Vision

In universities, the technologies of chalk, pencils and books have strongly influenced our ways of representing and sharing knowledge. Now information technology promises to change our ideas of what knowledge is and hence how education is practiced. But if we introduce computing without rethinking interaction of technology and behavior, we will achieve disappointing results. We will simply make more efficient educational processes that were developed decades, if not hundreds of years ago. Both teachers and learners will need to change to gain the most from new, powerful information technologies.

Experimentation is necessary, because few of us can foresee the complex interaction of technology with behavior and culture. Predictions concerning the interaction of technology and work seem inevitably to prove incomplete, inadequate or simply wrong. Even the current impact of information technology on organizations, which is amply documented, may not serve as a reliable guide to our future, because culture, institutional beliefs and practices may deflect technology from its intended use.

The Symonds facilities enable Rice community to meet the challenge of technology more with invention than prediction. The labs are environments for learning and investigation where faculty and students can test new ways to acquire, manage, and share knowledge within the complex social webs of academic life.

The labs already have loosened the mental constraints of current practice and enabled some of our faculty to see new ways of teaching and learning. Further experience will enable us to move the University to truly innovative configurations of people, processes and technology.

G. Anthony Gorry, Friedken Chair of Management in the Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Management, Director of Center for Technology in Teaching and Learning (CTTL), and former Vice President for Information Technology at Rice. Gorry directed the design and building of the Symonds I Lab.