Stanford Today Edition: July/August, 1997 Section: Features: Learning Curve WWW: Learning Curve
Melissa Determan
My introduction to David Fetterman's infectious enthusiasm for
technology began last August, when my fiancé and I flew down from
Washington State to visit the campus. Five minutes into the meeting and
realizing that we would be living in separate states, Professor
Fetterman, my program adviser for education policy and evaluation, gave
us an article he had written on CU-SeeMe, a free Internet video
conferencing program. Before long he was demonstrating how to use the
camera and explaining to us that we could make our own home pages and
communicate with each other.
I had never been very excited about computers. The whole process was
too overwhelming - brain overload! I just stuck to my word
processing and e-mail and I was content.
However, I soon realized Professor Fetterman's goal for his students was
to take us beyond our comfort zone. We spent our first session setting
up e-mail accounts and learning how to access them from home. We spent
the next few weeks "surfing the net." He posted a variety of links to
his home page, and we were able to look at pieces of art from the Louvre
as well as find people's addresses in a national directory. We also
became comfortable using e-mail and listservs - a form of
electronic discussion groups - as tools for our research projects.
Once the e-mail and Internet were mastered, Professor Fetterman
introduced us to html codes, or hypertext markup language: We were ready
to start our own home pages. I was not looking forward to it, but I
hoped for the best. Today I cannot imagine how I managed before and
realize how much easier the home page program has made our lives.
The Internet has become indispensable to be informed for class
discussions. When we studied Ebonics and national standards we looked at
reports in the media on the Web. Similarly, our discussion of national
standards was grounded in the Department of Education's web pages.
One of Professor Fetterman's web pages links us to a variety of
professional associations in education and evaluation, including the
American Education Research Association and the American Evaluation
Association (AEA). In addition, his web pages in evaluation link us to
professional listservs, including the AEA's listserv, the collaborative
participatory and empowerment listserv, as well as research corporations
and clearinghouses.
Our last project has been posting messages in the virtual classroom on
the Internet. There we can post messages and thoughts on a given
subject. It can be accessed immediately by anyone in the class. This is
useful because it keeps the messages all in one folder.
Professor Fetterman has dedicated himself to making his students
successful and he realizes one way to do that is to teach us about
technology. We have become more marketable with our knowledge of home
pages and we have the world at our fingertips with the click of a mouse.
While I have learned a lot about technology this year, I feel I have
learned more about myself. I have learned to venture out of my comfort
zone, not only with computers, but also in discussions in class and
with friends. ST
David M. Fetterman
I have become passionate about the power of technology to help transcend
traditional boundaries of time and space in the classroom. As a tool,
technology can enhance the quality of education. I also believe that it
is incumbent upon educators to make educational technology accessible to
students. A few years ago it became clear to me that being able to work
comfortably in this area adds extraordinary luster to a student's resume
and is another critical skill desired by employers. Such a belief became
one of the bases to create the Policy Analysis and Evaluation Program
six years ago.
From day one I encourage my students to immerse themselves not only in
the current policy issues such as Ebonics, national standards, systemic
reform and educational technology but also in the technology that will
enable them to understand these and other educational policies in a more
efficient way.
I ask my students to conceptualize the program as a three-level chess
game. The first level focuses on content, such as policy analysis and
evaluation matters. The second level is technology, and the third level
is jobs.
The School of Education's M.A. Policy Analysis and Evaluation Program is
designed to produce literate consumers of educational policy and
evaluation material. As policy analysts they learn about the pros and
cons of specific policies, and as evaluators they learn how to determine
the quality, value and cost-benefit of these policies and programs,
provide a measure of accountability and accumulate knowledge about
public policies over time.
During their tenure in the program the students conduct evaluations of,
among others, the Lucile Packard Children's Hospital Pediatrics
Curriculum, the San Francisco Peer Resources Program, the Stanford
Teacher Education Program and the Stanford Women's Center. This hands-on
approach helps them internalize basic evaluation practices and
principles. We bring evaluation clients into the classroom to discuss
their needs and interests, the feasibility of a given design, ethical
considerations, and reporting and dissemination practices. The classroom
becomes a living laboratory in which to explore educational policy and
put evaluation theories and techniques into practice.
Technology is an important resource for any student but it is not
valuable in a vacuum. Teaching about educational technology within the
context of a discipline is sound pedagogy. In our program it is an
indispensable tool to achieve our outcome and underlies much of what we
do. We begin by mastering the basics of e-mail, listservs and surfing
the net. E-mail enables us to communicate outside the classroom during
virtual office hours and links us to colleagues and resources outside
the school and the university. Listservs or classroom distribution lists
are another venue for meaningful dialogue outside the classroom. We
share conversation, notices about schedule changes and employment
opportunities. Surfing the Internet is a qualitative leap beyond e-mail
and listservs. The information available is enormous. We learn first how
to find the most useful sites, then assess the quality of what we've
found, and finally learn what to do with the information. Each student
thus begins a transition from being a consumer to a creator of
knowledge.
They also learn to create their own home pages to post what they have
learned and created on the web. It is a metaphor for the transformation
we make in the program from learning about policy and evaluation to
shaping policy and conducting evaluations. To top it all, we have our
own virtual classroom on the Internet where students post their
assignments and allow peers to post their thoughts about each other's
work.
The third level of the chess game, jobs, is complete by the end of the
year, when policy analysts and evaluators visit the class to share their
work. During this period, students participate in discussions of
relevant topics and concerns, share e-mail addresses and databases with
our guest speakers, and secure interviews and employment. E-mail is also
an instrumental link to prospective employers.
A recent e-mail from a current student confirms the power of these tools
in the transition from school to work: "I now work part-time for WestEd.
They asked me, 'Do you do home pages?' We pulled mine up and they hired
me on the spot. You're right!" ST
A COMPELLING CLASS SEEN THROUGH THE EYES OF PROFESSOR AND STUDENT
Graduate student
Director of the M.A. Policy
Analysis and Evaluation
Program, School of
Education