Bridging Technology and Academe

Abstract The current information technology mediums, such as the Internet pose exciting new opportunities for researchers and educators and, at the same time, present numerous questions and challenges. One of the current frustrations of many faculty includes their limited conceptual grasp of how these technologies can benefit themselves and their students. For certain, the Internet as it currently exists, is largely an undefined and unrefined information resource. This ostensible weakness, however, provides early adopters of …

…Usenet. The groups fall into various categories, including computer, news about newsgroups, science, social issues, recreation, talk, miscellaneous topics, and alternative. Newsgroups, except for alternative groups, are created through a voting process that solicits votes on a given topic from the Usenet participant community. There are no restrictions in creating alternative groups, and like listservs, a newsgroup specifically for students in a course can be created with some technical assistance from the academic computing facility.