Rome Wasn't Digitized in a Day - Council on Library and Information ...

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science and use ICT occasionally at home. In their classes they often use simple ICT
applications, such as PowerPo<strong>in</strong>t presentations, email and <strong>in</strong>ternet (Vlachopoulos 2009).
The largest area of support for the use of ICT was <strong>in</strong> terms of comb<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g it with traditional teach<strong>in</strong>g
methods, which 70 percent of the <strong>in</strong>structors believed was possible. To encourage the greater use of
ICT with<strong>in</strong> classical teach<strong>in</strong>g, Vlachopoulos suggested that the designers of <strong>in</strong>novative projects would
need to come up with strategies to attract more ma<strong>in</strong>stream faculty but also cautioned that
adm<strong>in</strong>istrators would have to consider the greatly idiosyncratic nature of teach<strong>in</strong>g with<strong>in</strong> classics
before deploy<strong>in</strong>g new teach<strong>in</strong>g methods us<strong>in</strong>g ICT. As only five of the <strong>in</strong>terviewees considered
themselves as technologically self-sufficient, Vlachopoulos surmised that universities would need to
provide a large amount of technical support <strong>in</strong> order to successfully deploy ICT <strong>in</strong> the classroom. As a
f<strong>in</strong>al thought, he noted that one of the most important po<strong>in</strong>ts for encourag<strong>in</strong>g more ma<strong>in</strong>stream faculty
to adopt <strong>in</strong>novative uses of ICT <strong>in</strong> teach<strong>in</strong>g would be to conv<strong>in</strong>ce them of its efficiency.
Another discovery highlighted by Vlachopoulos as part of his research was that he was not able to
“f<strong>in</strong>d any department of Classics that applies a complete onl<strong>in</strong>e language course <strong>in</strong> its curriculum.”
While some universities that were open to the use of <strong>in</strong>formation technology had designed onl<strong>in</strong>e
activities such as exercises, quizzes and surveys, there was “no complete course delivery with periodic
and stable <strong>in</strong>teraction between the members of a virtual community/classroom” (Vlachopoulos 2009).
An earlier JISC-funded survey by the Higher Education Academy, History, Classics and Archaeology
Subject Center (HCA) 632 pursued similar research and exam<strong>in</strong>ed the use of e-resources <strong>in</strong> teach<strong>in</strong>g and
learn<strong>in</strong>g <strong>in</strong> the discipl<strong>in</strong>es of history, classics and archaeology <strong>in</strong> the United K<strong>in</strong>gdom (MacMahon
2006). This survey made use of an onl<strong>in</strong>e questionnaire, semistructured <strong>in</strong>terviews, and focus groups.
The five most used e-resources were e-mail, websites of their home <strong>in</strong>stitutions, PowerPo<strong>in</strong>t, e-
journals, and other <strong>in</strong>stitutions’ websites. Interest<strong>in</strong>gly, the survey found that there was a significant
difference between the e-resources that were the most frequently used and resources that respondents
reported they were most likely to use, <strong>in</strong>clud<strong>in</strong>g software tools, e-books, digital archives, and virtual
learn<strong>in</strong>g environments. One primary concern of faculty was the accessibility of the onl<strong>in</strong>e learn<strong>in</strong>g
materials. Another <strong>in</strong>sight offered was that faculty often felt that an e-format was not always the best
way of deliver<strong>in</strong>g what they considered to be essential learn<strong>in</strong>g materials for their teach<strong>in</strong>g. Other areas
of concern were digital rights issues, student competence to use electronic resources both <strong>in</strong> terms of
IT skills and discipl<strong>in</strong>ary knowledge, and low levels of <strong>in</strong>stitutional support for us<strong>in</strong>g such resources.
Nonetheless, the study authors reported that the responses to the questionnaire had conv<strong>in</strong>ced them that
e-resources had made a significant impact on teach<strong>in</strong>g practices with<strong>in</strong> the surveyed discipl<strong>in</strong>es. The
two alterations <strong>in</strong> teach<strong>in</strong>g practice that were most frequently reported were an alteration <strong>in</strong> the
learn<strong>in</strong>g materials and the teach<strong>in</strong>g methods used to deliver them. Surveyed faculty also reported a
number of positive and negative impacts of us<strong>in</strong>g e-resources on student learn<strong>in</strong>g. Access to a wider
range of source materials was highly cited as a positive development, particularly s<strong>in</strong>ce it enabled
students to conduct research at an earlier stage <strong>in</strong> their education with both visual and textual
materials, and faculty hoped that this would encourage <strong>in</strong>dependent learn<strong>in</strong>g. Faculty also noted that
electronic resources permitted materials to be customized for the needs of different learn<strong>in</strong>g styles and
accessed both off-campus and all the time. On the other hand, some faculty feared that the rote use of
e-resources would actually deter <strong>in</strong>dependent learn<strong>in</strong>g by focus<strong>in</strong>g on “tra<strong>in</strong><strong>in</strong>g” rather than education,
that students would be discouraged from read<strong>in</strong>g, and that students used the Internet excessively and
632 http://www.heacademy.ac.uk/hca