Customer Reviews

The University of Google

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Tara Brabazon's book "University of Google" (2007) provides a complete discussion of the issues surrounding the push in higher education towards online delivery of course content. Brabazon discusses how university administrators have been economically pressured to increase revenues and reduce the cost of faculty through the use of online courses. She provides numerous literature references arguing that the primary mission of universities, namely a student's education, has and will continue to suffer using this approach. While there is a significant discussion of the advantages of online tools, such as Google, there is also a thoughtful argument presented that states, "Google is facilitating laziness, poor scholarship, and compliant thinking." Brabazon attempts to provide some remedies to this push toward online education, but I wish that she would have explored this more with additional concrete examples of alternatives to the use of the online approach. Most of the examples she does provide come from the Arts and Humanities but can be applied more broadly across the spectrum of disciplines in higher education. Her argument that students miss out on the non-textual cues (i.e. other student responses, smells, tastes, etc.) by viewing an online lecture rather than a face-to-face lecture is compelling. I came away from reading this book inspired to focus on improving my own lecture skills and enhancing interactions with students in the classroom. I agree with Brabazon's assessment that "students are not consumers", and education is most effective when rigorous, challenging, and at times painful. Only when students are challenged to the brink are they truly transformed into well educated, literate, critical human beings.