The 24 articles published here represent responses to a call issued in late 1997 by the Faculty Development Committee of the Indiana Partnership for Statewide Education. Collectively, they constitute an answer to the question posed in that call: "Using Technology to Enhance Learning: How Does It Change What Faculty Do?" Those who responded are incorporating a variety of technologies into their work as instructors, motivated in some cases by their own pedagogical concerns and in others by new directions their departments or institutions are taking.

No longer are "delivery methods" other than face-to-face contact the province continuing education. Increasingly, the boundaries between distance and on-campus education are blurred as the use of mediating technologies gains acceptance in on-campus classes. With the new cachet of "distributed education," increasing numbers of faculty are being called on to explore new ways of working with learners, perhaps even to rethink their understanding of teaching and learning.

Those who submitted the papers published here are working with a wide range of technologies, from development of computer applications to participation in interactive video courses. Their expectations regarding hands-on technical effort vary widely. Purdue University North Central's Aaron Montgomery and the University of Southern Indiana's Betty Hart write from the assumption that other faculty who develop Web course sites will themselves design the layout and create the electronic material, while IUPUI faculty member Pam Jeffries' co-authors are the media specialist and computer program designer who worked with her on a CD-ROM project, Rhett McDaniel and Michael Vaughn.

Some faculty describe an involvement with a particular technology that extends over time, like David Prentice of Indiana State University, whose work with Web courses has been evolving since 1994, and Indiana University's Gabriel Frommer, whose Web-based textbook represents the expansion of computerized quizzes he began using in 1992. Others present their experience with a particular utilization of technology during a defined time period: Indiana University's Helen Sword, for instance, discusses a fall 1997 course offering that explored the ways in which "changing publication technologies affect how we read, write, and produce textual meaning," with the Web as one of the changing technologies concerned.

Whatever the technology, the motive for using it springs in many cases from faculty concern for the quality of student learning. Indiana University's Jeanne Sept's motive in developing a CD-ROM of real archaeological data was "to help students with a wide range of backgrounds and levels of education learn about the authentic excitement of archaeological research." Immersed in her own first experience of creating a course Web page, Ball State's Mary Rizza surveyed her students to determine what features they wanted to see as part of that resource and then worked with university technologists to bring them into being. George Weimer of the University of Indianapolis invested his sabbatical in the creation of an application that would render selections of serious music "intelligible, even enjoyable" to his music appreciation students.

The writers make it clear that technology in and of itself will not produce the improvements in learning they hope for. Many of them discuss the new dimensions of communication required if technology is to be used successfully in instruction. As Patricia McNames of Indiana University Southeast observes, "One of the most difficult challenges that an instructor faces is creating a sense of community among students …. Developing a virtual learning community begins and ends by focusing on people." Indiana University's Jack Cummings gets that kind of focus with the electronic introductions he facilitates among the members of his psychology class using the Web conferencing application Allaire Forums. Bryan McCormick and David Austin, also of Indiana University, write of the specific strategies they employ to enable informal communication with the students who take their courses via video. Indiana University's Bill Brescia, Heike Schaumburg, and Thomas Duffy report on their work with several online conferencing tools and the differing qualities of the electronic conversations that resulted. And Susan Powers of Indiana State University describes the techniques she developed to make it possible for a learning-disabled student to succeed in an online course.

It's clear, also, that these writers recognize that their efforts alone will not necessarily ensure success in integrating technology. Many of the articles point out ways in which cooperation from other areas of the university may be crucial to that success. Judy Ann Serwatka of Purdue University Calumet discusses the importance of appropriate advising, not only in the department offering the course but in any department whose students may enroll, before students sign up for an on-line class.

Bonnie Bolinger of Ivy Tech State College explains that when her Terre Haute campus began an initiative to move not only courses but entire programs to the Internet, it was critical to make online admissions and registration available for students. Judith Halstead and Nadine Coudret of the University of Southern Indiana describe another ambitious undertaking, the migration of all fouth-year nursing courses at their institution to the Internet, and point out the importance in this process of having support personnel to work with faculty and of providing faculty with appropriate trainingand, just as important, with time to share progress and questions with colleagues in their department who were also engaged in the project.

The writers reveal in a number of ways the effects which the incorporation of technology had on their own thinking about their roles in the classroom. Ronald Roat of the University of Southern Indiana, recognized around town by strangers after his course appeared on the local cable channel, discusses the ways in which teaching in a public forum shapes public perceptions of the kind of instruction that goes on in our institutions of higher education. Ball State's Paul Ranieri includes several examples of the ways in which preparing materials to help his distance education students understand the subject matter visually gave him new insights into effective techniques of making abstract information comprehensible and meaningful. Elaine Kleiner of Indiana State University comments on the way in which the use of online interaction tools "[changes] the instructor-student relationship, putting it on a more personable and equal footing."

While virtually every article in this collection includes caveats about particular or general problems that the use of technology poses, most of the writers come down strongly on the side of the significant benefits that can result. Joan Esterline Lafuze and Randall Osborne of Indiana University East and Anna McDaniel of IUPUI describe the inclusion of guest lecturers in their three-site interactive video course and report their students' sense of "feeling privileged to have such guests enter the classroom." They note that "one of the primary strengths of the use of technology ….[is that it] truly opens up the world of opportunity to students." Students in Mark Mabrito's online technical writing class from Purdue University Calumet did more writing than they would have done in a face-to-face class because all communication in the class was itself done in writing, rather than spoken interchange. As a result, he reports, "they [gained] additional experiences in formulating text so that the entire classroom experience became a type of 'prewriting' exercise."

CHIP, the computerized physics homework application that Virendra Saxena and his colleagues developed at Purdue University, ensures that students take homework seriously and also makes it possible for teaching assistants to spend more of their time providing substantive help. Among several innovative World Wide Web projects which Indiana University Southeast's Kyle Forinash, William Rumsey, and Raymond Wisman describe are a computer simulator and a collaborative online biography of women in philosophy, both of which employ the new medium to do virtual work which could not be duplicated in the "real" classroom.

The state of Indiana is fortunate to have on the job in its institutions of higher education the dedicated and creative faculty and staff who did this work and wrote these papers. They are ensuring that the electronic wizardry of our era is not being embraced blindly or adopted without due consideration of its appropriateness and value, and they are incorporating their energy and ideas right along with the technology. Sharing in their experiences of doing so, and in their conclusions on the basis of those experiences, the readers of these papers stand to gain a new perspective on how technology affects the learning process as a whole as well as on how it changes what faculty do.

—Nancy Millichap