patth@sci.ccny.cuny.edu (Patt Haring) (10/02/90)
Index Number: 10685 "Educational Applications of the NREN," by Susan M. Rogers, director of the Office of Distance Learning, Rochester Institute of Technology. Reprinted from EDUCOM Review, Volume 25, Number 2, Summer 1990. Contact: EDITOR@EDUCOM.BITNET The National Research and Education Network (NREN) promises to "link supercomputers, libraries, national databases, and academic and industrial researchers into a unified information infrastructure."1 Indeed, the benefits of interconnecting the nation's researchers sound exciting and important. However, the "E" in NREN has not received much discussion beyond vague references to "improving education" and "serving educational needs," and the potential for educational applications at all levels is in danger of being overlooked. Thus far, the existing Internet has not been widely available to educators outside of large research universities. Rochester Institute of Technology has been connected to BITNET for a number of years, but only recently to the Internet. Access is expensive, and, as a comprehensive institution rather than a research institution, RIT has not considered it a high priority. However, equal access to educational opportunities and resources is a mounting concern at the Institute, as it is to educators everywhere. While the use of computer communication is somewhat new to education, for those of us working to extend access through distance learning data networks, it represents a powerful tool to expand and improve instructional efforts. It may be helpful to describe why access through distance learning is of interest to educators today. I would like to talk about why I believe data networks represent such a significant resource for instructional practice, then provide some examples of RIT's early use of computer communications. Finally I will briefly suggest the issues that must be confronted if the national network is to fulfill its promise to education. DISTANCE EDUCATION Distance education is no longer a marginal issue for higher education; it is becoming an important means of providing access to educational opportunities and resources. At the same time, distance learning efforts are fostering change in the structures and practices of educational institutions. The demand for educational access solutions is being driven by changes in three interrelated areas. The first is the student. This year, for the first time, the nontraditional student has become part of the majority; more than one half of the college students in this country are over 25 years of age. They are busy, working adults with a great many demands on their lives. Just as significantly, the profile of the younger student has also changed. As early as 1988, nearly 70 percent of the undergraduate students in this country were employed at least part-time.2 Students today are often minority students who, as Joshua Meyerowitz points out, have been around the world via television before they were old enough to cross the street.3 They are looking for an education organized less around the limitations that confronted medieval Europe and more around their own information and social needs. Second is our evolving view of knowledge. The dramatic rate of change in information is forcing us to realize that we don't need an educated population, but rather we need to become a nation of learners who combine work and education. In the midst of our knowledge explosion, it is clear that knowledge is not finite or stable, and therefore schooling is never over. Learning must become an active and ongoing process rather than a test of memorization skills based on some accepted list of "core knowledge."4 And, third, the availability of new communications technologies, which in many ways are responsible for the changes mentioned above, now offers exciting new opportunities and tools for teaching and learning. Traditional modes of education are based on the need to gather around the scarce resources of a learned person and printed thought. Today the world of recorded knowledge is richer, more spontaneous, and more transportable than it has been in the past. But we've yet to realize the impact that our ability to store sound and moving images is having on scholarship and education. While I will argue long and hard for better educational use of recorded sound and moving images, satellite television, and computers, I believe that no technology offers more promise to educators than their interconnection through telecommunications networks. To recall John Dewey, education is communication. An article on good teaching in the latest issue of Change magazine describes learning as the "result of both internal and external conversation."5 Data networks have the potential to interconnect students, teachers, and information resources in a conversation of learning that is free from many of the constraints of time, place, and physical handicap. The increasing digitalization of various communication modes will make the network all the more significant for education and cultural exchange. COMPUTER COMMUNICATIONS AT RIT In response to the challenges of a changing society, Rochester Institute of Technology has attempted to capitalize on the opportunities presented by communications technologies to meet the needs of new learning markets and to serve its traditional students more effectively. The Institute has tried to remain flexible and creative in this endeavor. As a teaching institution, many of the opportunities for funding innovative applications of technology have not been as open to us as they are at research- intensive universities. However, we are aware of the importance of new technologies for the instructional process, both for improvement and relevance of on-campus teaching and for extension of instruction to students handicapped by disability or circumstance. Because of its unmatched potential for engaging students in interaction with the Institute, computer communication has become a significant part of our distance learning programs. There are several areas in which computer communication has played an important role in the delivery of distance education. For the most part, these instructional applications have not been able to take advantage of the national networks, though many faculty members and students use them on a daily basis for other academic purposes. So while the potential is very exciting, there are many limitations we face in fulfilling the network's promise to increase access to learners and resources in isolated areas. RIT has delivered courses at a distance for over ten years through a mix of communications technologies, primarily print and video with supporting communication via mail and telephone. However, communications difficulties between these learners and their instructors, advisers, and other students continue to present a barrier to the students' success. While on-campus students obtain answers to simple questions by going to an instructor's office, walking to the bookstore, or asking a classmate, off- campus, part-time learners who work, care for children, or have limited mobility find it difficult to obtain answers to even easy questions. These learners telephone their instructors, write their advisers, and drive to campus after work, only to fail to get timely answers to their questions, sign up for the wrong course, or arrive at the bookstore an hour after it closes. And, as significantly, the benefits to be derived from classroom discussions are generally lacking or minimal in distance education. Unhappy with the limited communication capabilities available to distant- delivered students, we decided to augment existing telephone and mail channels with computer-based communications. This system allows for greater time and place independence and at the same time enhances interactivity among groups and individuals. Using personal computers and modems, learners are able to create and submit homework, receive feedback, take a self-test, interact with their instructor and others, and access software, library resources, and advisory information. Currently twenty different distant-delivered courses use computer conferencing as a part of their instructional delivery. RIT lends modems and software and provides relatively simple documentation that allows students to focus on the content of their course rather than the complications of computer connectivity. Our results using asynchronous computer conferencing for course discussions have been especially rewarding. No one is excluded from participation due to time limitations of the class or communication barriers. Students for whom English is not the first language have found the conferences especially useful. Courses making use of computer communication span the curriculum and include on-campus courses. At RIT, there are also nearly a hundred open conferences on issues such as College Life and The Women's Center, but by far the most popular conference is Philosophy. You might not expect to find this type of interest at a technical institute like RIT, but students and faculty have been enabled to engage in serious, and not so serious, discussions. As the home of the National Technical Institute for the Deaf, RIT is particularly sensitive to students with special communication needs. In our attempt to create a barrier-free learning environment for students, we have explored the unique benefits of technology-based delivery systems with disabled students and faculty. For example, a blind instructor uses captioned video materials and computer-based communications (with a speech board) to teach a course to classes of deaf and hearing students. Hearing-impaired faculty have used computer conferencing as the main course delivery system for their students. The extension of distance learning to persons with physical impairments can give them access to course content and at the same time increase their independence and self- reliance.6 Rural school districts also face many difficulties in providing a rich range of programs to their talented college-bound students. Small enrollment and specialized-subject classes can be costly for small, rural schools to support without sharing resources. RIT's KEY Program interconnects students in three rural school districts 50 miles south of Rochester to provide enhanced opportunities and resources. College credit courses are offered through a mix of delivery techniques such as PC-based electronic blackboards, computer and audio conferencing, facsimile machines, and videotapes. Faculty work in collaboration with high school teachers to provide a college-level learning experience. Students are able to take advantage of access to the college library and participate in out-of- class conferences through dial-up modems. Through the use of telecommunications, the KEY Program offers these rural students many of the same advantages available to students in larger, more urban school districts. POTENTIAL OF NETWORKS Though the use of computer communications has increased our ability to reach nontraditional learners, the long-distance costs, the complications of connectivity, and the lack of standards and availability of end-user devices have hampered our ability to offer courses to students at greater distances from campus. Many of our specialized programs are of interest to learners from small and mid-sized companies in rural areas of the state. We currently use community colleges as sites for access to resources such as labs and electronic blackboards. Connecting these community colleges to the network would allow students to communicate with the faculty and information resources at the Institute more equitably. The two national institutions of higher education for the deaf--RIT and Gallaudet University-have plans to use the Internet to offer some courses cooperatively between campuses. Since both institutions are connected to the Internet, the technical issues are minor, and faculty involved with the project can appropriately concentrate on instructional concerns. Extension of the expertise of these institutions through a national network could facilitate access by deaf learners, as well as their parents, teachers, and employers, who are widely dispersed throughout the country. Distance learning continues to be a key for improving our nation's schools. The Office of Technology Assessment Report, Linking for Learning, outlines many of these efforts. While wonderful things are happening around the country through the use of simple bulletin boards like KIDSNET, access to end-user devices and connect-time charges are a significant problem for isolated schools, to say nothing of the opportunity to engage in a full conferencing system or access software and applications through a high- speed connection. Yet these are the schools most in need of the library resources and learning opportunities that distance learning can provide. In RIT's KEY Program, for example, only a few users can take advantage of computer connectivity since there is only one computer connected to a modem. Still, some of the schools have reported over $500 phone bills each month! This obviously limits the possibilities for more extensive programs for teacher enhancement or programs for younger students. In working with NYSERNET to connect these schools to the network, we estimate costs of about $15,000 per year for 9.6 kb access for each school, including local loop charges. Yet each school's entire library budget is only about $10,000 per year for books and periodicals. This obviously precludes access to the rich resources available over the higher-speed data networks for most of the nation's school districts. SUCCESS FACTORS As we look to new communications technologies to provide solutions to instructional access problems, it is important to remember that the technology is only a tool for excellent teaching. Blackboards don't teach, and neither do more advanced distance learning technologies. However, it is clear that technology does offer invaluable potential to educators today. The networked computer offers the power to help good teachers engage learners in meaningful, critical discourse on current knowledge. However, we have a very long way to go before a national network can fulfill its potential as an important educational tool. For the network to be a success as an educational tool, it must be reliable, accessible, versatile, and reasonable. By reliable, I mean that the network cannot simply be "down." It must be nearly as reliable as the telephone if educators are to use it. Even those of us who advocate the use of computers and networks quake at the thought of doing a live demonstration before a large group of people; there are simply too many potential problems. Therefore, it is no wonder that faculty are often less than enthusiastic about using a computer network to deliver instruction. It must be accessible to learners and institutions everywhere in this country, not simply at a few large universities in a few large cities. Restrictions on student access and use of computer systems need to be seriously questioned. While all students at RIT receive user accounts with no usage-time limitations, this is not true at many colleges and universities. To be used well for education, the network must be accessible and controllable by faculty and students. But the cost of connecting is not trivial, and, as long as it remains high, most educational institutions that do not receive research funds, including community colleges, primary and secondary schools, and the more isolated schools and libraries, will not have access. In other words, from an educational as opposed to a research standpoint, those who need it most will not have access. Versatility will also be a key issue. One of the greatest barriers we face now in the use of computers to deliver education is the problem of using mathematical notation and illustrations. The language of much of what we teach cannot be easily communicated as a text file. Remote access to library resources, for example, is drastically limited by the inability to move images. While we overcome some of these problems now by supplementing the delivery with videotapes and picturephones, the integration of images and symbolic manipulation into the dialogue is vital in some content areas. Various media are converging via digitization, but their transmission still requires higher bandwidth than most educators can afford. Finally, the network must be reasonable, both in terms of cost and in ease of use. Now, I'm not saying it has to be cheap and intuitive, though that would of course be best, but it can't be more costly or complicated than most other solutions. The systems must be reasonably simple to learn; a 3- inch-thick manual filled with information about TCP-IP protocols will not do! We are past the days when teachers were required to chop their own firewood to heat the classroom. Therefore institutions will need to provide adequate support services for students and faculty as they learn to exploit the power of the network. The tool for instruction cannot interfere with the instruction itself. There must also be a comprehensive way of finding out what's "out there." This is a massive effort that will require ongoing support and incredible patience. It is certainly a task that rivals the technical problems of building a national network, yet it is no less critical to its success, particularly in educational applications. It is also, however, an area where educators and librarians might offer some assistance. The network offers many promising opportunities for education. It represents a step toward access to useful, current information and dialogue at the time and place they are needed. Properly utilized communications networks can assist educators in the development of a population that has the knowledge and understanding it needs to function effectively in a global community. But opportunities for utilization of the network may be wasted without the full collaboration of educators and nonresearch librarians to help make it useful and accessible to all learners. REFERENCES 1. Publication of the Coalition for the National Research and Education Network, (1989) p. 3. 2. McCarten, A., "Students Who Work," Change, Vol. 20, No. 5, September 1988, pp. 10-16. 3. Meyerowitz, J., No Sense of Place. New York: Oxford University Press, 1985. 4. Lave, J., "The Culture of Acquisition and the Practice of Understanding," Institute for Research on Learning Report No. IRL88-0007, May 1988. 5. Palmer, P., "Good Teaching," Change, Vol. 22, No. 1, January/February 1990, pp. 10-16. 6. For more about these efforts, see Coombs, N., "Using CMC to Overcome Physical Disabilities." In Mindweave, eds. Mason and Kaye. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1989. ************************************************************* CCNEWS Copyright Notice If you use this article, in whole or in part, in printed or electronic form, you are legally and morally obligated to credit the author and the original publication name, date, and page(s). We suggest that you also inform the author of your intention to use this article, in case there are updates or corrections that he or she might wish to suggest. The ideas and opinions expressed in this article, as well as articles obtained through CCNEWS and the CCNEWS Articles Archive, do not necessarily reflect those of EDUCOM. EDUCOM will not accept responsibility for misinformation, nor will EDUCOM be responsible for misuse of information obtained through the CCNEWS Articles Archive. 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