Steven W. Gilbert

July, 1996

”

WORKING DRAFT

COMMENTS WELCOME: GILBERT@CLARK.NET

Every institution needs a Vision to focus the hopes and work of its members. Recent data indicate that use of applications of information technology in conjunction with teaching is spreading faster than any other form of curricular change. There is no longer any question about whether or not information technology will become an integral part of education. There are only questions about when and how.

Information technology can and should be integrated into our lives in ways that support people's deep urges to learn... and to teach. Information technology should provide easy paths connecting people with information, teaching, learning, and educational institutions -- and with each other. The terms "distance education" and "lifelong learning" should fade away as most learners and teachers become comfortable with a wide range of changing educational and telecommunications options, and participation in formal (and informal) education becomes commonplace for people of all ages.

The single most important resource of any school, college, or university is the people -- the faculty, students (current and alumni), and staff. To achieve the full educational potential of new uses of information technology, the dysfunctional separation of people, functions, and purposes within a single institution must end. They must be brought together and their energy focused on teaching and learning.

Institutions need to support faculty members, students, professional staff, and institutional leaders in what must become permanently continuing efforts to improve teaching and learning with newly available tools and methods. All students and faculty members should routinely and comfortably be able to use a changing variety of educational materials, tools, and approaches -- including print, classrooms, and new media. One of the most important functions of these tools is to improve communications among faculty and students about the processes of teaching and learning; and about content, skills, knowledge and understanding.

Students and faculty members together should be able to match learning styles, teaching styles, and available educational resources to form effective teaching/learning/technology combinations to serve students' specific educational goals and career needs. However, faculty members should retain overall responsibility for setting parameters and objectives and providing guidance and direction for the students. Educational decisions should be based on a deepening understanding of the ways in which face-to-face communications, telecommunications, and independent work can fit together for the best learning (and teaching).

Every learner and teacher should have constantly available a "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) able to perform all its functions without requiring a physical connection to any network or power source. PDAs should enable their users to find and manipulate information in a variety of media from something even larger and much better organized than the World Wide Web of today. These devices should also support collaborative work when the users are not in the same place at the same time.

Schools, colleges and universities should have flexible schedules and meeting/presentation spaces suitable for activities ranging from lecture demonstrations to small group discussions. Each space should permit both effective voice communication among those present and participation by others from distant locations.

Old partnerships need to be extended and new ones created for the development and distribution of scholarly information resources and instructional materials in new media.

The biggest challenge is to reduce the growing gap between the educational "haves" and the "have nots" and to build more effective learning communities. Making quality education widely available with and through information technology in the next decade is one of the keys to improving the quality of life for everyone. This will require increased investments and annual expenditures at every level.

Steven W. Gilbert

July, 1996

”

WORKING DRAFT

COMMENTS WELCOME: GILBERT@CLARK.NET

Every institution needs a Vision to focus the hopes and work of its members; a picture of the future that might be realized if enough people believe in it and work to achieve it. A "Vision Worth Working Toward" is more than a prediction, wish, or nightmare. A prediction is a description of the future likely to occur independent of anyone's preference or labor. A wish is a piece of the future someone hopes will happen without any special effort. A nightmare is a glimpse of a future to be feared and avoided. Each individual, department, school, college or university needs instead its own "Vision Worth Working Toward" to focus efforts and guide decisions.

Education is being transformed at every level, from state university systems and consortia of colleges to individual faculty members and students. Information technology is now widely recognized as both a significant cause and a vehicle for shaping this transformation. Unfortunately, there is no clear, irrefutable quantitative evidence of the superiority of educational uses of information technology; and if information technology were certain to provide a simple solution to the "education problem" it would already have been reported in every news medium.

However, recent data indicate that use of applications of information technology in conjunction with teaching is spreading faster than any other form of curricular change and moving irreversibly beyond the pioneers and well into the mainstream of the faculty. [See Green's first chart in the March/April, 1996 issue of Change Magazine]. Still in the minority, but in rapidly growing numbers, faculty members are convinced that they can teach more and better by using information technology. They also believe that their students must integrate the use of technology into their lives as preparation for careers, or risk being (further) disadvantaged in the competition for jobs in industry, academia, and other sectors. Finally, institutional leaders are recognizing that increasingly often students and faculty members' decisions about which institution to attend or affiliate with are being influenced by their perceptions of the availability and use of information technology in academic programs. There is no longer any question about whether or not information technology will become an integral part of education. There are only questions about when and how.

The increasing availability of information technology to faculty and students and the increasing public attention to this technology's educational potential are leading to confusion, fear, and excited anticipation. The pace of arrival of new applications of technology with great potential for education is increasing, with no end in sight. Waiting until things settle down again into some semblance of a dimly remembered stability is no longer a realistic hope.

Information technology can turn nightmares into reality; or information technology can become the excuse and the means for achieving important institutional educational missions, personal teaching and learning goals, and human values. There is still time to choose between nightmares and visions.

The following is an effort to provide one coherent, attractive and achievable vision of how to improve teaching and learning by integrating information technology more widely and deeply into education. Some of the elements of this vision may be quickly attained while others are likely to be achieved only in a more distant future. It is offered for your consideration and modification as you shape your own "VISION WORTH WORKING TOWARD."

The single most important resource of any school, college, or university is the people -- the faculty, students (current and alumni), and staff -- and the relationships among them. Many individuals no longer feel a strong connection between their narrowly defined roles and the fundamental educational purposes of their institutions. Their energy and effort need to be re-focused on teaching and learning, and on developing and maintaining effective communications among teachers and learners.

Unfortunately, most colleges and universities are fragmented across professional/functional categories (faculty vs. librarians vs. computing professionals vs. faculty development professionals etc.) and across hierarchical boundaries (faculty vs. administrators vs. students vs. legislators etc.). To achieve the full educational potential of new uses of information technology, this separation of people, functions, and purposes must end. The technology itself can be used to strengthen and extend communications across and within these groups.

"De-Fragmentation" -- building better communication, coordination, collaboration, and connections across these lines and establishing more functional "learning communities" -- is becoming a pre-requisite for progress. Representatives of all groups who can provide insights into current patterns of change and who can help support the efforts of faculty and students to improve teaching and learning must be brought together regularly. They must be encouraged and guided always to focus first on improving teaching and learning, second on technological options. (On campuses where such “roundtables” are convened, participants find this focus a refreshing change from the usual pattern of narrowly focused committee work and private conversations.)

Educational decisions should be based on a deepening understanding of the ways in which face-to-face communications, telecommunications, and independent work can fit together for the best learning (and teaching). Collaborative work within and across groups of learners and teachers from all levels of expertise should be valued and supported. Previously, many faculty members could talk about how they would like to tailor their teaching to meet the growing variety of learning styles and needs of their students; but very few teachers had the time or other resources necessary to respond effectively to those differences. Emerging educational uses of information technology seem to make this a possibility for the first time. Institutions need to support faculty members, students, professional staff, and institutional leaders in what must become permanently continuing efforts to improve teaching and learning with newly available tools and methods.

As pressures to change the purpose and functions of educational institutions mount, each school, college and university needs to reconsider the depth of its dedication to teaching and learning and the profile of the student body that it serves. To what extent will it deliver credits and courses to any individuals who can pay for them -- anyone who needs to learn a specific set of skills, master a particular knowledge base, or gain certification for career advancement or maintenance? To what extent will it encourage and support communities of teachers and learners who can communicate with each other frequently and meaningfully and who feel a strong connection with each other and with the institution? Can it do both...for everyone?

All students and faculty members should routinely and comfortably be able to use a changing variety of educational materials, tools, and approaches -- including print, classrooms, and new media. One of the most important functions of these tools is to improve communications among faculty and students about the processes of teaching and learning; and about content, skills, knowledge and understanding. Students and faculty members together should be able to match learning styles, teaching styles, and available educational resources to form effective teaching/learning/technology combinations to serve students' specific educational goals and career needs. No student or faculty member should be prevented from participating fully and effectively in this matching process because of personal disability, wealth, race, etc.. Librarians, technology professionals, those expert in faculty development and pedagogy, and others should work as closely as possible with teachers and students to provide the most effective access to information resources and instructional materials and services.

Students should be able to schedule their learning at their own convenience in both time and location, and to work at their own pace independently. BUT, students should learn in collaborative groups both to increase their ability to work on teams and to learn more effectively through social interaction -- meeting at times and in locations that permit a teacher to guide the group's efforts. Education itself, and the uses of information technology within it, should foster sustained relationships and the development of effective communities, communities shaped by common educational goals and values, communities that can include people from a variety of cultures speaking a variety of languages.

Students should be active participants in making and implementing these choices, accepting increasing responsibility commensurate with their age and educational maturity. However, faculty members should retain overall responsibility for setting parameters and objectives and providing guidance and direction for the students. Faculty members may quite reasonably decide that lecturing is an important element in one of these combinations, along with computer-mediated collaborative work, independent use of multimedia simulations, and other forms of groupwork, independent work, or uses of telecommunications. If the educational mission of the institution includes serving the needs of students (or faculty) who cannot easily get to a campus because of location, work schedule, family obligations, or disabilities, then it is likely that telecommunications and independent work will have a larger role and face-to-face communications a smaller role in the educational combinations selected.

Teachers of the youngest students must retain most of the responsibility for choosing effective teaching/learning/technology combinations. Without significant institutional support, or re-configuring traditional elementary school classrooms and schedules, little can be done to integrate new applications of technology. However, some elementary school teachers are already among the most receptive to new options and with the help of teaching assistants and technical support staff are finding many ways to permit their young students to work directly with computers and telecommunications -- within their classrooms or in other spaces where computers are accessible. Most young students respond enthusiastically to using the tools that were already part of the world they were born into.

Teachers of older students -- undergraduates and graduate students of all ages -- can encourage or require them to accept even more responsibility for shaping their interaction with the content, materials, peers, and instructors. Students must give priority to making these educational judgments and choices. Students who hold full- or part-time jobs need their employers' support, perhaps including some release time, for shaping and participating in educational programs that respond both to student and employer needs. Faculty members can become educational leaders, accepting roles ranging from "sage on the stage" to "guide on the side" -- sometimes including elements of both models to meet students needs.

Some faculty will still be "called" to devote their full-time careers to teaching, but many will be able to fit teaching part-time with their work in industry, government, or other sectors and/or their scholarly research. Similarly, some (especially younger) students will find being a full-time student and living with age peers the best choice; but many will mix learning with work and other activities valued by society. Institutions should develop organizational structures and technological services that support individuals' efforts to connect teaching and learning with "real life" experience of work and public service. Just as important will be the accommodations developed to support effective teaching and learning that involves both full and part-time faculty and students in the same institution. So many students will serve as assistants -- helping their peers, the faculty, and technical support professionals -- that the overlap of learner and teacher roles will blur even further.

Just as students differ in their needs and abilities, so do faculty. The richest education will not be achieved by removing all traces of individual differences among faculty, but by honoring their individual strengths while supporting their weaknesses. Most faculty members should be helped to master new ways of teaching. Some should not. Every effort must be made to sustain the excitement of the pioneers -- those faculty members predisposed to try to improve their own teaching and their own students' learning with new applications of technology; comfortably engage the mainstream faculty -- those who are not by nature especially interested in technology, but who are often concerned with improving their own teaching and their students' learning; and maintain institutional respect for the laggards -- especially those who can be respected for their teaching ability and who may have important questions about new approaches.

Faculty members should expect to learn new educational approaches, to learn the possibilities for including new content and skills that were previously difficult or impossible to teach, and to learn the uses of information technology that become essential for the work being done in one's own discipline or field (especially as the latter become the basis for new ways of organizing, representing and communicating knowledge). Educational institutions should ensure that participating learners and teachers have adequate time, incentives, and support services to advance their instructional skills as new options for doing so become available. The quality and availability of support services should vary by department, reflecting the different educational uses of technology that emerge as applicable only within particular disciplines or fields.

Both students and faculty (and institutional planners) should have easy access to tools that can provide frequent feedback about the effectiveness of all varieties of teaching and learning. Both students and faculty should be permitted to avoid forms of teaching ineffective for them personally. For the students, the hope is that each will learn how to learn from a variety of faculty members and encounter more than a few who favor the kinds of teaching that best fit that student's own learning needs. [And similarly for the faculty!]

How might technology, space, and time available for teaching and learning be shaped in the distant future -- perhaps 10 or 20 years ahead? The accessibility of information resources to students and faculty will determine many of the parameters. Here is another piece of a "Vision Worth Working Toward."

Every learner and teacher should have constantly available some form of "Personal Digital Assistant" (PDA) [What is the original source of this term and acronym? Is it now commonly used?] able to perform all its functions without requiring a physical connection to any network or power source. Their PDAs will enable them to find and manipulate information in a variety of media from something even larger and much better organized than the World Wide Web of today.

Unfortunately, one of the more difficult and confusing challenges is that of establishing an efficient market for scholarly information resources and instructional materials in new media. Old partnerships need to be extended and new ones created for the development and distribution of educational applications of information technologies. The relationships between nonprofit educational institutions and publishing companies may alter significantly as the lines between information resources and instructional materials blur even further.

Publishers, libraries, and print materials will continue to change, but will not disappear. There may be fewer major research libraries, each functioning as the site of some of the most complete collections of unique print items and information resources -- but only for a few topics. Intellectual property laws and related patterns for business transactions will evolve to permit publishers to extend and focus on their roles as certifiers of the quality and completeness of information and as sources and distributors of it. Professional disciplinary societies and college or university departments will work with or compete with (or become) publishers of definitive collections of information in electronic formats. Educational institutions, local libraries, and commercial bookstores will develop more advanced abilities to move existing print materials among sites, to print copies immediately as needed by teachers and learners, and to collect fees and pass portions of them to the sources of information or materials.

Centers open to faculty members will offer training and related services from professional staff, direct access to hardware and software alternatives, and sample instructional materials. Some of these Centers may also serve students' needs.

The institutions will have the ability to schedule meeting times, provide suitably flexible meeting spaces for face-to-face sessions, and offer PDA-delivered communication functions supportive of group activities. Participants will be able to form and re-form learning groups, working groups, research groups, etc. The importance of face-to-face meetings for some kinds of communications and educational purposes and for some categories of learners and teachers will continue. Consequently, not all of the attractive instructional options will be available to "anyone, anywhere, anytime."

Schools, colleges and universities will have flexible meeting/presentation spaces suitable for activities ranging from lecture demonstrations to small group discussions. Each space will permit effective voice communication among those present and participation by others from distant locations. Both seating and visual display options will be mobile enough to support a variety of group configurations. All will be able to display and manipulate images of their choice -- selected with their PDAs -- on a large commonly visible screen. One or more teachers will be able to override others' control of the audio and visual devices. Teachers will be expected to understand and use to good effect the differences in level and kind of participation between those who are present and those at other sites. Most spaces will be of modest size, suitable for a group of 5 to 50, but some spaces will be available for large events involving several hundreds of people physically present and hundreds or thousands of others participating less fully from a distance.

Unfortunately, there will be great variation in the ease and speed with which any institution and any individual reaches this future. The next two to ten years will see a confusing and challenging transition -- exciting for some, painful and expensive for many. Change takes time, energy, commitment, and money.

Our biggest challenge is to avoid the nightmare of the growing gap between the educational "haves" and the "have nots" and to achieve the vision of more effective learning communities. In a talk to one of the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Roundtable (TLTR) Program's first workshops in March, 1995, Reed Hundt, Chair of the Federal Communications Commission, warned us about information technology's potential as the "cutting wedge" -- rather than the "cutting edge" -- of society. Current economic, political, and organizational conditions favor realization of technology's fullest educational potential quickly and effectively only for those students who can afford or otherwise manage to be enrolled in the wealthier, more selective colleges, universities (and schools). These institutions can afford to continue their efforts to improve conventional teaching/learning while experimenting with the addition of a variety of applications of information technology. Individual differences among students and faculty can be respected and supported. Their faculty and students have rapidly increasing access to a rich array of personal computers and telecommunications options.

By contrast, at most of the smaller private and state colleges the proportion of students and faculty with their own computers is rising much more slowly, as is access to the Internet and related services and facilities. (Even within many of those institutions most effectively integrating the new technologies there are examples of "have" and "have not" departments. Students and faculty in the sciences often have better access sooner to new computers and more powerful telecommunications resources than do their colleagues in the humanities.) In addition, the number of part-time and older students who have jobs is growing rapidly; but they are less likely to have these new technologies comfortably available for educational use at home or in their workplaces. They also have less time to use public access facilities on a campus.

It is still much too early in the development of distance education options to generalize broadly and certainly about the ways in which they are more or less effective than face-to-face classroom learning and for which kinds of students with which kinds of learning needs and goals. It is much too early to claim that offering ONLY distance education options to any segment of society determined by rural location or lack of wealth can truly provide something like equality of educational opportunity (assuming that the latter remains an important societal or institutional goal!).

Many of us still see the enormous potential for computing, video, and other forms of telecommunications for increasing access to information and improving the quality of education -- for everyone -- when used in conjunction with face-to-face meetings and independent work. And many who frequent the Internet claim they are finding new forms of communications and new relationships, especially new academic relationships that may be the beginnings of new kinds of scholarly communities or the extensions of old ones. Again, it may now be possible for a wider variety of academics -- including students -- to participate more actively, fully, and equally in some of these scholarly communities. The idea of "learning communities" may become a more attainable vision. However, current patterns and limitations of integration of educational uses of information technology will widen the already-growing gap between the wealthiest and the most impoverished people in our society -- locally, nationally, and worldwide. Those who cannot participate in new technology-based educational options will be seriously disadvantaged. So will those whose only educational options are through technology.

Information technology can and should be integrated into our lives in ways that support people's deep urges to learn... and to teach. Information technology should provide easy paths connecting people with information, teaching, learning, and educational institutions -- and with each other. The terms "distance education" and "lifelong learning" should fade away as most learners and teachers become comfortable with a wide range of changing educational and telecommunications options, and participation in formal (and informal) education becomes commonplace for people of all ages.

Some educational uses of information technology, especially some versions of distance education, are already providing less costly educational options that work well for some kinds of students in some subjects with some educational goals (note, for example, the continuing success of the Open University and the National Technological University and the emerging success of the University of Phoenix Online Campus and the Mind Extension University). So far, these options seem to fit best the needs of young students who cannot afford a four-year undergraduate education, older students for whom learning in or near their jobs or homes is significantly more attractive, or students who have quite specific learning goals. These cost-effective educational applications of technology seem to be easiest to develop for courses where there is the greatest clarity and consensus about the knowledge and skills students need to master (such as business courses, engineering, and basic skills in mathematics).

In the long run (ten years?) perhaps educational uses of information technology that significantly reduce the costs of many other kinds of education will be developed, but so far most improvements to the quality of and access to education via information technology have increased costs. Of course, some operational inefficiencies in our educational institutions can be removed or improved -- some replaced by technology. But most institutions are already moving expeditiously down that path. For the next few years, it is more realistic to strive for better quality and accessibility of education and for ways to meet "reasonable" increases in expenses. The nature of the institution and its access to funding determine what is "reasonable."

Today even the wealthiest institutions (perhaps 100 colleges and universities?) must struggle with the expense of moving ahead to integrate new technologies and new media into teaching and learning. But they seem able to afford both to extend high quality traditional education and to use technology to increase the quality of communications between and among faculty and students. However, the majority of schools, colleges, and universities must work much harder to reach higher new levels of revenues to support their integration of information technology (and to develop financial planning procedures and accounting categories more supportive of the full integration of educational uses of information technology). One of the most powerful motivators is the growing belief that institutions unable or unwilling to move at all in this direction are unlikely to be able to compete for students, faculty, and funding in the next decade.

Which institutions will disappear from the bumper stickers of tomorrow? Not Harvard. Will "America Online" or "Disney University" take the place of your nearest state college?

Making quality education widely available with and through information technology in the next decade is one of the keys to improving the quality of life for everyone. This will require increased investments and annual expenditures at every level, and can only be accomplished by allocating a larger portion of societal resources to education -- in effect, assigning a higher societal priority to education . Unfortunately, this will be a major challenge in today's political climate where some "leaders" argue that we should be cutting educational expenditures even deeper. It is confusing that some of these same "leaders" also argue that we need better education more than ever to produce the "knowledge workers" who will sustain our rapidly changing information-based economy and increase our international economic competitiveness.

However, the ultimate challenge is to use information technology to improve education, improve our lives, and shape a better future -- one that avoids twelve important blunders.

Mohandas Gandhi's list of "Seven Blunders of the World" that lead to violence was described in an article in the Christian Science Monitor on February 1, 1995 (page 14). In his final years, "...the elder Gandhi kept his grandson close at hand and set aside an hour every day to be alone with the boy." I like the image of a gifted world leader devoting so much time to a young person, affirming the fundamental human urge to connect to future generations -- to teach -- and, perhaps, to learn.

On their final day together, not too long before his assassination, Gandhi gave this important list to his grandson. Here are the seven -- with an eighth "blunder" added by Arun Gandhi, the grandson, and four of my own that focus on teaching, learning, and technology:

<Insert and Expand: "Levers for Change">

• CRISIS

• LURCH

• CRISIS

• LURCH

• CRISIS

• LURCH

• Top-Down, Bottom-Up, and Infection Strategies
Don’t Work Separately

• Top-Down, Bottom-Up, Infection
Do NOT Work SEPARATELY !

• SOLUTION:
Top-Down + Bottom-Up + Infection + SUPPORT
Might Work TOGETHER !

• Impact Greater than Investment

• Even Short Term Efforts
Can Achieve
Long Term Consequences

• Help Reach “Vision Worth Working Toward”

1. Information Technology

2. Inclusive Planning,
Policy Making (TLTRs)

3. Student Assistants

4. TLT Directories

5. TLT Centers

6. TLT (Local) Summer Institutes

7. TLT (Internal) Faculty Grants

8. Financial Planning,
Investment

9. Faculty Roles & Reward

10. Vision Worth Working
Toward

11. Portfolio of Strategies
(for Integrating Information Technology into Teaching & Learning)

13. Steve's Course/Seminar