ABSTRACT
In fall 1994 , I agreed to allow students at the University of Nevada, Reno (UNR) to enroll, via distance-education technology, in a feminist theory course I planned to offer students at the University of Nevada, Las Vegas (UNLV) in spring 1995. I did so, in large part, to find out whether dis tance-education technologies would allow for the kind of participatory, collaborative learning that characterizes the women’s studies classroom, and I reported my (largely negative) findings in an article published in Feminist Teacher in winter 1995.1 Since my article was published, I have received many requests from other women’s studies instructors and pro gram administrators to participate in discussions about how to adapt the technologies associated with distance education to achieve pedagogical goals defined by women’s studies practitioners rather than to adapt women’s studies instruction in response to administrative demands for cost containment. (As I noted in my article, educational administrators are in creasingly attracted to technologies associated with distance educatione.g., cable television, compressed video, computer bulletin boards, websites-not only because they see them as a way of serving an increas ingly diverse student population but also, perhaps even more compellingly, because they believe these technologies will enable them to cut costs.) At tendance was high at a workshop entitled Virtual Women’s Studies: New Ideas in Electronic Education, which Candace Collins of Arizona State University (ASU) and I facilitated at a women’s studies program adminis trators’ conference sponsored in February 1997 by ASU’s women’s studies program, and there were six “technology” sessions at the 1997 annual National Women’s Studies Association (NWSA) conference in St. Louis, including Women’s Studies in Cyberspace, in which again I joined Candace and Annis H. Hopkins, also from ASU, in sharing with conferees our
experience of using distance-education technologies to teach women’s studies. Once again I found myself interjecting a discordant note into my colleagues’ generally rhapsodic celebration of the potential of distanceeducation technologies for feminist education.2
