An Artist Unexpectedly Finds Herself Transformed Into a Technology Advocate

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

But because she believes that computers can help students understand difficult topics -- such as the history of the civil-rights movement -- she has spent countless hours building World-Wide Web pages, giving presentations on how technology can revolutionize teaching, and urging campus administrators to make sure that members of minority groups aren't left out of the technological revolution.

Ms. Roy, a professor of English at Virginia Tech with an infectious laugh and seemingly boundless energy, gives instructional technology a friendly face -- perhaps because she tries to focus on her teaching and her art rather than on simply extolling the virtues of high-tech gadgets. Though she challenges professors to try technology, she says she understands why some of them are nervous about the radical changes that computers can bring to academe. Technology isn't the answer to everything, she acknowledges. It should be used only when it helps students.

She delivers her messages in poetic cadences, and she isn't afraid to go out on a limb to make a point. Yet she wonders why she gets invited to give so many speeches at conferences sponsored by academic-technology organizations like CAUSE and EDUCOM and by institutions like the University of Wisconsin, among others. Other poets speak to small groups of fans in the back of bookstores; Ms. Roy speaks to crowds of a thousand or more in darkened hotel ballrooms with her own image towering behind her on a giant television screen.

Her own story began in England 42 years ago. Her father, a Jamaican artist and novelist, worked in a Brillo factory. He died when she was 5 years old. She describes a childhood of poverty in which her mother, who was from England, once wrote a poem to the gas company to persuade it not to cut off the family's service. The poem, which evoked the mother's fear of seeing the meter man, persuaded the company to reduce the bill.

Ms. Roy vividly tells of a woman with a remarkably similar childhood in Lady Moses, published this year by HarperCollins.The novel traces both love's power to overcome prejudice, and the consuming pain of loss.

Memories of her mother's struggle keep Ms. Roy going when she finds writing tough. "I better not suffer from writer's block -- I have no excuse," she says with a laugh.

Writer's block doesn't seem to be a problem at the moment. She is now working on her second novel, which she expects to finish later this year.

Ms. Roy graduated from King's College, in London, and planned to devote her life to teaching. At 20, she moved to Sierra Leone, where she taught at a Roman Catholic girls' school for two years before beginning graduate work in poetry at the University of Arkansas. After getting a master's of fine arts there, she settled at Virginia Tech, where she has spent most of the past 13 years. In addition to teaching and writing, she was associate dean for outreach, curriculum, and diversity from 1993 to 1996.

She got her first exposure to educational computing back in 1993, at a university-sponsored workshop. Virginia Tech lured her and other professors to the session by promising them new computers for their offices. "Even if you didn't know how to use it, the computer looked awfully good on your desk," she jokes.

The demonstrations she saw intrigued her, however -- especially a digital video of the famous "I Have a Dream" speech by Martin Luther King, Jr. Technology let the users skip to any part of the recording or listen to passages repeatedly. "It occurred to me that this technology, if handled correctly, could give students some sort of power over their own history," she says.

Ms. Roy thought of the students in her black-studies class, and of "how overwhelming, especially for African-American students or for those of us who are people of color, the whole civil-rights movement was." It's painful, she says, to look at images of segregated lunch counters and of peaceful marches being broken up with water hoses. Computer technology could help students deal with such material, she thought. "They could run it backwards if they wanted. They could edit things out. They could bring them to the fore and discuss them. In other words, they could manipulate the material in ways they never could with a textbook."

She also saw that technology had the potential to enrich professors' communication with students, especially those who felt reluctant to speak in class. Again, she saw a way of helping minority students in particular.

As a student herself, Ms. Roy remembers, she took care in public discussions because of her race. "I often felt I did have to speak well, and I better not misspeak, because I would be letting down my whole race. And I've talked with many other students of color in this country -- and on other continents, in fact -- who feel the same thing." E-mail lists and chat rooms can give cautious students "a kind of space to ponder before you speak," she says.

But cultural differences may be keeping some minority students and professors from taking advantage of technology, she believes. "I think among a lot of racial-minority students, and among us as faculty, there is often a sense that this technology revolution is not something that we can participate in very well," she says. "I think that in this environment, you have to be prepared to ask question after question after question. You have to show your ignorance, really."

That is exactly what some minority students try to avoid, she argues: "We have to be particularly careful about what we say we don't know, because we are being observed." One of her goals is to make all of her students more comfortable with technology.

Ms. Roy has also worked to bring greater access to technology to poor and minority communities. As an associate dean, she helped to start a community project that brought computers to community centers and other locations around Blacksburg. The community has become known for its widespread access to the Internet, the result of a Virginia Tech effort called the Blacksburg Electronic Village (The Chronicle, January 17, 1997).

Technology does have its dangers, she readily acknowledges. For one thing, it can be a powerful distraction for busy professors. "You can lose your life," she says, meaning your social life.

"Often we spend too long playing with the whistles and the bells," she adds. "It can become addictive if you're not careful." It's easy to make a kind of game out of building Web pages for courses, she has observed. Who has the prettiest Web page? Who has the biggest Web site? Who has the most links? "That's not really teaching," she says. "That's not what it's about."

As she has become more familiar with the technology, she says, she has been able to avoid such pitfalls -- and even save some time -- with its use. "I really do think the level of efficiency just grows as you start to become more involved," she says.

At the same time, she says, computers are bringing a profound change to university instruction. In her view, it's a positive change. But she knows that it's threatening to some of her colleagues.

"A lot of faculty went into teaching because they have a nostalgic sensibility, to some extent," she says. "You knew the books would be musty. You knew the students would be prone to falling asleep. You knew that you'd get enormous respect from some if you earned it. And you'd live in a world of the intellect, which was kind of wonderful, and pretty divorced sometimes from external things. And then, all of a sudden, these computers come along, and the whole scene shifts -- the landscape changes dramatically."

"I don't think that professors who are leery of this kind of thing should be mocked at all, because some of their reservations are very well founded," she continues. "But it's also true that when you approach this with an open mind, there are solutions it gives to us that are really quite stunning and exciting, I think."

She has incorporated technology into many of her classes, including "Introduction to Black Studies," "The Civil-Rights Movement and Literature," and creative-writing workshops on poetry and short fiction. She's set up e-mail chat rooms, delivered lectures over the Web, and created Web sites with video and audio clips.

She has also found time to keep up with her own research and art. She has published two books of poetry, The Humming Birds (Eighth Mountain Press, 1995) and Wailing the Dead to Sleep (Bogle-L'Ouverture Publications, 1988).

She is also working on a series of 20 paintings depicting the slave trade on the Middle Passage route from West Africa to the Americas. Other recent pictures show characters from Lady Moses. In one dazzlingly bright painting, which hangs in her living room, a girl triumphantly rides an elephant during a trip to Africa. Ms. Roy says the work is about "a reclamation of glory."

Being able to work in images as well as words helps Ms. Roy to probe more deeply into the issues she explores, she says. "When you read a novel, all you're thinking about is words, words, words. When you look at a painting, with any luck -- if it really works -- you've gone to a place beyond words."

She maintains a fast pace in her work. "When I actually sit down, I write fast. I paint fast," she says. "When I cook a meal, I take 10 minutes. That's how I get through." This gives her work "a kind of spontaneity," she says. "My life is this series of fireworks."

Her spark shows at her public speeches as well. In her keynote speech at the CAUSE education-technology conference at Walt Disney World last December, Ms. Roy wore Mickey Mouse ears as she compared college campuses to theme parks. Both, she said, are fantasy worlds. She went on to say once again that technology's bells and whistles shouldn't be used just for their own sake, but only if they make for better teaching.

Lately, she says, she's been turning down opportunities to talk about technology. She's trying to finish her second novel, about four people of different nationalities who face death together. And she wants to get started on some new ideas for course Web pages.

"I feel as though we're past the first phase now," she says, in a statement that could apply to her own life as much as to the introduction of technology into the classroom. "We need to assess what we've learned and start anew with some new approaches."