November 24, 1997
Steven Koblick
President
Reed College
3200 SE Woodstock Blvd
Portland, OR 97202
Dear Steve,
It took a while, but here is the report from the October meeting of the
Technical Advisory Council. I had the dubious honor of being scrivener and
editor of the document, but the entire TAC, along with Marty Ringle and Eileen
Trudeau, created the content, and it has been reviewed by the TAC. In true
Reed style, the report is less a consensus than a union of opinion, but I
don't believe that there is violent opposition to any elements of it. The
report became longer than is perhaps desirable, so we encourage you to concentrate
on the Executive Summary (page 2) and the overall Summary (pages 10-11).
The balance of the document provides varying levels of rhetoric and detail.
I am forwarding this both by email and by post. I'm sure that any of the
members of the TAC would be happy to discuss the content with you if you
have questions. I think that we all felt that the last TAC meeting was very
fruitful, and look forward to continued interaction.
Sincerely,
Steven McGeady
for the Technical Advisory Council
[Note: the document is attached in text, then in Word95 format.]
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Recommendations from 10/17-18/97
meeting of the Reed College Technical Advisory Council
On October 17th and 18th of 1997 the Reed Technical Advisory Council (TAC)
met to review Reed's progress to date on information technology deployment,
and to advise on technology directions for the future. This document is an
edited version of the notes from that meeting and subsequent email discussions.
Introduction
------------
In 1984, Reed College made a dramatic and compelling decision: every Reed
student would enter the electronic age with equal access to personal computing
resources. That decision represented a vision of the learning environment
of the future. It is again time -- perhaps even past time -- to make an equally
compelling decision. Every student should undertake their Reed education
with unhindered access to communications networks, collaboration applications,
and information resources that reinforce the Reed system of learning.
Back
to top. . .
Reed students are enterprising. They already supplement their local course-based
resources with network searches, share their personal identity in the form
of Web pages, and will access the global information network without substantial
incremental action from the administration. However, Reed has an opportunity
to reinvent the campus residential experience. We urge Reed to make the dramatic
decision to actively teach Reed students the art and skills required to participate
fully in the growing global electronic community.
This report outlines some of the first steps that could be taken to implement
such a decision. It is by no means complete, but may serve as a useful outline
for the next step of Reed's transition into information technology.
Notes and Acknowledgements
This letter provides a sense of the TAC's discussion during our meeting
of October 17- 18, 1997. The presence of a recommendation in this letter
does not imply unanimity in the council, but that a significant part of the
council supported the position. This draft has not yet been reviewed by TAC
members and may be incomplete or contain positions that are stronger than
the council as a whole may endorse. This note was drafted by Steven McGeady,
with significant email input from Adele Goldberg, Carlos de la Huerga, Howard
Reingold, and Doug Spink. Any errors are the responsibility of the drafter.
Executive Summary
-----------------
The TAC has a number of ideas, but there are three primary recommendations:
1. Ubiquitous mobile networked computing -- Reed's brand of education and
community can best be aided by augmenting the current models of education
and socialization with technology, rather than using the technology to mediate
them. This requires rapid and widespread deployment of portable computers
or "information appliances" with wireless network access, and the
presence of projection systems and in-place computers in classrooms and common
areas. In this way access to online information can add depth and speed to
the education process. Part of this recommendation is that Reed should re-evaluate
its current student computer policy.
2. Online archival, access, and indexing of Reed documents -- Reed students
and faculty generate large numbers of documents every year, ranging from
the most humble class reports to professors' class notes and syllabi to Reed
theses and juried academic research papers. Current storage of, indexing
of, and access to these documents is haphazard at best. Reed should encourage
the ubiquitous availability of Web document creation tools and deploy distributed
systems that encourage the archiving, indexing, and rapid, easy retrieval
of these documents.
3. Use the Internet to extend the Reed Community to Alumni -- Former Reed
students, former faculty, and friends of the College are a valuable part
of the Reed Community, yet they cannot participate physically in much of
ongoing life of the community. Reed should harness the energy of alumni through
electronic communication to keep them involved in the college. Encouraging
access by current students to former students who are now professionals in
a relevant field of study is a particular goal.
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TAC Report
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The TAC established four categories in which technology deployment at Reed
can be discussed:
1. Academic/Pedagogic -- Technology-based tools for research and instruction
at Reed;
2. Community-building -- Technology as a mechanism for extending and strengthening
the Reed Community, including faculty, students, administration, alumni,
parents, and friends of the College;
3. Administration -- Technology that enhances quality and/or efficiency
of the administrative business of Reed;
4. Enabling Infrastructure -- The technology infrastructure required to
realize the recommendations in the above areas, and experimental platforms
on which ideas may be developed in each of the areas above.
Technology for Academic Use
---------------------------
The council recommends additional and more focused investment in tools that
allow faculty, at their discretion to more easily adopt technology as part
of their teaching methods. The recommendations by the council fall into two
general categories:
-- Enhancing research and teaching tools available to the faculty and encouraging
their appropriate adoption; and
-- Extending the collaborative nature of the Reed Conference beyond the
classroom, onto the Web, to other classes and to alumni. A Caution Several
of the TAC members expressed concern over overt attempts to influence the
academic side of Reed. Ultimately Reed is distinguished because of a rigorous
and traditional academic environment, a low student-to-faculty ratio, and
instructional methods emphasizing interpersonal communication and the conference
method. Ultimately it should be the faculty (and, to a lesser degree and
in a different way, the students) who determine which uses of technology
enhance the teaching process and which do not. If faculty are conservative
and reluctant to adopt technology, then that should be respected. There is
a fine line between encouragement and coercion -- we believe that the Administration
is already sensitive to this, and the TAC doesn't want to upset this balance.
Research and Teaching Tools
The enhancement of research and teaching tools appears to be largely domain-specific:
each department will need to evaluate and select technologies that are appropriate
for its source material and teaching style.
-- Increase faculty encouragement -- We believe that Reed should find mechanisms
to encourage more technological experimentation by faculty. Currently available
foundation grants have done this to a limited degree, but encouragement toward
experimentation should be institutionalized in some way.
-- Results Assessment -- At the same time, it is important that assessment
of the results from technology experiments (and perhaps of teaching methods
in general) be brought to bear to guide the faculty and administration in
their deployment of technological teaching aids.
-- Teach Online Skills -- The Council noted that Reed has maintained excellence
in teaching Research and Communication skills to its students. The traditional
style of Reed has emphasized traditional versions of these skills. The TAC
believes that, in addition to traditional methods of research and in- person
forms of communication, electronic and online research and communication
skills will be needed by students in the future, and that Reed should consider
how to teach these skills as well. Beyond provision of the tools outlined
in this letter, we do not have specific ideas about how to accomplish this,
but this does not diminish our recommendation that it be considered.
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to top. . .
Experimentation
It is not possible to accurately predict which forms of electronic communication
and information access will be successful at Reed. The College's planning
process should include a mechanism for experimentation that defines specific
goals and includes a research design, a means to collect data, and plans
for assessment, dissemination of information, and implementation.
Focused experimentation should take place both at the social (institution-wide)
and individual levels. It should be conducted by both faculty and students.
In support of this experimentation, the Council has a specific suggestion
to make:
-- Academic Software "Beta-Tester" -- It is suggested that a per-department
liaison be established (or continued) to expose faculty to new applications
and ideas, and that the Computing and Information Services (CIS) team employ
one or more people to bring to Reed operating examples ("beta- tests")
of new technologies, to increase the overall exposure to them, to gain experience
with emerging online application paradigms, and to see which new ideas might "catch" and
be more broadly adopted. Commercial applications can often be tested for
weeks or months at little or no cost, and removed if a user community fails
to develop.
Extending the Classroom
The extension of the collaborative nature of the Reed Conference cuts across
all Reed departments. It is the belief of the Council that a key value of
technology might be to extend the reach of academic lectures, in-conference
discussions, and student papers to current students and faculty beyond the
hours of the class, to upper-classmen in similar or related subjects, and
to alumni and friends of Reed beyond the campus. We encourage the testing
and deployment of tools that allow for collaborative creation of web pages,
to distribute some of the burden of creating web content away from faculty,
to provide students a glimpse at previous attempts at understanding the topic
at hand, and to engage the alumni community in ongoing academic discussions
happening on campus.
There were some specific suggestions for academically related technology
projects:
-- Online archives of lectures and class materials -- Students have long
tape- recorded Humanities lectures and other classes, and many professors
prepare formal and semi-formal notes for use with their classes. It is the
Council's recommendation that the Administration encourage deposit of these
materials online, in audio form (using accepted commercial products such
as Progressive Networks' RealAudio(tm) or technology from Eloquent, Inc)
or as transcriptions. The Council is of varying opinion concerning the importance
of indexing the material. On one hand, the mere presence of the archived
material may be sufficient to generate new and unanticipated uses of the
information. However, indexing of these lectures and materials, through either
(or both) human and automated means, could dramatically increase their usefulness.
-- Online archives of Reed theses -- Alumni members of the TAC (as well
as our student guests) identified the value of an archival record of Reed
theses to students attempting to pursue their own theses or other undergraduate
research. The Senior Thesis is one of the defining elements of a Reed education,
and the availability of them beyond the Library Tower would benefit students
as well as other community members. It is the opinion of the TAC that few
new Reed theses are not prepared digitally, so at a minimum those should
be able to be captured, archived, and made available on the Web. As with
other data, a sophisticated index of theses is crucial, and an important
incremental benefit of technology: the alphabetical-by- author form of storage
in the library not being well adapted to browsing. It was commented that
the current library search system is not sufficiently easy to use to serve
this purpose. Even if it is not feasible to put historical theses online,
a repository for new theses should be established and titles and abstracts
from older theses should be added as possible.
Many of the ideas for extending the classroom depend on making a ubiquitous
computing infrastructure available, allowing live discussion of online materials
anywhere on campus. These ideas are discussed below in the section on infrastructure.
Back
to top. . .
Community Building
------------------
The Reed academic life and its community are tightly interwoven. However,
the Reed Community extends beyond the realm of current students and faculty,
and includes alumni, academics from other institutions, former faculty, parents,
and other friends of the College.
Computer-Augmented vs. Computer-Mediated
In discussing technology for use at Reed, there is always a great deal of
concern about the possibility of technology replacing the person-to-person,
physical interaction dominant in both the teaching and social environments.
When interpersonal and group interaction is discussed, many people think
of only email, bulletin boards, chat rooms, or videoconferencing, engaged
in by persons sitting alone at their computers -- this is computer-mediated
communication, i.e. the computer and communications network sits between
the participants. Elements of the Reed Community, notably alumni and parents
who are geographically distant from campus will be able to participate more
effectively if some of these technologies are deployed. But the Council wishes
to emphasize the importance of computer-augmented communication -- old-fashioned
in-person interaction that is enhanced (rather than replaced) by the presence
of a network- connected computers. It is our opinion that bringing the depth
and breadth of information available online to a student discussion or a
conference, without taking away the valuable social and intellectual interaction,
would enhance, rather than detract from, the educational environment at Reed.
-- Permanent Email Addresses / Web Pages for Alumni -- Extending the online
Reed community beyond the campus can be encouraged by providing electronic
alumni benefits. The suggestion was made that Reed can, at little cost, provide
a valuable commodity in the electronic world -- an email address that never
changes. Allowing alumni@reed.edu addresses, even if they are only mail redirectors,
would both provide a service to Reed alumni (comparable to access to the
Sports Palace or Library), and serve to extend the Reed "brand" into
cyberspace in a manner reminiscent of alumni automobile rear-window stickers.
Providing web page hosting is more expensive, but would enhance the participation
of ex-Reedies in ongoing college activities. Alumni association dues or direct
fees (it could even be a profit center for the CIS) could offset costs.
-- Collaborative Web Authoring Tools -- Moving the web from a one-to-many
model to a many-to-many model (more reminiscent of a Reed discussion) might
make the Web more relevant to campus life. There are emerging mechanisms
that will allow multiple people to annotate and add documents and pointers
to a page, making the construction of these pages less an act of personal
authoring and more of a "barn-raising". It is felt that this class
of tools would encourage more participation from off-campus and alumni participants,
and would expand the number of web pages that are relevant to academic and
social issues at Reed rather than "personal billboards."
Administration
--------------
The TAC has little to say about the administrative use of technology at
Reed, other than this: we are unimpressed with the "brochure-ware" on
the current Reed website. www.reed.com appears to many of us to be quite
un-Reed-like in appearance, and lacking in distinction. It should be the
responsibility of each administrative department (Admissions, Development,
Alumni Relations, etc) to determine the appropriate level of Internet presence
for their purposes, and they should spend their own budgets (not the CIS')
to implement this presence. Technology may provide significant economies
in Reed's administration, and when this is the case should be pursued, but
in this area Reed is not and should not strive to be distinctive.
Infrastructure
--------------
Ubiquity and The Assumption of Presence
One thread that ran through the Council's discussion was the desire for
certain technology capabilities to become ubiquitous on campus. While the
specific list may be debated, it is felt that in order to determine the viability
of specific application technology, and to encourage the adoption of technology
for both teaching and community-building, faculty and students must be able
to assume the existence of a sufficient infrastructure to experiment with
new applications and instructional models.
We congratulate the CIS for its success at establishing a reliable, campus-wide
personal computing infrastructure at Reed. But it is the TAC's recommendation
that the time has come to take the next step in this infrastructure deployment.
In 1978 Reed first allocated a computer solely to academic purposes. In 1984
Reed resolved to embrace personal computer technology and integrate those
computers with a campus network. The next stage of Reed's computing environment
is the move to ubiquitous, campus- wide mobile networked computing. Reed's
computing needs to move out of Computing Labs and Resource Centers and into
every classroom and laboratory, every ad hoc Coffee Shop or Front Lawn discussion
group, into the Commons and the Student Union, and every other location where
students gather to discuss their studies. Rooms should be universally equipped
with large VGA monitors or projection systems. In short, computer technology
should take the next step toward ubiquity on campus -- it needs to be everywhere.
In addition to this, Reed must ensure that Web authoring tools and Web servers
are ubiquitously available on campus. Authoring for the Web should be as
easy and nearly as frequent as its use as an information source. Distributed
resources should allow not just every Reed Thesis, but also every Humanities
paper or the data from every lab experiment to be accumulated online.
The specific recommendations are:
-- Ubiquitous Mobile Computing -- Every student should be encourage to have
a portable computer of some sort. While this need not be a laptop PC of the
latest and most expensive variety, the TAC feels that instant access to deeper
and broader information than can be carried in a notebook would enhance the
open and frequent interchange of ideas at Reed;
-- Campus-wide wireless network -- Access to both the Reed intranet and
to the Internet in general is critical to mobile computing. Wireless networking
is the least intrusive and fastest way to give network access to everyone.
Unless the network is immediately and painlessly accessible to every student,
everywhere on campus, collaborative networked applications will develop and
spread much more slowly.
-- Video projectors everywhere -- As information continues to move online,
the modern equivalent of the blackboard (now whiteboard) is the video projector.
If every conference table in a small classroom at Reed had a VGA cable connection
in the middle, then the "look at this" model of discourse using
online information would be encouraged;
-- Every computer a Web server -- The CIS should encourage everyone at Reed
to routinely deposit and advertise resources as they are created. The web
thrives on large amounts of data, not solely to be browsed by individuals,
but to provide grist for search engines, indexing tools, and other emerging
networked applications. The combined power of the desktop PCs around campus
will always vastly exceed the power of the central servers, and encouraging
every computer to be an active provider (as well as consumer) of information
is a step in the direction of more effectively using that distributed capability.
Back
to top. . .
The Platform Issue
Reed, for a variety of historical reasons, is dominated by Macintosh(tm)
computers. While they represent less than 10% of all personal computers,
they comprise more than 90% of Reed's computing infrastructure. In many cases,
software that the TAC might recommend is only available for Windows(tm)/Intel
Architecture Personal Computers. Without condoning this state of affairs,
the TAC observes that Reed's reliance on Macintosh computers slows its adoption
of new software, is more expensive, and complicates future planning. The
former ease-of-use advantages of Macintosh computers are now at best debatable.
Reed's transition to this far more widely accepted platform has been slow.
Reed continues to offer only Macintosh desktop and mobile computers for sale,
and supports networked Windows/Intel PCs in only limited configurations.
The TAC strongly recommends that Reed radically accelerate its transition
to standard Windows/Intel PCs, while retaining choice for those who wish
to continue using Macintosh computers.
Some TAC members believe that Reed should immediately begin offering comparably
configured Windows/Intel PCs to students who wish to purchase them, and should
begin to offer support for a larger number of standard configurations.
Alternatively, some believe that Reed should not be in the business of selling
computers. Given the rapid rate of change in the PC industry, it will be
difficult to identify and qualify appropriate system configurations. Rather
than attempting to directly supply student and faculty PC needs, Reed might
find it more effective to negotiate discounts for student purchases at local
computer stores.
In either case, the arguments for slower transitions are unconvincing, and
this issue is one which is most likely to hinder Reed in its adoption of
new technology. We urge serious and immediate action in this area.
Summary
-------
1. Academic Technology -- Encourage adoption of technology to enhance the
traditional Reed academic environment.
-- Increase faculty encouragement -- Create additional incentives for faculty
use of technology.
-- Results Assessment -- Aggressively analyze the benefits of technology
deployments and publish the results.
-- Teach Online Skills -- Find ways of adding on-line skills to Reed's pedagogy.
-- Academic Software "Beta-Tester" -- Support academic experimentation
with skilled, dedicated human resources.
Extend the collaborative nature of the Reed Conference beyond the classroom.
-- Online archives of lectures, class materials, and Reed theses -- Encourage
the digital archiving of academic material of all sorts.
2. Community-building -- Use technology to extending and strengthen the
Reed Community.
-- Permanent Email Addresses / Web Pages for Alumni -- Bring alumni back
into the College through cyberspace.
-- Collaborative Web Authoring Tools -- Allow everyone to interact with
the campus social and academic body of knowledge through multi-author collaborative
web sites.
3. Administration -- The Council doesn't have recommendations concerning
administrative computing.
4. Enabling Infrastructure -- Create the technology infrastructure required
to realize the recommendations of the Council.
-- Ubiquitous Mobile Computing -- Move from desktop PCs to mobile and handheld
devices that can be used by students and faculty anywhere they are useful,
vs. in computing centers, offices, and dorm rooms.
-- Campus-wide wireless network -- Connect these devices with a wireless
network that allows true mobility.
-- Video projectors everywhere -- Allow sharing of these devices by installing
projection systems in classrooms and elsewhere.
-- Every computer a Web server -- Distribute the computing environment across
campus.
-- Accelerate the transition to standard Windows/Intel PCs -- Build on the
dominant computing industry to maximize use of standard software and systems.
