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Robert A. Cole (Ed.). Issues in Web-Based Pedagogy: A Critical Primer. Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000. 432 pp. Cloth: $105.00. ISBN 0-313-31226-5.
This book examines two public purposes of higher education-instruction and student learning-and links them directly to emerging technologies. The outcome is a comprehensive collection of essays that describe how teaching in the academy has become reconfigured and technologically driven and how student learning has become distributed and digital, unbound by traditional limitations of time and space. Cavalier (2002) recently posed a fundamental question about the role of information technology in higher education when he asked: "What does the institution want to do with or accomplish through technology?" This question represents an important framework for understanding the central issues imbedded in each of the twenty-seven essays contained in this book.
Analysis of where to locate Web-based pedagogy within the broader transformations of higher education reflects one of three common ways to consider the question posed by Cavalier. Some of the authors argue that technology holds great promise because of its power to transform the academy in ways that could not have been otherwise realized before the advent of the Internet and other digital technologies. For example, McDonald describes how the design of Web-based instruction "is well positioned to realize the opportunities of emancipatory pedagogies" (p. 127) in relation to teaching a course in professional ethics to...