant for Augsburg, but that it would make a terrible master.
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