 Universities, Computers, and the Internet

Public universities
 Confronting a fiscal crisis
 Faculty members are expected to do more with less.

Online Education sensible reaction to fiscal *belt-tightening.( belt-tightening-the introduction of rigorous

reductions in spending)

*Commercial entities ( *means any private legal entity, whether for pro-fit or not-for-profit)
 Be persuaded to invest in such intitiatives
 Believe that the per student cost of such efforts can permit trimming

David Noble notes (2001)

 “The Foremost promoters of [ online education] are the vendors of the network hardware,software, and
content - Apple, IBM, Bell , the cable companies, Microsoft, and the edutainment and publishing
companies Disney, Simon and Schuster, Prentice-Hall, et aI. – who view education as a market for their
wares, a market estimated by the Lehman Brothers investment firm to be potentially worth several billion
dollars”
 Training is about” honing of a person’s mind so that [it] can be used for the purposes of someone other
than that person”(2001)
 For him, self-knowledge through bringing together knowledge and self.
 He suggests, the spread of computer technology and online courses in higher education is likely to reduce
the control faculty have over their work products and their time.

Infrastructure and Content for online education – can be bought and sold; can be made into a commodity.

Does online education offer the same quality as face-to-face higher education?

 This new educational mode mirrors & reinforces the approach to teaching one finds in large lecture classes
in universities throughout the country
 Bromley 1998 - students are largely passive and professor conveys information from the front of the room;
invested with the authority that comes with knowledge .
 Students are not only knowledge recipients, but knowledge producers; demands interaction;
 Noble (2001) not surprising that dropout rates for online distance education are much higher than those
for students enrolled in classroom-based programs

True education is labor intensive and depends on low-student-teacher ratios.

Professors can use electronic mail to prompt discussion outside of classroom hours and can develop websites
with links to sources faculty members want their students to have access to.

Warschauer suggest;

 In the internet age , the ability of students to critically assess their information sources may be more
important than it was when students replied on published sources
 Books are vetted twice: once by publishers and once by the librarians who purchase them.
 *Vetting - w/o vetting , it is more important than ever that students learn to evaluate the credibility and
viewpoint of the sources on which they draw .(* vetting- is a process of performing a background check; process of
thoroughly investigating an individual, company; background review )
 Universities and the commercial entities they contract are likely to own the lectures and materials prepared by
faculty.

Electronic mail and chatrooms is likely to extend and intensify the working of faculty.

Students expect their professors to be available at all times of day and night ; expect near instantaneous
responses to their requests and queries.

 Politics, Civic action, the Internet, and Mobile technology

Norris, 2001; Boyd 2003

 In Politics and organizing for social change contend the Internet will strengthen democracy
 Expanding possibilities for accountability of policy-makers and reducing the economic and other costs
for political participation.
Pessimistic forecast
 Expect politics of/on the internet to reflect and reinforce the existing character of governmental
decision-making and electoral politics
 The internet means more politics as usual, but the technology has created some opportunities for
making political action in a different way than it has generally been made and it gives us tempered
hope.

Reviewing the developments in the use of the internet by: Government agencies, elected officials,
political parties and nongovernmental organizations- recent studies have found that the internet
now figures prominently in political strategies.

Political campaign Websites – contain dedicated candidate profiles and candidate blogs.

Social networking sites such as Facebook, Youtube, and other platforms have provided interesting

and effective uses for political communication, and these trends are now migrating from the West to
to Asia.
Midterm elections (2007) in the Philippines
 conducted against a backdrop of violence and extrajudicial killings
 generated intense international interest.

GABRIELA (General Assembly Binding Women for Reforms, Integrity, Equality, Leadership, and Action)
 the largest women’s organization in the Philippines, won two legislative seats through its GABRIELA
Women’s Party (GWP).
 GABRIELA also secured the most votes in the overseas absentee voting system.
 Win marks a major reference point for women in politics ; it symbolizes the growing power of Asian
women and provides an illustration of the use of new media technologies for electoral campaigning.
 Party’s limited funds restricted its use of mainstream media advertising during the elections, the GWP
turned to internet and mobile technologies.
 GWP was not able to maximize the potential of the internet in its campaign, yet the party was able to
make effective use of mobile phones to reach voters.

Internet and mobile media should not be seen as a replacement for traditional campaign strategies , but
rather as a integral parts of a holistic political communication network ; mobile phone
deserves attention as a tool of personal communication with the *electorate.
(* electorate – all the people in a country or area who are entitled to vote in an election.)
  Social networking sites in Political Campaigning

Social networking sites ( Boyd , 2006 )

 defined as a category of Websites with profiles,
 semi-persistent public commentary on those profiles, and a *traversable
 publicly articulated social network displayed in relation to the profiles
(*traversable – capable of being traversed, or passed over; to go or travel across)

In the West, sites are increasingly important for election campaigns.

William and Gulati (2007)

 discuss the role of Facebook during the 2006 congressional
 *gubernatorial campaigns in the United States and conclude that Facebook played a role in the electoral
process. (* gubernatorial -relating to a state governor or the office of state governor)

Anstead and Chadwick (2008)

 Analyze British politicians’ experimentation with social networking sites following the 2005 UK
elections
 Pointing to developments such as MpURL Membersnet, which provides each Labour Party member with
a blog and enables constituents to participate in discussion forums
 Argue that more research is needed on the national differences between political systems when it comes
to online campaign communication.

Conners (2005)
 Social networking sites are increasingly used in political campaigns, their role in affecting electoral
outcomes is a matter for further research .
 Evidence of positive effects for candidates who engage with these sites.

GWP (GABRIELA Women’s Party ) used the internet and social networking sites as low- cost campaign tools
for reaching young voters and those based overseas.