managing technological change in academe (166172394)

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Managing Technological Change in Academe

Copyright 1995 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT magazine, Volume 18,Number 1, Spring 1995. Permission to copy or disseminate allor part of this material is granted provided that the copiesare not made or distributed for commercial advantage, theCAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given thatcopying is by permission of CAUSE, the association formanaging and using information technology in highereducation. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish,requires written permission. For further information, contactJulia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E,Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 3039390308; email:[email protected]

MANAGING TECHNOLOGICAL CHANGE IN ACADEMEby Carol B. MacKnight

ABSTRACT: Colleges and universities are grappling with thespiraling costs of education, a decline in revenue, changingstudent demographics, and a competitive marketplace.Technology offers a solution to some of these problems. Thisarticle describes what several institutions are doing to

support access to networks and communication services neededby a new informationage curriculum.

Colleges and universities are under pressure to change theway instruction is being delivered on their campuses. Thelecture approach, a laborintensive instructional model,falters before today's students and adult learners who comewith a wide diversity of needs, interests, and educationalbackgrounds. Information technology offers the attraction ofenhancing learning by giving students access to learningresources in a variety of forms whenever and wherever they

are needed. There are now several technologies available fordelivering instruction to students on the campus, in theirhomes, or on the job.

Providing a better education to more people is not an issueof asking the faculty to teach more classes. Increasing theteaching load will not significantly reduce institutionalcosts nor increase student learning.[1] Rather, the focusshould be on using the flexibility of information technologyto find new models of instruction that are more appropriatefor the information age. The shift is toward an instructionalmodel in which students have access to a variety of resourcesmade available by the faculty, whose role becomes one of a

collaborator or a mentor in the learning process. Completelectures, demonstrations, tutorials, library and researchmaterials, and other learning materials are some examples ofinstructional media that can be stored on courseware serversand retrieved from a network by students and faculty. In thismodel students will no longer be chained to time, space, oreven to local resources.

The greatest challenge to higher education comes from theexploding interest in the Internet. The Internet has



significantly changed the way business is being conducted inthe United States and abroad, from marketing and sellingproducts to the development of new products with customerparticipation. The virtual corporation will become the norm.In essence, the Internet is the world's largest publiclibrary, offering instant global communication. Leadingedgesoftware is distributed on the Internet, and valuabledatabases, research materials, documents, libraries andindices, current events, etc., are published there. Studentscan now interact with faculty worldwide and take coursesinternationally for credit. MIT students, for example, areconducting joint architectural projects with students fromother nations. As it has transformed business, the Internetheralds the inevitable transformation of higher education.

How do we get there from here? Several colleges anduniversities are making the transformation of infusingtechnology into academic life through a wellthoughtoutcampuswide plan. As Steve Gilbert points out, "Mostsignificant new applications of information technology cannotbe integrated widely and effectively within a college oruniversity without both the commitment of the institution tothe relevant infrastructure and the commitment of manyindividual faculty members to the particular approach."[2]

Faculty will not be successful with these new technologieswithout full support from a combination of services availablefrom the centers for teaching, libraries, media centers,academic computing units, and other campus organizations.Without a strategic plan that demonstrates an understandingof the technological options available and identifies thenecessary support services and other resources, the future ofour institutions will be at stake.

What are the computerteaching requirements; what newinstructional tools can faculty expect in the classroom ofthe future; and what combinations of the old and new will bemost effective? Will faculty be locked into an instructional

environment that seems oblivious to a changing student body,to new models of instructional interaction, to realworldexperiences? As part of a sabbatical study, the authorinterviewed academic leaders from several private and publiccolleges and universities to see how they were approachingthe technological challenges facing their campuses.[3] Thediscussion that follows highlights some achievements,successes, and shared challenges.

There is great diversity in planning styles among theinstitutions discussed in this article. What they have incommon, however, are very similar concerns. All campuses arestriving to provide improved access to computing resources

and to meet the instructional needs of their academiccommunity. Their administrators are struggling with risingtechnology costs and debating what future breakthroughs intechnology will mean to their campuses. Some campusstrategies aim at just trying to stay viable; some arefinding ways to support both connectivity and instructionalcomputing; and a few are betting on the future and testingtechnologies they think will put their institutions on thecutting edge. A view of common institutional goals, ideas,and advice related to improving access and support of



information technologies is presented below. Topicalhighlights are divided into three sections: current campustrends, common instructional needs, and future challenges andvisions.

CURRENT CAMPUS TRENDS

Distributed computing and increased specialization

Computing in higher education is moving toward a moredecentralized informationprocessing environment, which inturn has decentralized some of the decisionmakingsurrounding computing. However, central computingorganizations continue to have an important, though changing,role. It is this change that many fail to appreciate whenthey notice that the central organizations have not gone awayor decreased in size.[4]

Some activities or resources, like network design andadministration, file servers, reference databases, softwarelicensing, technology classrooms, faculty development, andsupport are most effectively managed centrally. Withoutcentral coordination and selection of "standards," a

community of individuals loses the ability to communicateelectronically. The electronic equivalent of the traditionallibrary activitiesnamely, developing and maintainingcollectionsis another example of resources most effectivelymanaged centrally.[5]

The trend in decentralization is toward client/serverarchitecture and multiplatform integration, with morecomputing being done at the departmental level. Movingprocessing from the mainframe to highfunction workstationsand to lowercost desktop computers enables costconsciousacademic computer directors with tight budgets to meet thespecialized needs of departments. More reliance on flexible

information systems can be seen now in departmentalcomputing, with network servers and file servers replacingmainframes.

Today, there is even a greater demand for computing supportservices, as more faculty, staff, and students becomeinterested in computing and what it can do for them tosupport teaching, research, and other administrativeservices. These new users need help in dealing withactivities (hardware, software, multimedia peripherals,networking, backups, viruses, etc.) on their personal systemsthat were previously taken care of for them on central timesharing systems, in addition to learning those skills

necessary to use the computer in enhancing the educationalexperience.

Staff people are increasingly needed to act as interpretersand resources in acquiring, searching, and retrieving data,text, and images, and in using a variety of other informationresources.[6] Without an adequate support staff, facultymembers, who are integrating computing into their curriculum,are often forced to teach basic computer skills and havelittle time for more creative applications.[7] Using the



computer in his course on Milton, John Huntley, for example,considers the amount of time he spent as a computer counselorto be misspent. "I should have spent more time in classchallenging superficial interpretations of Milton and moretime in the library helping people move toward the resourcesthat most likely dealt with their interest."[8] Huntley'sexperience demonstrates that the cost of technology does notend with the purchase of hardware and software. Academicsupport personnel need to be factored in for user training,without which the best examples of technology will not leadto successful implementations.

For institutions that are able to provide a wide variety ofsupport activities, from online help to the development ofcomplete technologybased courses, the future looks quitebright. In their approach, instructional support staff act ascampus information technology evangelists, encouraging andsupporting faculty as they integrate technology into thecurriculum. These instructional technologists are highlyspecialized instructional designers, programmers, andmultimedia consultants, who can provide direct assistance inthe creation of large projects and can offer instructionunder different formats such as group introductorydemonstrations, training workshops, and individual

consultations. Together, faculty and staff at places likePenn State and MIT have a track record of developing highquality instructional courseware, which is frequently shownat national conferences.

On a daily basis, instructional support staff are alsoavailable to provide other services. The demand fortransferring images to computers for displaya service thatis unlikely to be rendered by individual departmentsisincreasing. It is one case where having a centralizedfacility where faculty can create digital media for theirclasses has the distinct advantage of eliminating duplicationof costly equipment and of specialists to operate it on a

campus.

When resources are scarce, many institutions limit the scopeof services. For example, workshops provided by technicalsupport services staff generally focus on basic packages(word processing, spreadsheets, and the like) and on thevarious resources available on the Internet. The mainobjective of this approach is to develop selfsufficiency infaculty users on a limited number of software packages, asinstitutions try their best to survive severe financialconstraints and do more with less. Under these circumstances,faculty have the responsibility for finding appropriatecommercial courseware packages for their classes or have the

option of learning an authoring system or presentationsoftware and developing their own instructional materials.

Connectivity

Instructional technology has achieved its greatest successthrough email and exploding interest in the Internet.Internet connections offer the attraction of making rich"information resources accessible from lowend computers."[9]The Internet transports information to desktops from all



corners of the globe. By tapping in, scholars have immediateaccess to databases, library catalogs, and other libraryresources, and to the work of colleagues anywhere in theworld.

Newer browsers like Mosaic (a networked, multimedia hypertexttool for information discovery, retrieval, and collaboration)add another dimension to documents. Such tools handle allforms of multimedia (pictures, movies, audio, and text) andsupports public and private annotations (those stored on aspecified file server vs. those stored on a local computer).Annotations, which can be text and audio, can be left on anylocation in the World Wide Web and will appear at the bottomof a document like a footnote. The collaborative features ofMosaic, Netscape, and similar software offer many excitingpossibilities.

Providing Internet connections from classrooms, offices, andresidence halls remains a crucial element for manyinstitutions. "Connectivity is only the first step ininstructional uses of computing, but a necessary one. Lots ofwork must also go into providing high quality data sourcesand making them simpler to use."[10] Charles Benderrecommends that, at a minimum, we should strive to provide

for every member of the academic community a basic computinginfrastructure, consisting of access to word processing, datamanipulation applications, and network informationservices.[11] Policy makers must have a strategic plan forinformation technologies and be able to translate that planinto the financial resources necessary to implement it.

Impact of technology on teaching

The exploding rate of new information resources available tofaculty and students impacts on teaching, research, andadministration. Networks make it possible to deliverinstruction to every desktop in every office, computer lab,

classroom, residence hall, and home. With terminals indifferent locations, physical space is replaced with anaccess path. Networks have the potential to create thevirtual classroom, with people logging in at set times or attheir own convenience and discretion.[12] Education can nowtake place on demand at any time, in different forms, and atany place in the world.

Some faculty argue that there is no reason for us to havelectures anymore, because there are better mechanisms (onlinecollaboration, etc.) for achieving everything that we wish toachieve. Nevertheless, having technology and people in thesame room where students and faculty can interact with

displays that can be manipulated is invaluable.[13] Inteaching a course on meteorology, Dr. Alistair Fraser at PennState University, for example, uses weather maps to heightenstudents' understanding of the mathematics behindmeteorology. He grabs a satellite picture showing storms andradar echoes during his class to emphasize or clarify apoint, and then brings the point home with, "You'll need araincoat when you leave class." The advantage of visualizingthings, he suggests, is that it allows students to graspconcepts rather than symbols and is a much more effective way



of communicating difficult topics.

In this application, Dr. Fraser stimulates the mind andcreates excitement and purpose in learning. He feels it issimply a powerful way to teach. Utilizing technologies likethis one must be facilitated in different ways: technical,organizational, and in training. "Implementing aninfrastructure for networking and communications capabilitiesis probably the single most important project for a campus orschool preparing for the new education paradigm."[14]

In a technological environment, there is a definite shiftaway from the standard pattern ofinitiation/response/evaluation that dominates the traditionalclassroom. Instead, there is a "new set of relations betweeninstructors and students, among students, and between allmembers of the group and the body of material whose meaning,it now becomes apparent, we are all there to construct.[15]The most apparent changes in the teaching and learningprocess are the students who are more actively engaged in theclassroom environment,[16] and faculty who are honing theirskills on a new line of questioning and guidance. Forinstitutions, the question may be one of redefining theirmission, now that students can interact with professors,

fellow students, and friends around the world"face to face."

COMMON INSTRUCTIONAL NEEDS

Facilitating the use of technology

Helping faculty discover and become proficient in theresources for presentation or classroom uses that areavailable on file servers and on the Internet is a priorityfor many institutions. Some institutions, like Dartmouth,have achieved this objective in part by dealing "with severalresources through the same user interface."[17] They also

have created a systemwide directory, similar to the onlinecatalog, pulling together resources from around the campusand the Internet. Their aim is to create a seamlessenvironment that facilitates the discovery of usefulinformation and reduces the demand for training.

Whether faculty members have missed benefits offered bycomputer networks depends on their awareness, level ofcomputing skills, and their perceived usefulness of thenetwork offerings. Some institutions try to bridge the gapbetween technology access and appropriate uses in thecurriculum through a series of faculty development seminars.Since faculty sometimes view academic computing personnel as

technocrats, Vijay Kumar believes multimedia training isfrequently more effectively handled by inviting guestprofessors who are actively engaged in integrating computingin instruction and learning.[18] At these multimediaseminars, faculty learn about available resources andapplications and how technology can be implemented in theirdiscipline from persons whom they view as peers.

What has become clear to this writer is that the level ofcomfort faculty reach in integrating different information



resources into the curriculum is not achieved through asingle event but through continuous exposure, encouragement,and support from colleagues, students, and academic supportpersonnel. The process involves moving from one successfulexperience to anotherfrom word processing to email, fromexplorations of the Internet to ultimately collaborating withcolleagues over the Internet. The speed with which facultybecome fluent with various technologies may hinge on whetherthe administration encourages their development and providesthem with appropriate classroom facilities and technicalsupport along the way.

Supertech classrooms

Another common objective among diverse institutions contactedis the desire to improve classroom facilities. If faculty areencouraged to use technology, they must have a suitable spaceand not be expected to set up equipment for each use. Hightech classrooms push the state of the art in software bymixing film, video, sound, and text. Although the setups maydiffer among institutions, the professor's podium is thecentral command center. Depending on the room size andfunction (whether it is an auditorium or a classroom), thespace may be equipped with one or more large screen video and

data projection systems. Or it may have, in place ofadditional large screens, several video monitors. Eithersystem can be used to display images from VHS recorders,videodisks, CDROM disk players, remote video cameras,slides, films, television, satellite programming, andmultimedia software. All of these sources can be controlledfrom the teaching platform by direct remote control or via aMacintosh or IBM computer.

Integrated into an auditorium is a quality audio system withbalanced acoustical treatment. Media include audio CD andaudio tape. Live microphone audio is usually available. Forhearingimpaired students, the University of Connecticut has

installed a specialneeds audio system. There is alsoconnectivity to the college network and to the Internet. TheUniversity is committed to renovating and equipping tenclassrooms per year to meet the anticipated demand.

At the University of Maine, faculty can begin using the hightech auditorium long before they are up to speed with themany instructional aids that their versatile facilityprovides. Included with the equipment is a documentor, asophisticated overhead projector, which allows faculty toproject graphics directly from a book or from their teachingnotes and gives them the capability of writing on the objectas they would on a transparency. At the next level, faculty

can begin including other media with what is being projectedon the documentora onestepatatime approach towardproficiency. Vanderbilt's Chancellor Joe Wyatt believes that"the only way to bring new ideas to fruition is to provide asetting," that is, provide institutional support andincentives to faculty members and thereby demonstrate theinstitution's commitment to integrating new instructionalapplications of information technology.[19]

Providing an electronic instructional setting is becoming



more difficult in the current economic climate for thosecampuses where networks have yet to be completed. Thedistance between the longterm computing infrastructure goaland the present computing infrastructure is so great at manyinstitutions that it may take at least ten years to close thegap.[20] "Budgeting for departmental local area networks(LANs) is an essential first step toward moving a departmentinto the information technology arena."[21]

FUTURE CHALLENGES AND VISIONS

Developers or purchasers?

Academic computing directors support a wide range of computerneeds. Can they afford the costs involved in the developmentof courseware, or must they limit their services to providingresources, technology workshops, space, and equipment?Because of the development time and costs required to createa complete course, it is reasonable to expect that someinstitutions will be purchasers of courseware and applicationtools rather than software developers. Some institutions willshare development costs through collaborative computing overIntegrated Services Digital Network dialup connections or

over the Internet worldwide. The high cost of developmentmakes sharing and partnering more important than ever. Otherswill purchase disciplinespecific courseware throughassociations and other organizations that will spring up inanswer to the challenge.

Many institutions today are able to help faculty createpresentation materials within a reasonable time period fortheir classes. Hard copy, slides, graphics, animations,simulations, QuickTime movies, and the like are put on disksfor computer display in classes. This type of service isprovided in college and university settings in differentplaces by different peopleacademic support staff,

librarians, and helpdesk personnel. One can surmise thatsuch material could eventually develop into substantial classmaterials, if not fullblown courseware.

After upgrading their computer clusters with multimediacomputers, the University of Iowa set about providingfaculty, staff, and students with the necessary support toproduce multimediabased curriculum materials. Some projects,according to Joan Huntley, Research and Development ProjectLeader, were largescale projects like Teaching Milton byComputer, where an instructional designer provided assistancefrom the inception of the idea to the production of the finalcomputerized program.[22] This project is particularly

notable, for it also resulted in the development of ageneralpurpose authoring environment called the interText,which can be used for creating electronic books. TheinterText program is an outgrowth of the Second LookComputing program of the Weeg Computing Center at theUniversity of Iowa. Second Look derives its name from itsmission: to give computing a second look, not as complextechnology that one struggles to learn, but as a tool forpractical use.



Ease of use and inexpensive computing technology areempowering more faculty to develop presentation materials.The next step is to provide students with electronic accessto their courses. In the near future, it would not be unusualto put a student's complete undergraduate and graduateprogram on a CDROM [23] or some other emerging technology.Textbook publishers and researchers are already consideringthe possibilities. Researchers at Indiana University, forexample, envision "virtual textbooks" about the size of aclipboard, containing lessons, review drills, and data banksof reference materials.[24] This approach would build on thestrengths of their undergraduate program, using technology toimprove learning.

Moving away from computer labs

Richard A. Detweiler, president of Hartwick College, equatescomputer labs with phone booths; both are useful at certaintimes but extraneous to one's normal everyday needs. Thepotential of information technology, he thinks, lies ininformation seeking, processing, and communicatingas a toolfor thinking and learning. This can happen only if the toolis available to individuals wherever they are. The onlyviable student workstation is a portable system of some sort,

because students think and work in the dorm room, in class,in the library, under a tree, or at home during vacation. Theincreasing capability of the notebook system is making thedelivery of computing needs in a portable unit very viable.Inthe future, Detweiler foresees the addition of wirelessnetworking that will make communication with the rest of theworld possible on demand.[25]

Similarly, Glenn Ricart, former director of the computerscience center at the University of Maryland and now withARPA, predicts that future students will carry highpowered,portable computers, thereby obviating the need for mostinstitutional computer laboratories.

"Instead, campuses will need to provide 'touchbases' ofsome kind that students and faculty members will use toupdate the information in their computers. Mr. Ricartsays that those touchbases could be radio devicesembedded in the walls of campus buildings that wouldtransfer electronic mail and other information tostudents' computers. He suggests that campusadministrators begin preparing their campuses for theera of portable computing by developing 'work spaces'where students and faculty members could plug theirportable computers into the campus network. Those who arebuilding new classrooms, he said, may want to provide anelectrical outlet and a network connection at every

seat."[26]Clearly, there may be a need to maintain some public accesslabs at research institutions until the changeover can bemade, but the idea of building more labs has long passed.

Obsolescence and rising costs

Finding solutions to the problem of rising costs takesdifferent turns. MIT's Gregory Jackson, director of academiccomputing, has a replacement plan to upgrade onefourth of



their workstations each year. Once an institution has such aplan,[27] he says, protecting it requires several changes inthe way we think about technology. First, administrators needto stop thinking about computers as though they arebuildings. They are not a capital expense and should not bepaid for out of capital budgets. Computers must be amortizedand regularly replaced to keep pace with the changes intechnology. Second, administrators must acknowledge thattechnology is not free. The days when technology vendorscould afford to equip a campus lab have long since passed.Finally, it is important that the network be priced properly,by building in fees for the wiring costs, equipment, staff,and a certain amount of development that is network related.According to Jackson, "Pricing the network and not giving itaway feeds itself very nicely."[28]

Other institutions are redirecting a part of the financialburden to students. Many business and engineering schools,for example, are simply charging students a computing fee tocover their costs. Still, a growing number of institutionsare providing either a loaner program where the studentsreturn the equipment at the conclusion of the program or aleaseback arrangement where there is an option to buy theequipment for a nominal fee upon leaving the program.

The Columbia University model requires that students buy anew notebook computer upon entering the university. Accordingto James A. Haggard, assistant dean and executive directorfor information technology at Columbia's Business School, thepush for student ownership of computers is based on arevision of the curriculum and a realization that one couldneither keep up with the "technology curve" where leadingedge products are introduced every 90 to 120 days, nor meetthe needs of students in a lab environment when the averagestudent spends twenty hours per week on a computer. Now,faculty can plan instruction with the knowledge that thecomputer, loaded with certain applications, is a resource

available to every student.

There are several advantages to the Columbia model. "Moneysaved by not providing computers," says Haggard, "means thatmore can be spent on providing several hundred network jacksand a lot more on application software on the network. Havingclassrooms, the library, and student lounges wired has freedup much needed space in buildings, yet anotheradvantage."[29] The trend for the future is to get away frombeing the suppliers of hardware and move toward becominginformation centers.[30]

Another emerging trend includes establishing partnerships to

help cope with rising costs. For example, universities likeCalifornia Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly) plan tooffset the cost of maintaining the information technologyinfrastructure by joint development projects with vendors,other institutions, and organizations.[31] The University hasa working alliance with the University of Nebraska in Lincolnand with Rensselear Polytechnic Institute in Troy, New York,to produce "education on demand" and make learning availablefrom almost any place. Via the computer network, students canaccess fullmotion video lectures, demonstrations, selfpaced



tutorials, email, and conferencing. This effort representsthe beginning of what Cal Poly hopes might become the virtualuniversity campus.

Distance learning Some administrators see delivering education offcampusas a means not only of cutting costs but also of providinggreater access to the institution and dealing with learningchallenges. Their target audience includes branch campuses,industry, adult education, continuing education, and highschool students.

While sending video tapes to different sites was oncevalued as a way for higher education to reach and involvedistance learners, today changes in technology andtelecommunications are propelling the knowledge explosionwith interactive video, multimedia software forpresentations, and wireless communication. Distance learningnot only offers access to information and to enrichingquality educational experiences, but it also offers the meansto significantly transform and possibly reform our societalinstitutions.[32]

The University of Maine expects to educate 10,000students using interactive television by the year 2,000. TheUniversity has made the Education Network of Maine an eighthcampusan electronic campus offering seven fulldegreeprograms. Here and at colleges and universities around thenation, technology is toppling the ivory towers.Approximately 4,000 corporate engineers currently "earnadvanced degrees at their workplace via satellite from theNational Technological University, now one of the largestengineering schools in the nation."[33] The RochesterInstitute of Technology offers graduate and undergraduatedegrees in applied computing, telecommunications, healthadministration, and environmental management to students in

sixteen states. Another institution with impressiveenrollments is Maryland's College of the Air. It offers tentelecourses per semester via the Maryland Center for PublicBroadcasting to approximately 10,000 students. The costeffectiveness of communication also means that institutionsof higher education can expect new competition. Are these potential services more than an educationalinstitution can be expected to provide? There is a shift awayfrom schools as the central site for learning towards thehome, businesses, libraries, museums, and otherorganizations, representing a significant change in oursociety. Partnerships and corporate alliances are gearing up

to deliver instruction directly into the home. For quite sometime, businesses have been training their employeesworldwide, using computer technology with stateofthearttelebroadcast equipment. During these sessions, students canbe quizzed on topics or polled on the effectiveness of thepresentation. More importantly, these students can taketraining programs without ever going to the company's maintraining center. The scope of potential applications willprompt "a reconceptualization of what it means to educate,where we learn, what we learn, how and why."[34] The



impressive array of telecommunications technologies will havea profound effect on the content and delivery of highereducation in ways yet to be appreciated on many campuses.

Fiscal problems are forcing many colleges anduniversities to rethink the way they use technology in aneffort to provide instruction more efficiently andeffectively. Many believe that the erosion of the quality ofhigher education can be countered by a fundamental change inthe way technology is used to cope with such factors as thepublic's demand for better undergraduate education, thereduction in state support, the pressure to hold downtuition, and the increase in the number of nontraditionalstudents. Some administrators, like Ira Fuchs, Princeton's vicepresident for computing and information technology, believethat technology proponents have not persuaded enough collegepresidents and chief academic officers that computers canenhance teaching.[35] If colleges and universities fail tomake a persuasive case for using technology to increase thevalue of existing resources and if our policy makers fail torecognize society's increasing dependence on access to

information, the inevitable unevenness of informationtechnology resources on different campuses will affectenrollments, retention, and employment opportunities of ourfuture work force. In the final analysis, it will benecessary to make some serious restructuring adjustments ofacademe to change the way higher education operates and tomove forward in the information technology age.

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SIDEBAR:

INVESTING IN THE FUTURE: COMMON STRATEGIES

* The task of building an infrastructure consisting ofhighspeed networks and communication services is aprecondition to support the access needed by a newinformationage curriculum. Highspeed networks anddistributed computing environments are laying the foundationfor the delivery of multimedia materials and information onany subject to every desktop, whatever its location.

* Some classrooms are becoming virtual classrooms, withfaculty and groups of students sharing common interestsconnected electronically across distance, time, and space.

* Computing centers are moving away from being suppliersof hardware toward becoming information centers. With thatchange, we can expect the need for new public computer labsas we currently know them to disappear.

* Students will own portable computers, which will comeloaded with a variety of basic packages, including wordprocessing, data manipulation applications, spreadsheets,graphics packages, presentation applications, and network



software. These students will likely add personal softwareprograms and, consequently, will learn many more softwarepackages by the time they graduate, because of theconvenience of having a computer always with them.

* Distance learning will have an effect on instructionalcontent and learning resources, the time needed to earn adegree, the delivery of higher education to include a broaderconstituencyin short, on many of the ways of thinking abouthigher education.

* Knowledgeable faculty and staff will be key inimplementing a new curriculum that takes advantage ofinformation technologies.

* Partnerships and collaborations with other educationalinstitutions and organizations and with vendors for thedelivery of instruction; sharing of libraries, databases,software, supercomputing capabilities, and degree programs;and creation of course materials will become morecommonplace.

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Footnotes:1 Alan E. Guskin, "Restructuring the Role of Faculty," _Change_, September/October 1994, pp. 1625.

2 From an email communication, "Teaching, Learning, andTechnology Roundtable," October 28, 1994.

3 See acknowledgments at the end of this article for a listof institutions and educational leaders interviewed.

4 Robert J. Brentrup, "Building a Campus InformationCulture," _CAUSE/EFFECT_, Winter 1993, pp. 814.

5 Ibid.

6 Ibid.

7 D. L. Wilson, "Computer Revolution Changing the WayBusiness Schools Teach Their Courses," _The Chronicle ofHigher Education}, 13 October 1993, pp. A3132.

8 John Huntley, "Teaching Milton by Computer," _Journal ofComputing in Higher Education_, 3(1) 1991): 81.

9 From an interview with Paul Dobosh, Director of Computing

and Information Services at Mt. Holyoke College, November1994.

10 From an email communication with Robert Brentrup,Director, Dartmouth College Information Systems, May 1994.

11 From an interview with Charles Bender, Director ofAcademic Computing at The Ohio State University, December1993.



12 J. M. Slatin, "Is There a Class in This Text? CreatingKnowledge in the Electronic Classroom," In E. Barrett (Ed.), _Sociomedia: Multimedia, Hypermedia, and the SocialConstruction of Knowledge_ (Boston, Mass.: MIT Press, 1992),pp. 2752.

13 From an interview with Gregory Jackson, Director ofAcademic Computing at the Massachusetts Institute ofTechnology, December 1993.

14 Judith V. Boettcher, "The Power of Information Access:Transforming the Goals and Processes of Education," Journalof Computing in Higher Education, 4(2), (1993): 132.

15 Slatin, p.135.

16 R. Decker, S. Hirshfield, D. Paris, and N. Stout,"Computer Assisted Instruction in the Liberal Arts Using aSimple Authoring System," _Journal of Computing in HigherEducation_ 1(1) (1989): 2148; and J. Bump, "Radical changesin class discussion using networked computers," _Computersand the Humanities_ 24(1) (January 1990): 4965.

17 Brentrup, p. 10.

18 From an interview with Vijay Kumar, Director of AcademicComputing at Mount Holyoke College, November 1993.

19 B. T. Watkins, "The Electronic Classroom," _The Chronicleof Higher Education_, 4 September 1991, p. 26.

20 Bender interview.

21 John Oberlin, "Departmental Budgeting for InformationTechnology: A Lifecycle Approach," _CAUSE/EFFECT_, Summer1994, p. 24.

22 From an email communication with Joan Huntley, March1994.

23 Carol B. MacKnight, "Geist und Technik." LasecLetter,1990, Berlin, Germany, pp. 1013, and Hubert B. Herring,"Business Diary," 15 May 1994, _New York Times_, S3, p. 2.IBM has announced a new technology that allows digital disksto hold more than ten times more data than they do now, withthe result that several movies or a million pages of text canbe put on a single CD.

24 P. Monaghan, "'Sensoriums' and 'Virtual Textbooks'," _TheChronicle of Higher Education_, 2 March 1990, pp. A27, A29.

25 From an email communication with R. A. Detweiler,president of Hartwick College, March 1994.

26 Thomas J. Deloughry, "Colleges Told to Take DisciplinedApproach to Technology," _The Chronicle of Higher Education_,27 October 1993, p. A23.

27 Jackson interview.



28 The results of The 1993 USC National Survey of DesktopComputing in Higher Education showed that 44 percent of thosesurveyed operated without longrange plans for replacingoutdated machines and, therefore, may not be able to keep upwith the accelerating rate of technological change.

29 From a telephone interview with James A. Haggard,Assistant Dean and Executive Director for InformationTechnology at Columbia University's Business School, March1994.

30 Wilson, p. A32.

31 W. J. Baker. and A. S. Gloster II, "Moving Towards theVirtual University: A Vision of Technology in HigherEducation," _CAUSE/EFFECT_, Summer 1994, pp. 411.

32 R. B. Lowenstein and S. Charp, "Policy Issues in DistanceLearning: A Special Forum," _Proceedings of InteractiveMultimedia '93_ (Washington, DC: Society of Applied LearningTechnology, 1993), pp. 118119.

33 E. Graham, "Online Teaching," _The Wall Street Journal_,13 September 1991, p. 42.

34 Lowenstein and Charp, p. 119.

35 I. H. Fuchs, _Instructional Technology Newsletter_,University of Massachusetts, Fall 1992, p. 11.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS:

The author wishes to thank Judith V. Boettcher and Robert J.Brentrup for their helpful comments and also the many peoplewho so generously gave of their time from ColumbiaUniversity, Dartmouth College, Hartwick College, MIT, Mount

Holyoke College, New York University, Ohio State University,The Pennsylvania State University, University of Connecticut,University of Maine at Orono, and University of Maine atAugusta.

*************************************************************

Carol B. MacKnight is an instructional technologist at theUniversity of Massachusetts, where she has designed andauthored over fortyfive instructional software packages. Shehas also published extensively in the areas of interfacedesign and evaluation and electronic publishing. Dr.

MacKnight is the founder and editor of the Journal ofComputing in Higher Education. Her research interests includeinstructional theory and design, hypermedia systems,information retrieval, and Internet applications.

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