[tt] CHE: Information Technology: Where Technology Is Headed (several articles)
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Information Technology: Where Technology Is Headed (several articles)
The Chronicle of Higher Education, 8.4.4
Information technology permeates every aspect of campuses these days. In
that light, three experts consider what the future holds for IT.
Panelists at The Chronicle's Technology Forum discuss the future of
information technology in higher education. From left, Mark David
Milliron, Richard A. DeMillo, Richard Garrett, and Warren Arbogast.
(Photograph by Matt May)
* LIST: The top 10 trends in information technology.
* LIST: IT trends for community colleges.
A SCARY ENCOUNTER
Roderick J. McDavis, Ohio University's president, describes how his
institution responded to a major security breach involving the campus
network.
A FILE-SHARING FACE-OFF
College officials and a representative of the film industry debate how to
control illegal downloading by students.
THE LAW, DIGITALLY SPEAKING
What are the greatest areas of risk as new technologies emerge on
campuses? Three experts offer advice.
PUBLIC INTELLECTUALS TODAY
Scholars are using new media to circulate their findings and respond to
contemporary issues, says MIT's Henry Jenkins.
* A SAMPLING: Web sites from MIT's media-studies program.
TECHNOLOGY IN THE CLASSROOM
Seven professors describe the successes and frustrations they encounter in
using technology as part of their teaching.
A DELUGE OF SCHOLARLY DATA
Two librarians discuss the challenges of organizing and sharing the vast
quantity of data that researchers are generating in many fields.
THE SKILLS OF DIGITAL AVATARS
Virtual representations of professors can be more effective than the real
thing, argues Jeremy Bailenson.
TECHNOLOGY AND INSPIRATION
Administrators and professors need to be reminded that technology is only
a tool -- and is only as good as the person using it, writes Michelle
Valois.
E-MAIL FREEDOM DAY
How much time does it take a provost to deal with 26,688 incoming messages
a year? John M. Hughes and David Todd do the math.
============
IT on the Campuses: What the Future Holds
The Chronicle of Higher Education Information Technology
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b00601.htm
From the issue dated April 4, 2008
Information technology permeates every aspect of the campus these days. At
The Chronicle's Technology Forum, three experts spoke about what the
future may hold for IT. They were Richard A. DeMillo, dean of the College
of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology; Richard Garrett,
program director for online education at the consulting group Eduventures;
and Mark David Milliron, president of the consulting group Catalyze
Learning International. Warren Arbogast, president of Boulder Management
Group and a regular on The Chronicle's "Tech Therapy" podcast, was the
moderator.
Warren Arbogast: Higher education has to get faster, faster, faster in
adopting new technologies. So I'll ask you to share a little bit about
your work. In that context of velocity, are things picking up speed? Are
they going slower? What is going on?
Richard A. DeMillo: I lead a college of about 130 faculty members, three
departments, five research centers, all in the general
information-technology space: computer science, computational science,
robotics. For good or bad, we are in the position of having to
simultaneously react to what is going on in the IT industry and anticipate
it.
I got to Georgia Tech in 2002, just at the time computer-science majors
were walking off a cliff. It was going from a high point, in 2002, to an
absolute low point, in 2004, and we noticed that. What we did was respond
to the market forces by essentially blowing up our undergraduate
curriculum. We got rid of our core curriculum and replaced it with a
curriculum called Threads, thinking that we were being very innovative and
students would respond. Well, the good news is the students responded; we
had a 40-percent increase in enrollments the first year that we introduced
this. The bad news is we had a 40-percent increase the first year that we
introduced it.
Threads replaces a single degree with 28 degrees. It is great for
flexibility. [The New York Times columnist] Tom Friedman loved it, wrote a
chapter on it in the second edition of The World Is Flat, but we now have
to operationalize that. So the question related to velocity is, How do you
go from a very traditional academic program, running a single degree for
15 years, to all of a sudden having to manage 28 degrees under one
umbrella?
So there are a lot of things driving us. But I would say the most
important thing that is driving velocity at Georgia Tech these days is
trying to get ahead of those industry forces, the curriculum changes.
Mark David Milliron: There are a lot of different constituencies that I
work with — K-12 schools, districts, community colleges, universities,
legislative bodies. I think velocity is pushing the conversations. And I
think some of the big conversations that people are really pushing, which
is really encouraging to see, is that they are beginning to talk about
ending the "segregation." They have segregated their facilities
conversations over here and their technology conversations over there, and
now they are really beginning to think about how they pull those things
together.
And as they do that, they are really wrestling with, How do we more
aggressively use blending across our different programs and services? How
do we use more mobile technology, in particular, not just wireless, but
all the devices that we have? They are getting into conversations about
gaming, about social networking, about real, high-impact presentation
technologies, even holographics, and then really looking at the analytic
side of it, and the whole time thinking about how they maintain the human
touch.
I would argue that there are two pieces of reality therapy that have hit
us. I think people have figured out that the trickle-down theory of
technology does not work. They have invested a ton of money in the
innovators and have expected that the innovators will go do rowdy, great
things, and then that would trickle down into goodness for the rest of the
institution. And what they have ended up with is a lot of segregation.
Then, a lot of institutions have lived through what I jokingly call the
"techno Cro-Magnon theory," which is simply "Technology — good." And that
is the whole theory. Whenever you ask anybody about how they are going to
improve education, they talk about the hardware, the system that is going
to fix everything. And I think people realize now it is a lot more
difficult than that.
Richard Garrett: Online higher ed clearly has moved from rhetoric to
reality, from periphery to mainstream. If you look at people taking
individual courses online, we now have 3.5 million — at the last count, 20
percent of all students in U.S. higher education. If you segment people
over 25, we think it is about 20 percent of people taking their whole
higher education online.
So in that sense, we have seen significant velocity in a pretty short
period of time, in about a 10-year period. I think we are at a point where
online higher education has become a commodity. And that, I think, has
allowed that velocity to happen, because it is a kind of turnkey approach.
Everyone is experimenting; there is a lot of hype, a lot of possibility.
But in terms of day-to-day application, actually having an online degree
that actually embodied any of these things — I think that is still a
horizon for innovation. A lot of velocity in terms of hype, but not much
velocity in terms of application.
So I think it is interesting to assess online education. Clearly it is
growing; clearly it is popular. There is a basic consumer buy-in around
this notion of convenience, but is online really more than that? If we go
back to the original vision, can it really do things like expand
participation, rather than just shuffle a deck? If you look at trends in
adult participation over the last 10 years, nonprofit schools have
actually lost ground. They have actually lost a net number of adult
students. And it is the for-profit schools that have really added
significant numbers. Whether it is consolidation, whether it is
efficiency, whether it is pedagogy, whether it is pricing, I think online
education has a lot of ground to cover, a lot of velocity that needs to
happen.
***
Arbogast: Has online education proved itself? Does it need to prove
itself? How big can it get?
DeMillo: I represent a tier of universities that has a broad constituency
in the U.S. They are public universities at the 15,000- to 30,000-student
level, and as more and more curricula move toward models like the Threads
model at Georgia Tech, the consequence is that we are thrown into
long-tail distribution [meaning the ability of the Web to address highly
targeted and usually small markets in an efficient way]. So things that
used to happen almost in boot-camp fashion — the students come in; they
all take the same courses; they march through a four- or five-year program
together — forget about that. So whether it is new distribution models
online, online models, outsourcing, increasingly commoditized skilled
courses — those are all new business models that I think are going to be
supported by technology.
Milliron: I think one of the big IT trends is that this is not a
traditional or new world. This is an and world. There is a lot of really
exciting work going on in the hybrid world, where they are doing
everything from 70-30, 60-40, 50-50 splits [combining online and
traditional methods of instruction]. There is room for really dynamic,
out-of-the-box, for-profit online education. Then there is room for the
community colleges, which are more adult-learner friendly, with some
classroom experiences, some online experiences.
Arbogast: It is a giant tent.
Milliron: Yeah, it is a giant tent. I think we just have to be careful
about saying one size fits all.
***
Arbogast: There is something I'm hearing that is, maybe, even more
implicit here: Is higher education a business?
DeMillo: [Describes an experience in which he was amazed at how
efficiently Amazon.com's distribution system handled a problem with his
order.] We have no technology like the technology at Amazon, so this
really has not so much to do with online delivery of lectures as in the
basic infrastructure that it takes to build a happy bunch of graduates,
like I'm a happy customer for Amazon.com. So when you think about
long-tail distribution, there is online distribution, there is podcast,
there is lecture. But there is also an infrastructure fabric layer that we
need to think about: How are we going to do this globally? How are we
going to do this at scale?
Milliron: OK, what happens at Amazon after you buy a book? People like you
who bought this book also bought this, this, and this, right? They
immediately give you that kind of a choice. They do data mining about the
past, predictive modeling about the future, and in one second they give
you a choice that is customized to you, based on the knowledge that they
have. The challenge for our students is they are walking into an
infrastructure where they do not have anywhere close to that kind of
information. If we get interested in dropouts, for example, we get a group
together and we start looking at our retention figures. Everybody argues
about the quality of the data, so you have to go back out and collect some
more information. The faculty is mad because they were not included from
the beginning, so you have to go collect some more information.
Then you come back, and you bring it to the provost. The provost looks at
it and worries about the political implications across colleges. You bring
that up to the president, then the president wants to do something, but it
is going to take board approval. You finally get on the board calendar;
the board decides they want to do something. Now you have to hire
somebody. You do a national search; you bring that person in. After about
five months and four lawsuits, now that person is going to start leading
the retention initiative. What has happened to the students about whom you
collected the data? Their kids have enrolled at your institution. I just
juxtaposed the one second it takes Amazon to use data about you to make a
better choice in your experience to the more than a year it takes us to
leverage student data to do anything that helps them.
***
Arbogast: It sounds like an awful lot of change. Where do you start?
Milliron: The worst thing in the world you can do is have a leadership
team come down and say, "Damn it, innovate." I think you catalyze
conversations and get people moving. Models help because I think you can
go out and see what other people are doing, whether they are models within
our industry or outside of our industry. Higher ed has been very, very
good at what I call the "case method" — copy and steal everything, right?
But we also have to make sure that part of what we are doing is helping
our students learn beyond technology, which is critical thinking, problem
solving, decision making, because they are going to be in a world where
more data are being used about them than ever before. They have got to be
able to be consumers in a digital democracy.
***
Arbogast: Who leads that conversation? A lot of my clients say, "I've
already got a full-time job."
Garrett: I think it goes back to the notion of perceiving this as an
add-on, something you bolt on to something that already exists and does
not really touch the core. I think it is a matter of not making the
mistake of saying, "This is not about my core job." Because if it is not
about your core job, then I think you have not really framed it in such a
way that it is going to be as powerful as it might be.
DeMillo: The elephant in the room for me as a dean is the cost associated
with all of this. I cannot continue to acquire computing resources at the
rate that I'm acquiring them. We are acquiring roughly 20 teraflops of
computing power every 12 months, and that needs air- conditioning; it
needs power; it needs buildings. My donors are not going to cough up a
$40-million building every 12 months just because I'm bringing a new
computer in the door. But if universities continue the way they are
managing computing resources in the online world, that is exactly the
direction that we are heading. So managing cost is a very big deal for us,
and in software or service, outsourcing services — being able to work with
vendors to access high-performance computing resources without putting
them on campus — is stuff around which leadership discussions can be held.
++++++++++++++++
What Ohio U. Learned From a Major IT Crisis
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b00501.htm
By RODERICK J. MCDAVIS
For the past two years, as president of Ohio University, I have focused
attention on helping my institution recover from a major security breach.
I have spoken openly about our problems — how we dealt with them, and
where we are today — on many occasions. People often thank me: They're
just glad I'm the one talking, and not them. And that's OK. My hope has
been that others will learn from our experience.
Nationwide, IT breaches rose noticeably across all industries from 2003 to
2006. As much as I would like to say that I hope Ohio University's is
among the last in education, I doubt that will be the case.
According to national statistics, hackers account for half of all
exposures. Physical loss, theft, and fraud represent the second biggest
risk. Security is an issue for all of higher education. If you look at
Ohio University's exposure, 4 percent of all higher-education records that
were exposed from 2000 to 2008 were ours.
What happened at Ohio University? We got a call on April 21, 2006, from
the FBI, telling us that the server for our Technology Transfer
Department's office files had been compromised. Limited numbers of Social
Security numbers were in a file on the server, which was associated with
parking permits.
The first concern I had was that we had made some individuals' personal
information available. That turned out not to be the case. Our system was
used for other purposes — some of which, we believe, were illegal — by
hackers in a foreign country. Once they found a way in, they didn't want
to take the information that was on the server. What they really wanted to
do was set up shop. This is a little bit like somebody sneaking into the
basement of your house and living there without your knowledge, until one
day you go downstairs and say, "What are these clothes doing here?" We
were fortunate that with all of our breaches, no personal information was
stolen.
With that initial information from the FBI about our tech-transfer office,
we shut down that system and immediately reviewed what was happening all
over the campus. Three days later, through that due diligence, we
uncovered an incident of data theft on a server that supports alumni
relations. The hacker — probably the same perpetrator — had obtained
unauthorized access to a large number of electronic records. A few days
later, we discovered an incident of data theft on a server affiliated with
our student health center.
After the first tech-transfer breach, we held a large news conference.
Before we went to this news conference, one of the things I asked was,
"Are we sure that we're OK otherwise?" It was the right question, but I
got the wrong answer. The answer I was given was "Yes, we've checked, we
don't think there's anything.
" The lesson learned is that "We don't
think" is not good enough. Never trust that answer. When the second breach
occurred, I went back out and said, "You know, I think that's it." By the
third breach
you get my point.
In the wake of the incidents, there understandably was distrust among our
alumni, friends, and students. Our situation illustrated the negative
impact of a decentralized IT function. We became aware that the university
community did not take IT seriously enough. And obviously there was a
surge in media attention.
What did we do? First and most importantly, we took immediate action to
openly communicate with the compromised groups. We sent letters; made and
responded to phone calls; and created a Web site to answer questions,
provide instructions on what to do if personal information was exposed,
and explain the risks of identity theft. Our communication efforts were
very broad, yet focused. We tried to keep open lines of communication with
our affected groups to assure them and share information.
Second, we established an IT-oversight committee. With this committee, we
engaged members of our Board of Trustees who also were IT-industry
leaders. The group provided important advice and is still used to ensure
we're implementing best practices.
Third, we engaged highly qualified consultants, especially the Gartner
Group, which provided full risk assessment and highlighted additional
weaknesses. It found that our Office of Information Technology was
significantly understaffed and that its future performance was not
sustainable without further investment, which is a nice way of saying we
had to spend more money. It also found that the outsourcing we had been
doing was not a good option for the future.
The committee also helped us by putting together a 20-point action plan by
the summer of 2006. The plan involved all aspects of the university's
computer services — technology, business strategy and processes, and
organization and governance. The goal was to accomplish the tasks in nine
to 12 months.
The first and most critical part of the plan was to install a perimeter
fire wall that would filter Internet traffic to protect computers outside
the central cluster from hacker attacks. When you don't have a perimeter
fire wall, you can only expect trouble. We did that in short order.
Finally, we conducted a national search for a chief information officer
who could put our 20-point plan into place. That person, J. Brice Bible,
set clear goals for IT, developed a 75-day plan of action, and modified
the 20-point plan to fit more closely with where we were and wanted to go.
Based on the Gartner Group's report and the university's assessment, our
central IT system needed an additional $7-million to $10-million to
provide stable, reliable, and secure IT services. If your university is
like mine, you don't have $7-million to $10-million just lying around to
invest. But there is a way to begin walking the path toward investing more
money in IT. I recommend bringing someone in from the outside to provide
an analysis. We asked the Gartner Group to rank the efforts from greatest
to least importance, so we would know where we should invest first. With
outcome measures and quarterly reviews to guide our investment, we are not
just throwing money at a problem. We never want to get to a point again
where we're comfortable.
What are some of the lessons we've learned? Continuity is key. Share
information openly — both positive and negative. Stay the course. Create a
plan of action. Put the plan into place.
Since our breaches in 2006, more incidents have occurred in higher
education. My concern is that this is an area we're not taking seriously
enough. By and large, we are several thousand individual colleges and
universities each trying to do IT our own way. The hackers know that, and
they shop around. They hit my institution in 2006, and they may be
knocking on your door today. We all have to continue to pay attention to
IT-security issues, or this won't be the last warning on lessons learned
from multiple IT crises.
Roderick J. McDavis is president of Ohio University. This essay is based
on a speech he gave at The Chronicle's recent Technology Forum.
++++++++
How Higher Education and Industry Can Move Forward on File Sharing
The Chronicle of Higher Education Information Technology
How should colleges deal with incidents of illegal file sharing on their
campuses?
At the Technology Forum, aspects of that question were discussed by Cheryl
A. Elzy, dean of university libraries at Illinois State University; Jim
Gibson, an associate professor of law at the University of Richmond;
Stewart McLaurin, executive vice president for education affairs at the
Motion Picture Association of America; and Tracy Mitrano, director of
information-technology policy at Cornell University. Following are
excerpts from their remarks, questions from the audience, and their
responses.
Cheryl A. Elzy: Our research into student behavior has told us that
students don't think they are going to get caught for illegal file
sharing. If they do get caught, they will stop for a few days, be good,
but then they will go back to it. It's like when you get a speeding ticket
— you probably obey the speed limits for a few days, but then, eventually,
your foot gets a little heavier.
In our surveys at Illinois State, we also found that many students start
downloading in middle school, some as early as third grade. So, by and
large, the problem is not one we in higher education have developed. We
are inheriting it.
We've asked students to name a legal service for getting their music or
movies, and none of them could name one — not a single one. In fact,
several thought that iTunes was illegal. Students think the entire act of
downloading is illegal. They know it is wrong, but they don't have the
ethical or critical thinking that we assume that they do. So when you are
trying to tell students that it is wrong, the arguments do not carry a lot
of weight.
Jim Gibson: Imagine if Congress passed an act that said, "Henceforth,
universities will have no responsibilities with regard to copyright
infringement on their campuses." You would not have to worry about what
your students were doing. What would your policy as a university be then?
I suggest the answer would not be, "We will not do anything."
One of the things universities do well is to educate. But a lot of what
passes for education when it comes to file sharing and related copyright
issues doesn't resemble the kind of education at which universities excel.
It is a lot of lecturing, a lot of finger wagging, a lot of explaining
what the rules are and what will happen if you transgress them.
The educational process is much deeper than that. Students aren't simply
told, "Here are the answers. Remember what they are, and give them when
you are asked." Thinking critically, challenging premises, drilling down
to the policies of the decisions that lie behind the law or any other
field are what students should do in a university environment.
That does not mean that there are no penalties or sanctions for
infringement. But the more that we look at copyright issues as a teaching
moment, the more success we will have in creating the kinds of responsible
citizens we want.
Stewart McLaurin: Over a billion people around the world watched the
Academy Awards this year. More people will see an American movie or a
television show than an American military uniform or be affected by wars
that America is involved in abroad. Movies and television are our nation's
face to the world. Higher education and the entertainment industry are our
greatest exports.
The Motion Picture Association of America does not want to sue 18- to
22-year-olds. They are our best customers. We want movies to be a product
of our country that survives and that thrives. But our member studios are
very concerned about what happened in the music business, about 60 percent
of which has been gutted. If that happened in our industry, we might not
be able to survive. Much of the file-sharing activity is illegal, and that
is why Congress is involved.
Higher education has a tremendous responsibility to educate the future
leaders of our country and the world to do the right thing. And we in the
entertainment business have a responsibility to work with you to help you
any way that we can and to partner with you to make a difference.
Tracy Mitrano: When we at Cornell receive notice of a possible copyright
infringement by one of our students, we automatically block the alleged
infringers' access to the Internet and notify them that they must either
stop, remedy the situation, or file a counternotice claiming a legal right
to have or distribute the material. We then refer any cases of intentional
illegal file sharing to the Office of Judicial Administration, although we
firmly emphasize education over punishment.
We put out an annual notice to all our students about illegal file sharing
not only because it is required by law but because we regard it as an
opportunity to educate our students. In particular, we send new students
and their parents an enormous amount of information. We take advantage of
every opportunity to remind them of what their liabilities might be. If,
as the research shows, students begin practicing illegal file sharing as
early as the third grade, it is a message that has to be repeated over and
over again in a variety of ways so that both students and parents can
appreciate what is at stake.
As for recent legislative efforts, Stewart, I challenge you, if you really
want to collaborate with us, to go back to your friends at the MPAA and
have them take out of the College Opportunity and Affordability Act their
provisions requiring colleges to develop technological solutions to the
file-sharing issue. Several years ago, we formed the Joint Committee of
the Higher Education and Entertainment Communities with the tacit
agreement that no legislative activity would occur as long as we tried to
work together. We would love to get back to that place and help each other
accordingly.
***
Question from the audience: I'm not trying to defend the university, and I
agree that we should educate our students. But what concerns me is that
people assume this to be something that universities should solve, as if
the problem did not exist before. Parents hold universities responsible
for their children's illegal file sharing in ways they didn't hold
themselves responsible when their children lived with them at home.
Elzy: If there is any hope of dealing with the problem, we need to create
teachable moments in the middle grades and earlier. I know of no
elementary or secondary school that has the time or resources to teach a
full-blown course on copyright. But you can catch students when they are
doing a PowerPoint and selecting background music to put behind it. Or if
they pull a copyrighted photograph of a bug from National Geographic, you
can ask, "Well, how do you do that legally?" Those are opportunities.
McLaurin: The MPAA is creating a curriculum with Weekly Reader targeted to
fifth-grade through seventh-grade students. We do not believe that the
problem magically begins when students come to freshman orientation. We
know that there is a parental responsibility. We know that there is an
elementary-school responsibility. Teaching the teachers is important to us
as well.
Someone asked why we are focusing on universities and not the
Internet-service providers. In fact, we are working aggressively with
Internet-service providers regarding copyright issues that impact our
industry. We are not singling out universities to do battle with.
But colleges have a huge constituency that loves music and movies. And
students have now entered a realm where they can get those products
quickly and easily through university networks. If nobody teaches them
that it is wrong to obtain those products illegally, then they are going
to continue to do more of it. Most parents of those students don't know
how to download or even what it means. So we need to hit the kids where
they are, and the university is an important place to do that.
***
Question: But focusing on higher education is opportunistic. It's a lot
harder for the Motion Picture Association of America and the Recording
Industry Association of America to go against, say, Comcast or Verizon,
than against a college or university.
Gibson: Yes, there is a good story and a bad story as to why universities
are being targeted, and we have heard a lot about the good story. And I
think there is a lot of truth to it. You have kids at an age when they
have an avid interest in music, they have a lot of time on their hands,
and they have no money, so it is a population that is interested in
getting music for free.
But the bad story is that, in the political sphere, universities are sort
of low-hanging fruit. If you want to force an Internet-service provider to
build technological protections against the downloading of copyrighted
music into their network, you would have a hard time if you started making
the rounds at Comcast and Verizon.
You would have a lot easier time if you went against universities, who
already have a sort of parental responsibility toward the people who are
doing the downloading and who probably do not have the lobbying machine
that a big communications company has. So, while there is merit to say
that universities are different, there might be a dark side to the
explanation as to why they are on the very front lines of the copyright
war.
McLaurin: Front lines, yes, but not the only lines. I have colleagues
working with Internet-service providers. Those companies do not get a free
pass. And higher education has a pretty aggressive lobby. Do not deny
yourself that. It is a matter of segmenting the problem, and higher
education is a segment that for a long time has been a significant
problem.
We have members losing a lot of money who do not want to relegate our
legislative agenda to Educause or the American Council on Education, just
like we would not expect those associations to come to us and let us sign
off on their legislative agenda. We stand behind the bill as being a fair
and appropriate step. These are contentious issues, and not everything is
going to be harmonious and happy. But our industry does want to work with
colleges to create change. The joint committee is indeed a place where we
can come together to help understand and respect each other a bit more.
Mitrano: It seems that the MPAA is taking a different tack now,
understanding that alienating customers and frightening students and other
people with lawsuits is not the way to go. How much is your organization
devoting its resources to developing a business model that will leverage
the beautiful creativities of both entertainment industry and
higher-education system in ways that are more propitious for everyone?
McLaurin: A tremendous amount — because our industry knows its survival
depends on it.
Mitrano: Well, hear, hear.
***
Question: I appreciated your comment that the creative talent of Hollywood
is America's face to the world. But what are you teaching? I would suggest
that the motion-picture industry doesn't teach the values you are asking
higher education to teach. So do not hold us as the sole source of values
teaching in the United States or the world.
McLaurin: Noted, appreciated, and I will convey that. It is also important
to note that values are taught from many sources, especially parents. The
MPAA's ratings system is designed to give parents information about the
content of films so they can make judgments on what movies they allow
their children to see. We're not in the business of teaching per se, but
our ratings system does help provide valuable information for parents.
***
Question: Part of the issue is that students say they want everything now.
They demand content anytime, anywhere. So what are the MPAA's members
doing to change their distribution strategies to embrace those new
consumers?
McLaurin: All of that is being considered right now. We represent six
major movie studios. You have to remember that they compete against one
another, and there are also antitrust issues. We have to allow them to
work together and also compete with each other to come up with new models
in the marketplace.
But while that is being done, and while we are working with the
Internet-service providers, and while we are considering what we can do
with elementary and secondary schools, our members remain focused on
colleges as an important constituency that we want to always work with.
I was in a meeting in Los Angeles where the chancellor of a prominent
university system challenged the head of technology for one of our largest
studios and said, "Well, let's think down the line to the next generation
of technology. How can the 10 best and brightest people from your studio
and our system's 10 best technology people work together? How can we
collaborate toward a positive solution for both of us?"
+++++++++++++
The Law, Digitally Speaking
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b01401.htm
Rapid technological change can leave colleges grasping for the right legal
policies. Here are words of caution, and of reassurance
As new technologies emerge on campuses, how can colleges avoid legal land
mines? What are the areas of greatest risk, and how should
higher-education leaders deal with them? Three experts offered their
advice at the Technology Forum: Beth Cate, associate general counsel at
Indiana University, on data privacy and security; Steven J. McDonald,
general counsel at the Rhode Island School of Design, on copyright and
intellectual property; and Tracy Mitrano, director of
information-technology policy and computer policy and law programs at
Cornell University, on outsourcing.
Beth Cate: At both the state and federal levels, the legal landscape
concerning data privacy and security continues to evolve. Thirty-eight
states and the District of Columbia now have laws that require
institutions to notify people whose data are involved in a breach.
California, which had the first breach-notification law, has extended it
recently to include medical and health-care data as well as other types of
information. Various proposals for a federal breach-notification statute
have been made over the past few years, and one such bill is in the
Senate. Other state laws involve specific types of data, Social Security
numbers in particular. Enforcement activity is also occurring. For
example, institutions that accept credit-card payments are dealing with
potential fines and other penalties if they mishandle that information.
The sanctions (like losing merchant status) are developed and imposed by
the credit-card industry; those obligations and penalties flow down to
colleges that process credit-card payments and handle credit-card data.
So far, people who have been the subject of identity theft and have sued
institutions have had a tough time convincing courts that they have
suffered harm that requires some form of payment, or that any harm is
traceable to a specific breach. But that may change over time, and may
also lead to pressures for legislative solutions. State laws in particular
may be amended to require financial remedies in the event of a breach.
Managing data effectively requires resources and is one priority among
many. Moreover, many higher-education institutions are decentralized,
which makes dealing with the issues even more challenging. The data world
is fluid and changing, and colleges' policies and processes may not always
be nimble enough to respond quickly.
For example, outsourcing is creating new issues: How do colleges ensure
adequate data privacy and security as people use applications that are
hosted on third-party servers? What about mobile devices, particularly as
more institutions allow people to use personal devices for business
activities?
Many federal and state laws have similar requirements; while the specifics
may change for, say, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act or the
Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, the laws overlap
conceptually to a fair degree.
At the same time, institutional goals themselves often overlap —
effectively mapping institutional data and tracking access to them are
part of e-discovery, identity management, and disaster-recovery efforts,
for example. It's too overwhelming for colleges to try to deal with it all
in a piecemeal way. Rather, they should take a broad-based, integrated
approach and try to institutionalize assessments of privacy and security
as part of their continuing operations.
It's important to have a core group of people who can come together
regularly to ensure that a college's approach to data privacy and security
is comprehensive, integrated, well informed in terms of the institutional
norms and values, and responsive to change. That group can identify where
the data are, who has them, and how that institutional data map is
shifting.
To be effective, that effort will require visible, high-level
administrative authorization and support — statements coming from the
governing board and the president — about the importance of the issues and
the delegation of policy-making authority to the group.
Who should be on that team — besides, of course, people from the units
that actually have and plan to use the data? Representatives should come
from such key areas as information privacy and security, legal counsel,
risk management, internal audit, purchasing and contracting (particularly
to deal with outsourcing issues), human resources, and academic personnel,
among others. And if you're dealing with breaches or trying to construct
messages to your constituents, public-relations personnel are also useful.
For years everyone thought that issues related to data privacy and
security were technology oriented, but we're trying to take the focus off
just the technology and direct it toward behavioral issues. Human error
often lies at the bottom of a lot of breaches — just well-meaning people
who make mistakes. We aren't talking about a sophisticated hacker but a
person who loses a flash drive or inadvertently sends an e-mail message
containing unencrypted Social Security numbers.
So educational efforts to reach out to people are key. At Indiana
University, our information-privacy officer and I go on the road and talk
to the different units that handle data. That allows them to identify
people in their units who understand the issues and who can become data
stewards. We get many more questions now about appropriate practices.
People regularly contact me and ask, "I just realized that we're doing so
and so. Is that OK?" Such feedback is important.
It's also important to keep an eye on proposed federal and state
legislation because many of those bills will affect higher education. We
need to have a voice in the debates and to keep an eye on standards that
are developing for privacy and security in other arenas that may become
the standards for us, because we are handling the same sorts of data and
engaging in similar transactions.
Colleges should also keep in mind units or activities that may not
automatically leap to mind but may pose hidden data-privacy and security
problems. Take student organizations, which we tend to think of as
separate entities. But if they do things that involve the use of
institutional servers, like constructing donor databases and gathering
information for a fund-raising project, they can create potential risks
for the college or university in general.
***
Steven J. McDonald: We usually don't think of intellectual property as a
problem. We think of it as a good thing. But several features of copyright
law and several features of the Internet have collided to create a
problem.
Copyright has become increasingly pervasive and restrictive over the past
30 years. Before 1976, for example, you had to jump through several hoops
to get a copyright, so most people wouldn't go to the trouble of
copyrighting a work unless it was a book, a movie, or some other project
that had significant potential commercial value.
Since then we have eliminated virtually all the formalities, so that when
someone creates something that is copyrightable, copyright law
automatically makes it copyrighted. You don't have to file a registration.
You don't have to publish the work. You don't even have to put a little
"c" with a circle on it.
Moreover, the threshold for what it takes to get a copyright is incredibly
low. There's no requirement of quality or novelty; the tiniest "spark" of
creativity is enough. The contents of the phone book, for example, qualify
for a copyright. As a result, almost everything is copyrighted now,
including just about every e-mail list that you've ever written and the
doodles you are drawing right now.
The copyright term has also been extended over the past few decades to the
point that it seems like it almost never goes away. Nowadays, if you don't
know for sure, the safest thing is to assume that everything is
copyrighted and will be copyrighted for a very long time.
Meanwhile, pretty much everything you can do on the Internet implicates
copyright law. The reason is that the way that the Internet works is by
making copies and distributing them — and the two most fundamental rights
of a copyright owner are the right to make copies and to distribute them.
When you click on a URL, for example, you set in motion a process that
causes a copy to be made and sent to your computer — actually two copies,
one that goes into the RAM and shows up on your screen, and one that goes
into your disk cache and may remain there for quite a while. The same
thing happens with e-mail messages. You can't send a message, forward one,
or even reply to one without making and distributing copies. Simply
turning on a computer causes a copy of the operating system to be loaded
into RAM. Did anybody say you could do that? Probably not.
The Internet is really just a big photocopier. If you think about it in
those terms, you can understand why it creates copyright issues.
A second problematic aspect of the Internet is that it makes it much
easier to distribute copies. Before, you had to have a scribe, printing
press, or photocopier, and that took time, money, and effort. Now with the
Internet, you can make a million perfect copies of anything and distribute
them to a million of your closest friends with a few clicks of a button.
The third feature of the Internet that further raises the stakes is that
what we are doing is far more public. We've undoubtedly been engaging in
copyright infringement of one form or another on our campuses forever.
We've been doing things that we weren't supposed to be doing but that
nobody knew about unless they came to our campuses and looked around. But
now we're doing it on the Internet, where it's visible to billions of
people across the planet. I read that we even have an Internet connection
to Mars now, so if there's anybody on Mars, even they can watch us engage
in copyright infringement.
So if we combine the facts that virtually everything is copyrighted and
that everything we do on the Internet involves copyright, we've got a
problem: All of us are, at least technically, engaging in copyright
infringement all the time. Significantly, our faculty members are posting
all sorts of materials to course-management systems. Our libraries are
interested in creating new e-reserve systems to support the academic
effort. Are those things OK?
In analyzing that, the biggest thing we need to understand is that just
because something is technologically possible doesn't mean that it's
legal. If we just assume that it is, we're engaging in exactly the same
self-justification as our students who are file sharing. It doesn't much
matter if what we are doing is academically valuable — that by itself
isn't a defense of copyright infringement.
Today, copyright infringement is much more pervasive and much more
visible, which naturally creates legal issues. We're going to see more
lawsuits, especially if we aren't thoughtful and careful.
For example, the Association of American Publishers has been making a push
over the past few years specifically against e-reserves. They've entered
into what in effect are settlements with several institutions, and they
are going after several more. The publishers are trying to establish a set
of principles that we might not think are right, and which may be narrower
than what copyright law allows us to do. But they are taking an aggressive
approach.
We shouldn't simply give up and not do things because of copyright risks
or because copyright law is unclear. But we also can't take an ostrich
approach and ignore potential copyright issues. What we need to do is
educate our faculty and staff members. It's not enough to assume that they
understand copyright law and will apply it correctly.
Copyright law has a number of exceptions that do allow us to do quite a
few things in education. Many of the laws were written specifically with
us in mind, and we need to be aware of those and take advantage of them.
We also need to understand — and to exercise — fair use.
There is a lot of good resource material out there that provides guidance.
For example, the Association for Research Libraries has developed a
brochure, "Know Your Copyrights," that explains in a simple format what
our faculty members can do. It's available on the association's Web site
(http://www.arl.org) with, appropriately, a broad Creative Commons
license.
We also need to pay attention to these issues because if we don't, other
people will frame the debate for us. And then copyright laws are just
going to continue to become even more pervasive, restrictive, and
controlling.
The fundamental purpose of copyright law is about education and about
creativity. We've got a great story to tell, and we need to be in that
debate.
***
Tracy Mitrano: Outsourcing services can have legal implications in many
areas, including:
*
Student e-mail. The questions that come up tend to concern how to
construct contracts to be sure that you don't violate the Family Education
Rights and Privacy Act, which protects the educational records of
students. Take emergency messaging. Reading e-mail messages is a way to
help student-life and law-enforcement officials if they are trying to
ascertain if a student is in danger. If a parent calls and says, "Suzy
calls every day, but I haven't heard from her in three days," we can check
an e-mail server to see if she has been on it. We can even, as an
exception under Ferpa, look into a mail file to make sure when we are
dealing with a health-and-safety issue. So if we outsource student e-mail,
it's important to ask if we still have that kind of accessibility during
emergencies.
Another concern is how to get messages out to the broad campus
community in an emergency. We simply must think seriously about such
issues, given the crises like the shootings at Virginia Tech and Northern
Illinois University.
*
Plagiarism. The Education Department has ruled that a professor
would be putting an institution at risk for a Ferpa violation if he or she
simply took term papers and shipped them off to a plagiarism-check site
without having "anonymized" the data. Another question has to do with
copyright: Did the faculty member have the student's permission to make a
copy of his or her document? A plagiarism-check site will want to make a
copy of it so that it can check it against other papers and add it to the
database of papers against which others are checked. Colleges should have
the policies in place that ensure they don't run afoul of either problem,
Ferpa or copyright, when they use those kind of sites.
*
Course-management systems. There's no question that the court
decision in the Blackboard v. Desire2Learn patent-infringement case, in
which the jury awarded more than $3-million in damages to Blackboard, is
interesting in the context of what many people call a broken patent
system. It also has broad implications for colleges.
Last year Blackboard agreed not to bring any action against an
open-source or community-source product as long as it was not bundled with
proprietary software involving the technology that Blackboard alleges to
hold the patent to. The company also made it clear that it would continue
to sue the maker of a commercial product if Blackboard thought it violated
the company's patent. More important, Blackboard did not guarantee that it
would not sue an institution that had contracted with any
course-management system that the company believed had violated its
patent. That puts institutions that may have already contracted with
Desire2Learn at some potential risk.
*
Blogs, wikis, virtual worlds. What if a faculty member creates a
virtual world online? Who owns it? If the university bought the island in
Second Life, does that mean it owns the intellectual property that the
faculty member creates? If the policy on a particular site, like Second
Life, is that the avatar owns the information and the faculty member is
the avatar, a conflict may arise between what the site says, what the
university says, and what the faculty member says. The best advice is to
try to agree on those issues in advance, before someone starts to knock on
the courtroom door.
*
E-discovery. Concerns about having to gather huge amounts of
electronic data as evidence in legal cases is keeping folks on campuses up
at night. Of all higher-education institutions, Virginia Tech faced the
most challenging question about how to handle e-discovery. Its IT staff
worked with university counsel to get a handle on what could have been an
enormous e-discovery crisis. Virginia Tech stands as a model for all
colleges and universities.
*
Social-networking sites. Salacious-gossip sites are emerging that
target college students, encouraging a kind of speech that can be hurtful
to individuals and groups, and beneath the dignity of what we all would
like our students to use as speech.
If your institution is the type that promises parents and students
that it is going to be protective, you may want to go ahead and block
those sites as a statement of how you interpret your mission. At an
institution like Cornell University, that is harder to do, given how
strongly we value free speech. Obviously we can't control third-person
commercial sites on the Internet, but we can educate our students. We need
to be thinking in advance about how to deal with such sites. And we need
to view them — and the disruption they create — less as a technology issue
and more as an educational issue about behavior and citizenship.
Ultimately the fundamental question to ask about outsourcing might be: To
what degree would we outsource our products and services, such that we no
longer have control over them, in order to exercise our missions? We do
not want to be in the situation where we've outsourced, outsourced,
outsourced — simply because in each case it seemed like the most
economical thing to do — to the point that we are suddenly beholden to
external entities at the expense of our missions.
++++++++++++
Public Intellectuals in the New-Media Landscape
By HENRY JENKINS
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b01801.htm
Henry Jenkins has what most people would agree is a pretty cool gig: He
studies pop culture at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which
means he has written scholarly articles about Star Trek fans, video games,
and pro wrestling, among other topics. He is also one of the directors of
the institute's comparative-media-studies program, which is increasingly
being seen as a model for integrating the study of different media in one
department.
A prolific author and blogger, and a public intellectual on important
issues of media and technology in society, Jenkins is often called the
Marshall McLuhan of our day. But he has a theory (keep reading) about why
nobody can replace McLuhan, that pioneering scholar of the mass media who
coined the phrase "The medium is the message." Jenkins delivered the
keynote address at The Chronicle's Technology Forum. Following is an
adapted version of his remarks.
In the week after September 11, 2001, the students, faculty members, and
alumni of the MIT comparative-media-studies program rallied forces to
create a Web site called re:constructions
(http://mit.edu/cms/reconstructions). It was designed to provoke public
reflection on the media's role in shaping our responses to national
tragedies. Over the course of an intense weekend, students produced films,
identified quotations, wrote essays, and contacted friends and family
around the world. When the site went live, we had generated more than 100
separate entries, including reports on media responses to the attacks in
more than 30 countries.
In many ways, re:constructions represented a turning point in our
conception of the new graduate program, setting up a model for what might
happen if we deployed the new technologies we studied as a vehicle for
opening up a larger public conversation about media change. Today the
comparative-media-studies home page (http://cms.mit.edu) hosts feeds from
seven different blogs affiliated with our various research groups and
faculty members. Our site regularly offers podcasts from conferences (like
Futures of Entertainment and Media in Transition) and colloquia we hold at
MIT. My own blog, Confessions of an Aca-Fan, attracts several thousand
readers a day. We also recently made the decision to offer our masters'
theses online so they can be read by researchers around the world. These
efforts have had an impact on our relations with our current students,
prospective students, alumni, faculty members, the news media, the general
public, and other readers.
Current students. By design, students in our program come from many
professional and disciplinary backgrounds, and will follow many career
paths after they graduate. Early on, several students began to create
blogs around their thesis projects — in part to motivate them to write
regularly, in part to get feedback on their ideas. Ilya Vedrashko, for
example, started a blog called the Future of Advertising, which quickly
became a favorite among industry insiders and reporters. The blog's
visibility opened up new contacts and resources, which supported his
research. Before long, he was also being courted by some of those
companies for postgraduation jobs. Eventually, a major company created a
position specifically for him.
Something similar has happened for subsequent student bloggers, who have
gained visibility for their writing about "serious games" (video and
computer games for educational rather than entertainment purposes), data
visualization, and advertising. In each case, their work brought them into
contact with key thinkers and professionals. Historically, scholars might
develop a reputation as public intellectuals once they became senior
statespeople in their fields; increasingly, younger researchers are using
blogs as resources for reputation building, especially in cutting-edge
fields that lack established authorities.
When I started my own blog, I was able to use it to showcase the writing
of a broad range of students, allowing me to encourage them to refine
class assignments into something that could be shared with a general
readership. Several of my students have received invitations to publish
their work based on the traffic they drew on my blog. Many graduate
programs push their students toward academic publications, but we also see
a value in helping students cultivate their skills as public
intellectuals, finding ways to translate their ideas into a more citizenly
discourse that speaks across disciplinary boundaries and communicates with
a diverse audience.
When my blog first went live, a reader compared it with MIT's Open
Courseware project, which makes material from the university's courses
available online to the public. While Open Courseware allowed the public
to view the content of an MIT education, the blogs offered a chance to
witness the instructional process. Day by day the blogs unfold, offering a
glimpse into the research culture and the ways we think about current
issues in our field.
Running the blog feeds through the media-studies home page means that the
site is continually refreshed without much conscious effort on the part of
program administrators. Students become accustomed to checking our site
daily, which means they are more likely to read other announcements we put
up, thus enabling better information circulation.
Prospective students. A rising percentage of the students we admit list
these blogs as the primary way in which they learned about the
media-studies program. New students come to us with a much sharper
understanding of the strengths of our program and how their interests
might align with our continuing research efforts. The blogs thus raise the
number and quality of applicants, and may have had some impact on our
yield — the percentage of accepted candidates who enroll. New students are
increasingly integrated into the life of the program well before they
arrive in September.
Alumni. At a time when many universities are starting to think about the
value of lifelong learning, alumni of the program continue to engage with
our current faculty members and students long after they graduate. Just as
we feature student work through our various blogs, blog posts may also
emerge from tips from our alumni working in industries.
Faculty members. The blog posts represent what might be called
"just-in-time scholarship," offering thoughtful responses to contemporary
developments in the field. Because they are written for a general rather
than specialized readership, these short pieces prove useful for teaching
undergraduate subjects. We are seeing a growing number of colleagues using
blog posts or podcasts as a springboard for classroom discussions and
other instructional activities. Having developed a steady readership for
such content, we are also able to use our blogs to showcase innovative
ideas and research from colleagues around the world. Through my blog, I
regularly offer interviews with other academics whose work touches my
areas of interest. Some of those academics have started their own blogs,
having enjoyed the public response to their interviews on my site.
Last summer I responded to signs of continuing gender conflicts in the
field of "fan studies" — the study of the grass-roots creative expression
of fans of television, films, comics, and video games — by hosting a
series of paired conversations between male and female researchers working
on the topic. The duos used emerging collaboration tools, such as Google
Docs, to be able to construct dialogues that at times came from opposite
corners of the globe. Altogether, more than 30 academics contributed to
this forum over a six-month period. Many of those involved have gone on to
propose panels for conferences or collaborate on book projects that
emerged from their blog conversations.
The news media. Our blogs provide a platform from which we not only
publicize our research findings and conferences, but also focus news-media
interest on issues we think deserve greater attention. Historically,
academics have been put in a reactive position, responding to questions
from reporters. Blogging places academics in a more proactive position,
intervening more effectively in popular debates around the topics they
research.
Following up an interview with a blog post allows us to provide interested
readers with more information or to correct misinformation. A portion of
readers now seek additional information online when they encounter an
interesting quotation from an academic in the press.
The general public. Our society is undergoing a phase of prolonged and
profound media change, which is having an impact on every aspect of our
lives. In this context, there is tremendous hunger for insights into the
changing media landscape. As honest brokers of information, academics may
be ideally situated to bridge these more specialized conversations. As a
consequence, our various blogs attract readerships that extend well beyond
the academic sphere — public-school teachers trying to foster new-media
literacy, creative people from the media industries seeking to understand
shifts in consumer behavior, advertising executives looking for new models
of engagement and participation, fans and "gamers" (those who participate
in computer and video games) trying to understand the objects of their
passion. Since the program has multiple blogs, we have been able to
develop and maintain diverse constituencies of readers.
Readers. I started my own blog a few months before the release of my most
recent book, Convergence Culture: Where Old and New Media Collide (New
York University Press, 2006). Over time, the blog has become central to
the book's success. Most writers struggle to edit their books, often
frustrated that interesting tidbits end up on the cutting-room floor.
Having a blog gave me a place to publish outtakes from the book, nuggets
that were interesting in their own right but clogged the flow of the
argument. Another key frustration of anyone who writes about contemporary
culture is that the world is changing so fast that certain details become
out of date before a book sees print. Having a blog has allowed me to
return to some of the case histories and explore those changes, as well as
to extend the argument in order to deal with more-recent developments. I
was able to flag aspects of the book that might appeal to different kinds
of readers, and thus expand the potential market for the book over time.
The global reach of the blog has helped generate interest in publishing
translations of the book.
So how do you do these things? The crucial point is that running a blog is
a commitment, and has to be understood as part of a larger set of
professional obligations. When I first began blogging as an academic, I
sought advice from other bloggers. They stressed that it was important to
set a schedule for publication for your blog and stick with it. It
mattered less whether you blogged once a week or once a day, so long as
you were consistent in putting up material. Otherwise, on any given day it
would be easy to miss a post. And over a period of time, giving over to
that temptation would eventually push you out of blogging altogether. But
setting deadlines and developing strategies for generating content during
difficult periods insured a level of discipline that would allow one to
maintain momentum over time.
Media studies as a discipline has been quick to embrace the potentials of
new-media platforms as channels for sharing our research and scholarship.
A growing number of junior and senior faculty members in our field are
becoming bloggers. At the same time, media scholars are pooling their
efforts to contribute to larger projects, such as the biweekly webzine
Flow, which runs pieces on many aspects of contemporary television and
digital culture, and In Media Res, which each day offers a short video
clip and commentary by a leading media scholar.
These same strategies can be and are being adopted across a range of
academic disciplines, as scholars make a greater commitment to circulate
their findings more broadly and to respond to contemporary issues in a
thoughtful and timely manner.
A SAMPLING OF WEB SITES FROM MIT'S COMPARATIVE-MEDIA-STUDIES PROGRAM
Confessions of an Aca-Fan (http://www.henryjenkins.org): Run by the
program's co-director. Includes his reflections on contemporary media;
guest posts by students, researchers, and alumni; and interviews and
discussions with other academics
Project Good Luck (http://projectgoodluck.com/blog): Reports on the
continuing research of the comparative-media-studies faculty member Beth
Coleman, who studies China's emerging digital culture
Convergence Culture Consortium (http://convergenceculture.org/weblog):
Reports on recent trends in creative industries including film, music,
video games, and other forms of cultural expression
CMS Colloquia Podcast (http://cms.mit.edu/news/podcast): Features weekly
colloquia or conferences
Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Games Lab (http://gambit.mit.edu/updates): Offers
regular commentary on games (both serious and entertaining), and showcases
projects developed by the lab's students and researchers
Visual Methods (http://visualmethods.blogspot.com): Features blogs by
media-studies graduate students on thesis research on visualization,
hip-hop culture, media policy, and independent music production and
distribution, such as Todo Mundo (http://kevindriscoll.info/todomundo),
Managing Miracles (http://managingmiracles.blogspot.com), and A Distorted
Reality (http://scripts.mit.edu/~ewendel/blog)
CMS Theses (http://cms.mit.edu/research/theses.php): Offers digital
versions of most theses produced by the MIT program's students
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
How Professors Are Using Technology: a Report From the Trenches
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02101.htm
When it comes to how to use technology in the classroom, professors and
administrators aren't always on the same page. Nor are professors
themselves always in agreement. At The Chronicle's Technology Forum, a
panel of faculty members from several Florida institutions spoke about
their IT frustrations and successes. Jeffrey J. Selingo, editor of The
Chronicle, and Goldie Blumenstyk, a senior writer, served as moderators.
Following are excerpts from the discussion.
Examples of Technology in the Classroom
John Wayne Shafer, theater, University of Central Florida: I'm involved
with convergent theater, which merges digital combinations of theater over
large distances. Our latest work was a collaboration between Bradley
University in Illinois and the University of Waterloo, in Ontario, where
we took our three departments and merged them into one for the production
of Alice Experiments in Wonderland. [Casts from the three universities,
hundreds of miles apart, acted as one, connected by high-speed Internet
lines that transmitted images in real time to audiences at all three
institutions (The Chronicle, February 29).]
Ann Piccard, writing and legal skills, Stetson University College of Law:
I teach research and writing. The research is taught primarily with
technology but the writing is not, and I really do not use technology in
the classroom unless I'm required to for some reason. But I am also
currently enrolled as a student in a distance-learning program through the
University of London.
Michael L. Barnett, business administration, University of South Florida:
I use a moderate amount of technology in the classroom — document
projectors, online stuff with Blackboard, the Internet, videos, and so
forth. Probably right now my biggest challenge with technology is keeping
it out of the classroom in terms of cellphones and laptops and things that
distract.
Ellen S. Podgor, law (and associate dean of faculty development and
electronic education), Stetson College of Law: I teach in the areas of
criminal law, white-collar crime, and international criminal law. I do use
electronic education in my classroom and outside my classroom. I use
PowerPoints in my regular substantive course. I use vodcasts, podcasts,
asynchronous learning. I do a blog on the White Collar Crime Prof Blogger.
And I have taught students online on several different occasions. We use
electronic education at Stetson to add on to our curriculum, not as the
main basis.
Mary C. Madden, English, University of South Florida: I teach primarily in
both a large composition program and literature course. I do use — and
most instructors in our composition program use — hybrid classrooms. We
have to check six different sites almost daily. I'm kind of in the middle
in terms of using technology. Some of it has been strongly encouraged by
the composition program, and this has helped to drive the involvement on
the part of a lot of our faculty members.
Judy Nolasco, composition, Hillsborough Community College's Ybor City
campus: I'm in the process this semester of teaching my very first totally
online course, and that means that my students do not come to campus at
all. I do my introduction online through a video; I do all my lectures
through PowerPoint with my voice lecturing exactly like I do in my
classroom. I use a lot of technology in my course on teaching diverse
populations because, luckily, it came along with the textbook that I
chose, and I find that it really adds a new dimension to a lot of my
assignments. I like technology. However, from a teaching standpoint, it is
a lot of work to integrate technology into the curriculum and into the way
that you are used to teaching your courses.
Ellen Pastorino, psychology, Valencia Community College's Osceola campus:
I teach in a "smart" classroom and have for the past five years, so I have
the capability of going out onto the Internet or using PowerPoint, videos,
YouTube. And I also have been using for the past five years a
student-response system called the clicker system that is interactive, so
that you can use it to ask questions or get attitudinal data from the
students. And they can respond immediately, anonymously, and you can get
feedback on either where they are learning material or what they feel
about a particular topic.
Who Picks the Technology?
Jeffrey J. Selingo, moderator: For those who do use technology in the
classroom, how was that technology selected? How much of a role did you
have?
Nolasco: At our college, all our classrooms have been renovated to be what
we call 21st-century classrooms. Every classroom has a data projector;
some have whiteboards; we have PC's. I did not actually request it. I
believe it was just one of our overall college initiatives to make sure
that all of our classrooms were equipped for the 21st-century technology.
Pastorino: I would say it has been collaborative in some instances.
Certainly there is a lot of software that is just handed to us, and we are
expected to use it. On the other hand, if we want something that we think
will help our students, there are forums where you can solicit that
information and then work with your dean or administration.
Teaching Older Students
Goldie Blumenstyk, moderator: For those of you who teach adult students,
do you have to change things along the way because certain students are
not as adaptable as others?
Barnett: What is interesting is that if I post a requirement or something
online, there will be a certain percentage who would claim ignorance. But
when I post grades online, suddenly I get a million hits within 10
seconds. I think it is BS, mostly; they all know how to use it pretty
much.
Piccard: When I started teaching at Stetson nine years ago, the older ones
were completely unfamiliar with the Internet. A lot of them had never used
a computer before. That is not true anymore.
Shafer: [Cites survey data that found different attitudes across age
groups in some of his projects.] Generally speaking, if you were younger
you were much, much happier with the attempts at converging the technology
with traditional forms of theater, whereas if you were older, your general
response tended to be significantly less robust. So I think the skill
level of the older population has increased in general. But I still think
that there is more skepticism.
Pastorino: But I think that skepticism is healthy because the one thing
that the younger students are lacking is being able to evaluate the
information that they get. Older students are more skeptical; they look
more critically at that information.
Contact With Administrators and Training
Blumenstyk, moderator: How much training have you had? And what has it
overlooked?
Madden: Although we are a pretty collaborative program, the technological
end of it, so to speak, has been a little top down; many of us have not
felt knowledgeable enough to participate in the choices. But we have been
offered fairly extensive training. Sometimes it is a burden in terms of
time — yet another thing we have to do. But it has led to some wonderful
developments.
Selingo, moderator: We have a lot of CIO's in this room. How much
interaction do you all have with your chief information officer? How much
interaction do you have on questions of using technology in the classroom?
Pastorino: Once, at a party.
Shafer: We end up approaching our leadership when we need some kind of
expertise that may not be natural to our discipline. I will walk into the
office of just about anybody on campus, even though the chain of command
is very long. So who I go to depends on the urgency of the matter and what
kind of stakes we are dealing with.
Blumenstyk, moderator: Tell us what frustrates you the most about having
to teach with technology, or wanting to teach with it?
Barnett: It is not big-purchase issues that directly affect me but,
rather, when the light bulb burns out in the projector, or you cannot get
the system to boot up.
Nolasco: I think tech support is a big issue with faculty because it's not
that it isn't available; it's that it isn't available at that moment. When
you have got a class waiting for you and you walk in and nothing works,
it's not like you can just call somebody and they are there in five
minutes. The other thing that frustrates me about using technology is that
it's very time-consuming to integrate it into my classes. When you teach
five classes a semester, you have a lot of prep.
Question from the audience: Could you tell me if your campus has both
academic and administrative groups, or a single IT group?
Podgor: We have a separate IT department, and just within the last few
months, I was appointed as the faculty liaison to the IT department, which
I think helps enormously.
Pastorino: We have an IT group, too, and the difficulty is that they may
have representation on a budget committee for the college. Then they make
decisions, and it always seems like all the computers are refurbished
between semesters. So you come back and there is a new updated version of
some program, and training is not for another month, and now you already
have to use that in the classroom. So a lot of times just the
communication between IT and the faculty is not as stellar as it could be.
Teaching Online Courses
Barnett: I do not teach online courses, so what distinguishes someone who
is suited for an online course versus someone who is not?
Nolasco: Well, I think they have to be highly motivated students. I think
they have to be well organized. They have to have good time-management
skills.
Barnett: But how do you assess that?
Nolasco: Well, we do not. The students have to assess themselves.
Pastorino: A lot of students may be working 40 hours, and they think that
they can take 12 hours of online courses. Well, at 2 o'clock in the
morning, they are not really prepared to do the reading or the thinking
that is required of the material.
Podgor: We have no suitability [requirements]. Anybody who wants to take
the class can take the class. We do require a certain number of posts each
week so that we require the students to be up to a certain level each
week. And that is one of our ways of knowing whether they are, in fact,
online. They are required to actually answer questions and post and be
part of a discussion.
Never Enough Time (or Credit)
Shafer: Any time an instructor is asked or volunteers to introduce new
technologies in a classroom, the set-up time in advance of that course is
much more extreme than for any other course. [In one such case,] I spent a
large portion of my time trying to track down the hardware to teach the
class. We all know it changes every two seconds.
And being given credit academically for the introduction of that
technology is something that we hear about in every faculty meeting.
Question: We put a lot of resources into technology, both in terms of
funding and in terms of human hours. Is it worth it? And how do we know
that?
Barnett: Instructors should be able to save time and effort by using
technology, but in fact we are doing a lot of the administration instead
now, so we have to deal with posting materials and learning all the
different software and posting grades online and so forth. So our jobs
have expanded rather than been shrunk by technology.
Podgor: We do an extensive survey on our students using electronic
education, and the students say they work a lot harder when they take an
electronic class. They also love it. They think it is wonderful because
their voices are heard. It depends on how you do it. It depends on what
format you use, what type of interaction you might have online, how you
present the questions, and exactly how you put it together. It takes a lot
of time to do it right. It really does.
Nolasco: Teachers who actively engage their students in a face-to-face
classroom can actively engage their students online. That is the bottom
line, as far as I'm concerned.
Barnett: From an administrative standpoint, do you have a clue whether or
not we [faculty members] are doing anything effectively, or we are just
entertaining effectively?
Pastorino: Well, we do alumni surveys, so we follow students two, five,
eight years out, and then ask them for feedback on what was most helpful.
Madden: We assess the writing program every semester using a tool
developed by our testing-and-evaluation department. There is a whole week
required for all composition instructors before classes begin, and they
point out what percentage are weak in writing introductions, et cetera, et
cetera. I'm surprised, though, that there is not more stellar improvement
in the writing, which concerns me.
Barnett: We are reading a lot into this assessment stuff, especially here
at USF, and what worries me is that we are being held responsible for
outcomes when, in fact, we cannot control the amount of effort that they
put into it.
Shafer: I was attending a function in which one of the leadership folks
was saying, "Well, we need to develop a new assessment tool." And this is
like the 14th or 15th time we have revamped an assessment tool in the
college. One of my colleagues stood up and said, "I'm tired of being
assessed. When are we going to start assessing our students?" I think
there is imbalance there.
Interruptions in the Classroom
Blumenstyk, moderator: How do you handle classroom interruptions —
texting, use of laptops?
Piccard: I tell my students, "If your phone rings, please get up, go
outside to answer it, and do not come back." And this is the first
semester in nine years at Stetson that I have allowed laptops.
Podgor: I'm the opposite. I welcome the laptops; I want students online in
my class. I think they are capable of multitasking.
+++++++++++++++++
How to Channel the Data Deluge in Academic Research
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02401.htm
What are the best ways to organize the mass quantities of data that
researchers generate, and to share those data to engender new research?
Scott Carlson, a senior reporter at The Chronicle, asked Michael C. Witt,
an assistant professor of library science and an interdisciplinary
research librarian at Purdue University Libraries and its Distributed Data
Curation Center, and Sayeed Choudhury, associate dean of university
libraries and director of the Digital Knowledge Center at the Sheridan
Libraries of the Johns Hopkins University, for their views. Following are
excerpts.
Making the Case for Data Curators
Michael C. Witt: Data curation is an emerging area. The two traditional
branches of science, theoretical and experimental, are now being augmented
by computational science. In cyberinfrastructure, we have fast global
networks that are connecting vast computational and storage resources.
Scientists are using those resources in new and exciting ways,
collaborating in virtual organizations without regard to political or
institutional boundaries. They're sharing tools, data, and vast networks
of sensors and instruments. There are simulations and computer models that
are generating a tremendous amount of data.
Take, for example, Deb Roy, who directs the Media Lab's cognitive-machines
group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He studies cognitive
machines, artificial intelligence, and robotics. When he found out that
his wife was pregnant, he did what a lot of MIT engineers probably do when
they find out they're pregnant: They turn their kid into a science
project. So he started "The Human Speechome Project": He rigged his house
with microphones and video cameras, and recorded every waking moment of
the first two and a half years of his child's life. Think about the amount
of data generated by a project like that. Roy amassed 120,000 hours of
audio recordings and 80,000 hours of video footage, and is still in the
process of transcribing and annotating everything.
When you think of the tremendous value of that data set — not just for
robotics, artificial intelligence, and cognitive machines, but for child
development, linguistics, and other disciplines — you see that it makes
sense to curate science and research data. It makes sense to share data
because data increasingly drive science. Think of the Human Genome
Project: The data sets themselves have more value than any single
publication that was derived from an analysis of them.
Why is it important to share data? Why is it important to archive and
curate data? Because, for example, wouldn't it be terrific if, at the same
time that journal articles were published, the broad data set could be
cited in them? One of the principles of science is being able to reproduce
an experiment. How can you do that, in many cases, without the data?
There is also tremendous value in reusing data, which can be made possible
by archiving and sharing. Why recreate the wheel? We're all working with
budgets. Data can be reused to advance a similar line of research — or
even a different line in a different discipline.
Data sets are also valuable because they add to the legacy of a center or
a researcher or an institution, much in the same way that citations do. If
you can amass a critical amount of data in one place, you can foster a
virtual organization. As people share data, they create tools and move
toward common formats for interoperability.
Data curation is not without challenge. We've talked about big data sets,
and scale is certainly an issue. But size isn't always important. Smaller
data sets are every bit as important, and maybe more relevant for our
institutions to be looking at. And there are other issues: How do you
present data collections in the proper context, so that they're
discoverable and usable? How do you make them accessible not just by human
beings but by machines? You want to be able to cite data, so you need a
unique identifier and a way of resolving that, much like you would have an
ISBN for a book. If you're going to publish data, you would like to be
able to have citations and not have that link break over time as you
migrate to new servers and technologies.
Another challenge is metadata. How do you classify and describe data sets
so that they can be found, understood, and used? Provenance is another
consideration: What is the chain of custody of the data? Once a data set
has been shared, if it's combined with another data set, if it's
reprocessed, if it's republished, how do you go backward in the chain of
custody to determine the authentic source? Because if you can't do that,
researchers won't trust the data, and if they don't trust the data, they
won't use the data.
There is also the matter of preservation: What format are the data in, and
how can we use versions of them in the future? And sustainability: Who's
going to do this work, and what resources will they need? And intellectual
property: Who owns the data? Who's allowed to submit them to a repository?
That's a potential land mine and needs to be dealt with up front in
data-curation considerations — along with policies for submission and
selection, policies for data use, policies on how data will be preserved
and for how long. Which data will be preserved and curated over time?
Which will not? Thinking locally, we might ask, "What is the role of my
institution in curating research data? What are the various roles of our
departments?"
Those of us who work in administration and libraries must also consider
the roles of our researchers and keep them central in all of our
discussions and planning. We should learn their scientific work flow, how
they create their data, and how they use them.
And then, of course, since I'm a librarian, I think colleges should
consider the role of librarians. Librarians build and maintain collections
as a part of our mission. We have expertise in the selection and appraisal
of information. Libraries also represent an institutional commitment to
preserve and provide access to a university's intellectual record. That
can include data sets.
Librarians tend to take a 100-year view of information: We have special
collections, archival collections, digital-library projects. We are
digitizing all different kinds of content, including vast digitization
projects such as Google Books and the Open Content Alliance, and
preserving important artifacts and different kinds of multimedia. And
many, if not most, of our libraries have deployed, or are in the process
of deploying, online institutional repositories in which libraries are
preserving and providing access to e-prints, or drafts of articles, and
information in other electronic formats.
Librarians have expertise in classifying, describing, and organizing
information. Through access services, librarians help find and use
information properly. If you think of reference services and information
literacy, you may find that librarians have a broad awareness of the
research taking place on each campus just simply through their liaison
role with faculty members. They are aware of the journals in which faculty
members publish, so it's a logical extension to inquire, "What are the
data that support this research?"
Data curation is only going to be successful with a variety of approaches.
The data deluge is a big, big problem, so if you're in information
technology, consider picking up the phone or sending an e-mail message to
your libraries. Ask them what they are doing with institutional
repositories, with digital preservation. If you are outside of IT, make it
a point to learn what services and infrastructure are available and can be
used to support or expand data curation. And most importantly, involve
your researchers so that all your efforts meet their needs.
The Complexity of a Data-Intensive Age
Sayeed Choudhury: We're experiencing a major transformative period in
higher education, much like the transition from the horse and buggy to the
automobile. During such transformations, there's a period when old and new
technologies coexist and there's shared infrastructure. Ultimately the new
technologies and practices mature, and the infrastructure also changes.
Just to give you a sense of the scale that we are talking about, a project
that Johns Hopkins is involved in is called the "Sloan Digital Sky Survey"
— one of the most ambitious astronomical surveys or projects that we've
undertaken to date. In the first two days of SDSS, researchers acquired
more data than the entire history of humanity in terms of astronomy.
The next big project that's coming out is something called the Pan-Starrs,
which stands for Panoramic Survey Telescope And Rapid Response System. It
is a planned astronomical continuing survey of much of the entire sky. In
about one week, Pan-Starrs is going to acquire as many data as Sloan did
in 10 years — which gives you some sense of the exponential rate of
growth.
People now have more data than we do storage. Last year we ended up
producing more data than we even keep on all the storage throughout the
world. How can that be? My laptop has an 80-gig hard drive. It is
perpetually at about 75 gigs. I regularly erase things, clean it off, push
it back down to 60, and then I go right back up to 75 — that temporary
storage is what exceeds our permanent storage. We couldn't even keep all
of those data if we wanted to. It's not possible. Here's one sobering
thought: The highest rate of data acquisition comes from surveillance
cameras.
If you think about where astronomy is going, it's becoming completely
driven by data. Researchers don't even think in terms of anything other
than, "How do you manipulate data?" That is actually quite a bit of a
shift. Science has always been data-driven, but it's data-intensive right
now. Some disciplines could not even conduct their research anymore if
they didn't have access to such data sets.
One of the terms that people sometimes use is Digital Dark Age. That is
not a dramatic statement; it is true. We're living in an age where we are
deliberately, and sometimes not deliberately, throwing away large amounts
of data, never to get them back.
Michael talked about data sets that are cited in publications. Peter
Murray Rust, a researcher in Britain, conducted a study with his
colleagues in which they estimated that up to 80 percent of data cited in
publications are gone. It's not that you can't find them, or that they're
really hard to get, or that you don't want to give them to me. They just
don't exist anymore: They were in someone's hard drive, on a Web site that
went away when the person left that institution, or in some medium that
doesn't work anymore — whatever the case may be. We are deleting vast
amounts of data, and that's a serious problem.
But it's also a tremendous opportunity to push out to our communities, to
the "citizen scientists," and get them engaged in ways we haven't been
engaged with them before. For instance, astronomers and young people are
interacting with data in quite similar ways. I play online games, and I'm
completely blown away by the amount of information that's coming at me,
the amount of decision making that takes place, and how quickly and
spontaneously people who've never met each other self-organize. I'm
usually the laggard. I'm usually being protected by some 13-year-old who's
much better than I am. But very quickly people realize, "This person knows
what he's doing, let's follow him." Or, "That person needs help."
Fundamentally, the difference between digital data and print information
is that data are machine actionable. From etched stone tablets all the way
up to printed books, we could process information by reading with our
eyes; data are born to be processed by machines. Telescopes generate zeros
and ones that ultimately get processed. You don't look at them; you run
computer code against them. That is a fundamental difference that we'll
have to grapple with as we move forward in this time.
Data sharing is going to transform everything we do. When you look at
astronomy, the sociology of that community has changed. Their data are
unencumbered. There are no privacy issues, no intellectual-property
issues, nor any of those other kinds of things that make it difficult in
other domains. Even in that group, it took a while for everyone to agree
that they were going to share and analyze data from many different
sources. But we're going to have collective learning and research. That
has become a given, and it will happen in all the other sciences. If we're
not prepared for that, we might be looking at trying to make a horse and
buggy run on the Interstate. It won't get us very far.
+++++++++++++++++++++++
Why Digital Avatars Make the Best Teachers
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02701.htm
OPINION
By JEREMY BAILENSON
My virtual representation of me, commonly known as an avatar, can
outperform me as a teacher any day. It can pay unwavering attention to
every student in a class of 100 or more; show my most spectacular actions
while concealing any lapse, like losing my cool; and detect the slightest
movement, hint of confusion, and improvement in performance of each
student simultaneously.
Most people may think of avatars as too primitive to show such details.
But at Stanford University's Virtual Human Interaction Lab
(http://vhil.stanford.edu), my colleagues and I use cutting-edge
technology. We could build an avatar that looked just like you (the heads
we produce look real enough that they are used in police lineups),
gestured like you, even touched like you, thanks to haptic devices that
relay the speed and force of hand movements. And the technology can be
transmitted over a network.
The prevailing wisdom in teaching, as in just about every form of social
interaction, is that face-to-face contact is the gold standard, trumping
all forms of mediated interactions. But as virtual reality moves from
games into rigorous scientific applications, it is inevitable that we will
rethink the importance of physical location. We know that gasoline is
expensive and travel can be a nuisance. But more important, a teacher's
avatar has powers that just don't exist in physical space.
Virtual reality functions in cycles — the computer figures out what
someone is doing, then redraws his or her avatar to show changes based on
that behavior.
For example, as a student in Chicago moves his head, looks toward the
teacher, and raises his hand, sensing technology measures those actions.
As the student moves, the computer of the teacher in New York, which
already has an avatar with the student's facial features and body shape,
receives that information over the Internet and modifies the avatar to
make it move, too. Tracking the actions of teacher and students,
transmitting them online, and applying them to the respective avatars all
occur seamlessly, and all the participants feel as if they are in the same
virtual room, in a movie together.
No participant needs to try to behave in a particular way, either. In a
video game, a person must act intentionally to produce behavior. But in
virtual reality, tracking equipment, like magnetic sensors and video
cameras, detects what a person does and instructs the computer to redraw
the avatar performing the same action. Everyone's computer sends the other
machines a stream of information summarizing the user's current state.
However, users can alter their streams in real time for strategic
purposes. For example, a teacher can choose to have his computer never
display an angry expression, but always to replace it with a calm face. Or
he can screen out distracting student behaviors, like talking on
cellphones.
Research by Benjamin S. Bloom in the 1980s and subsequent studies have
demonstrated that students who receive one-on-one instruction learn at
least an order of magnitude better than do students in traditional
classrooms. Virtual reality makes it possible for one teacher to give
one-on-one instruction to many students at the same time.
The use of the Web to tailor messages to different recipients has received
ample discussion, most notably in the arena of advertising; we all know
about spam messages that appear to be from one of our colleagues. In a
virtual classroom, the teacher can tailor not simply a message, but her
identity.
Of course we must be careful not to cross the line between strategic
transformations and outright deception. Probably none of us would want to
see politicians, a few years in the future, take advantage of new
technology to tailor electronic messages by combining their faces with an
undetectable share of those of the recipients — knowing that including the
citizen's face can sway his vote. But good teachers already use psychology
to help students learn, and standard techniques can be made more effective
in virtual education.
Students in a given classroom, like most large groups of people, include a
wide range of personality types — for example, introverts and extroverts.
Some students might prefer communication accompanied by nonverbal cues,
like gestures and smiles; others may prefer a less-expressive speaker. A
number of psychological studies have demonstrated what is called the
"chameleon effect": When one person nonverbally mimics another, displaying
similar posture and gestures, he maximizes his social influence. Mimickers
are seen as more likable and more persuasive than nonmimickers.
In a number of laboratory studies of behaviors including head movements
and handshakes in virtual reality, my colleagues and I have demonstrated
that if a teacher practices virtual nonverbal mimicry — that is, if she
receives the students' nonverbal actions and then transforms her nonverbal
behavior to resemble the students' motions — there are three results.
First, the students rarely are conscious of the mimicry.
Second, they nonetheless pay more attention to the teacher: They direct
their gaze more at mimicking teachers than they do at teachers who are
behaving more normally.
Third, students are influenced more by mimicking teachers — more likely to
follow their instructions and to agree with what they say in a lesson.
When I teach a class of 100 students face to face, I try to match my
nonverbal behavior to that of a single student, and I am forced to devote
ample cognitive resources to that effort. But in a virtual classroom, my
avatar can seamlessly and automatically create 100 different versions,
which simultaneously mimic each student. Without my having to pay any
attention to my actions, let alone to type commands on a keyboard, my
computer changes my gestures and other behaviors to imitate each student's
gestures and behavior. In effect, I can psychologically reduce the size of
the class.
The virtual classroom, too, can be tailored for each student. Rooms have a
sweet spot — the location varies from room to room but is often front and
center, a few meters away from the teacher. Other experiments, in my lab
and at the Research Center for Virtual Environments and Behavior at the
University of California at Santa Barbara, have shown that students
randomly assigned to sweet spots in real-world classrooms do about 10
points better on exams than do students sitting elsewhere in the rooms.
Of course, in the physical world, only one student can sit in the sweet
spot. But because virtual rooms are drawn separately for each user, every
single student's avatar can be sitting in the sweet spot — and will see
classmates' avatars sitting in other locations. In a series of studies, we
demonstrated that putting multiple students simultaneously in the virtual
sweet spot substantially increased the learning of the group.
Another advantage of the virtual classroom is that a teacher can use data
collected by the computer to improve students' learning as well as his or
her own performance. Given that decades of research have pointed to the
importance of eye contact during speaking, my colleagues and I created an
algorithm that showed teachers exactly how much eye contact they gave each
student in a large virtual classroom. If the teacher was not looking at a
student's avatar, it would slowly become translucent until the teacher
looked at the student again, when the avatar would once more become opaque
to the teacher. With that algorithm, teachers looked much more evenly
around the classroom. Virtual technology can guarantee that no child gets
left behind.
In dozens of experimental paradigms, we have demonstrated similar
advantages of virtual classrooms. The advantages are most effective in
classes with large student-to-teacher ratios, where they are needed most.
Although the actual classrooms of Ivy League universities may never lose
their prestige, the practical implications are clear: The digital
transformations of virtual classrooms can increase students' learning.
Jeremy Bailenson is an assistant professor of communication at Stanford
University.
++++++++++++++++++++
Marley's Ghost, or the Spirit of Technology Future
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02801.htm
OPINION
By MICHELLE VALOIS
When I was young and green and fresh out of graduate school, I landed a
teaching gig at Mount Wachusett Community College, where I am still
employed. I was to start off with a schedule heavy on composition courses,
but the expectation was that when the professor who taught creative
writing and ran the student literary magazine retired after two more
years, I would replace him. As an M.F.A. in a market glutted with the
holders of that degree, I was thankful for the opportunity to teach what I
loved, and more than happy to bide my time with the five-paragraph essay
until I could step into the shoes of my retiring colleague.
Let me tell you a little about that professor whose career was ending when
mine was just beginning. No one could ever have mistaken Arthur E. Marley
for anything but an academic. With his tweed jacket and reading glasses,
his nonchalant Ivy League saunter, and a head of thick, combed-back,
graying hair, he was part Gregory Peck, part Samuel Beckett. I used to see
him in the afternoons, leaning against the brick wall just outside the
cafeteria, with one leg bent so that his foot pressed against the wall.
He'd be smoking, talking, listening, and looking for all the world like
the bad boy I am sure he never was in high school — exuding an aged
beatnik appeal.
At the time, I was too headstrong to be humbled by a colleague, too eager
to be in awe of anybody. I was hungry to teach what I had spent years
learning to do — story writing. I arrived at that community college with
an arsenal of teaching methods, most of which made a lot of noise: I was
uploading this, clicking that, streaming and beaming and PowerPointing my
way through multiple sections of "English Composition." I knew my college
was pushing technology in the classroom, and I was more than ready to
podcast my way to tenure, to transform the student literary magazine from
a Xeroxed, folded, and stapled booklet into a slick, glossy specimen of
the glories of Microsoft Publisher. Of course, all that was fun for me,
and I was sure the bells and whistles were good for the students, too.
The last semester before Professor Marley was to grab his emeritus title
and head to the seashore to work in his son's used bookstore, he asked if
I wanted to help with the magazine — maybe attend a few meetings and get
to know the students, some of whom would be returning the following year.
I told him I was more than happy to do so.
"Good," he said. "We meet next Wednesday at 6."
Good God, I thought, is this man mad? He's been here for three decades.
Doesn't he know that on this commuter campus, we can barely get students
to attend events that are held during lunch hour, let alone at 6 o'clock
in the evening?
On the appointed day, I found my way to the basement of the library,
expecting one student, maybe two — geeky kids who lived at home and didn't
have to work crazy hours at dead-end jobs. But when I swung into the room,
I saw nearly 20 students hovering around Professor Marley, who was perched
on the edge of the teacher's desk.
When he saw me, he motioned me to the front of the room and introduced me:
"This is Michelle; some of you may know her. She's new here. Great
teacher, great writer. She'll be taking over the magazine after I retire.
And look out, wow, is she going to do amazing things with our baby! Just
you wait."
I blushed. Students smiled their welcomes. Soon after I sat down, a young
man strolled in. Professor Marley stopped what he was saying and pointed
directly at the newcomer. His voice was serious, his delivery earnest.
"Good, Tom, I was hoping you could make it tonight. You're just the person
we need to — "
I no longer recall what it was that Professor Marley needed Tom and only
Tom to do. But as Tom sat down, we all leaned back and watched this man
who was leaning forward and looking at each and every one of us, making us
feel magnificent, as if we possessed remarkable and unique talents, as if
we were capable of great deeds. By the end of the meeting, it felt as if
we weren't producing an in-house community-college literary magazine on a
budget of a few hundred bucks; we were writing for The New Yorker.
It's been three years since Professor Marley retired, but I think of him
often. He was one of those professors — you know the kind — who just
doesn't have any use for technology. I have heard professors like him
mocked as people who never even turn their computers on. The whiz kids
hired to help us faculty members incorporate technology into our
classrooms say teachers like that don't care about active learning, don't
care about reaching students. All we can do, I hear the administrators
say, is wait for those professors to retire.
I waited for Professor Marley to retire, but not because of his silent
computer. I was raring to go, ripe with ideas and passionate about what I
love: writing and the teaching of writing. I embraced all the technology
that came my way, and I think I am a better teacher for it. As I waited
for Professor Marley to retire, the word "dinosaur" did cross my mind a
few times. I was green, remember? I was also, I fear, a bit arrogant, a
bit like those whiz kids.
But time and experience have humbled me, while also making me more secure
in who I am as an educator, what I do well, and what I still need to do
better. When I think of Professor Marley now, what strikes me most is his
ability to coach, to inspire, to make each student feel uniquely capable,
to make a new and nervous faculty member feel important. He had a
generosity of spirit and a deep respect for the people who sat in his
classroom.
Active learning? Student engagement? The man got 20 community-college
students to show up at 6 p.m. for a literary-magazine meeting. Students
listened to him, respected him, and believed in themselves because they
knew that he believed in them and could bring out their very best. And he
did all that without even turning on a computer.
I am not suggesting that all professors who disregard technology are as
gifted as Professor Marley, or that we technophiles have the personality
of a floppy disk and need technology to mediate our social dysfunction. I
am suggesting that administrators and faculty and staff members need to be
reminded that technology is only a tool: It can be used well or poorly
because it is only as good as the person using it. Without an inspired
user, technology does not create an active learning environment; active
learning does not require any technology. There are no panaceas in
education — there never were and never will be.
Of course, when used well, technology can contribute to an engaging
learning environment. I use Blackboard in my creative-writing classes to
enable students to share their writing with each other. I use a slew of
fancy software programs to produce a student literary magazine. And yes,
the final product is glossier and slicker than its predecessor.
Is the writing better? I do get good work from my students, but the
writing in those little stapled booklets was just as good, and the
students were just as proud of what they created. And I've never had as
many as 20 students working on the magazine.
As Professor Marley and others like him retire, colleges are losing
something special. The good news is that there are new, gifted faculty
members who — perhaps because of personality, teaching style, or aesthetic
sensibility — have the same indifference to technology. They should be
valued for who they are and what they bring to the classroom.
Students these days are often wired to the max, texting, e-mailing,
Facebooking, YouTubing, surfing the Net, living in a world sometimes more
virtual than real. How refreshing it would be for them, every once in a
while, to walk into a classroom and see a human being at the teacher's
desk with no USB ports or MP3 players, no PowerPoint slide shows, no
streaming anything, and to hear nothing beeping or buzzing, just the sound
of a human voice saying, "I'm glad you made it; we were waiting just for
you."
Michelle Valois is an associate professor of English at Mount Wachusett
Community College.
++++++++++++++++++++
E-Mail Freedom Day
http://chronicle.com/weekly/v54/i30/30b02901.htm
OPINION
By JOHN M. HUGHES and DAVID TODD
We have heard for years about Tax Freedom Day — the date in a given year
when the average worker would be done paying taxes, if his or her income
since January 1 had gone only to that purpose. In 2007, Tax Freedom Day
was April 30, demonstrating that last year we toiled for four months
before meeting our tax obligations.
How long into the year would we labor to respond to e-mail messages, if we
did nothing else during the working day? That is, when would we reach
E-Mail Freedom Day? I recently took the time to investigate that question
and others about e-mail with the help of my co-author, David Todd, chief
information officer of the University of Vermont, where I am provost and
senior vice president.
My career began before e-mail was born, and I certainly don't decry the
rise of electronic communication. It has facilitated my international
scientific collaborations, allowing my colleagues and me to keep revising
24 hours a day as we pass manuscripts electronically from Central European
Time to Eastern Time to Pacific Time, and, at the end of a late day in
Pasadena, Calif., back to Vienna to start the cycle again. The increase in
productivity is remarkable.
In my role as a college administrator, however, I find e-mail more of a
mixed blessing. Staff members used to communicate with colleagues only
between 8 a.m. and 5 p.m. Personal meetings, phone calls, and mail (snail
mail only, in those days) were bounded by those hours, barring major
crises; no one would have thought of calling someone to do routine
business at 11 at night, unlike our use of e-mail today. We still worked
many hours before 8 a.m. and after 5 p.m., but without e-mail, we could
have long, uninterrupted evenings of scholarly thought and writing, or
administrative thought and planning.
In July 2006, I moved to the University of Vermont. My new job allowed me
to start over in e-mail, with a brand-new electronic address, and my
co-author and I have analyzed the electronic messages I received during my
first year in Vermont. Not only is our university's spam filter
particularly effective, but vendors throughout the world who had
considered me to be a prime candidate for relief of erectile dysfunction,
for forming partnerships to pocket millions of dollars from their
developing African nations, or for marriage to a foreign woman (or, at
least, for viewing explicit photographs of potential brides) had not yet
learned of my move. Thus the statistics presented here are spam-free.
From September 1, 2006, to August 31, 2007, I received 26,688 e-mail
messages. Sorting the messages by time and date provides some interesting
background.
I am an early riser, and I usually arrive at work by 6:30 a.m., after
triaging e-mail messages at home in search of overnight campus emergencies
that did not warrant 3 a.m. phone calls. My first task in the office is to
deal with the e-mail messages that arrived overnight; I usually log off
between 10 and 11 at night.
Typically I find a message or two sent between 3 and 6 in the morning by
the university president, who is an even earlier riser, and communications
from the usual news services, academic and otherwise. I save the daily
message from The Chronicle for last, to savor it before the Waterman Café,
in our administration building, opens at 7:30 — when my chief of staff and
I can purchase the blessed first cups of coffee and return to the office
for the daily debriefing.
Not much mail reaches me between midnight and 3 a.m. in my time zone, but
after that point, the pace begins to increase. At 7 a.m. — while many of
my correspondents are presumably showering or otherwise preparing for the
day — the rate of increase drops somewhat, but it picks up once more at 8
and continues until it reaches a daily zenith at about 10. Fortunately
there is a lull around lunchtime, after which the volume picks up again
until the afternoon peak at 4. After a fairly rapid decline, the volume
picks up again for several hours, starting at 8. The evening is often when
the deans and I sort out many of the pressing problems of the day.
I had often felt that Wednesday was a light day in terms of e-mail, but
when we analyzed my messages, that suspicion turned out to be incorrect.
In fact, the highest volume of messages came on Wednesday. Weekday traffic
was highest on Tuesdays, Wednesdays, and Thursdays, slightly lower on
Mondays and Fridays, and much lower on Saturdays and Sundays.
What about the distribution of e-mail messages over the course of the
year? As provost, I find little difference between the academic year and
the summer, although it may well be that I get fewer messages in the
summer from faculty members, who are then more focused on conducting
research and preparing manuscripts than on new curricular initiatives.
I was surprised to find that September yielded the lowest number of
electronic messages by far, even though at Vermont we begin fall classes
in late August, making September a full month for classes (except for the
Labor Day holiday). And unexpectedly, the message count did not diminish
in December, despite the holiday recess. The short month of February
yields a large spike in messages, perhaps because we all spend much of
January getting the new semester under way and have to put nonessential
communications on hold. And April brings the most e-mail messages of any
month, probably because it is when academics rush to finish everything we
have put off all year.
The second-highest month for e-mail traffic was July, unfortunately. My
wife, Susan, and I took a mere week of vacation in what we expected to be
a quiet month, but I received nearly 2,600 e-mail messages in July. I paid
the price for that getaway when I returned to work.
Given that in the academic year we studied, I received 26,688 messages,
what day would be E-Mail Freedom Day? Calculating the answer involves some
assumptions.
First, I assume that I spend two minutes, on average, per message. Many of
the messages are for information only and can be dealt with in less than a
minute, but I can spend a full day musing on how to reply to messages that
pose seemingly intractable problems. I also assume that a provost works
only 10 hours per day and only five days per week, and takes holidays off.
(I know all provosts, pausing in their weeks of 80-plus hours, will
realize that I am being ridiculously unrealistic here.)
Using those assumptions, my 26,688 messages took 53,376 minutes to
dispatch, or 889.6 hours. They amount to 89 days of 10 hours each. If I
did nothing but answer e-mail messages every working day starting on
January 2, 2007, I would have dispatched all of the year's e-mail and
reached E-Mail Freedom Day by May 10.
In other words, I spend more time answering e-mail than I do working to
pay my taxes.
John M. Hughes is provost and senior vice president, and David Todd is
chief information officer, at the University of Vermont.
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