Wesleyan University: What Presidents Should Know About Integration of Information Technologies on Campus Background Paper for HEIRAlliance Executive Strategies Report #1 "WHAT PRESIDENTS NEED TO KNOW ABOUT THE INTEGRATION OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGIES ON CAMPUS" Prepared by representatives of WESLEYAN UNIVERSITY William M. Chace President Robert Adams University Librarian H. David Todd Director of University Computing _______________________________________________________ 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. _______________________________________________________ Institutions differ in the way they approach issues such as the development and inclusion of technology in institutional planning --- individual personalities, institutional culture, and funding sources all affect such plans. The role of technology in small, liberal-arts institutions is somewhat different than the role in other types of academic institutions. From casual discussions with other presidents, the directions being planned at other smaller schools is similar to that planned at Wesleyan. So what role does or could technology play in small schools, and how might the president and leading technology staff plan for its development and use? A fundamental question is: how can we use technology to reduce labor costs in education without damaging the learning experience? Presidents need to be convinced that technology can really provide solutions that are compatible with the underlying nature of the university. Bill Chace recognizes that one major reason for spiraling relative costs in higher education is the labor-intensive nature of the work. On the other hand, he feels strongly that institutions such as Wesleyan must not get away from having unique, stellar faculty in the front of classes. Many recognize that technology has provided cost-savings in commercial areas, and Bill Chace would love to have technology help in reducing or avoiding increased cost in higher education. But the idea of applying technology this way in education raises questions in Bill's mind. Preparation of this paper provided an opportunity to first outline the questions presidents have about the application of technology in higher education and then sketch the process by which Wesleyan is defining the role of technology on its campus. It is likely that technology might improve the quality of education at Wesleyan or help extend Wesleyan education to new communities. Associated with computing, communications, and information technology and with the availability of technologies such as video systems or satellite systems are a number of new questions such as: o How can we get faculty to see the possibilities in technology and want to use the tools that such technology offers? o Are there ways of showing a professor of Classics, for example, that there are other professors of Classics who use technological means to retrieve and analyze data? o How might we use video- or satellite-based instruction from other institutions to supplement our traditional learning with new sources of content-rich instruction? o How can we ensure that we have network access to a very broad range of information for institutional-research applications? o Can we have on-campus training for faculty to keep them up to date with emerging technology? o Can we use technology to offer Wesleyan education to non- traditional students? o How can we catalog and publicize faculty or departmental resources (software, multimedia materials, etc.) that might be of interest to others on campus? Some of these may be old questions in research universities, but the implications of the questions are different in small schools that have traditionally not invested heavily in technology. To work through the selection of ideas that might respond to these questions, Bill Chace prefers to engage faculty and staff in framing the questions and possible answers and then to evaluate projects by considering the following factors: - project description - value to community - cost - lifetime of result. He is especially interested in knowing what other schools are doing: what ideas have been particularly successful in applying technology in higher education? Are there examples of the use of technology in cutting costs? What demonstrations are available for top administrators to see technology in use and learn about applications that might be of value? The nature of the questions and the value placed on engaging faculty and staff in the process are consistent with the nature of modern distributed-computing and information-systems environments --- and Bill Chace's style as president. In response to the interest by faculty and staff in the use of technology and clear need to plan for future investments in this area, Bill convened a Task Force on Technology (TFT) in the Fall of 1991. The TFT was charged to review the current use of technology at Wesleyan and to recommend future directions and organization. The TFT was composed of faculty, administrative staff, the Director of University Computing, and the University Librarian. During its nine-month lifetime, the TFT monitored the evolving use of technology at other higher- education institutions, surveyed the technology available at Wesleyan, projected future developments in the industry, and considered ways in which technology might be employed by Wesleyan faculty, staff, and students. The resulting report of the TFT recommended substantial future investments in technology leading toward universal connectivity and universal access to computing and information resources on campus. As will be described later in this paper, funding for future initiatives involving technology had already been reserved in the long-range budgeting process. The senior administrative staff can now use the TFT report to select and begin sequencing projects to advance the use of technology at Wesleyan. The recommendations are long-term. In some areas, they attempt to lay a foundation for the use of technological means that may not be available until the year 2000. The long-term vision of how technology might be used by faculty has also led to the proposal of near-term projects and implementation plans and, particularly, to plans for engaging faculty in using technology. The TFT plan calls for providing more direct support for faculty initiatives in the use of technology, directly addressing Bill's question of how self-interest can be employed to encourage faculty, staff, and students to use technology. Faculty seldom lack initiative and energy, but in the past services have not been structured well enough to convince them that their investment of time would be worthwhile. The TFT plan proposes a sense of more direct support so that faculty can develop ownership of the technology they employ and are supported in learning new technologies. The current plan anticipates continued migration of technology from central facilities to faculty and staff desktops. To knit those individual systems into a coherent system, we expect to complete quickly the campus-wide network that has been under development for six years. We must also move as quickly as possible toward paperless administration and we must provide easy access to a variety of information sources for all members of the community. These are some of the functional goals that the planned technology should support. But technology accomplishes nothing on its own in support of institutional goals. The gradual distribution of computing and information facilities must be accompanied by significant organizational changes. Hence, the TFT plan calls for a corresponding distribution of some support staff and instructional equipment to the divisional level (the three divisions include the sciences, social sciences, and arts and humanities). Central support facilities and staff will be needed for planning, standards, management of networks and remaining central systems, and coordination. The TFT plan therefore matches the trend toward distributed facilities with distributed support targeted at particular areas of interest. Again, the goal is to engage the end-user in the design and implementation of new technological solutions. This is the beginning of organizational changes that has been induced by evolving distributed technology and its potential value for scholarly and instructional work. There are costs, however, associated with these many proposed changes. At a time when the University is managing resources very carefully, it will be difficult to provide for such expansion. Fortunately, a recently-completed strategic plan, Wesleyan's University Plan, has provided for expanding support for the application of technology. In response to tighter budgets and the need to address the deferred- maintenance problems, the Plan calls for reductions in both academic and administrative personnel and for overall reductions in budgets. The increasing interest in using technology and the expectation of more concrete plans resulted in long-range budget planning that anticipates substantial increases in funding for technology. The TFT report provides a list of possible project areas that can be expanded in more detail as specific projects are submitted to the president and the senior staff for evaluation and allocation. The major emphases embodied in the TFT plan for Wesleyan include: - local support for faculty use of technology - increased focus on instructional uses of technology - coordination of planning in different applications of technology - recognition that staff must be comfortable using technology and aware of the tools available - long-range planning for centrally-allocated funding for investments in technology. No major organizational shifts are anticipated in the plan, but the plan includes mechanisms to encourage members of the senior administration to be involved in planning for technology. Articles such as this should help promote discussions among presidents so that there is greater awareness of what works and what doesn't as we invest funds in the black hole of computing. With the substantial changes in technology and associated opportunities for educational use, it will be important to continue to exchange ideas and results through publications such as this.