Measured in a variety of ways, our faculty development program
has been very
successful. The first workshops were populated by “early innovators”
with some degree of
technological knowledge and sophistication, but recent years have seen
even self-described
“technophobes” flocking to the summer workshops and working long and
enthusiastic hours on
their projects. Part of this is no doubt due to the explosive
growth of the Internet and the World
Wide Web, and to simultaneous improvements in the usability of systems
for creating and
devising web-based applications and multimedia presentations.
Faculty who observe their
colleagues’ success in employing technology in their courses, and who
hear favorable reports
about the workshop activities, are also more likely to seek to develop
their own acquaintance
with and use of technology. The very high demand for computer-mediated
classrooms, and
constant activity in the faculty lab, are persuasive evidence that
many more course applications
are being undertaken, completed and used.
Since the faculty is growing more familiar with technology, and
technology itself is
becoming easier to use, we may be able gradually to move to a more
streamlined model for
training. But it is important to keep academic uses of technology
both visible and improving, to
train new users (faculty, students, and staff), to offer training for
new applications and to keep
pace with increasing demand. The size of the current professional
staff in faculty development is
adequate for the present, but the current model of software support
provided largely by students,
and the size of the staff that supports the system infrastructure,
have both become inadequate as
the number of systems and their usage increase. In addition,
we need to add professional staff
who can devote more time and attention to on-line learning applications,
including web- and
network-based models.
As instructional modalities proliferate, the current budget and
guidelines for providing
computers to adjunct faculty (particularly in instructional areas like
writing, language and
computer graphics) are proving inadequate. Each department
that requests it is provided with a
single computer that is shared by all adjuncts. This is a serious
problem when a department has
several adjuncts teaching technology-intensive courses. We recommend
that this policy be
reconsidered and that the budget necessary for appropriate support
be addressed.
Finally, our 1994 report noted the issue–still unresolved–of
providing proper recognition
to faculty who make curricular contributions in this area. Such
curricular developments take
considerable time and thought, and may be slowed should the available
grant-based financial
incentives decrease or disappear. Recognition and encouragement
of such work seems to us as
important, for example, as the recognition accorded for leading a Drew
International Seminar,
since each is in accord with major identity themes in the College strategic
plan.
Many faculty have already incorporated uses of the network into
their courses. While
most of these involve relatively simple web applications, the next
few years will see enormous
increases in sharing documents and software. Today’s applications
consist primarily of text,
with some use of pictures. The network can effectively facilitate
software and file sharing and
move text and pictures among users, but its electronic equipment will
require timely upgrades to
handle the anticipated increase in sound and video traffic. We
need to prepare for the
exponential growth of all of these kinds of academic applications of
the network.
Here are some examples to illustrate the situation we face.
Use of electronic mail has
been increasing at an annual rate of 20 percent. When a new e-mail
system capable of handling
graphics, video and sound is installed in Spring 1999, usage is likely
to grow even faster. Each
faculty workshop with 20 participants leads to 20 more courses that
require materials to be
transmitted electronically, and more students who need to use the network
for longer periods of
time. Internet usage has quadrupled over the past year.
In 1997, there were 500 network users;
in 1998 there are1400; and in 1999 the full campus population of
2500 will be on the network.
Campus wiring to serve this population should remain adequate for the
foreseeable future, but
there must be a plan for maintaining, updating, replacing, and adding
capacity to hubs, switches
and network cards, and adding needed Internet capacity. If these
components do not evolve
together at the proper rates, the entire network will decay.
A plan for appropriate staffing is at least as important as an
equipment plan. Staffing
levels in relevant technology areas have not changed much since before
the network arrived. The
College strongly supports the 1999–2000 priority budget requests from
Technology that would
add a new position in the systems support area and reallocate a position
from computer repair to
PC and software support (an issue noted above). We strongly urge
that the institution give
consistent and careful attention to anticipate additional personnel
increments.
Some related issues already face us in the immediate context.
Now that on-campus
construction is complete, achieving true universal access requires
that we provide off-campus
access–both for commuting students and for those who may urgently need
to connect to the
network for academic purposes when they are elsewhere. For the
next two years, we still need a
formal plan to provide connectivity for those undergraduates whose
university-provided
computers did not come with installed network cards. When the
College began its program of
distributing personal computers as part of tuition in 1984, we could
anticipate that students
would leave four years later with a machine that was not obsolete.
This is no longer the case,
and many schools that have recently adopted programs similar to ours
are planning on a two-year
replacement cycle. (The desktop models issued to most faculty
and staff tend to have a longer
useful life, both because more power can be purchased than for a notebook
computer at the same
price point, and because desktops are more easily expandable).
The College also welcomes the coming change in the administrative
computing system.
We anticipate that the new system will be widely used by College faculty
and students for
advising and in support of other academic purposes, and that it will
be yet another resource that
is facilitated by the campus network.
Most of these facilities were initially established and/or equipped
in whole or in part with
grant funds. Budgets for maintaining and upgrading most of these
facilities have not been
formalized. Although much of the “high-end” equipment located
in these facilities can be
“recycled” elsewhere to places where it will continue to be useful
for a few more years (such as
faculty and staff desktops), there are no funds to replace the more
sophisticated facilities when
their equipment becomes too obsolete for “state of the art” uses.
While we will continue to seek
additional external funds, we note that many funders explicitly perceive
their support as “seed
money,” and expect (if not require) either that the University provide
matching funds for the
initial purchases, or that it earmark funds for subsequent upgrading
and replacement. Frankly,
we are running out of funding sources to tap for “seed money.”
The demand for mediated classrooms that include computers and
projection equipment is
a particular pressure point. Academic grants have obtained equipment
for eight such classrooms
in Brothers College, the Hall of Science, and the Learning Center.
Requests to hold classes in
these rooms have been skyrocketing, and can be expected to increase
even more rapidly. This
year, the Registrar has had to schedule College classes in the mediated
classroom in Seminary
Hall because of the high demand from College faculty. Since a
number of Theological School
faculty are developing interest in this form of pedagogy (seven TS
faculty attended the first
academic technology summer workshop held for this faculty in June 1998,
and a major grant
proposal for continuing workshops for TS faculty modeled largely on
a successful College
proposal is pending), this method of dealing with the increased needs
of the College is not likely
to be available much longer. Just as virtually every classroom
in which College courses are
regularly taught now has VCR capabilities, there should be a plan to
install computerized
projection equipment in each of these rooms, and to maintain and replace
the equipment over its
predictable life cycle.
Demand for use of computer projection equipment for various kinds
of presentations has
also been growing among the nonacademic offices of the university.
Facilities to meet these
non-academic demands need to be budgeted additionally by those offices
in order to avoid
exacerbating the academic need for appropriately mediated classrooms.
In devising its 1995 “action plan” for the University’s strategic
planning process, the
College accorded the same high priority to a “technology maintenance
and amortization fund”
and “improvement of faculty and student computers” as it did to an
addition and renovation of
the Hall of Sciences. That is, we regard appropriate technology
budgets to be as essential to our
academic program as this crucial capital project. Therefore,
we urge the University to include
support for technology prominently in the case statement for the upcoming
capital campaign. A
lead gift should be sought to establish a technology endowment, and
attractive naming
opportunities abound. A million-dollar endowment providing $50,000
of expenditures for the
operating budget, for example, would more than double the current university-wide
budget for
curricular and faculty development, and would come close to doubling
the annual amount
available for computer upgrades.
Is the campus technology program an integral and essential component
of Drew’s
education program? Drew has joined every other quality institution
in offering a resounding
affirmative answer to this question, and is affirming its early steps
with thorough integration of
technology into the curriculum. That being the case, we need
to take decisive action to support it
adequately.