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Are you old enough to remember the slide rule? If handed one today, could you use it to perform simple math problems, let alone complex calculations?Abstract This article argues that there are many good reasons for colleges and universities to continue investing in using information resources and technology for teaching and learning; but that increasing INSTITUTIONAL productivity in a few years is not among them.
Recent financial pressures seem to be pushing some academic leaders to leap at the prospect of achieving cost-savings to meet short-term crises by investing in info tech. The urgency and power of this hope cannot make it plausible.
Early in the 1970s, calculators replaced slide-rules as the math tool of choice for scientists and engineers. Calculators are more accurate, easier to use, and generally do far more than slide-rules. After a few years on the market, calculators were less expensive than slide-rules. It was easier for students to learn to use calculators than slide-rules. Less instruction was necessary. For colleges and universities, the transition costs from slide rule to calculator were low because students purchased their own. And the transition decision was simple: a newer, more effective technology replaced an older - now less useful - tool. It was not necessary to conduct time-consuming, expensive, cost- benefit analyses or learning outcome evaluations of slide-rules and calcu-lators.
Calculators - both the ubiquitous inexpensive products as well as high-end, programmable models widely used by scientists, engineers, and financial analysts - provide an interesting case study of a compelling technology that helped change the way many professionals work. Moreover, this technology, by general consensus, helped its users become "more productive": The personal productivity value of the calculator was readily apparent. However, this technology changed only a small part of what was taught and how it was taught; and the changes applied primarily to specific disciplines, not the whole academic enterprise. Advocates did not believe or claim that higher education as a whole or that individual colleges or universities had become more productive because more students and faculty were using calculators.
The case-study of the calculator suggests several major points about the integration of technology in education. First, the most compelling technological innovations do not require extensive analysis or evaluation before they become widely adopted and integrated into the curriculum. The calculator, and especially the programmable calculator, was a compelling technological innovation.
Second, the universe of beneficiaries must be carefully identified in any and all discussions about impacts, including productivity. For example, a new technology may offer significant productivity gains for individual students or faculty without affecting institutional productivity; alternatively, technology may be used to increase the productivity of administrative operations without having any impact on instruction.
Third, compelling technology may - or may not - have dramatic consequences for the curriculum. Neither calculator advocates nor calculator vendors made great claims for how these products would change engineering education. But clearly the programmable calculator has contributed to some important changes in mathematics, engineering and technical education over the past two decades. And not all these changes were initially identified or anticipated. (Similarly, the computer spreadsheet has also had important impacts on management education, but advocates made no great claims. Here too, many of the impacts and benefits were not initially identified or anticipated.)
Finally, the experience with the calculator is unusual. The slide rule, like the book, blackboard and lecture, was an accepted standard. But unlike the book, blackboard and lecture, the slide rule was quickly replaced by compelling new technology - the calculator. There are few if any similar examples, even today given great claims for computers, video, and IT. For better or worse, the book, blackboard, and lecture continue to dominate instruction.
* * * * *
Education always seems attracted by the light - by the promise and potential - of technology. From film in the 1920s to television in the late 1950s, computers in the 1980s, and now "information technology" in the 1990s, the public has heard great expectations for the use of new technologies that might enhance learning and instruction. In the 1980s, during the much discussed "microcomputer revolution" in higher education, the computer emerged as a personal tool: writing across all disciplines, financial analysis in business, statistical analysis in the social sciences, etc. Students, faculty, and institutions purchased desktop systems by the truckload; engaging applications (graphics, digital imaging, desktop publishing, electronic mail, multimedia), falling prices, and increased power and convenience brought the desktop and notebook computer to thousands of academics who never previously thought of themselves as "computer users." Most would agree that modest productivity benefits emerged as growing numbers of faculty transferred much of their work from secretaries, mainframes, and minicomputers to desktop systems and word processors.
Midway through the 1990s, however, colleges and universities confront a second major phase of this "revolution" - a shift in emphasis from the computer as a desktop tool to the computer as the communic-ations gateway to colleagues and "content" (data bases, image and text libraries, video, and more) increasingly accessible via computer networks to both faculty and students. Technology advocates are fond of describing a future "information- rich" environment that will support instructional and scholarly activities in new and exciting ways.
Additionally, the rising financial pressures con-fronting higher education in recent years have also focused attention on the promise of technology to improve productivity in higher education. The stated hope is that computing and information technologies will yield new levels of institutional and instructional "productivity." The stated expectation is that the infusion or integration of new technologies into instruction will, at minimum maintain and ideally enhance student learning while significantly reducing instructional costs.
But will information technology (IT) lead to the kinds of productivity gains and associated cost savings touted by its most ardent advocates? Alas, not soon, and certainly not soon enough for those both in and out of academe understandably eager to control instructional costs or for the evangelists who promise that information technology will enhance faculty productivity.
However, a careful review suggests there will be major substantive benefits from more widespread academic uses of information technologies - in the areas of content, curriculum, and pedagogy. Further, the demands and expectations of students and faculty for technology resources are increasing the pressure on colleges and universities to make information technology readily available. Finally, the changing student demographics of students have already increased the number of those who can benefit most from new "distance education" applications of technology.
* * * * *
Reduced to the core issue, the "technology yields instructional productivity" advocates are eager to demonstrate that information technology will (a) allow the same number of faculty to "teach" more students at the current (or at an enhanced) level of learning or (b) allow campuses to serve the same number of students with fewer faculty and with no loss in learning (either what is learned or the number of students who learn it).
Clearly technology has brought both enhanced productivity and reduced costs to some parts of higher education. Like many corporations, campuses routinely and effectively use technology in many administrative areas. As in the corporate domain, computers have improved productivity related to a wide range of data management and transaction processing activities: personnel files, course schedules, library catalogs, budgets and accounts receivable, student transcripts and admissions information. Moreover, in some parts of the faculty domain, technology has truly helped to increase productivity and reduce operating costs. Indeed, a generation of faculty has come into academic positions with little or no secretarial assistance from their departments or institutions: they have a computer to prepare their own class materials, course syllabi, conference papers, grant proposals, manuscripts, and other documents. As of yet, however, relatively few would claim - even after a dozen years into the "micro" revolution - any real gains in instructional productivity. In that realm, as ever, we're still left with the "promise" of technology.
* * * * *
To understand why we find more potential than performance, it
is instructive to examine the wider literature on technology and
productivity, most of it based on the experience of corporations
and not-for-profit organizations. "Implementation cycle" research
points to three or four stages of IT integration that occur over
years, not weeks or months:
Stage 0. Some planning, investigation, and exper-imentation.
Recognition that the leading competition has already started to
use technology. Recognition by some individuals that they can
do some of their work better and faster if they can use the
most widely available functions of a desktop computer. A
decision is made to permit small groups to go ahead (or to
ignore the fact that they already have done so).
Stage 1. A few years of marked increase in planned capital
investment for individual workers/ professionals and surprising
increases in oper-ating expenses - with little reduction in
other expenses. Additionally, there are unanticipated but
significant delays in implementing some of the most "obvious"
applications. The organi-zation also slowly begins to
accomplish some tasks never before attempted and experiences a
modest gain in the scale or scope of new activities.
Stage 2. A few years of readjustment where costs and annual
investments in technology stabilize while capacity continues to
grow and new functions are developed and implemented.
[Alternative: the organization rejects "automation" and/or
leaves the business that was being automated.]
Stage 3. Several years where the organization achieves new
levels of efficiency and effectiveness - but the organization
is no longer really in quite the same "business" it was in the
beginning. No one seriously asks if technology increased
productivity compared with the "old" ways of working, because
the organization is no longer pursuing the old objectives and
no longer works in the old ways. No one seriously considers
abandoning the technology because it has become inconceivable
to accomplish what is now being done without it.
In administrative and other areas where educational
institutions engage in functions highly similar to corporations,
colleges and universities can adopt techniques already well-
developed for business and move very rapidly through (perhaps even
skip) the earliest stages. In instructional areas, however, the
IT decisions of colleges and universities are more decentralized
than in corporations; moreover, the core functions are not similar
to those in business. Consequently, the organizational
implementation cycle is more complex and educational organizations
are likely to move through the stages even more slowly than
industrial organi-zations of the same size.
On the academic side, most colleges and universities are
somewhere in Phase 1 - spending money. Just the same, new
technologies that may offer great potential for educational
applications continue to arrive - each year, each month, and
sometimes each week. And with each major new tech-nology,
institutions and departments must again revisit plans and move
through the same stages.
Higher education has much to learn about the turnover of
technologies and how to move quickly and painlessly into phases II
and III cited above. Additionally, we need better metrics and
models to measure the costs and benefits of technological
innovation on instruction.1 All the while, the current technology
infrastructure at most institutions is so taxed and under-funded
that campuses are stretched supporting just the "early adopters"
- the first large wave of students and faculty drawn to desktop
computing and IT resources.2
Ungrounded (and unchallenged) IT advocates will mislead many
if we all continue to underestimate the real costs, complexity,
and duration of the successful implementation process. Without
understanding these cycles and their costs, campuses will neither
recognize nor attain the full benefits that technology might offer
- to students, to faculty, to curriculum, and to institutional
effectiveness. The consequence: campuses will be stuck in phases
I and II, never achieving the gains available in phases III and IV
.
We cite as one example of this problem the costs of
"installing a campus network," an issue which most campuses have
experienced or will soon confront. At face value, the costs are
running wires into offices, dorms, libraries, and classrooms. But
the additional and very real implementation costs include
additional equipment, initial user training, continuing user
support, and software licenses. Moreover, while the initial
installation cost looks like a simple capital expenditure, the
technical maintenance and user support costs are a continuing
expense that over a few years can easily dwarf the initial expense
for installing the wire.
This mirrors a recent conversation with a college president:
the network installation estimates he received accurately stated
the costs of the "running the wire." But what he needed for
financial and curriculum planning were total costs over the first
three years. Yet the estimate on his desk did not include any of
the ancillary or support costs (e.g., additional hardware and
software, site licenses for content, additional technical support
personnel) which consequently almost tripled the total costs over
the first three years.
There is another lesson from the corporate experience that is
also important for higher education. The successful integration
of information technologies is almost always associated with
significant structural change - the very kind of change which
educational institutions routinely resist. In contrast to the
pace ofcorporate restructuring in the United States over the past
five years, structural change in education occurs slowly,
incrementally, and over a period of many years (decades). Indeed,
it is well-known that the collegial decision process works far
better at preserving culture and knowledge than at responding
quickly to new technologies and changing environmental issues.
Yet given the pressures currently confronting educational
institutions - for accountability, quality, cost control,
productivity, and organizational efficiency - colleges and
universities may have arrived at the moment when they must shift
to accommodate change as well as preservation.
Some IT advocates, such as computer center directors and
faculty who are strongly committed to applications of specific
technology, may argue with this critique. Some will point to
individual cases in specific disciplines where technology helped
to increase productivity and/or reduce costs. Some will argue
that successful structural changes are already underway, citing
distance education as the most important example.
But these changes do not necessarily address the core,
campus-based instructional activities of most faculty at most
institutions. Rather, the oft-cited examples of successful
integration and potential productivity gains (or effective cost
control) typically involve small programs, "early adopter"
faculty, and units that receive special support to "make things
work." We have yet to hear of an instance where the total costs
(including all realistically amortized capital investments and
development expenses, plus reasonable estimates for faculty and
support staff time) associated with teaching some unit to some
group of students actually decline while maintaining the quality
of learning.
TEXT FROM A SIDE-BAR BEGINS HERE
What Does it Cost?
What does it cost to support instruction in a
classroom? Much depends on the kinds of "technology" in
use.
One other important point: the half-life of the
white board is much longer than the half-life of the
multimedia computer system or a 20 unit instructional
computer lab. This too affects the overall, multiyear
costs.
TEXT FROM A SIDE-BAR ENDS HERE
* * * * *
So given the somewhat uncertain benefits, why do (or must)
colleges and universities invest in information technology, even
if the claims for productivity are elusive or just simply a long-
way off?
There are several compelling reasons why insti-tutions will
have to make continuing and significant investments in information
technology. These reasons generally fall into three categories:
competitive position; teaching, learning, and curri-culum
enhancement; and student preparation for the labor market.
COMPETITIVE POSITION. Growing numbers of college-bound
students come to campus with computer skills and technology
expectations. In Fall 1994 over half (55 percent) of all entering
college freshmen reported having had at minimum one-half year of
"computer science" or some form of formal computing or technology
instruction while in high school.3 Several recent consumer
studies suggest that one-fourth to one-third of American
households now own a computer and more than 40 percent of recent
computer sales in the United States have been into homes rather
than small businesses and large corporations.
Consequently, colleges and universities must invest in
computers and information technology if only to tell their
potential clientele that the institution provides the information
technology resources increasingly available elsewhere, meaning
both in homes and high schools, and at competing institutions.
Given the explosive growth in home sales over the past year, many
students will arrive on campus to find old (and in too many cases
antiquated) computers in campus labs and clusters: the computers
students have at home, in their dorm rooms, and in off-campus
apartments will be newer and more powerful than the systems
available to them on campus.
But the network and on-line information resources now drive
much of campus computing. So in this domain, the continuing
institutional investment will focus heavily on the network,
particularly "plug and play" options that allow mobile users to
connect devices into the campus network at a variety of locations
- libraries, labs, dorm rooms, offices, etc. The old competitive
reference points describing information resources that used to
distinguish between institutions- the numbers of science labs and
library books - are being be replaced by a new one: information
resources and tools available to students, as reflected by (a) the
number of locations on and adjacent to campus that support mobile
computing and network access; and (b) the kinds, quality, and
currency of digital resources available on-line via the campus
library or information services center. Evidence of this
transition? Simply spend a few minutes with a standard college
guidebook to see the kinds of information these resources now
provide about the campus computing and IT environment. These
competitive issues also apply to institutional efforts to recruit
and retain faculty.
TEACHING, LEARNING, AND CURRICULUM ENHANCEMENT.
There is
impressive evidence that information technology can be used to
enhance courses, curriculum, and student learning. One of the best
articles on this topic, by Robert Kozma and Jerome Johnston,
presents compelling evidence, drawn from a number of disciplines
and a variety of campuses, about the role of information
technology as a catalyst for (or enabler of) the qualitative
enhancement of the learning experience.4 Summarized below, Kozma
and Johnston identify seven ways that computing and information
technology can be used in the transformation of teaching,
learning, and the curriculum:
1. From reception to engagement. "The dominant model of
learning in higher education has the student passively
absorbing knowledge disseminated by professors and textbooks..
With technology, students are moving away from passive
reception of information to the active engagement in the
construction of knowledge.
2. From the classroom to the real world. "Too often students
walk out of class ill-equipped to apply their new knowledge to
real world situations and contexts. Conversely, too fre-
quently, the classroom examines ideas out of the context of
gritty real-world considerations. Technology is breaking down
the walls between the classroom and the real world.
3. From text to multiple representations. "Lin-guistic
expression, whether text or speech, as a reserved place in the
academy. technology is expanding our ability to express,
understand, and use ideas in other symbolic systems."
4. From coverage to mastery. "Expanding on their classic
instructional use, computers can teach and drill students on a
variety of rules and concepts essential to performance in an
interdisciplinary area.
5. From isolation to interconnection. "Technology has helped
us move from a view of learning as an individual act done in
isolation toward learning as a collaborative activity. And as
we have [also] moved from the consideration of ideas in
isolation to an examination of their meaning in the context of
other ideas."
6. From products to process. "With technology, we are moving
past a concern with the products of academic work to the
processes that create knowledge..[students] learn how to use
tools that facilitate the process of scholarship.
7. From mechanics to understanding in the laboratory. "The
scientific laboratory is one of the most expensive
instructional areas of the academy. It is costly to maintain
. and to provide supervision to students scientists. It is
also a limited learning experience [as] so much time is spent
replicating classic experiments that there is little time left
to explore alternative hypotheses as real scientists do."5
There are many ways that information technology can enhance
the undergraduate curriculum and student learning experience. The
key issue, of course, is the effective use of information
technology resources as tools to support instruction and learning
outcomes.
There are now good examples to document the successful use of
computer software to improve the quality of learning and teaching
in each of the categories described above. Kozma and Johnson
report from their work with the faculty who received national
recognition from the EDUCOM/NCRIPTAL Higher Education Software
Awards Program that most award winners needed five to seven years
to develop their own instructional applications. Students in the
classes of these faculty benefited significantly from the faculty
effort to develop instructional software. But overall, Kozma and
Johnston report minimal dissemination and adoption: comparatively
few students, courses, or other institutions ever benefited from
that work.
Focus for a moment on just the classes where faculty used the
EDUCOMoNCRIPTAL award software to support instruction. Were it
possible to accurately calculate (or even estimate) the increases
in student learning linked to these instructional resources, the
"productivity gains" for individual students would produce
impressive numbers. Students in these classes generally were
usually not required to pay additional fees or invest much
additional time, but they were enabled to learn more - to learn it
faster, better, more comprehensively Improved outcomes divided by
stable costs generated increased productivity.
However, calculating productivity gains for any broader
universe - even at the level of the individual course - will not
show such gains. This second set of calculations would have to
include total development costs - the faculty time and related
institutional support. This more accurate assessment of total
costs dramatically reduces the relevant cost-benefit ratio.
Moreover, the true development costs are quite large if spread
over only a few hundred or even a few thousand students.
LABOR MARKET PREPARATION. There is no question that
technology skills will be essential in ever increasing portions
of the labor market of the 21st Century. The use of computer
and other information technologies is becoming prevalent across
all fields and occupations. Consequently, colleges and
universities would be doing a major disservice to their students
if the institutions failed to provide appropriate opportunities
(including structured curricular experiences) to develop and
enhance information technology skills as part of an
undergraduate experience.
A.D.A.M.
The Cost of Curriculum Effectiveness
A.D.A.M. provides a relevant example of a relatively
successful commercial instructional software package. It is a
multimedia, CD-ROM-based set of programs in human anatomy and
physiology that is widely used to supplement instruction in
biology, anatomy and related courses, even in medical schools.
The software permits students to "explore" and "see" a human
body in ways that are not possible otherwise - not even through
working with a cadaver.
Faculty who have adopted ADAM report that their students
are learning more, better, easier, faster - at a cost per
student that is competitive with most textbooks. It is obvious
that the "student productivity" or "learner productivity" has
increased for those who use A.D.A.M..
But A.D.A.M. is not cheap: it is available for an
institutional purchase, rather than student resale. According
to the co-producers, A.D.A.M., Software Inc. of Atlanta and
Benjamin/ Cummings Publishing of Redwood City, the development
effort required four years, fifteen medical illustrators, ten
computer programmers, and over six million dollars.
Was this a cost-effective investment for the developers?
Probably so, since A.D.A.M. is broadly viewed as a quality
product and, despite the price ($800-1,300), it is widely used
in undergraduate and medical education. The size of the market,
the acceptable price, and the develop-ment cost seem to be in
balance, slightly in favor of the publishers. There are not yet
many other examples of instructional software for which this is
true.
But it is also hard to argue that any single college or
university has achieved more than a negligible gain in
productivity by using A.D.A.M. The number of students taught in
these courses has not increased. Tuition has not increased.
The number, kinds, and combination of faculty teaching these
courses using A.D.A.M. have not changed. There may be some
marginal gains in reducing the number (and expense) of certain
laboratory requirements that have been replaced by student use
of A.D.A.M.
The point is that A.D.A.M. represents a worth-while
investment, a commercial success, and an innovative application.
But it has not been respon-sible for instructional productivity.
In this context one of the best statements comes not from an
occupational task force or industry group but from the American
Library Association:
To be an information literate, a person must be able to
recognize when information is needed and have the ability to
locate, evaluate, and use effectively the needed
information.... Ultimately, information-literate people are
those who have learned how to learn. They know how to learn
because they know how knowledge is organized, how to find
information, and how to use information in such a way that
others can learn from them. They are people prepared for
life-long learning, because they can always find the
information needed for any task or decision.6
Information access, or information literacy (to use the ALA
term), will be essential for the growing cadre of knowledge
workers and professionals in the 21st Century. These challenges
cut across all academic disciplines and across all occupational
and professional fields. It is an issue higher education
institutions across the United States cannot ignore - but one that
many faculty have no idea how to address and for which few
teaching materials have been designed. It is an area where
communication, cooperation, and collaboration among faculty,
faculty support staff, and librarians will be essential.
So there are good reasons - other than "institutional
productivity" - for colleges and universities to invest in
information technology for teaching and learning. These reasons,
described above, can be explained in terms of productivity gains
for individual faculty and, especially, to individual students.
But these gains do not offer the kind of progress described in
phases III and IV; and many colleges and universities confront
pressures that force them to seek much greater gains (and the
accompanying reduced costs).
So why are institutions not making more progress towards
stages III and IV?
Infrastructure and user support limitations are the central
issues preventing colleges and universities from reaching phases
III and IV in the educational use of information technology. Most
campuses have barely begun to provide the capital investment -
computers, telecommunications links, adequate technical support
staff - required to support significant gains based on the
effective integration of information technology. One example:
when user support levels (personnel and dollars) are compared to
widely cited standards for corporations, colleges and universities
are often running at one-half to one-fifth, or less, of
recommended levels. Some observers may (incorrectly) cite this as
productivity, a case of doing more with less; rather, this one
example provides important evidence that many things are probably
not being done well or right, or at all. Additionally, it
highlights the often hidden, often unacknowledged, but nonetheless
real costs of user support as a key component of the overall costs
of the institutional investment in IT.
Moreover, many senior campus officials view the technology
infrastructure - equipment, software, and support personnel - as a
"black hole" for money. They also often view IT as a centralized
service (similar to the library) that is an easy target for budget
cuts in times of financial difficulty. Additionally, technology
resources are expensive yet have a short-half-life, often less
than 15 months. Most campuses do not have an amortization plan
for acquiring and retiring needed equipment and software that
becomes obsolete quickly.7
Many campuses fit a pattern that leads to a crisis in this
area. Increasing investments (campus dollars or external grants)
support the expansion of the information technology hardware base
on campus - most recently, the campus-wide network. Little
attention is given to the accompanying increased demand for
technical support personnel who keep the new additions functional.
Meanwhile, more students and faculty notice the arrival of the
gizmos, widgets, and stuff; they begin to ask "How can I use that
new jack in the wall? When can I use this Internet I hear so much
about? Who will train me to use Mosaic? How soon before I can
bring this into my classroom?" At the same time, institutional
financial pressures have led to a hiring freeze or staff
reductions. Faculty who have depended on technical support staff
for basic services find support less accessible. Faculty eager to
explore IT applications in their instructional and scholarly work
experience problems because the support staff who handle technical
issues or training are simply not available.
And what then happens when institutional pressure increases
to support distance education and other pedagogical and content
changes? The need for additional faculty support services to
facilitate these major transitions increases, becomes still more
varied, and often is recognized too late. Pedagogical change
enabled by technology required faculty development services that
help faculty understand, adapt, and adopt new teaching approaches.
As many of the new pedagogical approaches rely on new ways for
students to access to new kinds of information resources,
increased and more sophisticated library support services are also
required.
The all too-likely and unfortunate outcome: user support
(training, assistance, etc.) declines just when faculty interest
and aspirations might reach "critical mass." The hopes for
engaging, significant, and exciting changes in academic
activities, enabled by technology, are unfulfilled as the gap
between the level of support services needed and the level
available widens. The institution remains stuck in phase I or II.
* * * * *
There is another important dimension to this discussion.
Amidst all the conversation about using IT to enhance
instructional productivity, the client's perspective seems
missing. How much and what kinds of IT do our clients - students
- view as essential, beneficial and/or convenient? And how much
and what kinds of IT do they view as serving faculty or
institutional interests, rather than their own?
The 15 million students - clients - enrolled in U. S.
colleges and universities represent many different markets for
educational training and services, ranging from full-time freshmen
and medical students to part-time students in community colleges
and in MBA programs. Instructional models and technologies
appropriate for and effective with some populations or in some
disciplines may not work well for others.
Some interesting innovations such as Mind Extension
University (MEU) use cable to bring college courses into homes at
all hours of the day. (MEU students can even tape the lectures for
viewing at a more convenient time, much the way many traditional
students might copy reserve reading assignments.) But even with
dramatic growth, MEU serves a very small percentage of the
clientele for higher education in the United States. And part of
MEU's costs are leveraged because it distributes content - video
courses - developed by faculty based at traditional campuses
across the country. For MEU's clients, cable offers added-value:
traditional content plus significant convenience. Similarly, for
MEU's suppliers (participating faculty and institu-tions), MEU's
distribution agreements also represent added-value, in the form of
new markets and revenue that do not compete with core clients.
But the IT that provides added-value to MEU's clientele can
also be inappropriate, impersonalized (and potentially overpriced)
instruction for eighteen-year old college freshmen and executive
MBA students. In short, IT is not a "one-context serves all"
solution. Yet the kinds of productivity gains or cost savings
promised by advocates requires a mass, rather than unique
application of the resource. However, IT does not provide a one-
size, one source solution.
What Do We Really Do With Technology?
Accidentally Falling into Phases III and IV?
Even as many institutions struggle to develop their
technology plans and articulate a vision for the way
they intend to use IT, the daily importance and impact
of IT on higher education is readily apparent, if not
yet pervasive Over the past decade, and in particular
within the past five years, IT has become common within
the academic enterprise. Some examples:
o Computers have replaced typewriters. Word
processing is now the primary mechanism for preparing
the documents - class assignments, institutional
reports, and scholarly documents - that are the coin of
the realm in academe.
o E-mail has emerged as a major resource for
scholarly communication. The dissemination of ideas and
documents via "The Net" has contributed to new levels of
scholarly access and dissemination in many fields.
o On-line information resources provide remote
access to a rich array of content. Gopher and World
Wide Web (WWW) resources bring distant data and archival
material to individual desktops via the magic of the
network: the White House, Library of Congress, National
Medical Library, and the Vatican Museum- as well as
Elvis's Graceland to name but a few- are now available
on-line to almost anyone with access to the Internet or
to a commercial information service (e.g., America On-
Line, Prodigy or CompuServe).
o Video distribution supporting distant
learning transfers the content of one classroom to many.
Using conventional telephone lines, fiber-optic
networks, satellite down-links and even standard VCR
tapes, campuses and departments are "broadcasting"
classes and content to new clientele at new locations.
Of course these four examples barely touch the
movement of IT into the course syllabus: slowly,
cautiously, and somewhat erratically, growing numbers of
faculty are bringing IT into their instructional
activities. The early adopters are already using
commercial products, creating their own templates,
making assignments that draw on courseware distributed
by educational publishers, and using simulations across
a variety of disciplines to encourage the "active
engagement in the construction of knowledge" described
by Kozma and Johnson. But these early adopters may
represent no more than a fifth of the professoriate;
integration and innovation that goes beyond this group
has been stalled. (See Geoghegan, "Stuck at the
Barricades" elsewhere in this issue of Change.)
Nonetheless, the campus community harbors great
expectations for more - more that will be better,
richer, and less expensive, if not "free" - or at little
costs to individual users. The initial experience with
the Internet or "the Network" as a source of content for
instruction and scholarship is striking - and positive.
The rich array of periodicals, data bases, scholarly
literature, image libraries, federal and state
documents, and scientific research coming on-line on a
daily (or even hourly) basis is stunning - and
fundamentally changes the traditional definition of the
library as the primary campus archive or information
repository. Via both campus networks and broadly
available commercial services such as America On-Line,
CompuServe, and Prodigy (the big three in commercial
consumer services), users have access to wide range of
commercial, scholarly, and scientific resources
concurrent with the publication of these materials in
printed form. Moreover, archival searches are quick and
are becoming increasingly easy. On some of the
commercial services, searching special topics and
content in back issues of Time, Newsweek, Scientific
American, Atlantic Monthly, and The Congressional Record
can be done in the time it takes to walk from a parking
lot, dorm room, or faculty office to a campus library.
The emerging uses of the Internet by faculty and
students (especially, the new practice of using e-mail
to enhance communication among students and faculty in
conjunction with the work of a specific course) may
provide ways to change the structure of the fundamental
"business" of education. Colleges and universities may
discover that small pockets of faculty and students are
already making a transition to phases III and IV in the
use of information technology for teaching and learning.
* * * * *
Those who believe that technology provides the "silver
bullet" on productivity and quality should look at the experience
of General Motors during the early 1980s. Seeking a quick fix to
quality and productivity problems, GM invested heavily to bring
technology to its manufacturing plants. By one estimate GM spent
$50 billion on automated assembly lines and robots. A decade
later GM could report only marginal gains in quality and
productivity: moreover, GM continued to lose market share and fall
behind on quality to its Japanese and US competitors.
In contrast, a visit to Honda, Toyota and Nissan plants in
the US, as well as to Ford's assembly lines reveals only average
use of robotics in manufacturing and assembly. Yet quality and
market share have im-proved for these companies.
What happened? Why did GM fail to realize real benefits from
its massive investment in technology? The problem was that GM
poured money into technology but paid little attention to the
overall design process: the new technology on the assembly line
could not resolve key design problems in the product. The GM
experience, widely cited in TQM circles, highlights the role of
technology as one of many tools, rather than the tool, to enhances
quality and improve productivity. Moreover, at GM as in higher
education, process and participation are important: training,
worker (or user) participation, design, client needs and
requirements, and support services for professionals all affect
outcomes - be it car quality or classroom learning.
The real long-term academic benefit of information technology
will be what it brings to pedagogy and the curriculum - additional
resources that enhance the instructional tools used by faculty and
the learning experience of students. Ample evidence documents the
benefits for the learning experience. Technology provides access
to image data bases (satellite photos of the cosmos or the
California coastline); statistical data bases (such as Census
data) that students can use for class projects, remote libraries
(which supplement resources available from campus facilities), and
more.
It is in this context that the IT implementation effort now
underway at colleges and universities across the country poses two
great risks:
1) Many institutions will follow GM's path by focusing on
technology, with inadequate attention to other components of
the process. This will lead to marginal (if any) gains, great
individual and organizational frustration, and, ultimately, to
unrealized potential;
2) Only a few institutions will have the financial and personnel
resources and the commitment necessary to achieve the
educational potential of information technology - providing
access to superior learning options for students and new
levels of faculty productivity.
Despite the time and money invested to date, colleges and
universities are still in the "flat part of the learning curve" in
the area of information technology. Institutions, departments,
and faculty are still experimenting with using familiar
technologies in new and different ways, with both traditional and
new clientele. Additionally, past experience suggests that new
technologies always generate unanticipated applications - and
benefits. In other words, the wisest technology advocate or
planner cannot anticipate all the ways that new technologies might
be used to enhance instruction and scholarship.
Colleges and universities still have much to learn about how
to develop a new information technology infrastructure that
provides instructional and curricular benefits. We must measure
our great aspirations and institutional investments against what
information technology can really provide, not what we hope (or
fear) it might do.
For today and into the realistic future, most students at
most colleges will continue to pursue campus-based and classroom-
defined educational experiences. The technology not withstanding,
instruction in virtually all these classrooms will continue to
depend primarily faculty.
Clearly, information technology can support changes in the
traditional faculty role. Growing numbers of faculty are gaining
experience using the Internet for collaborative discourse in their
disciplinary specialties and for pursuing their own research
agendas; however, very few have begun to train their students in
these same skills. (In many instances, students are training the
faculty!) As noted above, navigating the network now provides
access to resources previously not available to most students (and
perhaps to many faculty). This shift reflects a dramatic change in
kinds of learning resources that can come into the classroom -
dramatic shifts in the content available for instruction. And
content - the material used to stimulate learning, analysis,
synthesis, integration and mastery - combined with new modes of
communication, provides the new foundation for education's great
aspirations for information technology.
* * * * *
What IT does best (or will do better as it improves) is
deliver content and provide access to information and to other
people. It allows students and faculty to find and manipulate
information, to take new meaning, and to have new (learning)
experiences. In the near term, however, the demand for faculty
guidance and intervention, for faculty mentoring, is much more
likely to increase than to decrease. Students will continue to
need faculty to provide the conceptual framework and motivation
that enable them to seek and integrate new information. They will
also need someone to introduce them to the most effective ways to
approach the Internet for the purposes of acquiring information
for a particular academic discipline.
But what then about the new Grail of productivity?
Unfortunately (or, fortunately!), there is little if any evidence
that information technology will reduce faculty involvement in
instruction (i.e., reduce the cost of instruction) in the next few
years. Technology enhances the content of the curriculum, the
materials that faculty use as a catalyst for learning; it also
enhances the options for communication with and among students.
And technology can help faculty adjust the syllabus to respond to
changing issues and environmental opportunities, be these the
shifting maps of Eastern Europe or the human genome. Admittedly,
there are exceptions, most of which center on "skill-heavy"
applications: the use of computer-based instruction for
introductory logic and other courses have effectively altered some
components of the course syllabus and the need for the faculty
role in some instances - but these courses are still quite the
exception after twenty years of demonstrated effectiveness.
Perhaps the changing demographics of higher education's
clientele - the growing population of non-residential, part-time,
older students - will continue to make distance education an
attractive option. Consequently, some instructional uses of
information technology will be more widely sought and acceptable.
But higher education will be shaped by two demographic forces over
the next decade: rising numbers of baby-boomers who are coming
back to campus for additional education, coupled with a tidal-wave
of the children of the baby-boomers (Boom II), making their first
appearance on campus. Parent and child will not necessarily want,
need, or appreciate the same kind of instructional methodology.
* * * * *
So what do we advocate and what can we hope for? What are
reasonable aspirations for information technology if campuses
cannot realistically expect their technology investments to reduce
the costs of instruction in the next few years?
We suggest that each college and university engage in an
institution-wide planning initiative that looks carefully at the
ways information technology can be used most effectively to
improve teaching and learning. This review must also include a
careful assessment of the full costs (hardware, software, faculty
time, support services, etc.) and potential benefits of various
alternatives. A promising framework for setting and achieving
realistic goals in this arena recognizes four basic categories of
IT benefits that differ significantly in the kinds and levels of
faculty support services required.
I. Personal and institutional administrative
productivity.
II. Enhancing traditional teaching.
III. Changing pedagogy.
IV. Changing content.
IT and the Corporate
Quest for Productivity
In case you missed it, the Industrial Age passed into the
Information Age in 1991: that's the year, according to a recent
report in Fortune, that corporate spending on IT surpassed
corporate investment in manufacturing technology.
But has the corporate investment spurred great gains in
productivity? Alas, no, much to the surprise (and
disappointment) of many analysts. Several recent studies
suggest that the contribution of IT to corporate productivity
has been marginal, at best. One example: Harvard's Gary
Loveman, studying manufacturing companies in the US and Western
Europe, reports that "IT capital had little, if any marginal
impact on output or labor productivity, whereas all other inputs
into production - including non-IT capital - had significant
positive impacts."
Why no big productivity bang for the bucks? As reported
recently in BusinessWeek (January 16, 1995), research by two
economists - by Daniel E. Sichel at the Brookings Institution
and Stephen D. Olinerat the Federal Reserve - reveals that
computers and peripheral equipment contributed at best only one
tenth of the growth in business output between 1987 and 1993.
Sichel and Oliner speculate that the reason computers contribute
so little to growth despite what BusinessWeek calls the "digital
explosion" of the past 15 years is that the installed base of
computers represents a tiny share - just two percent - of the
nation's total capital stock.
The two economists also note that the short half-life of IT
resources, coupled with corporate amortization policies, also
reduce economic growth linked to technology investments. Says
Sichel: "I'm not suggesting computers haven't brought about
efficiency gains for individual corporations. It's just not the
story for the economy as a whole." Sound familiar?
The first category, individual productivity, reflects IT
applications that have no direct effect on the teaching or
learning experiences of current faculty or students. Word-
processing, spreadsheets, and electronic mail are good examples of
individual productivity. So too does automated course
registration systems. These are examples of productivity gains
that have minimal impact on what or how things are taught and
learned. Faculty support services needed in this category are
primarily technical, largely introductory training, plus hardware
and software maintenance.
Campus efforts to enhance traditional teaching (category II),
include the broad effort underway at campuses across the country
"to wire" classrooms with computers and projection devices.
Showing a rotating 3-dimensional image of a molecule or cross-
section of a human brain adds to the quality of content and
communication in class without necessarily changing the underlying
teaching approach or curriculum. Faculty support services needed
in this category are primarily technical: introductory training
and hardware maintenance, plus discipline-specific or course-
specific guidance about the availability and acquisition of
computer-based materials.
Changing pedagogy, the third category, draws on many issues
raised by Kozma and Johnston, cited above. Good examples here
include supplementing science experiments with computer-based
simulations (such as A.D.A.M) or the use of networked computers to
exchange drafts and editorial comments in English composition
courses. Additionally, this category might also include distance
education initiatives, which must acknowledge the difference
between students being present in a conventional classroom and
participating via telecommunications. Faculty support services
needed in this category include the technical: intro-ductory
training and hardware maintenance. However, discipline-specific or
course-specific guidance about the availability and acquisition of
computer-based materials is essential. Also important is the
availability of introductory and training materials and services
to enable faculty members to understand how they can modify their
course preparation and conduct. As faculty pursue these options
more extensively it also becomes necessary to involve other campus
services such as the library and bookstore in helping to find,
select, and make available for convenient and effective student
use new combinations of traditional books and reprints and new
media such as computer software, CD-ROMs, and Internet access.
The fourth category, changing content, represents the "final
frontier." In some disciplines the use of information technology
in the research and field work has already changed how scholars
think of their work and the focus of their activities (e.g.,
textual analysis, mathematical proof by exhaustion of all
options). In other areas, scholars have discovered that
information technology now permits them to represent and
manipulate information and ideas in ways that were nearly
impossible previously (e.g., Geographical Information Systems,
theatrical lighting designs, musical notation and performance).
In both cases, scholars believe they must teach the "new" material
and that they must engage their students in using the relevant
technology. In this context, IT becomes both the reason for and
means of changing curriculum content. Faculty support services
needed in this category are even beyond those described for
category three. Faculty need to be working with publishers,
disciplinary associations, and peer-groups to revise the
curriculum and make sure teaching and learning materials
reflecting the changes in content and use of technology are
appropriately available.
And what about productivity? There is only one category in
this framework (THE FIRST!) where productivity gains (reduced
costs, enhanced quality, broader access to learning) are readily
achievable. The other categories offer improvements and increased
value, but usually in conjunction with substantially increased
investment and support costs. In sum, there is still no
instructional equivalent of the calculator replacing the slide-
rule.9
* * * * *
This review suggests that content, curriculum, and
communications - rather than productivity - are the appropriate
focus of and rationale for campus investments in IT. But even if
this argument is compelling, we must still be careful not to
foster inappropriate expectations. IT enthusiasts must avoid
irritating too many people by making too many promises that cannot
be kept. Technology advocates must sustain the good will and
realistic expectations of a wide audience of information consumers
and providers so that all participants in the educational
enterprise will be, at minimum, cautiously receptive when the next
course-specific application of great potential comes along and
when the first great across-the-board instructional tool comes
along.
There is also still much to learn about the costs and
benefits associated with bringing a group of people into the same
place (classroom) at the same time vs. having them interact using
computers, video, and telecommunications. Each institution,
department, and faculty member must find the right balance in
forming combinations of traditional practices and materials with
new ones.
These are important issues for higher education. Advocates
and evangelists must make promises carefully, managing both
expectations and limited financial resources with great care. We
must be honest with ourselves, our sponsors, and our clientele
about the applications and limits of information technology. The
academic enterprise can do great things with and will experience
significant benefitsfrom information technology. But it won't be
cheap, and it will not save money soon. The IT investment,
however, will make a qualitative difference in the way we teach,
the materials we teach with, the structure of the college
curriculum, the learning experience for students, and how we
exchange information - both with colleagues and also as faculty
interacting with students. Goals and aspira-tions for quality and
academic productivity will be achieved only over many years and
ony through developing and providing the right combinations of:
These are not small challenges. But they are also important
challenges which higher education must address with realistic
expectations and objectives, mindful about real costs, attentive
to the capacity to deliver, and focused on the needs of an
increasingly heterogeneous clientele in a rapidly changing world.
White Board (4'x8') $ 150
Overheard Projector 350
20" TV w/ VCR 600
Multimedia computer w/projection via
overheard projector 2,700
Multimedia computer w/projection via
overheard RGB/TV device 4,700
20 unit networked computer lab with
projection device 60,000
Of course these costs reflect just the initial
purchase price, not sustained support and operating
costs, which vary tremendously. For example the three
year costs for a 4'x8' white board might be $100 or
$150, mostly for markers, erasers, and cleaning fluid.
In contrast, the three year costs for a single unit
multimedia computer/projection system could easily
surpass purchase costs, given software upgrades and some
technical assistance.