Networks & Learning Environments: Responding to Growing Demands

The nature and roles of campus networks are changing as their use spreads across the campus, around the world, and into an ever-increasing number of offices, dorm rooms, labs, and classrooms. Technologically, they are evolving to include new forms of data like voice, image, and video, as well as new technologies like FDDI and ATM. In turn, these vast changes in network infrastructure will pave the way for entirely new forms of management and learning as well as for increasing the effectiveness of the existing models. How are institutions responding to what seems a never-ending demand for network access? Based upon the results of five annual surveys of higher education institutions, this paper will provide a trendline analysis of change--between 1991 and 1995--and will focus on the areas of networks, network-based services, distance learning and other forms of technology-based learning environments. All analyses will compare the results for the entire higher education community in contrast to the major Carnegie classes.