9 . University educators largely think highly of the wonders of teaching through technology, but skeptics question whether something is lost when professors and lectures rely too heavily on electronic media or when interaction with students takes place remotely — in cyberspace rather than the real space of the classroom. Hans Ulrich Gumbrecht, the Professor of Literature at Stanford University, is one such skeptic. “I think this enthusiastic and sometimes childish and blind pushing toward the more technology the better, the more websites the better teacher, and so forth, is very dangerous — is, indeed, suicidal,” he indicates.

However, Gumbrecht warns that there are few, if any, studies either supporting or rejecting the hypothesis that traditional ways of teaching are superior to teaching via the Internet. He says that he could point only to his “intuition that real classroom presence should be maintained,” and emphasizes the need for educators to examine critically where technology serves a useful pedagogical (教学法的) function and where it does not.

Yet, Gumbrecht allows that, for courses in which knowledge transmission is the sole purpose, electronic media probably can do the job well enough. Indeed, given the 20th century’s knowledge explosion and the increasing costs of higher education, using technology as opposed to real-life teachers for the transmission of information is probably inevitable, he admits. In any case, knowledge transmission should not be the core function of the university, he maintains, noting that universities should be places where people confront open questions, places for “intellectual complexity” and “riskful thinking”.

“We are not about finding or transmitting solutions; we are not about recipes; we are not about making intellectual life easy. Confrontation with complexity is what expands your mind. It is something like intellectual gymnastics. And this is what makes you a suitable member of the society.”

Moreover, discussions in the physical presence of others can lead to the intellectual innovation. “There’s a qualitative change, and you don’t know how it happens. Discussions in the physical presence have the capacity of being the catalyst (催化剂) for such intellectual breakthroughs. The possibility of in-classroom teaching — of letting something happen which cannot happen if you teach by the transmission of information — is a strength.”