Chapter 3, Section 3.2: The Role of Universities in New Learning Environments

Excerpt from chapter 3 (pp. 75-82)

Historically, universities have consistently been involved in information technology. The coincidence of the full emergence of European universities with the technological innovation of the printing press shows this relationship clearly, as does the increased role of stationers and copyists just before the print revolution. From the medieval period to the Information Age, the influence of universities has grown concentrically. As the means of scholarly communication moved from hand-copied manuscripts to printed books, the concept of the university changed. In the nineteenth century, the Industrial Revolution and especially Darwin's theories had an impact on the professionalization of the humanities and the social sciences and the refinement of graduate training. While these changes in the culture of the university have generally been slow, today universities have to adapt to and adopt innovations quickly in order to keep pace with the technological changes.

Planning, interaction, and management in academic computing centers used to work on an ad-hoc basis. Accounts and resources were provided on a case-by-case basis. The community of on-campus users was so limited that it would not be unfair to say in this period that the computing staff had a closer knowledge of peer groups at other universities than of people on their own campuses. The first change came with the introduction of personal computers, which created a new community of on-campus computer users who were outside of the computer science and physical science communities. This shift and expansion in the user base came in the late 1980s as personal computers made their way into academic departments, onto professor's desks and into graduate research seminars. Within ten years, e-mail had become a part of expected campus services, as had general access to the Internet and then the Web, in academic departments from anthropology to zoology.

This dramatic change affected not just academic departments and professors, but also university libraries as electronic catalogs began to replace card catalogs. Now we are in the midst of another transformation as digital libraries and electronic journals are beginning to coexist in the same information space--not just as digitized versions of concrete, real-world libraries or electronic versions of print journals. In recent years, this dramatic change has also reached into administrative areas as well. In-person registration has given way at many universities to online registration. In each case, a new campus center is in the process of being defined. Where before the library was a college professor's principle campus resource to access research materials, supplemented by academic conferences and professional contacts, now increasingly an academic computing facility acts as a critical gateway as these traditional avenues are supplemented and in some cases supplanted by online resources such as electronic libraries, journals and LISTSERV mailing lists.

Along with this new central role on today's campuses, academic computing centers have to meet a new set of operating demands. Before 1995, those of us who worked with e-mail and online resources were among a manageable handful of computer users outside the computer science and physical science fields, so the relationship between the academic computing center and faculty members could remain an informal one. How radical the shift was for academic computing centers can be seen in the jump in the numbers of computer accounts generated at New York University. In 1981, there were six thousand computer accounts at NYU. By January 1998, there were over forty-six thousand computer accounts and demand was still growing.

This change did not just increase the demand on the technical and administrative infrastructure of computing centers, it has also placed demands on the infrastructure of the university as a whole, as classroom space now has to be reworked and in some cases new classrooms need to be built. Classroom networks, course home pages and professors bringing laptops to class need to be accommodated. The classroom in some sense has always been the front parlor of the academy--the place where teachers and students come together to form "the university" in its most classical definition. In this front parlor, the tools typically have been a blackboard, an overhead projector and, more recently, a VCR. In today's classrooms and seminar halls, it is no longer enough to provide an overhead projector, much more is required. Fully wired classrooms, sophisticated projection systems and a central computing environment are quickly becoming the only way to provide the needed space to access the now twenty-four-hour virtual classroom. This virtual classroom is beginning to play not just an experimental role in higher education, but in some cases has become an entrenched tool and for many college teachers as much a part of course creation as writing the course syllabus.

In response to this unprecedented demand, universities must build and maintain industry-strength networking and computing environments. Campus-wide information networks need to be strengthened and in some cases updated to university Webs. The critical gateways to the outside world that comprise the modem pools, dial-up lines and on-ramps to the Internet need to be expanded and responsive to the need for speed. We have been fortunate at NYU to have the Innovation Center, a faculty computer lab set aside for the exploration of innovative technology and the acquisition of critical skills. It is our hope that such centers will become a ubiquitous part of the academic computing landscape at all universities. Financial investment in such a resource is crucial; if only one resource for the faculty can be set up, then this is far and away the best model. Faculty members need to have good tools, they need technical support, and they need to meet and interact with others involved in this process.

As faculty gravitate to placing materials on the Web, student computing services must also respond in kind. Walk-in general help centers need to be set up and centralized. Discipline-specific technical staff need to be hired, using the same model that libraries use of having a humanities reference librarian, a social science reference librarian and so forth. Since the Internet is rapidly evolving, there should also be a campus-wide and concerted effort, through seminars and workshops, to keep the campus community--students, faculty and administrators--informed about new developments in the technology as well as providing ways to update skills. On-campus computing laboratories--located around campus and in residence halls--need to be expanded from glorified writing centers to full-service multimedia centers. Internet access is critical here. Developing the necessary infrastructure to make information and rapid communication available will be a large step toward the ideal of a global university. If the Internet is used to its full potential, it will be as vital and necessary a linking device as the Internet's precursor ARPANET was when it connected university ARPA sponsored computer centers over twenty-five years ago.

New technologies, even those less dramatic than the Internet, have always worked to transform the way we see and explain the world and, by extension, have transformed the ways we learn and teach. The innovation of moveable type and the proliferation of printing presses, as seen in chapter 1, distributed information at rates of speed that were perhaps as remarkable then as the speed of Internet-delivered information now. As a result, libraries went through their first sustained period of growth since the fall of the Roman Empire. Whole new industries were created as printing houses emerged, and scholarly work and academic discourse were expanded and transformed. Exquisitely illustrated books, pictures, anatomical drawings and maps left locked monastery libraries and the private libraries of the wealthy and finally came into the hands of instructors and students alike. It is no coincidence that the period that followed the invention of the printing press was one of feverish production and that this technological revolution contributed substantially to the European Renaissance.

In the twentieth century, the development of radio, film and television ushered in a new age of what can be called early instructional technology. At first, these were used to make literal translations of written material. There was a natural lag between the time that radio, film and television were used primarily to "copy" print materials and when artists and technicians began to exploit the inherent power and creative range of the new media. The educational potential of these media was seen immediately, and there was a push to deliver class content via radio, film and television almost as soon as the bugs were worked out of each new media. With the new media, new ideas emerged. Educators and industry thinkers discussed the end of classroom-style education in favor of distance and distributed learning. Some questioned the role of educators in the learning process, or the negative effect of "information overload." Taken together, it is remarkable to see how closely the pedagogical issues of the television "revolution" foreshadowed those surrounding the Internet today.

Nonstructured and informal learning have been at the heart of the Internet since its inception. J. C. R. Licklider's broad research idea brought thousands of people together to share ideas, research and just plain information through e-mail and news discussion groups. As this network expanded, so did the knowledge base of the Internet community. Topic-specific newsgroups and information resources were created in dramatic numbers and their content was organized and archived for further study. As information was added and the Internet population kept growing, further organization took place. Specialized newsgroups evolved as offshoots of general newsgroups. A simple newsgroup like rec.photo cruised along for many years before it had to be split into smaller, more specific photography discussions focused around specialized areas to allow topic-specific browsing. Following the evolutionary model of the informal learning space created in newsgroups like rec.photo, it will ultimately be your job to facilitate structured learning. A carefully planned and executed Web page can act as both a microcosm of the Internet and a catalyst for discussion, exploration and further research. It can contain most of the tools you can find on the Internet, such as your class newsgroup for discussion, bulletin boards to discuss class issues, tutorials, tests, software downloads, and of course, if needed, links to other Internet sites. However, above all, you can inject some semblance of order and guidance into this seemingly unwieldy and ever-changing world.

Approaches to Web-based course-page creation reflect individual personal and teaching styles. We have seen three major approaches in the way instructors use the Web. The first is that of instructors who post their syllabus, office hours and telephone numbers online. This administrative approach is minimal and in some ways looks more and more to us like a basic service any department at a university should offer. The second group, and most people fall in this category, are instructors who translate their existing class routine to the Web with minor additions. This is a first real step toward providing meaningful educational material for the Web--a learning stage during which most instructors, like early silent film makers, acquire a feel for the new media. The third and traditionally most active group is made up of instructors who create educational material using Web-specific tools. These "wired professors" search high and low to create content that is unique and uses the latest Internet tools and ideas.

While the search for a new angle to demonstrate a key concept or enhance the classroom discussion is both infinite and exhausting, the Internet and related technological breakthroughs do offer unique opportunities to show things in a way not seen before. Although the scientific community has led the way in the development and aggressive use of the new technology, the humanities and social sciences have actually been instrumental in leading the way to Web-based course design. The scientific community builds on tools older and more complex than hypertext; for them, entry to the Web as we know it today has been quite different. They were on the Internet long before most of us. In fact, many of them were actively involved in building the Internet, using applications, tools and delivery methods that predated HTML. This has led to an interesting duality: they were the first on the Internet, but are often the last on the World Wide Web. Some of this is due in part to the same sentiment expressed by Tim Berners-Lee that a graphical interface is frivolous and possibly destructive and what is key on the Internet is the ability to transmit and share technical text-based data. But the reasons are deeper even than this.

There has been a technology-enforced adherence to traditional tools in the sciences. Scientific research, visualization and typesetting methods are much too demanding in scope, complexity and detail to allow easy translation and posting to the Web. Scientific applications have been fine-tuned for decades and require computing power far beyond the reach of desktop computing. Browser plug-ins, Java applets and microcomputer-based "helper applications" could only in the most general sense register the end-result generated by high-end research, in the form of an image, or chart or a three-dimensional model. Only rarely would such an approach permit the user to "recalculate" data--the essential task performed by these scientific applications. However, while high-end scientific work on the Web may still be a few years down the line, science education has benefited from Web-based delivery. For example, Razmol, originally developed by Roger Sayle at the University of Edinburgh exclusively for high-end computer systems, now has a desktop version that offers a perfect way for students to look at and understand the spatial relationship of molecules. Some of these materials, in the form of images, charts and three-dimensional models, can be published on the Web as slides, animations and Java-based simulations.

Across the disciplines, much of the work posted to the Internet has involved translating existing content to Web-presentable content. Until 1993, the migration of material to the Internet was heavily text-oriented. The massive introduction of images around 1996 marked a turning point. We are now in the middle of a new wave as a whole new generation of software has been introduced that finally allows "complex" material that integrates interactivity, sound, animation and video to be presented on the Web.

For most professors, however, the initial step is still to translate preexisting materials to the Web. Although this approach does not tap into the creative range of the medium, the critical ideas that motivate instructors to take the plunge, the classroom metaphors they bring with them and how they handle the challenge of learning what is for many an absolutely new set of skills are critical first steps into the medium and continue to influence instructors regardless of how technically adept they become. First-stage Web design involves the refinement or discovery of new teaching metaphors, a heightened or renewed interest in pedagogy and an emphasis on learning and adjusting to the new technology. In some cases it also involves a degree of playfulness and exploration, which can colloquially be referred to as "hacking around"--inserting blinking text into a Web page or undergoing technical rites of passage like the first successful set of frames or the first image map. Some professors remain comfortably at this stage, eventually moving away from playing with the technology to focusing almost exclusively on content creation. However, others begin to mine the technology for its hidden strengths and creative potential.

Student involvement in the critique and refinement of these Web sites is a critical factor in designing effective teaching sites. It is especially important in first-stage design. Part of the excitement of working with the Web between 1995 and 1996 was that teachers and students faced a new technology together. For many students, a given professor was the first with a Web site, and students experienced the same anticipation, anxiety and exhilaration as their teachers. In ways that went well beyond end-of-term paper evaluations, students were an intense resource for feedback for teachers who asked: "Did this work?" "Did you understand it?" "Could you work with it?" In some cases, the excitement with the technology created unique opportunities in the classroom for nearly transparent collaborative learning.

This was certainly my experience with my adult students in the School of Continuing Education. Tackling the Web as a group, my students could observe my personal challenges on a weekly basis as I both learned and adjusted to this new medium. This in turn led to increased risk-taking and intellectual stretching on the part of my writing students. When I included interactivity on my Web site, this challenge increased as my students overcame their fear of posting a comment to a guest book or adding a link to a Web page. The psychology of success in this area (which I made clear was not going to reflect adversely on their grades as long as they made an effort to use the Web site) led to success with the course material. I can only conclude that the exhilaration combined with the acquisition of these timely skills led to greater self-confidence with the course material. I was teaching a course on writing a research paper at the time--a course that I had taught for several years before integrating the Web into my practice--and I saw both interest in the course material and writing skill levels rise dramatically when I introduced the Web as a research tool and partial extension of the classroom.

Christopher Mele observed similar responses in his classes:

The growth of the Internet offers further encouragement for the effort it takes to conduct on-going or semester-length applied student research projects. . . . The notion of creating a public document visible to any number of people across the globe has a very positive effect upon student motivation. Made aware of both the exposure and possible uses of their research, students take keen interest in assuring high quality in their work both individually and collectively. The ease of mounting a project on the Web--in essence, making their work a reality in the public sphere--is not only appealing but instills a sense of responsibility upon the student researcher to do well.13

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