English: Submitted by Paul Cantor and Jahan Ramazani

On the whole, the responses were extremely positive and even enthusiastic about the role technology has come to play in the English Department. Several faculty members stressed how helpful the new forms of technology have been to them in their teaching. E-mail has facilitated communication in courses, especially among the students themselves. Technology has also been helpful to faculty members in their own research; they feel that they now have access to a much greater body of information and can get to it with greater speed and ease. Respondents talked about how technology has helped them collaborate with colleagues, both here at the university and elsewhere. Some of the respondents are directly involved in some of the more avantgarde technology initiatives at the University, such as the Electronic Text Center. They stressed that technology has changed their academic lives not just quantitatively but qualitatively: they are now doing kinds of work they never imagined doing before. Several respondents stated that the initiatives UVA has taken in technology, such as the Electronic Text Center, have added greatly to its international reputation. Generally faculty members were happy with the university's commitment to technology, financial and otherwise. Some would like to see the university commit even more money to technology. One respondent wanted to see more classrooms outfitted to handle the most advanced teaching technology.

The faculty respondents did have some reservations about technological developments, though these must be viewed in the context of their overall endorsement of what has been happening. Some expressed concern about budget priorities, worrying that technology was become too big an item in the university budget. One worried that technology was now taking too big a bite out of the library budget, noting that the library no longer routinely buys volumes published by major university presses and the budget for serials is under serious pressure. Several of the respondents expressed concern about the speed of the technological cycle. Software and information systems seem to be replaced every six months, sometimes even faster. The university seems to have been drawn in to the technology cycle of the business world--where bigger and faster always is the answer. But some faculty members questioned whether the academic world should be on the same cycle as the business world. Businesses can afford to replace technology quickly because it usually generates genuine cost savings for them. Such financial savings are not as evident in the academic world, and several faculty members worried that technology is headed toward eating up an ever increasing part of the university budget overall. A few of the respondents also raised questions about the cost in terms of faculty time of constantly replacing software and information systems. The faculty has to relearn systems, like VIRGO, in the library--in return for what often looks like very little or no gain in the usefulness of the systems. The question was raised: is technology responding to the needs of the faculty or is the faculty being asked to respond to the needs of the technology? In other words: what is driving the development of technology at the university? Is it coming in answer to needs actually felt by the faculty or is the university almost mechanically responding to the latest gimmick developed out of Silicon Valley? One respondent raised the issue of privacy as a serious concern with the new technology. Several worried about unexpected ways in which technology might be transforming the university. They were skeptical of notions of "remote learning" and worried that the result of increased technology in the university might be to depersonalize the relations between faculty and students.

Once again, though, these reservations must be understood in the context of overall praise of technological developments, which the respondents generally endorsed. In closing, though, I cannot help raising the issue of whether we inadvertently skewed the responses. Because it was easier, we chose to hold this "conversation" by means of e-mail. All the responses we got were via e-mail. Obviously, therefore, we got responses from people who feel at least minimally comfortable with technology. Had we not let technology make us lazy, and had we tried to hold a real conversation, we might well have gotten at least a somewhat different range of responses. This little story is in itself a lesson in how technology is transforming the university.