EXECUTIVE SUMMARY
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During the drafting of this report a study team member noted with
more amusement than surprise that she had "just received a message from
tomorrow." While the electronic message she had received from Australia
was literally from tomorrow, the irony and impact of this statement in the
larger context of the changing academic environment did not go unnoticed
among members of the Academic Computing Study (ACS) team. The
team recognized that Kent State University has implemented several
important computing and related technological applications during the past
decade, resulting in many positive changes in academic and administrative
programs and services. However there was also a realization that the work
is far from complete. The University continues to build a strong record of
technological achievement, while looking for improved methods to meet
the many and varied technological challenges of the 1990s and beyond.
These challenges must be met if the University hopes to improve its
competitiveness and meet the expectations placed on higher education for
the year 2000.
Solutions to the challenges will lie in the ability of the University
community to better articulate the options and resource requirements for
academic computing and technology. The logical assignment of
responsibilities for meeting needs and the establishment of a well-defined
balance of effort between central and distributed information systems and
services must be determined and implemented. Much work will be
required before the next century to meet the particular computing needs of
each discipline. This will necessitate a major realignment of allocations
across all sectors of the University to achieve noticeable progress and
positive change in the instructional processes.
Rapid technological innovation has produced a dynamic and
volatile environment for instruction and research. The contributions of
this ACS include careful data collection, recommendations, and an
implementation plan. The study team found a need for continuous
improvement of the academic computing and technology environment at
Kent, and it anticipates the concomitant positive impact on the
instructional enterprise for both students and faculty. The team also
recognizes that this technological innovation will be driven by faculty
commitment and leadership.
The team echoes the needs expressed by students and faculty for
distributed discipline-specific databases and other electronic information
resources to enhance the instruction and research environment. Such
resources may reside in a variety of national and worldwide locations.
Network access to these resources will enable collaboration among faculty
and students using diverse computer workstations housed in a variety of
locations. This emerging environment at Kent will include:
growth of discipline-specific hardware and software adequate to support
student and faculty educational endeavors;
standardization of general computer applications such as word processing,
spreadsheets, and database management;
consistent access to well-equipped and staffed student computer labs;
support of electronic or multimedia classrooms that house a selected set of
technologies that enhance instructional capabilities through a variety of
methodologies and resources;
requirements and opportunities for students, staff, and faculty to achieve
technological competency;
student and faculty access to library and other information resources,
including text and graphics, whether they are located on a specific campus,
across the nation, or around the world;
real time conferencing involving multiple users such as faculty and
students, interacting at an informal conversational level;
collaborative research projects and routine group work by teams through
the use of common tools such as spreadsheets, graphic representations,
tables, and mathematical equations;
the integration of administrative data into the instructional process, thus
contributing to faculty and staff effectiveness through improved timely
access to needed information for purposes such as student advising;
the study of information flow and re-engineering of work processes to
reduce manual procedures and paper flow where needed.
The study team recommends that by the year 2000 technologies be
in place at Kent to support this emerging environment and other elements
in this academic computing plan. Specifically, the team emphasizes the
following recommendations, arranged around nine key themes. More
information and additional recommendations can be found in the
Recommendations and Benefits section of this report.
1. Advocacy for Academic Computing.
University policies regarding acquisition and distribution of
computer resources should place an added emphasis on academic
computing. An advocate for academic computing should be appointed to
coordinate academic computing priorities and resource needs, including
fundraising and budget development. The advocate should also promote
collaboration between those responsible for computing within academic
units and Academic Computing Services. In addition, an Advisory
Committee on Technology (ACT) should be established to advise both the
Provost and the Vice President for Business and Finance. The ACT
should be an expanded version of the NISS-recommended Technology
Policy Advisory Committee, and should include constituency-based
representation across academic and administrative units of the University,
including faculty and student representation. Charges to this committee
should include serving as an advocate for constituency information
systems, academic and administrative computing, and instructional
technology needs; serving as a resource and review group for
implementing information systems, instructional technology, and network
facilities; and advocating and promoting advances in technology.
2. Annual Planning.
The annual planning process should include consideration of the
role and use of technology in support of the mission of the academic units.
As part of the formal planning process, faculty should be provided
opportunities to identify specialized hardware and software requirements
for their academic units. Operating budgets that include funding lines for
academic computing should be earmarked and safeguarded. Capital
budget planning should make provision for the installation of network
connections in every office and residence hall room. Academic units
should ensure that technical expertise is available to support computer
hardware, networks, and discipline-specific software. Such arrangements
may be made through employment of full time systems support staff,
shared support staff with other units, formal agreements with their college
or Computer Services, or, when appropriate, on-load assignment to
designated faculty.
Planning should include movement toward a distributed academic
computing environment in which all classrooms, labs, residence hall
rooms, and faculty and administrative offices are connected to the campus
fiber optic backbone. Ultimately, the role of Academic Computing
Services should continue to evolve from that of a hardware and software
provider to a centralized consulting and support service for computing
systems distributed in academic units.
3. Provide and Reallocate E&G Budget for Student and Faculty Access.
Funding plans need to be developed to ensure continuous
improvement in the academic computing environment. Ongoing funding
needs to be provided for the purchase of new equipment, equipment
replacement, and maintenance for discipline-specific academic unit needs.
The Office of the Provost, colleges, and independent schools should work
in partnership to allocate funding to meet the growing technical support
staff needs of academic units. Funding plans should take into account the
total cost of using computers, including purchase, training, installation of
hardware and software, maintenance, repair, replacement, and upgrading.
University policy should encourage budget carry-forward plans to ensure
better acquisition decisions in support of purchases and upgrades to new
technology. The director of Information Systems and Technology, with
advice from ACT, should investigate alternative ways to contract for
maintenance and repair, and should review the pricing structure for service
contracts offered by Computer Equipment Services. In order to maximize
efficiency, bureaucracy inherent to the selection and purchasing processes
should be reviewed and streamlined as much as possible. This would
allow academic units to procure the brand of equipment needed within the
required time frame.
4. Universal Network Connectivity.
Assuming the completion of the campus backbone, it is imperative
that connection of offices, classrooms, labs, and rooms in residence halls
to the Kent Campus network should occur in order to provide access to
campus and global educational resources. Electronic mail should be
migrated from the mainframe to user friendly LAN based systems
connected to the Internet. A UNIX platform should be used for
campuswide mail and Internet access and as a central node for a
distributed campuswide information system.
University dial-in modem lines on the Kent and Regional
campuses should be connected to networked terminal servers to enable
transparent access from all locations to all University computers and local
area networks. These dial-in connections should be enhanced to support
direct Internet connection. Increasing demand from students and faculty
for remote access will necessitate constant expansion of the number of
dial-in lines.
5. Faculty Development and Support.
The administration and the faculty share the obligation for faculty
learning about ways in which technology can be applied to their
disciplines. Faculty professional development plans should incorporate
provision for time to develop skills in basic and advanced computer use.
A plan and strategy should be developed and implemented to acquire
discipline-specific technology and to provide every faculty member with a
computer that is appropriate to his or her instructional and research
activities, including support for both UNIX and Macintosh platforms and
evaluation of alternative PC platforms, such as Windows, Windows NT,
and OS/2.
The Office of the Provost should establish local unit or
college-based support positions and a faculty and staff support center that
contains multiplatform state-of-the-art instructional hardware and
software, including a software lending library. This support center should
showcase the use of technology in teaching and provide hands-on training
for faculty and staff.
In recognition of the substantial time required to develop and
provide technology-based instruction, academic units should provide
incentives and workload reductions for faculty to engage in innovative
computer-based instruction (e.g., summer instructional grants, merit pay,
and credit toward promotion and tenure). In view of the strategic
importance of computing to the future of the University, departmental
handbooks should provide information regarding workload equivalents for
faculty who engage in management or support of computing resources.
6. Student Access to Computing Resources.
Students need access in their departments to discipline-specific
hardware and software that are as current as that normally used in the
professions for which they are being educated. Academic units should
recognize this need and budget for the necessary equipment and software.
Academic units need to revise current staffing policies of computer labs to
provide staffing on evenings and weekends. Student lab monitors should
receive adequate and formal training appropriate to their assigned
responsibilities.
The Office of the Vice President for Business and Finance, in
cooperation with academic units, should coordinate computer purchase
programs for students so as to provide recommendations and reduce costs
to those who choose to purchase their own equipment. Students should be
provided with information regarding local and remote network
connections so that they can ensure that their computer is able to connect
to the University network.
Every student should be given, upon request, a computer account
that provides Internet access.
7. Training and User Assistance for Students and Faculty.
A Technological Education Requirement should be instituted for
freshmen that would ensure student computer literacy by developing
competency in areas such as word processing, spreadsheets, databases,
e-mail, and accessing Internet resources. It is recommended that these
skills be applied where relevant in existing courses. An example is the
emerging integration of word processing into English composition.
Academic units should schedule training for faculty. Staff should
be given formal release time to take advantage of available training. In
addition, Computer Services should provide self-paced learning aids such
as online tutorials, computer assisted instruction, or videos. A central help
desk with a single phone number should be available sixteen hours a day
to answer a wide variety of questions from users on any computer related
topic.
8. Upgrade Classrooms for Technology Use.
All new and renovated classroom facilities need to be
equipped with appropriate instructional technologies. Designing effective
instructional facilities requires a holistic approach to the classroom
environment. The needs of students (e.g., seating, computer workstations)
and instructors (e.g., user friendly teaching stations), as well as room and
infrastructure elements of networks, electricity, equipment, security,
screens, lighting, air handling, noise, and their related controls, all need to
be considered. Advances in classroom technology and necessary technical
and maintenance support should be incorporated into the annual planning
process. To that end, Media Services, in consultation with academic units,
the ACT, the Space Committee, Facilities Planning, Physical Plant, the
Registrar, and other pertinent parties, should all contribute to proposed
classroom design work.
In addition, Computer Services and Media Services should
investigate the distribution of multimedia to enhance support for teaching
efforts and to facilitate use of technological applications. One option is to
use the mainframe as a multimedia megaserver; another option is a
distributed network of powerful workstations.
9. Distance Learning for Kent State University.
Distance education has enormous potential to transform higher
education. Research in the use of alternative instructional delivery
systems should be reviewed and augmented as a means of achieving the
mission of the University. In addition to methods of delivery and areas of
focus within and beyond the Kent system, many points need to be
considered to ensure overall quality. These issues include planning,
administration, methods of instruction, technical support, curriculum,
faculty workload and incentives. Environmental assessment and a needs
study should be undertaken to identify Kent's niche and to determine the
level and extent of the resources the University should commit to the
development and support of alternative instructional delivery systems.
Responsibility for examining these and other issues should be assigned to
a person who would coordinate and foster the activity of those faculty and
staff interested in distance education and who would act as an advocate for
it. In addition, a joint subcommittee of the Teaching Council and ACT
should be established to advise and participate in planning and
implementation.