Maricopa CCD: What Presidents Should Know About Integration of Information Technologies on Campus Background Material for HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #1 "WHAT PRESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY ON CAMPUS" Submitted by representatives of MARICOPA COUNTY COMMUNITY COLLEGE DISTRICT Paul E. Elsner Chancellor Philip Tompkins Director, Library Information Services Estrella Mountain Community College Center Ronald Bleed Vice Chancellor, Information Technologies ____________________________________________________ The following material is in two parts: First is the text of a presentation for the Leadership 2000 conference held July 8, 1990, in San Francisco, sponsored by the League for Innovation and the Community College Leadership Program at the University of Texas/Austin, with support from the W.K. Kellogg Foundation. This material is copyrighted by the Maricopa County Community College District. Following the presentation is a report prepared for this HEIRAlliance report by Philip Tompkins, copyright 1992 by HEIRA. + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + + The Executive Strategies reports are published by the Higher Education Information Resources Alliance (HEIRAlliance), based on background papers prepared by teams of contributing editors from institutions of higher education. This material may be reproduced for noncommercial purposes with appropriate credit to the HEIRAlliance, which is a vehicle for cooperative projects between the Association of Research Libraries, CAUSE, and EDUCOM. ____________________________________________________ INTRODUCTION OF SPEAKERS FOR LEADERSHIP 2000 Paul Elsner is well known to most of you of course. He presides over our huge and dynamic Maricopa Community College District with a unique artistry and vision, unparalleled in higher education. An author-playwright of a 21st Century morality play entitled Le Movement -- the first play in a trilogy, performed in Orlando and Phoenix -- Paul has set the creative standard for presentations about leadership. He has built his own adobe house in the upper Sonoran Desert; he has a network of hundreds of colleagues from all over the world involved in many of his projects, which range from biospheres to homeless children. He is the founder of the Phoenix Think Tank and has recently organized a coalition of large urban community colleges around the need for renewal and change. Paul received his doctorate at Stanford, has studied at Harvard, taught English in the Dakotas and Arizona, and has held numerous other positions before assuming the chancellorship of Maricopa, including the presidency of a non-traditional college in Berkeley. Dr. Elsner has served on many prestigious boards and commissions, and is currently President of ACT, and a member of the prestigious Business Higher Education Forum. He has served as a board member for AAHE, the American Council on Education and CAEL. He was selected in three national studies as most effective leader. He was recently honored by the National Community College Hispanic Council for his contribution to Hispanic leadership in higher education. Last month he was awarded the ACCT Marie Y. Martin Chief Executive Officer Award for the nations leading chief executive officer of a community college system. He will be assisted today by two colleagues, central to and largely responsible for much of Maricopa's premier position in technology and innovation: Ron Bleed, Vice Chancellor for Information Technologies, has spent twenty-four years in the management of computing and communications within community colleges. He has served on the Executive Advisory Boards for AT&T and Apple and has been recently nominated for the CAUSE Exemplary Leadership and Information Technology Excellence (ELITE) Award. Jan Baltzer, Director of Computing and Communications. Ms. Baltzer has been with the Maricopa Community Colleges for the past fourteen years. She is a past president of the AACJC Instructional Telecommunications Consortium, serves on the national advisory boards of the Public Services Satellite Consortium and the National University Teleconferencing Network, and will be assuming the leadership role for the Arizona Educational Telecommunications Consortium in September. PRESENTATION FOR LEADERSHIP 2000 ----- PAE: Our discussion today will be based upon several assumptions regarding the state of information technology and its impact upon leadership. These assumptions are as follows: 1. All of our institutions are going through major transformations in the world today. 2. The transformation from the industrial age to the Information age is only one of the many concurrent evolutions occurring in our society. One could add, at least, the shift of global predominance of new economic powers such as Japan and Western Europe block countries, the de-sovietization of eastern block nations, the world health crisis, e.g. AIDS, the South African civil rights movement and many more. 3. Much of the mythology and research on leadership is either seriously flawed or based on outdated models. 4. The next assumption is that the connection between leadership and how an institution's technology agenda is managed, forms the basis of many observations about leadership; indeed, has affected both the good and bad ways that we lead. We are willing to share these observations with you today. We would add that there is greater artistry to leadership than most leaders wish to acknowledge. 5. A fourth assumption is that leadership challenges and dilemmas become apparent in managing a huge and monolithic technology agenda such as we have developed at Maricopa. Some of these dilemmas have appeared in history or literature or both in the past. 6. It may surprise you to learn that Maricopa does not consult Rouche-Baker models of leadership at every turn; Indeed, we consult the DesJardins-Gilligan model quite frequently; and, if we don't, Carolyn reminds us to. It is upon these leadership challenges and dilemmas that we wish to focus today, using literary and historical examples as well as examples from our own experiences within the Maricopa Community Colleges. Traditional models of leadership are often flawed. In an information-age institution such as Maricopa, there are many conflicting tensions around the traditional modes of implementation and the current practice of developing technological advances in our organization. The first flaw Is that most of our models for leadership are rulers, ruling the ruled. As Jim March at Stanford has pointed out, many models or heroes in leadership are depicted on statues and they are usually on horses. One could quickly note that there are very few poets on horses. Nor are there many women depicted on horses. Napoleon, for example, met the emperor of Russia on a horse and the Emperor of Russia greeted him from his horse. You will recall that at the time, Napoleon's supply lines were dwindling and winter was setting in, and most of Russia's cities were ravaged by Napoleon's troops. Nevertheless, the two met on horses. It has been said that horses are to leaders what elevator shoes are to Hollywood actors. The moral for leaders is simple: Get Off Your High Horse !! The technology environment Maricopa is used to operating under does not suggest rule, but it suggests empowerment of staff and the dominance of user groups in shaping the information environment. ----- JAB: Change did not come to Maricopa on a high horse. Empowered staff and faculty brought about our changes. The way in which staff have been empowered within the Maricopa District is best exemplified by an organizational structure known as Ocotillo; a planning group of faculty and staff from throughout the district. Ocotillo is named after the plant whose branches sprout in many directions, but all from one common base. The primary focus of the Ocotillo group is to create new ideas and to bring about discussion on topics affecting instruction by technology. It is a Think Tank of faculty and staff coming together for a common purpose--supporting teaching and learning. On all of the campuses and centers of development, changes unfold daily. Faculty can and do feel they can affect change and improve teaching and learning. Over 200 faculty participate in groups such as Ocotillo each year, but faculty participate at the college level in equally varied and exciting ways. Whether it is a new center of excellence for teaching or a library or classroom of the future, there are such dialogues unfolding at Mesa, Glendale, Estrella Mountain, or Chandler/Gilbert--we are extending, improving and even rejecting options for the best possible solutions for teaching and learning. We are empowered; the faculty are leaders of this empowerment. ----- PAE: Another leadership challenge or dilemma, is our inability as leaders to transmit authority to others. Taking a philosophy of empowerment to its logical conclusion requires one to divest himself/herself of the ego needs of position and authority. The most classic example we have in literature of this dilemma is that of King Lear. In more contemporary terms, consider Kurosawa's great film called RAN, in which a great warlord attempts to pass on his authority as he ages, to a new leader, but chooses his successor on the basis of his personal needs rather than for the benefit of the entity he leads. A Lear inclination. Maricopa has basically followed a policy of undermanagement of its technology agenda by vesting In those that It has entrusted and by giving the widest possible latitude to take technology to Its logical and more local conclusions. Maricopa has concentrated on the architecture of Its technology. The colleges have concentrated on their own solutions which meet their particular needs for instruction and delivery in the best possible way that fits them, not us. ----- RDB: Maricopa could not have entrusted the management of Its technology agenda to individuals within the organization, at both the college and district office levels, without the establishment of an overall architecture. Architecture Is a symbolic word. It means that success In technology requires a vision; a carefully integrated plan. Like the architecture of a house, the architecture of information technology is integrated, efficient, and functional. The pieces fit together. Architecture is in direct contrast to a collage which is an assembly of diverse elements. Information systems that just happen, are a collage. An architecture is a plan that provides the framework for future decisions and activities. The key to the success of Maricopa has been the creation of an information technology architecture or infrastructure. From a base of software, the Maricopa staff has added to and modified it for the unique needs of our system and the instruction and learning it supports. This approach leveraged greater and more rapid success in the movement to new online systems. Partnerships with the private sector were created in order to develop some new software projects. Much of the success of Maricopa can be attributed to this relationship with such partners as Information Associates, Digital and others. The hardware architecture that was created for both computing and communications was designed to distribute the power and responsibility for the technology to the colleges and to the uses, which includes students and faculty. The architecture was shaped after the management philosophy and directions of the district. Technology flowed with those directions rather than ran counter to them. In this architecture, there was considerable compatibility among the colleges, but with opportunities for individual college choices. The concept of a network brought together, within technology, the apparent contradictions of compatibility and decentralized decision-making. But the results were a community of empowered faculty, staff, and students whose limits and boundaries for ideas and creativity are set free. This architecture of networking for both hardware and software has been the cornerstone of Maricopa success in computing, communication and innovation. Unlike King Lear--Maricopa sought the wisdom of its users-- those who would naturally inherit the legacy of change and technology. You as faculty are the monarchy of change. ----- PAE: Another dilemma for some leaders is their inability to straddle different orientations and different worlds. The most classic example we have in literature is the tragic history of Mark Antony described in Shakespeare's Antony and Cleopatra. One notion is that Mark Antony, a great Roman military leader and hero, was smitten with Cleopatra and was blinded by love and passion, which to an extent he was. The real dilemma in the fall of Antony, however, is that he was not able to straddle an Octavian world and an Alexandrine World; two different orientations, the Alexandrine world was mystical, intuitive, paradoxical; the other, the Octavian or Roman World, ordered, procedural, statutory and always predictable. So, too, Modern leaders must face diversity and new cultures. They must straddle multiple worlds. Few in higher education can know the electric diversity of a Miami-Dade, a Los Angeles City College--two colleges alone that enroll more foreign students than any other college or university in the United States. One amnesty decision alone can cause 80 new course sections of ESL to open at Maricopa. We are world campuses serving a world society. Leaders must be able to shift from one orientation to another easily, at will. Comfort in one setting can mean failure in another. ----- JAB: Two of the most dominant worlds within the Maricopa District which must be straddled by our leaders are the world of the colleges and the world of the district office. The programmatic needs and the specific organizational needs of individual colleges within the Maricopa District vary greatly. College faculty and staff help to identify these needs and corresponding technologies. The implementation of the technologies, however, must be accomplished within the overall districtwide technology architecture. This means a careful balancing between the need for college autonomy and the need for districtwide coordination. A primary example of how this balancing is accomplished can be found in the way in which technology decisions are made within the Maricopa District. Several years ago, the Information Technologies Executive Council or ITEC was formed to establish policies and to make major decisions regarding the acquisition and implementation of information technologies within the Maricopa District. It became evident very quickly, however, that the diversity of the colleges and the varying nature of their capabilities, needs and desires, made centralized decisionmaking an impossibility. Today, college information technologies committees work to prioritize and evaluate technology purchasing decisions. ITEC reviews these decisions to ensure consistency with the overall technology architecture. Thus, the individual needs of the colleges are met as are the coordinating and support needs of the district. Two worlds are straddled; two worlds are served. ----- PAE: Leaders must have some degree of tolerance for ambiguity and some sense of the unpredictable. Such a sense becomes necessary before we can truly lead a massive program such as Maricopa's information age agenda. Western literature is full of examples of leadership dilemmas involving the management of unpredictable events. Ishmael, in Moby Dick, must make decisions on a forlorn quest of an allegorical white whale. He must sort out the obsessive, all consuming search of his leader, Captain Ahab. Not until the ship breaks apart at sea, can he see the fallacy of consuming passion; the blindness of an obsessive goal. Ishmael represents all of us--we must make sense of unpredictable events, see their patterns, meaning and significance--trust our hunches and intuition. As Herman Melville wrote in the first lines of Moby Dick, "Call Me Ishmael . . ." for he represents all of us in the room. ----- RDB: The implementation of our districtwide office automation system provides the best example of the way in which technology can offer up unanticipated, yet positive, results. When the new computers were being purchased in 1982, Maricopa decided to move forward with office automation, but viewed it as a byproduct, or "nice to have" feature on the computers that were coming out at that time. Maricopa bought a product from Digital Equipment Corporation. The code name for the product was "Charlotte." Since that time, this product has become a DEC product called All- in-1, and it is currently the number one office automation product in the world. We are now actually the worlds largest user of All-in-1. There are now approximately 2,000 users, not counting subsets of users somewhere in the environment. Its use at Maricopa has grown far beyond simple concurrence; it is pulse and life-line of the Maricopa district. Nearly every employee uses this system on a daily basis, primarily for electronic mail. Employees at Maricopa communicate openly and freely with each other. It has become a way of life for us. Included within the All-in-1 system are electronic mail, personal calendars, word processing, electronic file cabinets and electronic forms--all unpredictable, but wonderful outcomes. A one dimensional view would have denied us the opportunity to take advantage of unpredictable events. A tolerance of ambiguity and the taking advantage of unpredictable events took us further than a single obsession. ----- PAE: One of the most challenging dilemmas leaders must face in a fastbreaking information age setting is that one must act and carry out initiatives at a greater speed and with greater decisiveness than what common sense would dictate. Sometimes an imperfect decision is better than no decision. Faculty do not wish to wait for their technology solutions. They want decisions made and they want them made in a timely way. The greatest literary example I can give to illustrate this dilemma is Hamlet. You will recall his famous soliloquy "To be or not to be." Hamlet shows his tragic flaw as a leader. He is unable to act. He is overcontemplative and he weighs one decision over another and still another over another. He is frozen in analysis; and frozen to act. One of the very best attributes of technology is that it has a leapfrogging characteristic. The technology you implement today will not be as good as the next generation of technology implemented by some other institution tomorrow. But, you must act and the only way you can get into the fray is to jump in, make a technology decision and move forward. You cannot wait for the next generation of technology because it will be better. Even after you have made your decision, some other technology will come along which is better than what you have selected. That is a condition and a way of life. One must act; one must not be an over contemplative Hamlet. ----- JAB: We were certainly not Hamlets when we undertook our districtwide Telecommunications Improvement Project. We jumped in with both feet to install a districtwide digital microwave network with the capacity to carry voice, data and video communications among our nine colleges and the district office. We had no choice! Our telephone systems were antiquated, at best; and our data lines were clogged and dying. We didn't know much about video or how we would use it, but we knew that down the road It, too, would be a vital communications vehicle for us. We had no sooner completed installation of the microwave system and conversion of our intercollege voice and data traffic to the network than we began to receive requests and questions from faculty regarding the capability of using the system for video communications, particularly for shared instruction. While it was exciting to see this much interest in the network, it was somewhat overwhelming as well because the technology of multipoint digital video is so new. Fortunately, one of our vendor partners, NEC America, is among the leading manufacturers of video teleconferencing equipment in the world. Together with NEC, we launched a Video Demonstration Project in the Spring of 1989. For thirty days we demonstrated the use of digital video across our microwave network for instruction, for meetings, for staff development and training activities, for community events and even dog obedience. The results were so positive that we moved immediately to equip four of our colleges with this two-way video and two-way audio capability and classes began to be offered across the system in January of 1990. Plans are being developed to expand the use of this equipment to the remainder of the Maricopa Community Colleges. The technology is still new and we have much left to learn. Every day is a new experience as faculty and staff try new teaching techniques and as we work to open up new uses for the system. We could have waited until the technology was more stable and international standards were established, but we took the risk that getting this technology in the hands of our faculty was more important than waiting. We were right! Having vendor partners like NEC, who have excellent equipment and outstanding people to support it, makes the risk easier. Having faculty and staff who are willing to learn while doing is also a requirement; but having leaders who are willing to take a chance is a must if we are to move ahead in new technology frontiers. We are so convinced that all technology has this leapfrog characteristic that we have created a venture capital firm within Maricopa with the Robinson Group called "Project Leapfrog." One must, at times, take the leap! ----- PAE: The next concept of leadership I would like to develop for you is the leader as hero. Our prototype of the hero is borrowed from many examples in American literature. One is from James Fenimore Cooper's interpretation of the Noble Savage. The quiet, stoical, virtuous leader. Another comes from the Deerslayer model. One would look at leadership as silent, careful, cautious and a killer, extending perhaps to a Rambo. A notion of the American prototype of leadership is particularly troublesome because it depicts a leader or a hero struggling virtuously in a corrupt world--the modern detective or investigator on a low salary trying to break a crime syndicate is another good example of the characteristic, American, silent hero. Another notion of leadership at Maricopa, the prototype of the hero, does prevail. First of all, Maricopa does not overstate its case. We have made a great play on being the early follower. We do not shoot up the rockets bout our technology achievements or accomplishments. We try to stay reserved and quiet until the evidence proves the technology application works. Even then, we really do not talk about it much. Last year we had visitors from over 150 institutions come to the Maricopa Community College District to look at some of our technology applications. That, in itself, is enough. The faculty generally are the greatest testimonials to the success of our technology applications. ----- RDB: Within the Information Technologies Services Department, we have had a motto for many years: "Assets make things possible, people make things happen." Real heroes in the technology agenda at Maricopa have been the faculty. They are the ones who have embraced this technology and have used it effectively in teaching and learning processes for the students. A very good example of this are Mark Montanus, Chuck West, and Manny Griego, faculty members at Glendale Community College. They are redefining the role of faculty in the future. Within the large-scale High Tech Center at Glendale, Chuck and others have designed a method of supporting large numbers of students in open entry/open exit mode with the infrastructure of computers, lab assistants, software, and faculty consultants. Besides creating this new infrastructure, Chuck has led the way to a new multi-million dollar complex referred to as the "classroom of the Future Project." ----- PAE: Another corollary of leadership is that often times leaders themselves do not have an educational agenda or vision. Consider Shakespeare's Henry the V--a visionary leader in the greatest sense. Henry the V defeated the French at the battle of Agincourt because he had a faith and a process and could offer his troops a reorientation and the possibility of renewal. He took no technology into the Battle of Agincourt except arrows and sharpened spears that he made from the woods. There were no icons nor any particular sophisticated military hardware that allowed him to prevail over the French. He could promise them renewal, but he could not promise them victory. In the process of engaging in this most important historical movement, whether the battle was won or lost, renewal and reconstitution of the English was assured. As we all know, Henry prevailed in this great battle with fewer than a small percentage of the troops that the French monarchy was able to bring into the battle. There are many faculty who tell me they have seen very few presidents who could actually summon the faculty in an assembly or convocation on an Important single educational or instructional agenda. I am not asking that every leader be a Henry the V, a Joan of Arc, an Elizabeth I or an Alexander the Great. It is, indeed, important that the ideological premises of the institution be set forth by its leader--its vision and its passion be somewhat exemplified by its leader. ----- JAB: Like Henry V's vision, Maricopa' vision is very clear. We are in business to provide accessible teaching and learning opportunities for the citizens of Maricopa County. To accomplish this mission, we must not only share a common focus, but we must provide our faculty and staff with the most up-to-date equipment and support services. We are all ordinary; but our vision makes us step up to the occasion. We all have our doubts; but our vision helps us over come them. We all have our limits; but our vision allows us to transcend them. We believe that we have the best equipped, best housed and, certainly, the best supported faculty in the country. Virtually every faculty member who wants to have a personal computer in his/her office has one. Virtually every member of the faculty is connected to our districtwide network for electronic mail and computer conferencing. Every faculty member has a digital telephone with voice mail and the capability for simultaneous voice and data transmission. Every faculty member has access to BITNET and other national and international information networks. Every faculty member is provided training for new computer applications and new types of personal computers. Several of our colleges have invested in oncampus personnel who work one-on-one with faculty interested in developing new technology applications or taking advantage of technology that currently exists to improve their teaching and learning environment. Quality teaching and learning can occur only when the faculty have the tools they need to develop and deliver instruction. Our vision is simple: well supported faculty results in well supported learning. ----- PAE: Finally, a most important characteristic of leadership is the ability we have to instill fun or playfulness into the organization. Making difficult decisions, straddling multiple cultures, dealing with ambiguity, forging a vision, are all stressful activities. The successful leader has the ability to lighten the load of his/her staff through the use of humor and by providing activities which give staff a type of release. One must leave room for uncommon solutions to common problems--one must find the courage to reward "interesting failures." There is no logical reason why the penguin has become the mascot for our technology agenda. I could tell you it is because the penguin is the epitome of the early follower. It is well known that before penguins will enter the water where seals or other predators may be lurking, they push a single penguin into the water. If the first penguin is eaten, the rest wait until another time. If the first penguin survives, the rest follow him into the water. I could tell you that the penguin is our technology mascot because penguins can survive only in numbers. There is no such thing as a lone penguin. They understand the need to work together to achieve a common goal. The truth, however, is that the penguin became our technology mascot because several years ago we needed a rallying point. We had just completed a serious and risky installation of a major system. The staff had to learn many new skills in a very short period of time. The rallying symbol that helped them move through this stressful period was Opus from Bloom County. Opus was a computer buff and his antics, and that of other characters in the story, provided the outlet of fun required by the staff. The results included penguin tee shirts, Penguin Hour, a billboard-size penguin poster and, literally, hundreds of penguins occupying bookshelf space in the Information Technologies Department. The penguin became an icon--but it represented relief from stress, irony, playfulness and above all, our need to take ourselves less seriously. In summary - we advise that much of what we embrace as models of leadership may be flawed; leadership must empower rather than rule; leaders must straddle changing worlds and orientations; leaders must act; they must find patterns and opportunities among unpredictable events--of course, leaders must overcome with their visions, they must be able to celebrate their interesting failures --but above all they should have fun! ------------------------------------------------------------------------ INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING AND COMMUNITY COLLEGES: A VARIANCE IN A TRANSITIONAL ERA Philip Tompkins Director of Library Information Services Estrella Mountain Community Center Maricopa Community College District We have crossed the frontier into the Information Age without the infrastructure to adapt. Information technologies, in a remarkably short time, have moved us beyond the static concept of information resources which were previously coextensive with the products of the inventor- printer from Mainz. But are our information technologies (and organizational) planning processes seasoned enough to bear the burden of permeating the campus learning cultures with the dazzling array of products now locally and remotely accessible? What pieces are missing from the puzzle? Who can help develop new organizational structure designed by people with a personalist vision? Since World War II 'information technologies planning' allowed higher education institutions to acquire information resources in splendid isolation from the work, civic and family cultures (and economies) of which they were a part. It simply meant entering and encouraging the race to fill our libraries and with exponentially increasing book stock.[1] TROUBLE IN PARADISE This process was more easily managed then as we dealt exclusively with the product of the Gutenberg technology and its offspring. Information technology planning was merely iterative. Libraries and their parent institutions have done this for decades, hiding behind the carapace of self-defined 'primary clienteles,' neglecting the urban and regional populations which were not formally part of the academy. (These populations, in one way or another, were nevertheless contributing tax monies from which they drew sustenance.) Suddenly the bottom has dropped out of everything supporting the old economic and fiscal order and assumptions about providing instructional support services. The appearance of non-print resources were promoted as semi- legitimate vehicles of teaching and learning tied to rather humble and simple technologies -- the projector or the audiocassette player. More recently motion visuals with the power to demonstrate comparisons and models proliferated into almost every curriculum area. Computer laboratories began to serve certain instructional constituencies where the early drill and practice and number-crunching software solved primarily specific learning needs. Along with this, libraries preoccupied themselves with creating electronic indexes to their book stock and abstracting services to provide navigation tools for the sea of bibliographic data bases in which we are awash. But all these separate domains -- libraries, learning centers, media centers, computer laboratories tied to separate media, functioned without a truly integrating instructional and informational technologies planning process. As a matter of fact, an era of reconceptualization and boundary spanning collaboration is occurring. This collaboration has implications for telecommunications, microcomputers, the redesign of the classroom and the need for new, sponsored learning environments (spaces) departing radically in design from the theater of the classroom or the traditional library or learning resource center. Above all, a new vision of the role of all campus personnel to accommodate student- centered learning cultures has emerged. It is richly supported by the massing of microcomputer technology and changes in pedagogy. Quite intentionally, it causes the atrophy of disciplinary separatism. This is the price which must be paid in deference to the cultivation of the independent lifelong learners. It requires the new spaces and learning modalities to free them from crippling academic co-dependency. Yet the hoary division of the academic workforce into domains of teaching and support services has by no means lost its organizational stranglehold as the academy has been brought to its fiscal knees. These divisions reinforce the isolation based on the classic divisions of knowledge. People's needs, habits, and learning styles are rarely considered in library planning for example, as the ever-growing book stock is perceived as the library's contribution to instructional relevancy. OUT OF PRINT PRISON Instruction has been predominantly confined to the classroom. Pedagogical realities and information literacy lie unquestioned and unaffected by what is happening in the wings. Information technology planning left to its own devices may drain the resources without permeating the instructional culture of a campus. It may remain preoccupied with its unassimilated products rather than with collaborating with persons who are creating new learning communities. Where this is not the case, campuses are running on two tracks -- the old and the new cultures claiming legitimacy and vying for ever- diminishing resources. But things seem to have taken a turn. Information technologies, however, are currently influencing how libraries reconceive their role more than ever. In a long overdue essay, Eldred Smith puts it succinctly: "The new electronic information technology has begun to demonstrate print's limitations more clearly than any other development over the past 500 years, precisely because it provides the means to overcome these limitations.... This does not mean that the book will not be with us....What it does mean is that the new technology will replace print in performing an increasing number of functions, wherever its performance proves superior."[2] The pervasive presence of the television monitor is an instance of mass distribution of moving images offering visual literacy a chance for equal status with the literacy long identified with the printed page. Visual and book-based literacies have been enriched with electronic and digital media. The convergence resulting from this enrichment offers information technology planning a broad all-inclusive scope for the every process and product in the instructional support arena even though libraries remain prisoners of the printed word. LESS TELLING, MORE FACILITATING Hand in hand with the accessibility and affordability of multimedia, we witness efforts to reform and restructure within higher education. Collaborative and cooperative teaching, and independent, self-paced learning call for new spaces accommodating the massing of newer instructional and information technologies, remote from the theater style classroom. Multimedia accessibility can usher in changing roles for the instructors who learn to moderate the historic obsession with 'telling' to incorporate skillful coaching and facilitating upon call ('from sage on the stage to guide on the side'). Planning for information technologies should encompass the integration of instructional and information and communication resources. But this cannot happen without the reconsideration of the design of old spaces and the invention of new spaces -- sponsored learning environments correlative to the classroom. These newly designed spaces remain the undiscovered variable in people's capacity to assimilate information technologies into the campus culture. They are also the unacknowledged variables in information technology's planning to permeate the campus learning culture. That is why pioneer efforts to create integrated library/high technology complexes are so meaningful today. THE NEW INSTRUCTIONAL PERSONALISM Imbedded in the new national environment is the expectation that we can also re-evaluate information technology planning in light of a new personalism. We arrived at this in a roundabout way. The nation's schools have repeatedly failed, despite generously funded initiatives, to show improved educational achievement using highly depersonalized pedagogical models and values. The new personalism speaks to us opportunely as we attempt to engage technology in support of teaching and learning. We are beginning to understand the need for a person-centered pedagogy which can take advantage of the flexibility information technologies offer. The time is ripe for leadership teams[3] rather than technicians and separatists to predominate in planning efforts. The present decade offers a propitious time because, on a fairly large scale, the agendas of active learning, information technology, and restructuring of education and educational spaces -- each a powerful vehicle for changing learning and teaching in schools -- are being pursued concurrently and are separately evolving and becoming intertwined.[4] Information technologies pervade all aspects of our lives and higher education is no exception. We have witnessed it with wonder (and envy), especially as administrative computing has imported into the campus culture the efficiencies of the business world. But herein lies the rub. One must not assume that the impressive accomplishments of administrative computing will or can cause a parallel infusion of information technologies in the service of teaching and learning without creative planning and collaboration. The potential of information technology for enriching teaching and learning has begun to be realized in affordable hardware and software within the last five years. Whether planning models have acquired a person-centered focus remains perhaps to be seen. But the convergence of cooperative teaching and learning, the restructuring of how we teach and learn, the integration of core access to instructional and information resources, and required experimentation with new spaces distinct from the classroom to accommodate the independent learner -- all have made it possible for people to reconceive what learning and critical thinking is all about.[5] People have discovered instinctively what new spaces with significant multimodality technologies can do. They autoaccelerate their emancipation from the pedagogical limitations of the 'tellers,' as they see the 'tellers' themselves evolve into facilitators of the learning process. THE UNACKNOWLEDGED ARENA Sportsmen hunt for quail where coveys are known to frequent. "Community colleges have emerged as arguably the premier teaching institutions in the world, devoted to that mission and inclined toward innovation to improve the effectiveness of the teaching and learning process which is at the heart of these institutions.... The point of this essay is that "they are the institutions of higher education in which the widespread integration of computers into instructional practice is first taking place."[6] The experiments with the integration of information technologies into community college teaching and learning has a little acknowledged developmental curve in quiet ascendance over the past five years. A new campus in metropolitan Phoenix has just opened its doors where "computing and information access across the curriculum" have been a hallmark of the design of an integrated library/high technology campus centerpiece.[7] As the crossroads of the campus, the facility is collaboratively staffed by faculty, staff, information, computer and media professionals and students to serve the independent learner's continuing activities initiated in the classroom. This did not happen by chance. It was planned as an environment where instructional and information technologies and efforts were to be integrated.[8] Remodeling projects orchestrated to create a new learning culture at an older community college has served as a prelude to planning an integrated library/high technology complex.[9] Perhaps efforts such as these and others[10] might serve in microcosm as a model for student- centered planning for information technologies. NEW PARADIGMS IN ACTION What was unthinkable until recently might make some sense in the foreseeable future: collegial contacts with this network of current experiments in the integration of information technology into the fabric of a new evolving campus learning community. Like-minded people seeing and discussing firsthand the efforts of leadership teams working from an integrated vision of teaching and learning is a cost-effective way to encourage the spread of this new consensus. Closeness to ordinary people, closeness to elementary and secondary schools, closeness to citizens at large are the stated operational modalities for the community college. Closeness to community colleges may also become a new and profitable characteristic of higher education collaboration in its effort to win again public trust and support for the way it plans and manages itself. The efforts of community colleges and the two universities mentioned in this essay may be characterized as 'new paradigms in action.' There are others collaborating similarly elsewhere in the country. These 'paradigms in action' may offer a short cut to the segmented and overly elaborate corporate planning models driving too much of information technology's educational agenda today. They are consistent with the agenda offered to chief executive and planning officers pointedly summarized in Mel Elfin's September 28, 1992 article[11] on "What Must Be Done" in higher education: create new educational partnerships, scale down student services, modify tenure, set research priorities, emphasize comparative advantages, reshape the academic calendar, find new sources of revenue, take advantage of technology, increase faculty productivity, and reduce administrative bloat -- even though the new pedagogical personalism eludes him. But none of this will happen quickly unless there is an integrated information technologies planning process which helps us creatively utilize the potential that now exists with all deliberate speed. The leadership clusters addressing the process ought to be based on campus teams that truly 'deliver the product' rather than a regrouping of the traditional divisions. Where we begin is where we will end up. FOOTNOTES 1 A survey of the expansionist tendencies of university and university library administrators can be documented from the annual survey of library construction since 1950 (with the most unforgivable expansions having been reserved for the 1980s); this was 'information technology planning with the print based products'; it was the model emulated everywhere information repositories were needed. 2 Eldred Smith, "The Print Prison," Library Journal, February 1, 1992, 48-51. 3 Total Quality Management supports the personalist strain. 4 Karen Sheingold, "Restructuring for Learning with Technology: The Potential for Synergy," Phi Delta Kappan, September 1991, 17-27. 5 "Final Report of the American Library Association Presidential Committee on Information Literacy," 1989. 6 Don Doucette, "The Community College and the Computer: Behind Widespread Integration Into Instruction," Academic Computing, February 1990, 12-14,51-56. 7 Estrella Mountain Community College Center, one of the Maricopa Community College District institutions. 8 As part of the Maricopa Community College ten campus district, the new institution benefited from a district information technologies agenda beginning in 1984 and centered on the integration of technology in the service of teaching and learning. 9 Mesa Community College, Mesa AZ. 10 The New Teaching Library at the University of Southern California currently under construction, but in the planning mode since 1985; the new integrated facility at George Mason University; the carefully planned but now archived plans for re-conceptualizing the Meyer Undergraduate Library at Stanford; the proposed Los Angeles Mission College library complex, Sylmar, CA., major renovation (and joining) of the library and audiovisual facilities at the College of the Sequoias, Visalia, CA., library facility at the Menifee Valley Campus of Mt. San Jacinto College, Menifee, CA, library complex at Southwestern Community College, Chula Vista, CA are interesting examples of efforts to restructure simultaneously a learning culture while creating the required new sponsored learning environments. 11 Mel Elfin, "What Must Be Done," U.S. News & World Report, September 28, 1992, 100-112.