• Abstract
• Japanese abstract
• Notes
• Survey Data

Sven Birkerts begins his recent book The Gutenberg Elegies with a belletristic cri de coeur:

Over the past few decades, in the blink of the eye of history, our culture has begun to go through what promises to be a total metamorphosis. The influx of electronic communications and information processing technologies, abetted by the steady improvement of the microprocessor, has rapidly brought a condition of critical mass. The slower world that many of us grew up with dwindles in the rearview mirror. The stable hierarchies of the printed page--one of the defining norms of that world--are being superceded by the rush of impulses through freshly minted circuits.1

As a literary critic, Birkerts laments the changing landscape of print culture. His concerns are not connected solely to literature, however. They are intensely interdisciplinary. Faculty in history departments are pondering the same transitions posed in The Gutenberg Elegies. The problem with Birkerts' jeremiad and many coffee break conversations is that they are impressionistically prophetic. History faculty include their Pollyannas with their Jeremiahs, of course, but much of the discussion remains anecdotal. While the end of the world is decried and the dawn of a new age is proclaimed, few attempts have been made to chart what changes are actually occurring.

In order to help foster a more informed and productive discussion about the practices of history in the electronic age, the American Association for History and Computing (AAHC) conducted a survey of computer usage among American college and university history professors during the summer and fall of 1998.2 The survey was distributed through H-Net and other historical discussion lists and was mailed to the chairs of the approximately 660 departments listed in the American Historical Association Directory of History Departments and Organizations in the United States and Canada. 485 history instructors from 101 American colleges and universities responded. Replies were evenly distributed across rank and degree of technical proficiency. (See data below)

As the full results of the survey reveal, computer technology has gained an established place in the practices of history. Every history instructor who returned the survey is using electronic mail for scholarly communication, and ninety-three percent of the respondents report using computers for research. Problems of access for faculty also appear to be lessening. Every respondent indicated that they can now use the Internet from work. Ninety-eight percent of full-time faculty reported having a computer in their office, with ninety-one percent of those instructors stating that their office computer is connected to the Internet. It must be noted, however, that access for students remains problematic, and community college faculty, adjuncts, and part-time instructors still lag far behind.

The survey also reveals the danger in using unitary metaphors like "the electronic revolution" to describe the process of change occurring in American colleges and universities. Respondents' remarks show that there is great individual and institutional variation in how technology is being applied to the practices of history. The detailed comments following each of the survey questions clearly demonstrate that neither the dangers nor the promise of computer technology can be adequately addressed through broad comments about general trends affecting the profession. To invert Georges Lefebvre's famous injunction about the French Revolution--the computer revolution is not a block.

There are, of course, some shared experiences that are reflected across the entire range of surveys. Experimentation with technology in the history classroom, albeit in widely divergent forms, is a central theme. Eighty percent of those surveyed reported using technology in teaching, and forty-six percent state that they are now requiring their students to use email for course purposes. Forty-four percent also have begun requiring students to use the Internet for research exercises, papers, and seminars, though twenty-three percent of this later group expressed concerns about the reliability of information on the Internet.

To address the problem of quality many faculty report trying a variety of pro-active experiments. Fifty-four percent of the respondents have begun devoting class sessions to technical instruction and workshops. Many are offering students specific instruction on how to find and evaluate materials on the Internet. Respondents are also turning to printed scholarly guides to Internet resources, such as The History Highway, and to on-line guides, such as The Argus Clearinghouse, the OCLC Internet Cataloging Project, and the Encyclopedia Britannica's E-Blast to direct students to reliable materials.3

Instructors are also creating their own web sites to help guide students to dependable on-line materials and provide other useful resources. Forty-seven percent of the respondents stated that they have developed their own course sites. This measure masks great variety, however. For most of the faculty in this group, the creation of a web site means primarily making a copy of their syllabus and schedule available on the web and directing students to several web sites relevant to the course. A smaller group of faculty (who report greater technical support at their university or some training in computer technology) is producing more complex web resources for their students. The materials mentioned traverse a wide technical range from annotated course readings to interactive tutorials and sophisticated historical databases.

A significant number of faculty are also requiring students to create as well as use on-line multimedia materials. Twenty-seven percent have begun asking students to produce individual web sites for their courses, and twenty-one percent require or encourage students to develop group web projects. Many courses are now meeting at least occasionally in computer labs to work with or on multimedia materials. These projects are most frequently mentioned as part of upper-level history courses, but a number of faculty are encouraging students to create multimedia projects even at the introductory level.

Anecdotal comments indicate that there are still many history instructors across all ranks and institutional types who are uncomfortable with the use of multimedia projects in teaching history. The rationale most often given is that requiring multimedia projects necessitates greater student preparation. The other side of this complaint is the second most repeated explanation: "teaching technical skills at the expense of historical content and methodology is a calculus of dubious value." Similarly, a number of respondents question the benefits of adopting technology relative to the high costs in purely economic terms. One representative respondent poses the question: Which leads more directly to good history teaching--"a new computer lab or a new full-time history professor?"

Importantly, a number of those already actively using multimedia projects and materials in their courses also question the benefits to learning outcomes. These complaints come primarily from faculty at community colleges and state universities, especially from those at schools moving aggressively to develop distance learning programs. These instructors echo concerns about students being poorly prepared to use computers in the classroom. They raise fundamental questions about the success of distance learning for early undergraduates in history. More than twenty instructors anecdotally claimed that participation and enthusiasm dropped in direct correlation to the amount of hours spent on-line in a course. One professor who has conducted a quantitative comparative study of his distance and traditional versions of an otherwise identical course, reported that use of the Internet and multimedia projects negatively affected student interest, communication with the instructor, and performance.

Reflecting these anxieties, seventy-three percent of faculty worry that their present use of technology is inadequate or poorly conceived. They express concerns about outdated technology, insufficient training, lack of release time, student resistance, negative impact upon tenure and promotion decisions, and unforeseen or negative effects upon the quality of their teaching. A number of faculty also reiterate deep concerns, already being widely heard, about how technology is being implemented and used on their campuses. Thirty-five percent of the respondents claimed that they were required by their institutions to use the Internet for their courses. Some of the mandatory uses indicated included offering state-required "technology across the curriculum" courses, putting syllabi on the Internet, making course enrollment and grade records available on-line, and even using technology provided by a specific corporation as mandated by a partnership agreement. Eleven percent of the respondents specifically noted as their central concern the lack of faculty involvement in planning and policy making. More generally, sixty-five percent claimed to be dissatisfied with their institutions' technology policies, initiatives, and plans for the future. The most common complaint is that "the administration is imposing technology without consulting faculty" and with "little regard for its impact upon teaching or learning." Others worry that the human dimensions of the profession are being devalued and disregarded. They argue that the union of technology and history will exacerbate the job crisis, further commercialize and dehumanize the profession, and increase the use of adjuncts, part-time instructors, and graduate students. Collectively, these complaints illustrate many of the central issues which the profession must continue to address if technology is to be sensibly and productively incorporated into the practices of history.

Overall, however, the spirit of the surveys is not pessimistic. As the fuller figures and selected comments indicate, there is an alert recognition throughout the profession that the Internet and World Wide Web are changing, or hold the potential to change, every dimension of history--from the structures of historical knowledge to the paradigms of pedagogy. The criticisms which resonate in the responses demonstrate a pervasive desire by faculty to actively direct the courses these changes will follow. The current state of history reflected in the surveys can, perhaps, be best described as cautiously optimistic experimentation.

As appropriate for such a period of uncertain transition, there is no consensus about where the discipline is headed. The experiments do suggest the development of new modes of historical interpretation, explanation, and instruction, but the story will likely be one of increased options. Just as television has not replaced radio, and modern scientific thought has not supplanted metaphysics, well-established practices of history will not disappear, rather they will most likely find novel and productive supplements through evolving computer technologies. The American Association for History and Computing, the American Historical Association, the Organization of American Historians, and other professional bodies must not stand idly by and allow market forces or ironic detachment to determine future disciplinary practices. Historians must take advantage of the Internet's power to foster community so that we may collectively shape the forms history will take in the next millennium.

Notes (Return to Index)
(Please note: the ordinal numbers below are links back to the appropriate point in the text)

1. Sven Birkerts, The Gutenberg Elegies: The Fate of Reading in the Electronic Age (New York: Fawcett Columbine, 1994) p. 3.

2. Portions of this summary appeared previously in Dennis A. Trinkle, "Computers and the Practice of History: Where Are We? Where Are We Headed?,"
Perspectives 37:2 (February 1999): 31-4.

3. Dennis Trinkle et al., The History Highway (New York: M.E. Sharpe, 1998). The Argus Clearinghouse: http://www.clearinghouse.net/index.html; The OCLC Internet Cataloging Project: http://orc.rsch.oclc.org:6990; and the Encyclopedia Britannica's E-Blast: http://www.ebig.com.

Dennis A. Trinkle <dtrinkle@depauw.edu>
Executive Director, American Association for History and Computing
DePauw University