Final Report is here

Terms of Reference

This plan should be available in the October/November time frame and it will be used to guide the 1998/99 budgeting process where IT investments are concerned.

The plan should specifically address investment issues including: central vs. departmental IT labs; classroom delivery technologies; SRC; distance education delivery; high-end vs. commodity users of IT. Recommendations on issues such as intellectual property as related to the delivery of course material may also result from the deliberations.

Background material: 1996 APG-IT report, 1996 Admin-IT report, previous 2 new systems reports, Report of the Vision Task Group.

There was a Forum on Information Technology at Ryerson on October 28 and October 29. Members of the community were strongly encouraged to attend the forum and participate in workshops discussing ``Laptops vs. Labs'' or ``Faculty Currency and Intellectual Property''.

If you wish to provide input you can mail to all members of the committee here: <it-sdc@scs.ryerson.ca> or address individual members below.

Membership

Agenda and Timetable

Discussion papers from the Committee

• Where is the committee going? What is the basic question we are trying to answer? Here is a very short precise of the June 10 meeting.
• Musings from the chair on what might become a Draft of the Report
• Student Competencies - What is the impact of new technologies on student learning? How does it improve it? Where does it hurt? How can we ameliorate those problems? What key competencies do graduates need in the next decade? This must be the driving force behind change.
• Laptops - If we could make a bulk purchase of reasonable laptops with basic software for under $2000, would it be reasonable to consider switching the whole university to structure classes around their use? Brian Lesser talked about laptops at the forum and his notes from the talk are here.
• Labs - The current computer lab space is inadequate. The effective lifetime of a lab is about 3 years. Should we continue trying to provide general purpose labs? What about high-end labs? Re-equipping our labs would cost on the order of $3,000,000 every 3-4 years, or a million a year. Is this the most cost-effective way to operate?
• Presentation Technology (general and multimedia) - What do we need in every classroom/lab? To equip every room with middle-of-the-road multimedia equipment would cost about $30,000 per classroom. To equip all 140 classrooms would cost about $4,000,000. Like labs, this equipment has a somewhat limited useful life.
• Faculty, Retirements, RFA - How do we facilitate faculty attaining the skills to work in a significantly more technological environment? How do we protect existing faculty who want/need to continue with the status quo until retirement? What part does the faculty association have to play in this changing landscape?
• Intellectual Property - Without clear policy on ownership of courseware and media, most faculty will not be willing to make the necessary investment. There have to be benefits to faculty, as well as the students and the university, to make change happen. (The Report of the University Intellectual Property Committee is here.)
• Curricular Currency - How does technology affect this? There are programs where familiarity with expensive state-of-the-art technology is critical. How do we assure our ability to maintain this currency?
• Teaching/Learning Technology Roundtables - TLTR are an approach used by the AAHE (see below) to help faculty, staff and students come to terms with implications of new technologies and ensure that appropriate uses of technology are the norm. We should explore these posibilities.
• Requirements Definition Document

Other Ryerson Comments

Janet Mays (Director Equity, Harassment and Safety Services) expresses a concern about security of laptops.

Ken McCracken provides this perspective as a Continuing Education student.

Professors Gosha Zywno & Ted Kesik provided a comment on digitally-mediated education.

Discussion Group

Professors Gosha Zywno & Ted Kesik have independently started a WWW Discussion Group to focus on many of the issues that also arise from this committee.

Interesting Articles from Outside Ryerson

The Canadian Centre for Policy Alternatives has several comments about technology and education, perhaps the most relevant being this one

The San Francisco Chronicle had an article December 1, 1997 about a plan by Cal State University to form a company with 4 corporate partners to install educational infrastructure.

The U.S. National Science Foundation has some guidelines on accessibilty of Web documents for those who are hearing/vision impaired.

David F. Noble has a paper called Digital Diploma Mills which raises some questions about this pell-mell rush to adopt information technology in teaching. Whether you agree or disagree, he makes some interesting points.

The Economist had a series of articles on the Future of Universities that make for interesting reading.

The NODE runs free interactive forums including one on The Copyright Conundrum. These forums are moderated and well focussed and, in addition to the discussions, have many valuable links on the topic under discussion. Another forum that is currently running is on Technology & College Culture. There is an upcoming forum on Tenure and Technology which should also be interesting. Another forum starting December 1 is Taking it to the Web: Putting Your Course Online.

There is a page of Best Practice in web course delivery from the Special Needs Opportunity Window project.

The Acadia Advantage is one of the leading efforts to integrate information technology into the curriculum in a pervasive way. They have several pages describing their work, including a description of the Introductory Physics course.

Why Universities Need Technology Strategies was a talk by Sir John Daniel (also published in the July/August 1997 Change magazine).

Opening remarks on slowness and being there from the AAHE TTLR sessions, mid-July/1997.

A discussion on alternative computer spaces.

Responses from an inquiry into institutional technology planning have been put in a web page. It includes links to Information/Instructional Technology reports from U.C.Berkeley:Instructional/Information, Stanford, U.C.Davis, U Wisconson (and here), California State University, M.I.T. (and here), Columbia, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute

The AAHE has a process to aid thinking about technology issues. Here is the first stage of questions. This is a link to more related pages.

What is the role of ``Being There'' in education?

Here is a proposal to create a Virtual Computing School in collaboration with ACM, the main international computing society. Here is also work on a Standard for Educational Technology

Four years ago Peterson's "Distance Learning" guide counted 93 "cyberschools" where students could earn degrees without setting foot on campus. In 1997, the list had grown to 762. In "I Got My Degree Through E-Mail" [June 16, 1997 issue of FORBES], Lisa Gubernick and Ashlea Ebeling chart the rise of virtual colleges and summarize the reasons why the number of students who choose non-traditional paths to getting an education is increasing dramatically. The authors present viewpoints ranging from economists who hail cyberschools as the best solution for college education, to advocates for the superiority of in-residence programs. A list of Forbes' top 20 cyber-universities, along with Web links, is included in the article. The article is available online.

There is an interesting discussion (with some actual results) on the use of Interactive Engagement in Physics.

Equal Access to Software and Information is an American group working to help the disabled in education. They recently pointed out that: the latest decisions by the Office of Civil Rights (OCR) make it clear that colleges and universities are legally bound to provide equal access to the web and to that institution's information. This means that just as you have to have ramps for wheelchairs, you need web design that enables access for the print disabled. While this may only be a legal issue for American institutions, obviously it is something we should be taking into account. Here is a link to info on some recent OCR cases (although it's not all laid out very readably).
EASI also has begun an online workshop series to help designers create more accessible web pages.

The Canadian Network for New Media Learning (CNNML), supported by the Office of Learning Technologies and Industry Canada, is an interprovincial, producer-run cooperative created for the purposes of marketing and distributing Canadian learnware (computer-based training and education materials).

Asynchronous Learning Networks is an eight-month old site that everyone involved in distance education should find interesting. The project is funded by a grant from the Sloan Foundation to Dr. John Bourne, professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Vanderbilt University, and is designed to support research devoted to asynchronous learning networks.

Schoolhouse Tech is a three part online dialog on high-tech education published in the electronic magazine FEED
The debate begins with projections of what the panelists think constitutes an ideal digital school. Part two tackles the question of how schools can make the most of new technologies and presents several examples of projects that are attempting to integrate technology into schools. The final part explores the value of edutainment-style software and the question of what well-designed software can do better than a teacher. Readers are encouraged to add their own comments and converse with the panelists in an online discussion forum.

Teaching and Learning on the WWW is a database of web based courses maintained by Alan Levine of Maricopa Comm. Coll. System.

The May 1993 Communications of the ACM was a special issue on Technology in Education. The articles themselves are worth reading, but here is a review of Technology in education (most articles). There is a separate review of the article Reading and writing in the 21st century in the same issue.

Technology Tools for Today's Campuses is a vast collection of comments, experiences and technologies (web, email, MUDs, MOOs, presentation software, etc.) on delivering courses in language, music, science, math, and social sciences, among others. This was sponsored by Microsoft and produced in collaboration with On the Horizon at the University of North Carolina.

Educational Uses for Information/Instructional Technology is a significant review of resources and approaches that can improve teaching and learning, written by Dorothy Frayer of Duquesne University.

Grace Johnson-Page (Marietta College, Ohio) identified and interviewed a collection of liberal arts college faculty using information technology in the hopes that their stories would "inform and ignite a spark in those faculty interested in using computers but not sure how or where to begin." Rethinking Teaching and Learning: A Reformation of Liberal Arts Education With Information Technology

In Top-Down Meets Bottom-Up: Making Ends Meet: A Faculty Perspective on Computing & Scholarship (EDUCOM REVIEW, vol. 32, no. 3, May/June 1997, pp. 38-43), James Noblitt, IAT Academic Chair, explores the relationship between administrators (the "top-downs") and faculty (the "bottom-ups") in the use of information technology for teaching and research. Both points of view have validity, and both must reconcile their differences to assure success in the institution. To advance this cause, Noblitt provides a set of questions for bottom-up innovators who are trying to gain administrative support for technology solutions, and he gives advice to top-down people to help them open a dialogue with their faculty.

COMPUTERWORLD's Leadership Series is a monthly publication on management trends, case studies of leading-edge organizations, and new ways of directing technology in the workplace. Although its declared audience is senior-level IS management in the private sector, the issues are also useful for anyone involved in leading the technology advances in educational institutions.

Privacy and the Handling of Student Information in the Electronic Networked Environments of Colleges and Universities. This white paper is the work of a task force created by CAUSE in cooperation with the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. The paper identifies the challenges and opportunities of technology advances, presents a set of primary principles that underlie fair information practices, and recommends a process whereby a full spectrum of campus constituencies can be involved in discussions that will lead to a better understanding of campus culture and values.