Engineering: Submitted by Kathryn Neeley

Overview

This report summarizes the responses of Engineering School faculty to the three questions contained in the faculty senate survey. All faculty were invited to comment. We received 35 email responses and one telephone response. The thoughts of faculty who had previously been asked by ITC to respond to Noble's article on information technology (IT) in higher education were also included, for a total of 37 points of view represented. Many faculty did not directly address the question of how high a priority the university should place on IT. Of those who did address that question, 13 said IT should be a very high/high priority, 1 said the current emphasis was about right, and 3 indicated there should be much less priority placed on it.

Points of Consensus (or Near Consensus)

Although the responses of our faculty reveal considerable diversity of opinion about information technology (IT), there are some areas of consensus or near-consensus, at least among those who responded.

1.) Nearly all respondents emphasized access to information (especially library and Web resources) and ease of communication (especially via email and Web pages) with students and colleagues as the greatest gains yet realized in teaching, learning, and research. They also emphasized the ways that information technology increases capability for doing things that could not be done or at least not done effectively before, such as: combining text and graphics, visualization and animation of complex or invisible phenomena, simulation of remote or dangerous processes, calculation, and transmission of documents. They generally felt that the gains from IT in research had come before the gains in teaching, and that the gains in teaching and learning were less fully realized and potentially greater.

2.) Our faculty seemed virtually unanimous that making use of IT is a labor intensive and costly enterprise. Overall, they talked much more the investments IT requires us to make than they did about its dangers or limitations. They emphasized that hardware was only one component of the cost; support personnel, software, and training also require significant investments.

3.) Regardless of what priority they thought the university should place on information technology, they seemed to agree that IT demands a response in the sense that it is an important development that should not and most likely cannot be ignored.

Significant Differences of Opinion

The differences in opinion arose in the various respondents' assessment of the investments IT requires us to make. Some talked in terms of "losses," but most spoke instead of costs and the tradeoffs involved. For example, IT leads to greater efficiency in some areas but is also seen as a distraction (surfing the Web) or source of additional work (answering email) by some faculty. Many faculty feel that email has a very positive impact on interpersonal communication, but also recognize that it can take up large amounts of time, lacks the nonverbal content of face-to-fact communication, and may lead to less human interaction. Several respondents mentioned that email makes communication virtually instantaneous even over great distances and across time zones but also creates a sense of urgency. Similarly, many felt that networked computers both make it possible and create pressure to work 24 hours a day, seven days a week. One frequently mentioned tradeoff was between the greater accessibility to educational information provided by IT and a tendency for students (and in some cases faculty) to rely on Web-based information rather than doing library research. Several respondents pointed to the need to train students in thoughtful use of Web resources by increasing their awareness of issues such as peer review.

Many respondents focused on the amount of time needed to master and incorporate IT in teaching. As one respondent put it, "I cannot overemphasize the amount of time needed to incorporate electronic communication tools in teaching. . . .The time devoted to learning technology is enormously larger than that devoted to improving pedagogy." Some respondents felt that more emphasis should be placed on other forms of pedagogical development, while others felt that efforts to integrate technology into teaching were not adequately rewarded in tenure and promotion decisions.

Another frequently mentioned issue in the area of investments concerned the difficulty of knowing what we should invest in: "It seems the biggest danger is thinking we know where the technology is going more than a couple of years down the road and then spending a lot of money on a big expensive network strategy that becomes a white elephant by the time it arrives." The rapid rate at which systems become obsolete was often cited as a factor that both increased the investments required and complicated the decision-making process. Many felt that expectations are rising faster than the amounts of money available for developing IT, and several reported frustrating experiences with unreliable or inadequate technology.

A number of respondents were excited about the possibilities for enhancing teaching and learning and willing to make the investments required. Others complained about what might be called "environmental pressure," which suggests, for example, that any up-to-date teacher must put his or her course notes and other materials on the Web. As one respondent put it, "Maybe it is a good idea and maybe it is a bad idea for their particular situation. Will it encourage kids to miss class or will it facilitate classroom discussion time? Are there unique things to be done by using the Web, or it is just something to put on your resume/course description?" Such questions can perhaps only be answered through experimentation and thoughtful consideration of results.

Many concluded that we need a careful, case-by-case appraisal of the costs and benefits of implementing particular forms of IT, rather than an across-the-board commitment to its full use. Others argued that we can realize the ultimate potential of IT only by integrating it fully and investing in it to the point that we have systems that work properly and predictably and are perceived as user-friendly. As one faculty member expressed it, "To make every member of the university community a comfortable user of information technology should be the number one priority of this school." Many emphasized that investing in IT often means that we are not able to invest in other areas, so that there are both the direct costs of investing in IT and the opportunity costs of forgoing other options.

SEAS respondents also frequently identified tradeoffs between centralization and autonomy. Many emphasized the need for planning and coherent vision at the school and university levels, both because the resources in question are shared and extensively interconnected and because the potential for inequity and divisiveness is great. They also focused on the problems inherent in bureaucracy and of devoting too much money to shared resources at the expense of less widely used but also very important facilities. IT "is perhaps the single source that is of use to everyone in the University community. Viewed a little differently, it is the least common denominator amongst a diverse community. This should not be used as an argument for unfettered expansion." One major concern is that the investments required to develop IT infrastructure have led to less overhead return to the school and to individual departments, which must often make their own investments in IT equipment and support staff and continue to maintain their own laboratory equipment.

Probably the most significant differences of opinion relate to the guiding principle that we should use in our acquisition and use of information technology. Will we assume that IT has "a blueprint for its own deployment" and that we must reorganize university life around it? Will we assume that we can use IT selectively and direct its development so that it enhances the most important research, teaching, and service missions of the university? To what extent will and should we redefine those missions in light of the opportunities and pressures IT creates? No one (among the respondents at least) seems inclined to do away with IT, but there are significant differences of view about the choices available and the extent to which IT should become the focus and organizing principle of university life.

An Agenda for Further Discussion

In the final analysis, there seem to be many reasons to continue the conversation on the role of information technology in the life of the university. Several faculty pointed to a need for additional broad-based and inclusive discussions, discussions that include ITC and other advocates of the technology and critics as well. As one faculty member expressed it, "there is a need for balance in the discussion and use of IT."

The responses of the School of Engineering & Applied Science suggest that the agenda for these discussions should include:

• the investments IT requires us to make, including the tradeoffs and uncertainties involved
• strategies for encouraging thoughtful use of IT in research and teaching
• balancing centralization with autonomy and traditional activities with new ones as we plan and allocate resources
• areas in which we have significant freedom of choice vs. areas in which choice is significantly constrained.

One of the most important but subtle decisions we will make in these discussions concerns the models or metaphors we use as we attempt to come to terms with new developments. The SEAS responses suggested a number of models for thinking about IT. One compared the current university system to the production of buttons by hand, indicating that it would not disappear completely but would be available only to the elite. Another suggested that the coming of IT was analogous to the development of printed books, which increased the demand for teachers and universities rather than diminishing it. Another argued that learning to use IT for instructional purposes was analogous to learning to use equipment for laboratory work and class demonstrations. As these examples make clear, the models and metaphors we choose can have a significant impact on the decisions we reach.