• Technology is transforming higher education today, but it is a transformation, not a revolution.
  
• Kenneth Green, director of the Campus Computing Project and a visiting scholar at the Claremont Graduate University in Claremont, CA, says there are three key issues in the "emerging new world of postsecondary education:
  • Increased Access;
  • Lifelong Learning
  • Information Technology
• As Green says, "Higher education’s clientele–students from ages 17 to 67–now come to college expecting to learn about technology and also to learn with technology."
• James Duderstadt, former president of the University of Michigan and now head of the Millennium Project at Michigan, says higher education is evolving from a loosely federated system of colleges and universities, serving traditional students from local communities, to what he calls a "knowledge industry." "To survive in a competitive global marketplace," he says, "universities must shift their focus from faculty members and their specialties to the needs of all kinds of students at various points in their lives."
• I personally would make several observations that I believe signal a transformation:
  • The Web is rapidly becoming a prime source of information.
  • Engagement in problem-solving, aided by the advantage of asynchronous but immediate communication, is becoming a much more prevalent (and effective) methodology for instruction.
  • In research, one can pick his collaborators from anywhere in the world. Geography is no longer an issue.
  • And in both research and teaching, university professors can draw upon and include people from industry and the professions with no inconvenience whatsoever.
• So, when we consider that
  • we have a new, immediately accessible source for all kinds of information;
  • we have new possibilities for teaching methodologies at our disposal;
  • we have no geographic limitations in our selection of collaborators for research or teaching; and
  • we can include practitioners from industry and the professions–people who are facing real, current problems–in either our research or teaching;
  • I would say that we are experiencing a significant transformation in our higher education enterprise.
• As proof that I (and the Ohio University Board of Trustees) believe that we are undergoing a transformation, and as some may know, Ohio University has installed a computer in every first-year student residence hall room. And we will furnish all the rest of our residence hall rooms next summer. We believe it critical that both our students and our faculty have the advantage of immediate and convenient access to technology to assist them in the teaching-learning process.
• This transformation, like any other, has significant upsides and perhaps some downsides as well.
• Will speak about the uses of technology in teaching and learning, some of the effects of technology on learners and on the environment, and the specter of the new providers and how they may affect traditional universities such as my own.

Technology for Teaching and Learning

• Technology provides us with amazing capabilities for finding information, sorting it, storing it, transmitting it. Anything that powerful in processing information has to have important implications for the teaching and learning process.
• For all practical purposes today, the only limitation is our imagination.
• Now quite common for faculty to…
  • communicate with their students via e-mail;
  • post lecture notes and study guides so students can be more attentive in class;
  • share resource material, to expand students’ access to information;
  • provide students with databases, web links, or excerpts from electronic journals, to point them to reliable information.
• And many colleges and universities have laboratories for faculty professional development, to help faculty who wish to learn how to put their courses on the web get ideas about how they can use technology more effectively. Example: CITL.
• Faculty who are more advanced in their use of technology are beginning to use it…
  • for simulation, modeling, and/or visualization in subjects where that is important;
  • to increase peer-to-peer and novice-to-expert interaction;
  • to build content databases for exploratory and/or discovery learning;
  • to implement models of active, collaborative, and/or project-based learning.
• Project-based learning is one of the more exciting developments that is afforded by technology. We use it extensively in GLC and Business Clusters at the UG level, and in MBAWOB at the graduate level. How it works…
• Our most innovative (and internationally connected) faculty are using technology to engage or involve international students and faculty in their class discussions and projects.
• Foresee the time when the Carnegie unit, which tends to measure academic achievement according to "seat time," will be challenged. Course schedules–even term schedules–will be changed, will be much more flexible.

Effects of Technology on the Learner and on the Environment

• Some have great concern that computers are dehumanizing, that they discourage sociability and social development because people "hunker down" in front of them.
  • In any case, a computer is interactive; and as such, is better than TV-watching, which is a passive learning experience (at best) rather than active one.
• Nonetheless, there may be some merits to the dehumanizing argument. We’re watching that carefully with our "Computers in Residence Halls" project.
• However, others contend that many people interact better as a result of electronic mail, for example.
  • Some students will send messages or ask questions of a professor by e-mail that they may be too shy to communicate in class.
  • Both students and professors find the asynchronous nature of e-mail communication to be much preferable to "telephone tag" or to missed appointments.
  • Some senior professors who use e-mail extensively to communicate with their students tell me they’ve never developed better rapport with students.
  • E-mail tends to put the focus on ideas rather than personal appearance or other distractions.
  • Students feel it is special when they can have a one-to-one conversation with a professor.
  • The process of written communication is in itself an important learning device. As long as we remember to uphold standards of grammar, spelling, and syntax, every electronic contact between student and professor can be part of the learning process!
• Effects on the academic environment are somewhat more worrisome in at least one respect: the relationship between faculty and their institutions.
  • Concern over intellectual property rights. Who "owns" a course that is developed by a professor at my university–the institution or the professor or both? Does he or she have the right to sell that course through another university? How does this intellectual property differ from the publication of a textbook?
  • Some faculty worry about whether technology will replace faculty. (In fact, it won’t in quality institutions, but…)
  • Some of us in research universities have worried for years that many professors, particularly those most invested in their research, develop more sense of community with others in their own discipline around the country than with professors in other disciplines on their own campus.
  • Changing nature of the "community of scholars." With something gained, something else may be lost.
• Important to remember that technology is not an end in itself; it is a tool through which we can transmit ideas, search for information, gain access to the world’s information resources, and improve our scholarship. It is important that we remember that good scholarship is the end, not technology itself–that a network of learners is the end, not the network itself. Technology should enhance the opportunity for greater scholarship and community.

The Specter of the New Providers

• Higher education is in high demand, and anything in such high demand will attract entrepreneurs who see it as a profitable business opportunity.
• Some are succeeding in offering higher education services for profit. How? Because, for the most part, they offer only those courses that develop specific skills that are in high demand in the marketplace. And, they do not pay for research or the advancement of knowledge.
• More and more, these educational opportunities are offered at a distance, on line, and often with no face-to-face contact.
• Many in the traditional higher education community are very concerned about their future because of the competition from on-line providers, and some should worry.
• The question is, what value do you add? Residential campuses, for those who can afford them, still offer a total educational experience with which the on-line providers cannot compete.
• Residential campuses like ours will be offering more and more on-line experiences, and mixing those with face-to-face class meetings. Examples: MBAWOB, GLC, Business Clusters.
• The Ohio Learning Network (OLN) and its plans.
  • Developing on-line course catalog from a number of institutions around the state, both public and private.
  • Serviced by the Ohio SuperComputer Center
  • Advisors will be on location in various places around the state.
  • Ohio University’s efforts initially aimed toward degree completers–those who have completed some work toward a baccalaureate degree but have never completed it. Reportedly there are some 1.2 million such people in Ohio!
• In conclusion, at least with respect to learning–the main mission of a residential campus like Ohio University–we might safely say that computer technology:
  • Helps students to maintain relationships with professors, friends and family during a critical growth period in their lives.
  • Enhances the learning environment and facilitates research.
  • Supplements rather than replaces the teaching process.
  • Expands cultural awareness and develops new independent learning strategies.
  • Requires monitoring to ensure that the traditional educational values–teaching, research, and service–are maintained.
• Peter Drucker predicted (in a Forbes interview in 1997) that "universities won’t survive…higher education is in deep crisis. … The college won’t survive as a residential institution."
• I believe in this instance Drucker is wrong. Residential campuses will survive, but we had better heed the call and take full advantage of the technological advantages afforded us. Our students will demand it!

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Ohio University President Robert Glidden delivered this lecture to the Cleveland City Club on November 19, 1999 in Cleveland, Ohio.

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