Universities are gateways to our accumulated knowledge, our culture, our art. The University's core missions of learning, teaching, and service follow ancient traditions, rooted profoundly in the human character. We are here to bring new generations through this gateway and down the road to life-long exploration and contribution. The faculty serve as guides, as role models, as filters -- i.e. as mentors.
Technology has always played a distinctive role in the growth of our intellectual culture by molding and extending the reach of our biological capabilities. Writing in stone tablets, the printing press, the recording of sounds and pictures, and the communication of all these over time and distance have each, in their turn, reshaped our society. The technological revolutions of past two decades are bringing all of this to the fingertips of each individual.
What will UVM's role be in shaping these revolutions and the coming generations? We must use these new tools to extend our reach in learning, teaching, and service. Further, we must make sure that our graduates can understand and wield the tools for new powers of creativity. At the same time, we cannot just throw away the human core of our institution, that which differentiates us from the technology itself. In embracing these new approaches, we must also maintain our focus on our core missions, so that technology acts as an amplifier, not the originator of our creative spirit. We should not seek to replace our traditional approaches toward teaching and learning, rather, to enhance them with these new approaches.
As we are currently judged for the quality of our intellectual and social environment, so too will we be judged for our response to these technological changes. Recruitment of students and faculty will depend, in part, on both the interface and the substance which we give to the technological revolution as integrated into our core missions. Information technology, therefore, presents both opportunity and challenge. It will alter the learning environment, the where, when, and from whom of learning.
We address here, four topics critical to our changing learning environment. The first is the creation of an "intellectual commons" for our newly developing teaching and learning efforts, called the Learning Gateway. The second is the evolution of our Libraries as active partners in exploring this increasingly technological environment. The third is the enhancement of our current teaching by the selective and creative application of IT capabilities. The fourth is the general concept of "distance education", where the focus is on presenting university courses to people in other parts of the state, the country, or even the world.
As new capabilities in information technology begin to transform the way faculty and students interact, development and utilization of these new approaches will greatly benefit from clearly identifiable, highly capable common facilities. The faculty will need a technology resource center to help them enhance their own strengths with new information technology approaches. Students will continue to require access to high quality facilities for their own directed and independent studies. The resources we currently make available to faculty and students are physically scattered, and often separately administered. Finally, the "face" that we put on our technological efforts is often inconsistent, and our capacities diluted, so that those students and parents looking for this aspect of a modern education perceive there is far less at UVM than at some of our peer institutions. All of these issues could be addressed with the establishment of a new academic technology center on institution, the Learning Gateway.
This Learning Gateway facility would bring greater identity to the institution's technological investments. It will be dedicated to exploring new modes of teaching and learning, and to transforming our scholarly communication system. We envision this Gateway will be the focal point for academic technology, and a point of intersection for faculty, students, University Libraries, and CIT. The central roles of the Learning Gateway will include:
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In this increasingly technological information environment, our libraries are in a period of significant transition. Changes in higher education, information technology, teaching methods, learning styles, community needs and the international information environment all impact the ways in which library and information services are planned, perceived, and delivered. The Libraries are now providing a full range of services in two settings, one with traditional print-based collections and another taking full advantage of electronic information resources. Library acquisitions are characterized by an increasing emphasis on networked access to information resources, but the development of core print collections to support curricular programs and research needs remains important. There is an expanding role for library faculty and staff in teaching users how to identify, select, evaluate, retrieve, and interpret information resources relevant to their needs. There is, additionally, an enhanced capacity for the library to create, organize, and disseminate select sets of electronic information (e.g., gateways to Internet resources).
The development of the technological capacities of the UVM Libraries in this changing information landscape is a continuing concern. Experimentation with new modes of information delivery have yielded important tools, such as Sage and VTMEDNET, which are now accepted as central features of UVM's information environment. There are many challenges in advancing the integration of information technology across the institution, as the Libraries attempt to make more sophisticated systems work within an environment characterized by multiple platforms and uneven levels of capacity at the desktop.
Another challenge is the ten year old NOTIS system, which provides both the LUIS online catalog and the integrated library system supporting library operations. While we have been able to enhance this system on numerous occasions over the past decade to meet new needs and utilize advanced technology, the marketplace has moved well beyond our present capabilities to new products based upon advanced technologies. An immediate investment in upgrading or replacing this core system is essential to meet the present information needs of the institution, as well as to move forward in the new information environment.
The University of Vermont is at a critical juncture in the development of institutional resources, that of planning a major library expansion. The changing demands on the University require a library that combines the strengths of traditional functions with new roles in teaching, learning, and technology. To reflect this shifting paradigm, we need to explore a new vision for the library as a center for teaching and learning, as a institution focal point for information technology, and as a place supporting people, their interaction and their inquiry. In light of the growing impact of technology on both information resources and publishing patterns, new approaches to planning for growth in on site book collections also need to be investigated. Planning must include utmost flexibility to provide for ongoing responsiveness to a changing environment, as well as an enhanced role in the learning community. A commitment to the ubiquitous delivery of information regardless of format or medium, to collaboration in the support of students and faculty engaged in academic endeavors, and to the encouragement of intellectual interaction for all members of the university community should guide the development effort. We recommend that any planning for enhanced library facilities be coordinated with the concepts outlined in the Learning Gateway Center discussed above.
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Classroom learning is not just students listening to spoken words. Instructors have always enhanced their presentations with appropriate text and illustrations. As these enhancements have progressed from static, black and white to colored, dynamic illustrations, instructors have been better able to stimulate the hearts and minds of their students. Emerging capabilities enable a teacher to orchestrate a wide range of media, from sounds and simulations, to distant documents, to live events. These capabilities have enhanced the potential for learning as never before. Further, contact between student and teacher can be extended in time and space, beyond the boundaries of the traditional lecture hall.
To best use available technologies, we need to have knowledgeable instructors, appropriate classrooms, and wide-area network access. We need to work with faculty to create courses that make effective use of these technologies. This requires basic technical skills, such as how to create a Web page, how to download software to display video, etc. It also requires a pedagogical component, working with faculty to fit technology into what they do in the classroom. We cannot simply provide new technology and assume that an instructor is going to work through the implementation without help.
In addition to helping instructors make use of current and emerging technologies, classrooms must support technology enabled instruction. There needs to be a computer and other display equipment available when the instructor walks into the class. There needs to be an active network connection available. For example, material that exists on the World Wide Web needs to be there when the instructor clicks on a link. When things go wrong, assistance must be readily available.
Non-classroom learning will require different kinds of solutions, for example, wide access to high speed networking. This will require a substantial commitment to finding ways to provide appropriate, off-campus electronic access.
It is also becoming increasingly common for individuals to have their own basic computing devices. Therefore basic computer labs like those in Waterman and the libraries will likely evolve to provide network connections, specialized equipment, and access to other technologies not available on basic personal computers.
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Media and telecommunications technologies are enlarging what we understand to be the campus, the classroom, and the student/teacher relationship. Entire universities are today being built without any classrooms in the traditional sense of the word. Some institutions are combining courses taught by top faculty working at a variety of different universities and offering to students on a nationwide basis degree sequences based on this aggregation of courses. Education and policy leaders such as Oblinger and Maruyama identify three campuses or environments in which students and faculty now work: the residential college community; the global electronic campus accessed through the computer; and the required continuing education and training delivered through a variety of media and provided at the work place upon the completion of the degree. These changes are rapidly taking hold from the liberal arts to medicine and they will have an inevitable impact on the infrastructure of the University.
Developments in the technology of media and communications not only expand what we teach, they change where and when we teach it, to whom we teach it, and how we teach it. The university is now significantly more accessible in significant and interactive ways to students and other clients who do not live in immediate proximity to it. Our products are no longer exclusively degree-oriented course sequences. We are starting to recognize that we have both an obligation and an opportunity to address the needs of our students not only when they are in residence as undergraduates, but throughout the length of their professional lives. Access to our faculty and the results of their scholarship can be immediate.
And as technologies converge, the concept of distance learning is slowly giving way to concept of distributed learning. The traditional, and over simplified, paradigm of a teacher standing in front of 60 students in the Angell Hall who are all working independently of each other can be replaced by a more student-centered model in which the student sits in the center of an array of learning resources, including the instructor, the classroom experience, other students, library and Internet resources, other faculty, etc. In such an arrangement, the role of the faculty takes on significant new proportions. He or she becomes a guide as well as a content area expert, an orchestrator of resources as well as a subject area professional responsible for the generation of new knowledge. The critical thinking and analytic skills that faculty seek to model and instill in their students take on new dimensions given the scope and complexity of accessing new resources that in here-to-fore unprecedented ways.
Constraints of time and geography are significantly reduced, although it is important to note that they are not altogether eliminated. The demands of community, of peer relationships, of collegiality, and of a common and shared set of experiences, all important elements in the creation of a learning environment, dictate otherwise. Our reach, however, is dramatically extended. With this extension come a new set of pedagogical responsibilities. We cannot duplicate the residential experience electronically, or even replicate the in-person classroom experience with a virtual classroom. We must transform the learning experience for distant students in order for it to be equivalent to that of the residential student in terms of outcomes.
These are daunting tasks for a faculty already fully occupied with scholarship, teaching and service within the bounded confines of a campus and a traditional semester. To expand both of those dimensions is to invite chaos unless we also equip ourselves as an institution to support faculty in extending their teaching and scholarship beyond traditional boundaries. Putting the right technology on the ground is only the first step. The real challenges are in identifying new audiences and partnerships whereby our reach is extended, in creating and sustaining the supports and rewards for faculty in developing the skill sets required to use this technology to its fullest, and in supporting the student at the end site, be it across the campus or across the country, in achieving success.