Eugene, Oregon
May 13-15, 1998

The Future Network: Transforming Learning and Scholarship

Beyond Potemkin Villages: Networks and Learning

Betsy Wilson
Associate Director of Libraries for Public Services
University of Washington

Let me take you back to that IBM commercial of a year or so back. An elderly man walks with his young granddaughter down the winding, narrow, stone streets of a Tuscan village. We are privy to their conversation. He tells her that he had always wanted to study music, but living in a small village kept him from doing so. Not any more, thanks to the Internet. He is studying at an American University half a world away. He forgets to mention that this is still not a functioning reality, but we wish, for his sake, that it were.

For years, we have been promised huge educational benefit from technology--first from television then video then computers and now the Internet. The results have generally been disappointing, especially given the hype and cost. But the new networked technologies are for real.

When the new technologies are combined with students who are members of the "digital generation," tremendous opportunities for new learning environments are created. These students were raised in a world of robust and ubiquitous electronic media. Learning is a plug and play experience for many. They are unaccustomed to and impatient with learning sequentially and are more adept at participatory and experiential learning.

One question is whether faculty who grew up in a very different technological environment will be able to recognize these new opportunities. Given the potential financial savings and the power of distributed access, there is a great deal of pressure on faculty to adopt them. Will they have the time, motivation, rewards, and support to do so? I recently heard a public official chastise those in higher education who don't recognize the need for profound change. He says they are "suffering from mural dyslexia--failure to see the writing on the wall."

The reality seems ready to happen. But, the hard work is just beginning for those of us at research universities.

Today, I am going to try to decipher the writing on the wall, suggest some new instructional approaches made possible by networked technology, and share some successful strategies that are working today.

There is a lot of talk of how technology will allow us to educate more students faster and cheaper. Expectations about networked technology have grown to almost mythic proportions.

It is imperative that we know what we are trying to achieve pedagogically before we can truly take advantage of the network. As Steve Ehrmann has said: "If we rush out and buy new technologies without first asking hard questions about appropriate educational goals, the results are likely to be disappointing and wasteful."1 If you are headed in the wrong direction, technology will only get you there faster.

We know that the three major types of learning--accumulation of information and knowledge, skill development, and conceptual development--are fostered in certain settings. Arthur Chickering and Zelda Gamson summarize many years of research and practice.2 If you want to increase learning:

• Encourage student/faculty contact;
  
• Enable collaboration among students;
  
• Give prompt feedback;
  
• Provide more time on task;
  
• Communicate high expectations; and
  
• Support diverse ways of learning.

So how do networked technologies allow us to create these best learning practices? 3

First, can we use networks to encourage contact between learners and instructors?

You betcha. This one is easy. We all have our own success stories of asynchronous communication. E-mail, computer conferencing, and the Web allow students and faculty to exchange ideas faster and more often. And it is a lot more comfortable over the network than addressing a teaching in the classroom or during office hours. Interaction increases, and learning increases.

Second, how can we use networking to facilitate reciprocity and collaboration among learners?

Another big win for networks--distributed study groups, collaborative learning, and group problem solving. The extent to which the Internet encourages spontaneous collaboration was one of the earliest surprises about networks.

Third, how can we use networks for active learning?

The possibilities are almost limitless. Networking supports learning by doing, time-shifted interaction, and productive engagement.

Fourth, how can we use networking to provide continuous and prompt feedback?

The ways in which new technologies can provide feedback are many, and we've just begun to scratch the surface. As our universities move toward capstone experiences and learning outcomes and assessment, networks can provide us with storage and easy access to learner processes. Most importantly, networks enable self-assessment, so that learning continues.

Fifth, how can we use networking to allow more time on task?

When learning is limited to the classroom, Monday-Wednesday-Friday at 9 a.m., learning is constrained. Learning can now be carried on 24 by 7.

Sixth, how can we use networks to communicate high expectations?

Many of us have experienced, first-hand, heightened expectations from being self-published on the Web. As students share their work with peers, and the world--work that was previously only seen by the instructor--standards rise.

And finally, how can we use networked technologies to support diverse ways of learning?

Another huge gain. The visual, the accelerated, the plodding, the linear, the non-linear learner can all be accommodated. Perhaps the greatest gain is the enfranchisement of those with different physical constraints or cognitive processes.

What happens when we don't bring networked technology into the service of learning? We end up with the pedagogical equivalent of Potemkin Villages. Like these villages, the creation of technological edifices on our campuses gives us the illusion that all is well in the hinterlands. But, if we look closer, we may uncover an educational sham focused solely on web forms, pretty screens, and showcase electronic classrooms--but little or no learning is occurring.

How do we make sure that we move beyond Potemkin classrooms and "bolted-on" technology? How do we use networks to move, as James Duderstadt has said, from just in case to just in time to just for you learning?4

I'd like to share with you the experience of one institution--the University of Washington--and one particular approach called UWired.

UWired is a campus-wide effort to create learning communities in which communication, collaboration, and networked technologies become part of teaching and learning. Launched in 1994 as a collaboration of the University Libraries, campus computing, and the Office of Undergraduate Education, UWired has grown from a pilot project for a small number of incoming freshmen to a university-wide initiative that touches thousands of students and hundreds of faculty. Partners in the collaboration now include Educational Outreach and the Office of Educational Partnerships. It is not insignificant that UWired was launched the same year that Mosaic came into our sight lines. Of course, we have a dynamic website (http://www.washington.edu/uwired/) and I encourage you to take a look at it at your leisure.

UWired believes that higher education is being fundamentally transformed by the networked environment. We also believe that the future of higher education will be determined in large part by how individuals and institutions respond to networked technology.

We do not believe that technology can or should replace the efforts of individual faculty. Rather, we seek to find ways to give faculty and their students access to networked technologies and assist them in making use of these technologies in ways that increase learning. We support faculty and other educators with workshops and consultation at the UWired Center for Teaching, Learning, and Technology, and provide wired learning spaces in the UWired Collaboratories. Students, faculty, and staff are supported at our general access computing learning commons. In addition, UWired works with our partners and other affiliate organizations to address policy issues raised by networked technology, that, unless resolved, will hamstring learning.

We argue that information technology has the potential to transform teaching and learning in at least four major ways. It can: (1) promote curricular integration, (2) serve as a catalyst for integration and sharing among currently disengaged fields of study, (3) facilitate active and collaborative learning, and (4) extend learning opportunities to new populations of students. Technology makes it possible for instructors to share materials, curriculum, and information about teaching approaches with their peers in ways that can forge new links between courses, within a field of study, as well as between fields of study. Traditionally, the challenge of technology has been understood as "integrating technology into the curriculum." We propose going beyond that view by demonstrating how the curriculum can in fact be "integrated through technology." The synergies of this type of integration should make the learning environment of the University of Washington exceed the sum of the efforts of individuals. By facilitating active and collaborative learning approaches through networked technology, we seek to put students in charge of their own learning, something that is much more easily done in a networked environment of curricular coherence.

Many tangibles have been gained under the UWired umbrella. Information literacy and technology instruction is now part of the freshman learning group experience and transfer student curriculum. Three collaboratories have been built in the library which facilitate electronic learning communities. The 240-seat UWired Commons opened last fall. Over 40 upper-division classes and two entire curriculums have been reshaped to leverage networked technology for course delivery, content, and distributed learning. Intercollegiate Athletics has also become a partner in UWired, providing student athletes laptops and the skills to stay connected while on the road.

In the beginning, UWired focused on students, facilities, and technological infrastructure. Our first effort was to distribute laptops to freshmen in small learning communities, and provide them with instruction and plug and play space. We sent them off into the wild world web. The students truly were transformed by the experience--as were the UWired faculty and librarians. I can still see the UWired student, who, addressing a group of faculty, held up his laptop over his head, and said, "This is the future. Either get on the bus, or get out of our way." We are gathering these original cohorts together next month as the students prepare for graduation. I am sure there will be compelling stories to share.

But this approach was not scaleable and sustainable at a large research institution and in some ways missed the point. We realized that we needed to create a learning and transformational infrastructure for educators as well as students. That infrastructure now includes a physical center, the UWired Center for Teaching, Learning and Technology, a virtual commons for educators, a growing digital library, and a departmental approach to curricular change. This approach focuses on how networked technology might transform the educational process and what academic departments, schools, and colleges gain from committing themselves--as entire academic units--to using networked technology as a "way of doing business." Recognizing the limitations of working only with individual faculty, UWired supports opportunities for curriculum integration among entire departments and between academic disciplines. We are moving from the individual early adopter to the collective department level to explore methods for insuring long-term sustainable change. Perhaps equally exciting is the opportunity to draw on the creative intellectual rigor that comes from the collective participation and engagement of faculty.

In addition, UWired has entered into several collaborations aimed at using our state's K-20 network to extend the resources of a research university to learners and educators across the state. Briefly, I want to highlight two of these.

The first is a web-based credit-bearing Teaching, Learning, and Technology Program for K-12 educators. Teachers can take self-paced modules, interact electronically with experts and fellow educators, and fulfill specific certification requirements. Interactive modules cover using web resources in instruction, creating web-based instructional materials, issues of teaching with technology, finding and evaluating web resources, assessment and technology, social and ethical issues, and networked technology. Check out the UWired web site to experience these modules first hand. The Program has been collaboratively developed by teachers, instructional designers, students, librarians, graphic artists, and technologists.

The second project is the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest, an interactive website. Educators in Pacific Northwest history, from middle school on, find at the site an exciting tool designed for their classroom's expedition across this vast, rugged, and often rainy region. This virtual Center provides scholarly resources on the Northwest region; connects educators and students to news and current events; and provides a forum for on-line discussion with PNW scholars and fellow instructors. The Libraries has taken the lead in building the Digital Northwest--an organized repository of primary materials that provides the foundation for this learning site. From scanned manuscript materials from the Japanese-American relocation and internment in the Pacific Northwest to photographs from the Klondike gold rush to the archives of the Canwell Red Scare hearings at the University of Washington, the unique resources of a research library are being extended over the state's K-20 network.

I believe that the greatest contribution research libraries can make to the distributed learning environments rests in how we shape the digital library. To date, most work has focused on technical challenges and complex retrieval questions. I urge us not to miss the opportunity to construct digital libraries that support learning. A rich, remotely accessible, and authoritative library is a pre-requisite to quality distributed learning. A digital library can provide the content, and, more importantly, the context, necessary to bridge the gap in time and space for our students.

In conclusion, the instructional opportunities provided by networking are simultaneously staggering and challenging. If we can build the requisite learning infrastructure, complete with rich and remotely accessible libraries and meaningful intellectual content and context, and support it with instructional teams that include librarians as curricular transformers, we will succeed in using networks to create excellent conditions for learning. We can create learning environments where students and faculty interact often and effortlessly, where students collaborate with one another regardless of where they are located, where learning is active, where feedback is rich and continuous, where expectations are high, and where diverse ways of learning are supported. If we use networked technology with these goals in mind, we won't build any more Potemkin classrooms, but rather rich and distributed learning environments.

Footnotes

1. Stephen C. Ehrmann, "Asking the Right Questions: What Does Research Tell Us about Technology and Higher Learning?" Change (Mar./Apr. 1995): 21-27.
   
2. Arthur W. Chickering, and Zelda Gamson, "Seven Principles for Good Practice in Undergraduate Education," AAHE Bulletin (Mar. 1987): 3-7.
   
3. Arthur W. Chickering, and Stephen C. Ehrmann, "Implementing the Seven Principles: Technology as Lever," AAHE Bulletin (Oct. 1996): 3-6.
   
4. James J. Duderstadt, "Transforming the University to Serve the Digital Age," CAUSE/EFFECT (Win. 1997-98): 21-32.