5. Towards an Agenda

160. "If you don't know where you are going, any road will do." The White Rabbit in Alice in Wonderland Lewis Carroll

5.1 A Vision of Education

161 Earlier sections of this report have shown that a richly interconnected and highly leveraged network of computing resources, tools and information resources that provide students and teaching staff with unprecedented access across disciplinary, institutional and national boundaries is emerging through the use of the information technologies. The evolving national and international network infrastructure allows access by students and teachers to each other and to alternate centres of expertise. The implications for education could be enormous. Some commentators see the impact of IT on education being a important a watershed as the invention of writing or the printing press. We now appear to be entering the Information Age which is characterised by the electronic transmission of information.

162. However, before we are carried away by the technology, it is as well, like Alice, to know where we wish to go. A shared vision of what we want education and training to be in the 21st century is therefore extremely important. The vision should take into account the potential of technology but should not be driven solely by what is possible technologically. The question is not how to use technology and, in doing so, somehow improve or even transform education but, rather, how universities can exploit technology to provide the most effective learning, most efficiently delivered, and consistent with the budgets available in order to meet the challenges highlighted in Chapter 1 of this paper. Therefore planning and management are more necessary than ever.

163. Elements of an emerging agenda to fully integrate information technology into higher education can be considered at four levels, namely: national, institutional, staff and student levels. How should they cope with the demands and challenges placed upon them by a vision of the future which includes some or all of the following features?

• All students will need to become computer literate as well as literate and numerate, that is, able to handle current information technology at a level appropriate to their discipline and be equipped to continue their development with it into the future. All students will make use of IT in their courses. The use of IT will not be confined to the more traditional areas of use of computers, namely, the sciences, engineering and business. The Humanities and the Health Sciences will also make significant use of IT. IT will contribute both to the methods of assessment as well as entering into the curricula and pedagogy of many subjects.
• In order to achieve this objective students and teaching staff will have ready access at home, on campus or at their place of work to workstations and access to the network. There will be an exponential growth in the availability to staff and students of electronic information services such as the electronic provision of the full text of books and journals. Staff and students will have access to information on the local, the national and the international network as though it were on the individual's personal computer. Collections of software for use in teaching including computer based learning and multimedia materials incorporating audio and video as well as computer generated graphics and text will be accessible from anywhere on the network.
• The potential benefits include allowing the academic and research community and both on-campus and Open Learning students to participate in discussions, exchange documents, information and data with their peers throughout the world and to access virtual libraries at minimal cost. It allows academics to incorporate world-wide information sources into courses and in doing so, it has the potential to change the way in which courses are offered and teaching and learning take place.
• The appropriate use of technology appears to mean that learning can be independent of time and place and available throughout life and to open up opportunities for electronic access to universities. Institutions may not have to be rooted in time and place. They could be accessible electronically from anywhere and available at all times. Institutions could consequently possibly be a mix of physical campus and remote access points giving access to groups whose family or work commitments prevent them from attending a specific place at a specific time. Electronic access could also enable more people to access education for the same cost, since the capital costs of providing physical space (classrooms, car-parks) would not increase proportionate to the numbers.

164. Whether the changes brought about by IT are seen as an evolution or a revolution, the reality is that education will change as a result. These changes should preferably be determined and to some extent controlled within the institutions or they will be forced by external pressures. The option that things will remain unchanged is not available.

165. What are the roles of, firstly, the national bodies, secondly, the institutions and thirdly, the teaching staff, as they react to the challenges of the potential of the technologies? How do they have to change? What is needed to encourage them to change and to adopt the new technologies? And fourthly, what needs to happen for students? Although these four areas are treated in that order in this paper, that is, in an apparent top-down order, it should be stressed that the most important of them and the one to which all the others contribute directly or indirectly is the impact on students, the users or clients of the educational systems.

5.2 Strategies at the National Level

166. Unlike a number of countries, Australia does not have a central coordinating and funding body specifically for IT in higher education such as the JISC in the UK which acts for the funding councils and has the mission "to stimulate and enable the cost-effective exploitation of information systems and to provide a high quality national network infrastructure for the UK higher education and Research Councils community". Although some aspects of the remit of JISC are covered by committees such as the AARNet Board of Management, other committees such as the Standing Committee on Information Resources (SCIR) are merely advisory to the AVCC and in no sense are funding or coordinating bodies of activities in the field.

167. Serious consideration needs to be given at the highest level to establishing a coordinating and funding body under the joint auspices of DEETYA and the AVCC to coordinate all national activities and initiatives in the sector. The issues involved are too important to the future welfare of the nation to be allowed to continue in the rather haphazard and hit-and-miss present manner. Such a body might include in its remit the responsibility and funding to address needs such as:

• The need at the national level to develop policies for educational applications of telecommunications technologies which provide equity of access, common standards and a unified network strategy including all telecommunications services (voice, data, fax, video etc.) together with interconnections between institutions and with the external world, for example, Internet.
• The expansion of the networks originally set up to serve the academic community into national networks serving not just the universities but also the K-12 schools, technical and further education and adult and continuing education. This may or may not be implicit in the EdNA developments.
• The need for national approaches to the establishment of software and communications standards, the education and training of staff and students, the collaborative development of critical and innovative software packages and curriculum design and the collection of information resources in a standardised format and the making of them available to educational centres through both conventional and advanced communication networks.

5.3 Strategies at the University Level

168. How should universities meet the challenges presented by the new information technologies, in particular with respect to teaching and learning? In the first place, the use of IT must be seen in the widest sense and in the context of the overall goals of the institution. There is consequently a need to plan strategically for IT. In the second place, how do universities go about infusing IT into its teaching and what are some of the issues involved in doing this?

5.3.1 Strategic Planning for Information Technology

169. Careful definition and planning of the different educational purposes of physical and electronic access and of the use of the new Information Technologies is required by universities. As an integral part therefore of their overall strategic planning, they should invest time and effort in developing an Information Technology strategic plan. Such a plan should be a guide to it in making strategic uses of the information technologies in its teaching, research and administrative activities.

170. It is beyond the scope of this paper to discuss in great depth the issues involved in planning for IT and the reader is therefore referred to the literature on the subject. Some of the more important issues to be taken account of in developing such a plan are the following:

171. IT has to be seen as an important and integral component in the functioning and essence of the institution in all its aspects and not just as an operating tool. An IT Strategic Plan is therefore not just about the use of IT in teaching and learning but about its use also in the administration of the institution, in its research activities and in its information services.

172. It is important to achieve the commitment of the University to the IT Plan. A fundamental issue is how change is effected in institutions with regard to the use of IT. IT does not happen without a very strong commitment on the part of the institution. This might be through the strong direction of the chief executive officer; it might be through the conscious decision of the whole institution giving its assent to a commitment to IT.

173. It is important that the IT Plan is seen not as a plan which is immutably set in stone but as a plan which will evolve over the next several years, which will be modified in the light of experience and as the technology develops. Typically an IT Strategic Plan addresses issues such as the uses to which IT in its various forms is to be put, the infrastructure required to make those uses possible including the institution's network, hardware and software facilities, the needs of staff and students, for example, for training and for support and assistance when necessary.

174. The strategic plan is basically a vision document which identifies the various options or strategic uses of IT which are available and the aims and directions in which the institution can move. A full-scale plan always implies a considerable financial investment by an institution. Very few, if any, have adequate financial resources available to them to implement their whole plan immediately. In addition, priorities have to be set for the immediate future and for the longer term to accord with the institution's present and anticipated future situation. Therefore, a number of criteria must be taken into account and priorities set:

i) above all and summing up all the other criteria, the extent to which the strategic use of IT contributes to the institution achieving its goals as established in its overall strategic plan.

ii) the extent to which the particular strategic use of technology contributes to the institution's priority areas, for example, it might be to provide the infrastructure needed to meet the anticipated growth in a particular discipline or extension of the campus network to facilitate research.

iii) the extent to which the strategic use contributes to the more effective and efficient operation of the institution, for example, the extent to which the implementation of an information systems plan improves the administrative systems of the Institution.

iv) the extent to which the strategic use is an emerging, immature or innovative area on which it is appropriate to place particular emphasis and support for longer term gains, for example, the use of computer managed learning, computer based learning, multimedia, video-conferencing.

v) the extent to which the strategic use, if implemented, contributes to meeting the expectations of students coming to the institution, for example, the level of student facilities.

vi) the extent to which the strategic use is an infrastructure that must be integrated across the Institution if it is to come to terms with the Information Age, for example, the extension of the campus network.

vii) the size of the population, whether of staff or students, that will be affected by the implementation of the strategic use.

viii) the extent to which the institution community through consultation and participation in the development of the plan which has taken place, has indicated preferences for the implementation of particular strategic uses.

ix) the extent to which the institution or school is already well developed in its use of a particular strategic use and consequently accords that use a lower priority in its present state of development.

5.3.2 Infusing IT into Teaching and Learning

175. The infusion of information technology into the teaching/learning process presents opportunities and challenges for institutions. It is not easy. Some of the issues involved include: the adequacy of student facilities; the adequacy of the teaching staff and the support services needed as well as the availability of suitable software.

5.4 The Teaching Staff and the Use of IT

176. The ultimate decision about whether to incorporate IT in the teaching/learning process depends on the individual teaching staff and is made, often implicitly, on the basis of perceived trade-off between marginal increase in student learning and the perceived investment in time to learn to use the technology. Most teaching staff currently have no overriding reason to make this investment, being caught up in their other obligations such as the pressure to do research, the need to publish, to make presentations at professional societies and to render community service.

177. Staff should be encouraged to experiment as broadly with teaching and learning as they do with research and to check whether an application of technology will improve student learning. Institutions and authorities should provide teaching staff with incentives and rewards for remaining technologically current in their own disciplines and integrating appropriate information technology into their courses and related support services for students. In this respect the grants awarded by industry, government and associations are very significant.

178. Teaching staff need to be provided with an appropriately configured scholar's workstation located in their office which is linked to libraries, shared computing resources, knowledge bases, media centres and colleagues on campus, across the campus and externally via an integrated network of voice, data and video. Although the situation is improving, not all teachers have access to such facilities.

5.4.1 The Support Crisis

179. Teaching staff need support services such as media specialists, instructional systems developers, computing consultants and equipment technicians to assist them in gaining access to and effectively using IT. A phenomenon confronting many universities, however, is an insatiable demand for information technology services which appears to be growing day by day. It includes demands for more dial-in lines, the exponential increase in use of the Internet and the World Wide Web and requests for more and more central and departmental support for desktop computers.

180. The result is that many universities report that there is a "siege" environment in their IT support organisations; in that enormous pressures are being generated on the support staff involved on the one hand and that there is a lack of understanding by end users of the complexities involved in their simple request "to fix it" on the other. Many universities report an "IT support crisis" brought about by:

• a new dependency of academic and administrative work on IT. Academics and general staff rightly perceive that the use of IT is central to their mission and want IT services to deliver on their expectations;
• new and expanding sets of customers, often including ones with little or no interest in technology per se;
• new customers who are not "expert" but want authority for decision-making and refuse to be advised by some lowly paid "techo";
• increased per capita demand for services in all aspects of technology support;
• a mismatch between expectations and funding at all levels;
• a failure or inability of end users and units to assume responsibility for many support functions;
• the recognition that front-line support provided by a central IT support unit is not as effective as more locally based support;
• the complexity of support for multi-vendor, distributed IT and the failure to recognise that individuals cannot be experts in everything related to IT.

181. A interesting and comprehensive paper, "Information Technology Support Services: Crisis Or Opportunity" by J. Michael Yohe, Director, Information Systems and Computing Services, University of Northern Iowa, describing some of the issues can be found at

http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/dept/cc/help/support_service.html

182. Universities are tackling the problem in different ways. Curtin University of Technology, for example, developed its current policy in its IT Strategic Plan of 1991. A two-tier support model has been developed (http://www.curtin.edu.au/curtin/dept/cc/help/support.html). In it, the central information technology support staff at the Computing Centre (CC) work with school computing support staff as enablers, encouragers, trainers, and back-stops where particular problems cannot be resolved by the local support staff. There are currently almost 50 staff employed in the divisions outside of the CC providing local support, although there are still some areas and schools which do not have a local support person. Duties include hardware and software installation, local area network management, local on-site training and general hand-holding in a technological sense. Many of the support people have duties which are split between supporting student labs, supporting staff and non-IT duties. Thus although perhaps 50 are perceived as being IT support, many are doing other duties such clerical and administrative duties and the repair of non-computer equipment. Many are also providing direct support to students in the schools' computer labs.

183. There are currently over 3000 systems installed, 80 student labs and 76 local area network servers with the numbers increasing constantly. The software used on these desktop systems continues to grow in complexity, resulting in a greater need for assistance to each user. Furthermore, connection of systems to the campus network, and thence to the world-wide Internet, continue to require significant levels of sophisticated technical support. Both of these factors combined have made supporting these systems a mammoth task. Providing support, within user expectations of timeliness, has been beyond the limited resources of the Computing Centre User Services staff. This is mainly due to the volume of systems and their geographical spread across Curtin's various campuses. Furthermore, there is no sign of the rate of installation of new desktop systems diminishing. (It is of concern that in the recent spate of threatened budget cuts some areas are reported to have targeted the local IT support staff as something to be cut, with the supposition that the central service would provide the required support when its staff are already stretched as tight as a drum!) Although the two-tier model of support appears to have been successful to a large extent (it could possibly be improved with a higher degree of central co-ordination) Curtin too therefore is heading towards a crisis in its IT support services.

5.5 Meeting Students' Needs

184. The importance of Information Technology in today's society is unquestioned. Few students do not need to learn to use computers for the benefit of their own academic and professional activities. Information technology is revolutionising the ways in which knowledge is being collected, analysed, stored, presented and transmitted. Students must be computer literate, that is, able to handle current information technology at a level appropriate to their discipline and be equipped to continue their development with it into the future. Institutions have to prepare their students for life in that society by incorporating into their curricula appropriate training in the technologies. Institutions which fail to do so will be left behind by those that do. This is one of the many, if not the biggest, challenges faced by all institutions.

185. In the past the OECD has identified the lack of adequate hardware facilities as one of the factors inhibiting the more widespread use of the information technologies in teaching and learning and has estimated that an adequate ratio for high schools is one microcomputer per ten students, i.e. 30 minutes per student per day or two-and-a-half hours per week and an ideal ratio of one microcomputer for every five students. The Office of Technology Assessment of the Congress of the United States (OTA) has estimated that the required ratio is 1:3.

186. The report of the United Kingdom Inter-University Committee on Computing (IUCC) has recommended a ratio of one workstation for every four students. In doing so, it is not recommending that this ratio should be applied across all subject areas. A model based on the classification of disciplines taught into seven subject categories and then weighted according to the anticipated level of use gives the following target ratios for 1996:

187. The model is presented as a best estimate. It does not attempt to define the level or type of workstation required in each subject area, nor to take account of the profile of the particular university, nor to take into account that there will be variations within each group of subjects.

188. A number of strategies could be used to achieve the target ratio. One is to require all students to have private access to a personal computer. There is, however, an equity issue in enforcing this strategy. Secondly, whilst this might be appropriate for some types of students, for example, computing, engineering and some of the business and science students because their studies involve them in heavy use of computing, as big an issue is having access to all software that they might need to use. Some institutions have found that there is no need to require students to own computers since as many as over 50 per cent of them already have private access to a computer. For these and other reasons some institutions have chosen instead to adopt a laissez-faire policy of providing open access facilities for students and not imposing a requirement to purchase a computer.

5.5.1 Conclusion

189. The vision is of a networked society with equal access to knowledge and information; communities and individuals in charge of their learning environments; government, educators and the private sector working in partnership; and an education and training system delivering the skills and knowledge needed for a free and prosperous society in the 21st century.

190. Will it happen? When will it happen? It requires tough political decisions regarding access to and regulation of telecommunications networks, copyright law and investments in educational materials and communications. It needs a close examination of the purpose and function of educational institutions in the 21st century and of their use of electronic technologies to meet new educational needs. It needs enthusiasm and energy to seize the opportunities and meet the challenge.

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