CAUSE/EFFECT

This article was published in CAUSE/EFFECT journal, Volume 22 Number 4 1999. The copyright by the author. See http://www.educause.edu/copyright for additional copyright information.

Research in Brief

Managing the Campus Internet Explosion
by Robert A. Fleck Jr. and Tena McQueen

The Internet, in its rebirth as the World Wide Web, entered the campus environment with great rapidity and little forewarning. The rapidity of adoption by students caused many academic institutions to discover that existing policies were ill prepared and ill suited for managing and focusing computing resources. The authors surveyed computer center directors concerning Internet usage and allocation policies and problems. A full report of the survey was published by First Monday and is available at http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_11/fleck/.

The authors believe that many campuses face similar problems of managing Internet access and that sharing solutions and problems would benefit users and policy makers. They therefore surveyed 919 computer center directors at public and private institutions. Names and addresses were obtained from the 1998 Higher Education Directory. The response rate was approximately 15 percent.

Survey results

Responses were evenly distributed between public and private institutions. The largest cohort came from public institutions offering the associate degree followed by private baccalaureate-granting institutions. The sample represents almost one-half million students. Approximately half of the responding institutions monitor, supervise, restrict, or record access. When an institution reported monitoring student Internet usage, staff monitoring was the primary methodology.

Usage policies are disseminated via postings or statements in student handbooks, listed on a home page, or issued verbally. Many institutions use a variety or combination of methods. There was no discernable difference in policy dissemination between private and public institutions. Some example policies can be found at Belmont Abby College (http://www.bac.edu/rules.shtml); Columbus State University (http://cins.colstate.edu/policies/); and Portland Community College (http://www.pcc.edu/lrc/aup.htm).

Not all respondents with formal institutional usage policies indicated that they had formal penalties for policy violations. Penalties mentioned included the loss of computer privileges and expulsion for more serious offenses. Several mentioned civil penalties.

Problems of defining pornography were often mentioned. Some institutions apparently do not limit, monitor, or regulate access for this reason. Academic freedom was also mentioned as a reason for a lack of monitoring while others indicated a strong belief that students would make appropriate decisions. About 50 percent of the respondents do not monitor access. Among those institutions that do monitor access, the authors could not detect any pattern in the tools used.

Computer center directors often use committees consisting of administrators, faculty, and staff to establish policies. Very few committees include students.

Annual growth rates in usage as high as 300 percent were reported. Only a small number indicated a decline or static use. None of the respondents indicated that growth spurred concomitant funding increases. Other issues included the use of computing resources for nonacademic purposes.

Conclusion and recommendations

In the absence of formal policies, informal policies develop. Those informal policies can be contrary to core academic values. We believe that all institutions should have written policies. We also believe that policy development should include administrators, faculty, staff, and students.

We understand the difficulty of trying to restrict or block access to pornographic sites. Since pornography is subject to local interpretation, some institutions seem to rely on sexual harassment guidelines and procedures to protect users and others from inappropriate use.

Growth and its management were large issues. We believe that an institution, its faculty, and its stakeholders must plan for and fund increased computing capacity in the same way they plan for other major campus-changing events. Demands for asynchronous courses will only exacerbate issues listed in the survey. In addition, growth must be managed with the development of policies that encourage appropriate use and specify penalties when those policies are violated.

Robert A. Fleck Jr. ([email protected]) is distinguished professor of computer information systems and Tena McQueen ([email protected]) is associate professor of computer science at Columbus State University, Columbus, Georgia.

...to the table of contents