New Learning Technologies: Promises and Prospects for Women

Discussion focused also on strategies to increase women's access through institutions. For example, lobbying the government to set up financial incentives to technical colleges or university programs to graduate a quota of women in technology fields, or to provide grants to women's organizations for purchase and set up of Internet technology; creating high profile "awards" for the best and worst records of an institution or corporation in retraining women in areas related to technology or in other areas where their work has been eliminated because of technology.

Positive and negative effects of an institution's adoption of technology were expressed. A small activist- based organization in Toronto has grown into a national organization that provides daily updated information from international sources on HIV and AIDS treatment. Others expressed fears that as universities are under pressure to provide practical skills, including technological skills, liberal arts and humanities-based education will suffer.

Areas of most concern identified by this workshop are:

• lobbying various sectors to increase women's entry into fields of new technology (premiums for admitting women into programs, bursaries for individual women, tax breaks for hiring women or taking on female co-op students)
  
• continuing research into gender, learning and technology
  
• sharing information and examples to help women's organizations advance through the use of technology (eg. STEMNET (Science, Technology, Engineering, Math Network), HIV information sharing network, TD Bank retraining of displaced clerical workers

Quality of the Learning Experience (facilitated by Pat Webb)
This workshop group identified elements of successful learning to use as evaluative measures for learning with new technologies. Such elements include: learning within a community, content that is relevant to the lives of students, passionate teachers, respect for individual learners, active participation, a safe environment, learning from role models, having resources and time (to learn on one's own), pleasure and desire in learning, and the opportunity to discover knowledge or information.

Some technologies provide some of these elements. Email can be used to build community, even to circumvent "regular" channels of communication to make contact with those interested in similar issues or research; email also facilitates the participation of learners who may not otherwise speak up in a group, and contact between these learners and the instructor. Students can divide themselves up into study or "chat" groups on the Internet, and can allow for safety and confidentiality by making their groups private. However, technology can also jeopardize the safety and confidentiality of learning (eg. in Women's Studies) by requiring the presence of technicians or the possibility of others "listening in." The caution against "technology for technology's sake" was raised, as was the statement that technology is just the tool and not the end itself.