About CODE

Included here are excerpted recommendations from the Committee on Research and Scholarship's Rice Self-Study report, Part II: The Role of information technology in the University (1994) that are relevant to CODE's planning efforts. Omissions have been noted with [...].

Research Computing

II. A. Goals Shared by all Researchers

1. The most pressing need cited by computer users across campus (and indeed also by the 1990 report) is for a long-term, university- wide plan, implemented by a planning board that would coordinate currently scattered and thus insufficiently effectual structures such as the University Computer Committee, the Computer Planning Board, and the Library Committee. This board should include representatives from the administration, the library, the faculty, the students, and the information technology experts. It should take into account the three different kind of research computer users: scientists/engineers; social scientists/business administrators; and humanists/architects/musicologists, each characterized by different technological needs. It should actively facilitate communication between itself and the Rice community; it should patiently solicit input from, and aggressively publicize its procedures and the information it gains, to the campus at large. Such a planning board should:

* Be vigilant about keeping up with new developments in technology; with new research paradigms; and with changing applications at other institutions, libraries, and museums.

* Be vigilant about assessing the campus community. Keep constant track of hardware, software, people, and projects.

* Assess, on the basis of information about both the current state of technology and about the specific people at Rice, what technological strategies are best for the campus as a whole. It would be responsible for creating a technological plan in keeping with Rice's overall mission. Thus, it would guide us so that we can choose wisely among the multiplicity of technological options. It would guide us as we decide where to take the lead and where, instead, to take advantage of already existing technology: in many cases the best strategy for a small school like Rice may be to follow first rather than to be first. The planning board would guide us in the necessary campuswide changes, such as the movement from centralized to distributed computing, involved in our chosen plan. It would serve as a central source of information about ongoing activities, so that we can avoid duplication and conflict among users.

* Institutionalize a continuing planning/review cycle to reevaluate the best uses of information technology. Ideally this would involve a visionary as well as a practical dimension-as did, for example, Carnegie Mellon's AAAA project that asked how to facilitate the transmission of "anything, anytime, to anyone, anywhere."

* Think proactively about financing. It should work to get computers included as capital investment; it should explore "strategic partnerships" with vendors, industry, and other universities. It should work out effective and varying cost-sharing plans, such as that organized by Rice's Systems/LAN management director, Vicky Dean, in which departments pay at least a portion of the costs for operation and maintenance of their systems, but be more comprehensive-for hardware, software, maintenance, and access.

* Think proactively about other large problems, e. g., copyright and publishing issues. We do not have to establish our own publishing center or revise the copyright laws, but we need to be more aware of what is happening with regard to these issues and what options are available to us.

2. We need to maintain and improve a powerful and expandable electronic network infrastructure with wide-band, high-speed capability and telecommunication linkup so that data, voice, and video can travel freely anywhere on campus wherever needed for research as well as teaching. This means we should:

* Continue to improve access to the network. [...]

* Continue to add services to the campuswide information system, that is, to improve its breadth of coverage and the ease of use.

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* We need improved reliability, security, and fail-safe plans. Recent extensive blackouts should not be repeated, and we should benefit from the experience of other schools such as M.I.T., which have prevented such incidents.

3. The most pressing new need that has arisen since the 1990 report is to develop a so-called virtual library as good as those at other major research institutions across the country. This means:

* We need increased access to bibliographic information, both site-based and from other libraries and collections of all kinds. We should continue working to develop cutting-edge bibliographic tools, techniques, and user interfaces and to improve available ways of synthesizing information from a variety of sources. Rice should be committed to making access as flexible as possible.

* Where possible, licensing arrangements should continue to be made so that CD-ROM materials can be accessed on-line.

* We need access to, and whenever possible, own our own scanning devices to create full-text databases, such as those that the British Library, the state of Virginia virtual library, the University of Virginia, the Janus project at Columbia University, and the Center for Electronic Texts (CETH) at Rutgers and Princeton are developing.

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It is important that Rice emphasize databases used for research as well as teaching, as does, for example, the Institute for Humanities at the University of Virginia, where a limited number of humanities faculty receive intense support for using technology in their research and therefore utilize computers in their research more than do humanists at Rice, where faculty are supported only for using technology in teaching.

We need to keep track of and arrange for access to databases that we decide not to create ourselves.

* We need access to, and whenever possible, scanning devices to create collections of "virtual artifacts," which are image- and sound-based as well as text-based.

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4. We need more financial and technical support for buying and maintaining individual workstations and for local area networks.

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An even greater problem than financing purchases, however, is financing for maintenance and upgrading. The universal complaint was that, even if Rice helps support an initial purchase, it leaves maintenance and upgrading to individuals and departments. We need central repair facilities not only for Macintosh but also for other systems, we need pick-up and delivery systems, and we need a plan for financing this maintenance. Administrators at other universities, for example, Ira Fuchs, Vice President for Computing and Information Technology at Princeton, stressed the need for such long-term financing.

5. We need more technological support for software specific to different departments. The heart of the 1990 Computer Planning Board Report was the need to provide human support as well as hardware for researchers, but even that document could not realize the extent of the current problem. Rice now has many more computer users than predicted in the 1990 report, and they are both far less technologically sophisticated than the original science and engineering users and far more dependent financially on Rice. These new users may also be, as the College of Wooster found of theirs in a self-study similar to this one, more risk averse than the pioneers and thus less willing to experiment with partially developed technology-or to help figure it out.

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Some of the increased support should be centralized (from Rice's point of view as centralized as possible), to provide technological expertise for hardware and applications used in shared facilities and in workstations across campus. The support staff should continue to experiment creatively with ways of handling problems (like assigning "ownership" of individual problems to individual staff members). But no matter how creative they are, we are significantly understaffed, and the staff are often undertrained.

By far our most important need is for distributed support from staff who are directly knowledgeable about and responsible to their end users.

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The goal of our support service should be, as it is at the University of California at Berkeley, "to help all departments make effective and innovative use of the full range of communications and computing technologies," that is, to tailor its services to different users. Support staff should provide more readily available reactive help for crises with existing facilities and should aim at an ideal of two-hour response time during regular working hours, 8:30-5:00, Monday through Friday. But it should also be proactive and-again as at Berkeley-"develop innovative exemplars for"information technology in research." This means educating users. One common response when we asked Rice users, "What kinds of technological support do you need?" was, "Someone to tell me what I need."

Rice is hardly unique in facing these problems, which are endemic to the lightning-speed spread of technology at all campuses. But other places such as Pennsylvania State University and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill have been extremely successful in delivering support campuswide; we need to find out about and learn from these places and to keep track of effective solutions for specific problems elsewhere, too. For example, some fairly simple rearrangement of our training courses to match those elsewhere would help a great deal. Currently Rice offers short courses that many of our respondents described as useless. These courses are often taught by students who have not been trained sufficiently, and the courses are not taught during the summer-which is when faculty have most freedom to learn. But the University of California at Davis has an extremely successful faculty institute each summer that provides participants with intensive training and hardware. In return, each summer's participants become mentors for the next year's institute. Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University has four-day intensive summer workshops for faculty, tailored to specific departments or disciplines. Other institutions such as Stanford have year-round programs of training "local experts" for each department, who then serve as the first contact for their colleagues' technological questions. All have found that the investment in training pays off-faculty then can take care of themselves and their peers. We might also "subcontract" selected areas of support to training groups who travel from campus to campus (e.g., to teach specialized audiences like humanists about the Internet), so that resident support staff need not learn about every area of research.

II. B. Specific Divisional Goals

Apart from setting up distributed support for different users, the planning board has to acknowledge and account for the sheer fact of user differences, in both its long- and short-term planning processes.

Natural Sciences and Engineering, including Computational Engineering: Scientists and engineers handle vast amounts of data from new sources, ranging from the intergalactic to the subatomic, for new purposes like robotics, fuzzy logic, and virtual experimentation, usually involving the execution of computation- intensive algorithms used for a variety of analyses and simulations. Because of the prevailing need to solve large sets of complex equations, the main activities in these areas demand computational power and speed, whether provided by supercomputers or, increasingly, by huge banks of distributed parallel processing capability. The main problem, apart from the absolute limits on technology, has been the cost of access to state-of-the-art developments. Scientists and engineers, however, have been successful in attracting federal funding; and for the most part, they take care of themselves. But although grants cover most of their individual needs, they have a continual need for additional access to high-end computing and for graduate student workstations not supplied by grants.

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Social Sciences and the Jones School of Administration: The main activity in these areas usually entails analysis of huge databases, some of which are available only on 9-track tape. This requires computers with vast disc storage and memory, with tape-reading and output capability, with dynamic disc allocation and batch facility, and with the ability to handle the demands of many users simultaneously.

Because the social scientists' needs are being met by the mainframe computers that may soon be replaced by distributed computing, the main problem for social science research will be the transition between old and new technology. Rice's move from large central processing units such as the mainframe to distributed computing-like similar moves on many campuses across the country-has proved extremely effective for campuswide systems and infrastructures. In many ways the new Unix system is more powerful, more flexible, more advanced, and thus more technologically interesting. But so far no one has seemed to find a substitute for the mainframe that can also meet specific computing needs of the social scientists. Consequently, nearly all the universities surveyed for this report have kept mainframe computers for users who need them, even though their general campus infrastructure has moved to distributed computing. [...] If Rice does not follow the lead of these universities and provide a mainframe large enough for Social Sciences and Jones School research, we need to provide alternative facilities that work at least as well as the mainframe and to provide extensive, specific education and assistance for mainframe users as they transfer to the Unix system. University Librarian Beth Shapiro's proposed appointment of a Data Librarian for social scientists and scientists who use electronic databases is a step in the right direction.

Humanities, Architecture, and Music: The main activity in these areas involves the study of existing artifacts-texts, images, and sounds-and in some areas the creation of new artifacts. If the biggest technological problem for scientists and engineers is access to the most powerful technologies, and if for social scientists the transition from old to new technologies, the main problem for humanists, architects, and musicologists is the shift from nontechnological methods to technology. This problem has two facets, one stemming from limitations in users and one from limitations in technology.

* User limitations: Humanists have been not only slowest but also most resistant to making use of computing information technology. This hesitancy has been especially true in the study of existing artifacts; by contrast, the virtual creation of new artifacts-like the virtual creation of scientific experiments-has been more common, as in Rice's Advanced Visualization Laboratory and Computer Assisted Design facilities for architects, and in compositional computation and visualization for musicians.

The humanists' reluctance may have been appropriate in the past, when computing was not as useful to them as to scientists and social scientists. But humanities is the "sleeping giant" of computing. There will be an explosion in humanists' use of information technology as the methods and tools of scientific computing are applied to the materials that humanists study and as new databases are created. Techniques for capturing, encoding, storing, and retrieving texts have made it easier to compare multiple versions of a single text and have opened up new possibilities for computational, lexicographic, semantic, syntactic, and stylistic analysis and modeling.

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Vice President Gorry, who from the beginning of his tenure at Rice has worked to bring information technology to humanists as well as to scientists, has ensured that, for the most part, humanists now have access to workstations and networks. But this progress has created its own problems. As increasing numbers of humanists become interested in technology, the demands on our support services will be tremendous. We need to think carefully about how best to provide the necessary technological support as well as the necessary technology, and about ways of educating humanities faculty and enlisting them in guiding the transition to the new technologies.

* Technological limitations: In the humanities-unlike the sciences, engineering, and the social sciences-one of the biggest problems is the inherent limitation (at least for the foreseeable future) on the new technology's ability to supplant traditional materials and methods of research. One day, perhaps, computing will transform humanists' study, but at present, where it has succeeded, as Gary Crane of Tufts University says, it has simply helped scholars do what they have always done faster and more effectively (though often also more expensively). And in many cases even where technology has succeeded, as in the case of scanning devices to create virtual libraries, there are insurmountable practical limits on its use. The Library of Congress will have five million books digitized by the year 2000, for example, but it owns 106 million items, and at that rate of conversion (just under one million each year), it would take more than a century to recreate the library electronically. James H. Billington, Librarian of Congress, has written that, "Only a small fraction of humanity's vast paper record will be-or should be-digitized in the foreseeable future."

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The problem, then, will be to integrate the development of state -of-the-art electronic resources with continued access to traditional resources.

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III: Implementation Priorities

III. A. The Rice administration must make greater financial investment in the creation and maintenance of communications and information systems.

III. B. Improvement should begin with the establishment of a permanent, representative, campuswide planning board, (as described in Section II.A.1 and 2 of this report. This board should undertake the tasks, also described in Section II.A.1 and 2, of assessing available technology, assessing campus strengths and weaknesses, forming long-range plans in keeping with Rice's situation and overall campus mission, establishing permanent review procedures, and attending to present and potential problems of financing and legality.

III. C. One of the board's first priorities should be to examine the technological support system. Rice needs both to make best use of the resources we do have and to enlarge the staff to create a more distributed, user-oriented support system. Educating users and helping them to adapt must not come second to purely technological effort.

IV: The Future

IV. A. It is possible to make some general predictions on the basis of current technological experimentation. We will probably see cheaper, more powerful-and portable-hardware; vast storage systems; digital networks capable not only of carrying gigabyte-per-second loads, but also of acting intelligently to direct information; and wireless personal computing with real-time video. But no one can make detailed predictions in the rapidly changing technological environment, and our planning therefore needs to be a planning for flexibility.

IV. B. We need to think about the relation between research and education so that they complement each other as they develop electronically, rather than competing for energy and money. We need to acknowledge that, at least at the present, although research and education share certain needs and benefit from some of the same developments, ultimately their aims, materials, and methods differ. Research means discovering something new; undergraduate education generally provides a guided introduction to a body of already discovered information and makes available already discovered links between separate pieces of data. Graduate education and research are usually more closely linked and are mutually beneficial-even necessary in many fields. Creating educational software for undergraduate classes, however, is still more like writing a textbook than it is like doing original research, and using the software is more like using a superb textbook than it is like doing research. (The exceptions are, first, in fields like ancient Greek civilization, where the primary material consists of a finite collection of texts so that students and researchers are already confined to the same body of data; and, second, in fields where software allows development as well as exercise of skills, as in mathematics, graphics, language, etc.)

Thus while original research may be constantly required to develop the evolving technology used in electronic education, it is not required in developing the software. Therefore in addition to supporting the faculty when they work on software, we need to support their own prior research as well, or we run the danger of institutionalizing in our newly designed educational software all the old research and the old ways of dealing with it.

IV. C. The 1990 Computer Planning Board Report singled out one area of research for special emphasis: the use of computers to study computing, meaning the use of computers to study the science and engineering of computer architecture and programming-in which Rice is today a leading force. The present report also sees a special role for the study of computing in Rice's future, but today this means a study involving social scientists and humanists as well as scientists and engineers. Director of Outreach Priscilla Huston points out that, as a small campus with many existing interdisciplinary ties, Rice is uniquely suited to study the whole process of technological change and to explore the way computers have affected the way we all learn, teach, and carry out research. Computer scientists, cognitive scientists, physical scientists, and social scientists have begun to work together elsewhere, as in the case of the astronomers in the new "collaboratory" at the University of Michigan, who are being observed by behavioral scientists and psychologists as they in turn observe the universe. Humanists too- who have long studied the use and interpretation of symbolic language-have much to contribute to an understanding of how people and computers interact in contemporary intellectual life. Humanist Richard Lanham has said that the interaction of word and image, so important in the human-computer interface, has been a central problem in the study of intellectual history. Our new Computational Engineering Building has been designed with many public spaces to facilitate the interdisciplinary and collaborative work that has already begun to spread as a result of electronic networking; we should think about intellectually redesigning the rest of the campus to encourage even wider collaborations.

Committee on Teaching

Executive Summary

The committee evaluated the current needs and uses as well as future directions for computers, information technologies, audiovisual capability, multimedia technology, and interactive teleconferencing in the teaching mission of the university. Utilization of new technologies should enhance the traditional emphasis at Rice on personalized education. Rice should always be a community of learning where faculty, students, and experts from around the world come together-in person and electronically-to exchange information, solve problems, analyze issues, and nurture personal growth in a variety of dimensions. The committee discussed and advocated the expansion of the teaching process to include greater use of multiple resources and alternatives to the traditional lecture form. It was felt that significant improvements in classroom capabilities are required. The electronic studio concept should be further expanded and developed, but a special emphasis should be on creating a series of "teaching theaters," classrooms with screens, black-out shades, and the ability to project onto the screen materials from a computer (PC and Mac) monitor, a VCR, and from a video presentation stand. All students, faculty, and staff should have full access to electronic networks for communication and learning opportunities. All students, both undergraduate and graduate, should be exposed to the electronic and communication skills that will be necessary for their future development. Rice students should learn how to adapt to changing situations, including a variety of jobs and careers, how to be effective at oral and written communication, and how to be leaders in their fields and in their communities. Distance and lifelong learning should be promoted, and the School of Continuing Studies should play a major role in the teaching of technologies. Emerging technologies should be used to disseminate information. Uses of new technologies should be developed on a school-by-school basis with a group in each school determining their own needs on a continual basis. Oversight committees must be established to work with the administration in allocating funds for technology and overseeing future planning. Planning must be consultative, focused, visionary, and lead to real, practical results in a reasonable period of time.

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The Office of Information Systems and Services, as it is now called, has four major goals. These include enhancing the educational process, improving administrative productivity, enriching scholarly resources, and expanding the Rice community.

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Information from Audio/Visual Services and Previous Committee Studies in this Area.

An ad hoc Committee on Audio/Visual Services developed a report in 1991 with a number of recommendations including 1) a system of electronic classrooms (including a large and a medium-sized Teaching Theater, as well as the capability to serve smaller classrooms with portable equipment), 2) a campuswide video network, and 3) an Educational Technology Center that would coordinate, support, and maintain both of the above and expand the activities of what was then called the Center for Scholarship and Information, a collection of networked computers located in Fondren Library. It was suggested that a standing committee on Audio/Visual Services be established. Many specific recommendations were made as to rooms to be equipped, equipment to be obtained, and services to be developed. Most of these recommendations have only been partly accomplished, as indicated by the A/V Services report. Most of the accomplishments to date have depended on funding from Continuing Studies. We clearly do not have the recommended support services suggested, and only a limited number of classrooms are equipped for complete use of available technology.

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Report of the Computer Planning Board from 1990:

The Computer Planning Board worked for three years to develop a five-year plan for computing at Rice. A detailed plan based on their extensive deliberations was presented in September 1990. The parts of that report pertinent to education are included in the Appendix, and the overall recommendations of the Computer Planning Board along with those specifically regarding teaching and curriculum issues are listed below:

* All faculty, students, and staff should have access to the computational resources necessary for their work.

* Computing resources should be familiar tools for every student, and computing should be systematically integrated into the curriculum.

* Modern administrative computing must be coordinated to provide efficient information management and productivity for educational functions, such as advising, course registration, and course evaluations.

The Electronic Studio was proposed as a means to achieve the first two goals. The studio would allow creation of an intellectual environment that would enable the student to solve problems and link the student to intellectual resources and other members of the university community.

It was recommended that the university must expand and improve its network so that every faculty member, staff person, and student would have access to educational computing facilities. A knowledgeable professional staff would be needed along with considerable resources.

The board made six specific recommendation relative to educational computing:

* Develop and implement the network and Electronic Studio concepts in the seven schools.

* Provide an introduction to computers and basic software that would enable a student to begin working with an electronic studio.

* Offer high-quality courses in important new and expanding subdisciplines that use computing as a principal method.

* Provide a system of coherently ordered computing courses that teach those computing techniques needed in subject-area courses.

* Ensure through graduation requirements that a degree candidate is competent in computation methods essential for the disciplines in which the degree is granted. Departments should specify the types (if any) of computation essential to their fields, as they have specified course requirements in the past.

* Enable every undergraduate student to participate in research through traditional methods or through use of computing.

The implementation of these recommendations is discussed above in the deans' responses. The effort succeeded in some areas and not in others, largely due to a lack of a financial commitment to what would have been a very expensive undertaking. The recent development of three classrooms in Herring Hall that employ a variety of electronic teaching tools but are not the full-fledged, highly ambitious Electronic Studios may suggest that while Rice will need several Electronic Studios, it will need many more (far less expensive) teaching theaters equipped with an overhead projection system that serves a VCR, a computer monitor, a Sony Video Presentation Stand, and various audio formats.

Analysis of Areas by the Committee

Current Services:

The university has begun to develop facilities for development and use of electronic aids to education. Owlnet provides many interactive services and is used extensively in a number of courses. An Electronic Studio and RAVL have been established and a limited number of courses are using such technology. A number of courses use computer simulation during lectures, and quite a number of lecturers use audiovideo materials to supplement their lectures. The university has only a limited number of classrooms equipped for modern electronic use, although a number of rooms continue to be upgraded each year. Assistance in development of new techniques and material is provided from Information Systems and Services.

A number of faculty are just now connected to the network, and many barriers exist to use of electronic media. Many faculty have no idea how to proceed with using technology, and staff to support development-although very competent and helpful-are limited in number. It is clear that a major enhancement of the educational use of electronic technology would not be possible at the current level of service. It must be emphasized that staff support is essential to the most effective and creative use of new technologies in teaching. The problem is less one of hardware and software than of human attitudes and aptitudes. Many faculty who may be hesitant to adopt new tools-even sparingly-must be able to see new technologies demonstrated. Nothing will facilitate the proliferation of new teaching styles like seeing those new styles effectively practiced by colleagues. Faculty should also be encouraged to consider using new technologies for a portion of a course, and that module would be less intimidating to prepare and might well be adaptable in more than one course. Providing released time so that initially a limited number of faculty could develop and model computer-assisted, multimedia, and other kinds of technology-enhanced classes would in the long run lead/persuade other faculty to be more innovative teachers. Assistance in producing teaching materials-as simple as making slides-must be provided and made easy. Assistance includes such mundane things as having a repair technician come to a faculty office to pick up a failed computer and take it to and from the repair facility on campus.

Faculty and secretaries should not have to carry equipment around campus when something breaks. Computers will never achieve their full pedagogical potential unless extensive support is available to faculty, at least in the beginning. Faculty have already begun to experiment, innovate, and develop new programs, but these creative advances will require equipment, assistance, and operational budgets.

Areas that Need Upgrading or Development in the Near Term.

A major investment in facilities and support for course development, teaching development, staff support, and classroom upgrading is required. A center should be established that teaches faculty how to use new techniques and provides both staff support and time for faculty to develop new materials and implement these new techniques. This center, which would offer a number of demonstrations and short courses, should be operating during the summer, when faculty would have the best opportunity of taking advantage of its programs to improve their teaching skills. This center could be based on the Electronic Studio concept, or a variety of new approaches and formats could be taught, perhaps modeled on the kinds of short courses offered by the School of Continuing Studies.

Facilities and materials for many components of the university such as language instruction, engineering and science laboratories and courses, resources for many humanities and social courses, and almost all other segments of the university should be expanded.

Specific Recommendations

Goals:

* That the value of education at a small, selective university like Rice not be diminished or impersonalized by technology but enhanced through carefully planned use.

* That development of uses of technology in teaching provide benefits proportional to cost in money, time, and effort.

* That technology be used to develop learning resources.

* That student research be enhanced with the use of technology.

* That the greater use of information technology in teaching should enhance the effectiveness of teaching as much or more through providing more/better information as through providing better delivery systems.

Actions should be taken to ensure:

* That all students, staff, and faculty have access to the network both on campus and from remote sites.

* That all or a great many classrooms are equipped with capacity for modern education technology; these classrooms might be based on the model developed in Herring Hall.

* That groups are established at the university level and at the divisional level to oversee uses of technology (see below).

* That each division develops its own goals and have an advisory group that oversees development specific to that division.

* That faculty are provided support via released time or student (even postdoctoral) assistance to facilitate the development of new educational approaches

* That all students are given network access during their first orientation week, and that they spend time using these facilities that week so they will be well acquainted with the technology and will be able to access it for academic uses.

* That electronic laboratories in various areas and other facilities are established to allow maximal use of new technologies. A teaching center should be established to help faculty develop techniques using all areas of technology.

* That all students are able to use technology pertinent to their areas for presentations. Student writing workshops can make particularly effective use of networked computers.

* That all graduate students are instructed in uses of presentation or teaching technology pertinent to their fields.

* That the goals of the education section of the Computer Planning Board Report are implemented.

* That the goals of Continuing Studies are amplified through distance learning, lifelong learning efforts, and outreach via networking.

Planning and Implementation

Planning is the key to effective utilization of new advances in computational and communication technology, but any plans need to be able to respond to changing technology and be flexible in approach. Good planning means consultation; it means tailoring applications to different needs and approaches; it means having a vision and having patience. Planning must also be tied to providing the funds and technical assistance to make ideas become reality-otherwise faculty could quickly become disillusioned and cynical about planning.

Expansive vision and limited results can end up undermining the efficacy of planning. Raising expectations only to crush them through lack of follow-through will create resentment and cynicism, thereby harming all subsequent efforts to plan creatively.

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The real gain offered by more use of technology is to provide more time for faculty-student interaction. Increasingly, the intellectual attraction of relatively high-cost private education will be the fact that on such campuses technology has not made human contact less common. The goal for a place such as Rice is to enhance the community of scholars, teachers, and students in a creative ambiance. Collective human response to an idea, an artistic expression, a conceptual problem generates enthusiasm, new ideas, a shared sense of participation in a valuable endeavor. We need to consider how a selective school can continue to provide a "better" education and more value for its students in the face of technology. This effort should be a continuing focus for each division and be a topic continually revisited by the community as a whole. Learning/teaching needs should drive the process of technological application, not vice versa.

For planning purposes the Computer Planning Board should continue to exist with an altered make-up (mostly faculty) to advise the administration on allocation of funds in the technology area and in classroom development and audiovisual areas. The board should have an outside consultant in information technology who can provide timely input to new approaches and technologies. The consultant would research new technologies available and would report on new approaches at other universities.A group that is an analog of the Computer Planning Board with a title such as Electronic Education Planning Committee should be established with representation from all schools; this committee should report to the provost. This group would provide guidance on educational approaches. All schools should develop their own plans and committees for support of the implementation of new technologies across the campus. Needs vary so much across disciplines that at least some planning should be decentralized, though it should be coordinated by the proposed Electronic Education Planning Committee. As part of this process there should be ongoing dialogue on the role of electronic approaches in teaching and clear support for their use in whatever area to be developed. Perhaps each school should have a staff member assigned responsibility for constantly staying abreast of new technologies and innovative applications of technology. This person should, for example, attend the Educom Conference each year so as to be better able to advise faculty about both hardware and software to purchase. Such advice would be welcomed by practically all faculty.

Practically every member of the faculty has had the experience of turning to bright students for on-the-spot computer assistance. Perhaps this reservoir of student talent could be tapped by setting up something similar to the Rice Student Volunteer Program whereby creative students could establish and staff discipline-based workshops to create educational materials for classroom use. Perhaps students could get one hour course credit for participating three hours per week (similar participation in the Rice Concert Band results in one hour credit) in such a workshop with an appropriate acronym like CAKE (Computer Assisted Knowledge Enhancement) that would prototype class-based programs, programs that faculty would experiment with in their classes or have available as supplements to their classes. Many graduate students involved in team research projects already play such a role, but the enormous undergraduate talent available needs to be cultivated and allowed opportunities for expression that would complement the sense of academic community.

Support of new approaches should become an integral part of planning for all development at the university. The plans for three new buildings on campus-the computational engineering building, the building for the James A. Baker III Institute for Public Policy, and the building for nanotechnology and chemistry-include discussions of electronic technology, and it appears that all of these buildings will have good capabilities in these areas, but these are not primarily classroom buildings. There is a critical need for a state- of-the-art classroom building-such as, for example, Edward D. DeBartolo Hall at Notre Dame University-fully equipped to accommodate all the new teaching technology, so that Rice can become a leader in the area of innovative teaching.

Nothing would be more conducive to the creative use of new communication technologies in teaching at Rice than the renovation of a building to include a number of teaching studios based on the model prototyped by the Jones School in Herring Hall. These classrooms could be equipped at a fraction of the cost of the more elaborate Electronic Studios, and the combination of these facilities with the capabilities of the Electronic Studios would allow Rice to support highly innovative teaching. Rice should aspire to being a university that develops, borrows and improves, and implements pedagogical applications of information technology and assesses the worth of such approaches.

Rice's educational goals, which in essence are to provide a special kind of education to unusually able students, must be linked to all planning. We should be able to justify new technology for specific educational purposes, not advocate it just for the sake of novelty.

The Office of Information Systems and Services should not necessarily presume needs but should provide needed service when asked. In fact, proactive efforts may lead to overload. And we must be willing to accept that any particular adaptation of new technology will not be a final answer but will require continuous evaluation and development. Moreover, appreciation of the advantages of applying technology to the teaching enterprise by no means suggests that all traditional formats of teaching are henceforth obsolete.

Any university is a complex institution consisting of many kinds of personalities, learning styles, and teaching skills-and many different kinds of material to be mastered.

No one solution exists. A variety of solutions should be modeled, made available, and supported.

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