Über die Autorin bzw. den Autor

MARK A. LUKER is a vice president at EDUCAUSE, responsible for monitoring policy that affects information technology and telecommunications. He is also head of Net@EDU, an EDUCAUSE program that develops leading strategies for networking in higher education.

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Sponsored by EDUCAUSE and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP

"Anyone with a serious interest in the future of education will find this book provocative, prescient, prescriptive, and pivotal. It is a must-read for those responsible for preparing educational institutions at all levels for their new role in our networked society."
―Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president, MCI WORLDCOM, and chairman, Internet Society

"Transformative. That's what networks are; that's the role our institutions must fill for society; and that's what our leadership must be. This book provides valuable insight into networks and the challenges we must address to ensure that higher education thrives in the Knowledge Age."
―Molly Corbett Broad, president, University of North Carolina

"The networks of today and tomorrow are...engines of transformation that will affect virtually every aspect of life in the academy. This book will prove essential to presidents and other campus leaders who must plan for, and invest in, the networking infrastructures that will powerfully impact the futures of our institutions."
―John Hitt, president, University of Central Florida

"All of educational practice will eventually contribute to the creative and fast-paced links that we know through the Internet. The thoughtful essays in this volume can, indeed, help us prepare for that future."
―Jane Margaret "Maggie" O'Brien, president, St. Mary's College of Maryland

This first volume from the EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies series examines the changes and challenges that the advanced Internet2 will bring to higher education campuses everywhere. This forward-thinking guide provides a road map to the extraordinary capabilities of the advanced Internet to come. Far from a technical study, Preparing Your Campus for a Networked Future is a pragmatic exploration of what leaders can do to prepare for continually evolving technology.

The Sponsor
EDUCAUSE is committed to shaping and enabling transformational change in higher education through the introduction, use, and management of information resources and technologies in teaching, learning, scholarship, research, and institutional management.

The Editor
Mark Luker is a vice president at EDUCAUSE, responsible for monitoring policy that affects information technology and telecommunications. He is also head of Net@EDU, an EDUCAUSE program that develops leading strategies for networking in higher education.

Aus dem Klappentext

Sponsored by EDUCAUSE and PricewaterhouseCoopers LLP"Anyone with a serious interest in the future of education will find this book provocative, prescient, prescriptive, and pivotal. It is a must-read for those responsible for preparing educational institutions at all levels for their new role in our networked society."―Vinton G. Cerf, senior vice president, MCI WORLDCOM, and chairman, Internet Society" Transformative. That's what networks are; that's the role our institutions must fill for society; and that's what our leadership must be. This book provides valuable insight into networks and the challenges we must address to ensure that higher education thrives in the Knowledge Age."―Molly Corbett Broad, president, University of North Carolina" The networks of today and tomorrow are...engines of transformation that will affect virtually every aspect of life in the academy. This book will prove essential to presidents and other campus leaders who must plan for, and invest in, the networking infrastructures that will powerfully impact the futures of our institutions."―John Hitt, president, University of Central Florida" All of educational practice will eventually contribute to the creative and fast-paced links that we know through the Internet. The thoughtful essays in this volume can, indeed, help us prepare for that future."―Jane Margaret "Maggie" O'Brien, president, St. Mary's College of Maryland This first volume from the EDUCAUSE Leadership Strategies series examines the changes and challenges that the advanced Internet2 will bring to higher education campuses everywhere. This forward-thinking guide provides a road map to the extraordinary capabilities of the advanced Internet to come. Far from a technical study, Preparing Your Campus for a Networked Future is a pragmatic exploration of what leaders can do to prepare for continually evolving technology. The SponsorEDUCAUSE is committed to shaping and enabling transformational chan

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Educause Leadership Strategies, Volume 1, Preparing Your Campus for a Networked Future

Jossey-Bass

Chapter One

Many have predicted that a global network of affordable multimedia computers, on-line libraries, student-centered "learningware," and enhanced human communications in general will improve access to high-quality education on a scale that simply cannot be accomplished today. Although this may be a compelling vision of the future, many details, methods, capabilities, and even principles necessary to achieve it are not yet clear. Recent rapid progress on several fronts, however, suggests that much of this vision can be realized-and sooner rather than later. There is an exciting ferment in the entire field, both within and outside traditional institutions of higher education.

This chapter first looks at how the emergence of an advanced Internet will break the access, performance, and cost barriers that in the past have presented an insurmountable obstacle to the new vision of education. It then discusses the more fundamental opportunities and challenges concerning missions, goals, roles, methods, organization, and evaluation that will face our institutions of higher education once the technical barriers have been removed.

Role of an Advanced Internet in High-Quality Education

Most discussions about new models for distributed learning assume that there will be an underlying network-which we will call the advanced Internet-that can support the rich variety of communications and interaction required at any location, at an affordable cost. Why should we believe this now, when no past efforts have satisfied all of these requirements? And just what are the requirements, anyway? The following discussion explores the underlying technologies required to support distributed learning and looks at basic performance requirements, past and future methods of delivery, and important cost factors. It shows how the advanced Internet will be the first affordable system that can meet all of the basic access requirements of the new learning model, both on campus and off, and how some of these developments will be driven and partially funded by a massive convergence of three global communications technologies into one.

Network Requirements for Distributed Learning

A glance at the Web today shows that we do not really have to wait for the advanced Internet to begin to participate in networked distance learning. This is because traditional lectures, presentations, demonstrations, and examples, which are mostly one-way communications to the student, represent a large fraction of a typical course. A standard classroom lecture can be delivered effectively as a video clip, in just the way we can watch a news report over the Internet or on television today. (Indeed, one-way television has been the primary mode of distance education.) Simply dividing a lecture into small segments that can be repeated, skipped, called up as needed, and used anytime (as on videotape) adds valuable flexibility. Links to high-quality multimedia examples further improve the presentation, as can the preparation and delivery of really outstanding content. In short, many of todays classroom experiences can be replicated using a network that supports sending video segments to any location one way, including todays Internet. Although the Internet will become the most cost-effective way to deliver this type of content for learning, the real power of the new technology lies well beyond mimicking television.

What about the human interaction that takes place in courses, when students ask questions, get help, work together, and discuss common problems? All of these activities take place on todays Internet as well, but with a distinct bow to the limitations of the network. All have been implemented successfully using e-mail, with special software called groupware that keeps track of who is in what group, organizes their threads of discussion, and shares relevant information with group members. This type of communication is called asynchronous communication, because it does not require that members of a group be on the network at the same time. Although the idea of saving messages to be read later may at first sound awkward, it is a real advantage for distributed learning, since learners schedules often conflict. (Of course, asynchronous access is also one of the main benefits of voice mail and e-mail.) Alternate versions of groupware support synchronous communication, which allows the members of a group to "chat" over the network, instantly receiving and responding to messages from one another. Often called chat rooms, these arrangements are a low-speed and inexpensive electronic version of a small-group discussion. Both synchronous and asynchronous communications over networks have been used very successfully for instructors office hours, group projects, study sessions, and other types of interactions essential to many courses.

What can the advanced Internet add to this picture? Well, it can add an actual picture, as well as voices. With an advanced network both synchronous and asynchronous communications can include natural voice and video so that all participants can see and hear one another. This format makes for communication that is not only easier than typing and reading but also richer, conveying the subtleties of expression and tone that are lost in textual communication. Two-way video conferencing has proved to be very effective for business meetings and remote classrooms, but it has been too expensive for widespread use. Advanced networks will make this tool affordable for both classroom and "anytime, anywhere" education. Network-based curricula will support a full range of interaction, with students working alone with lectures, in study groups, and with tutors.

Related Critical Technologies

Campus-based courses depend heavily on readings, presentations, exhibits, examples, and other supporting information. These types of information are every bit as important in a distributed model, but using them in that setting depends to a much greater extent on affordable access to a high-quality collection that can be searched and retrieved through a network. Since almost all of the information in traditional libraries can be presented in digital form, these needs can be met, in principle, by digital libraries that augment the Web and improve on its structure and capability. Although successful on-line collections exist today for certain fields, there are substantial economic, intellectual property, licensing, authorization, preservation, and management barriers that must be overcome to achieve this goal in general. Organizations such as the Coalition for Networked Information and the Digital Library Federation are working actively on practical solutions to these problems. Meanwhile, there is a rapidly growing but less well organized collection of digital information for education on the Web, CD-ROMs, and other media, which can often satisfy specific objectives.

Perhaps the most important components of a distributed learning system will be modules of learningware-that is, special computer programs designed to help a student access and work with presentations, questions, experiments, and related information on specific topics. Learningware might support flexible access to text, photographs and charts, sound and video clips, and on-line data, all focused on some particular learning activity. Such digital content can be organized...