LEAD Report Released

By Donna Justice

Only a few years ago, the synergy of information technology and instruction seemed a wave on the distant horizon. Today, that wave is breaking on our shores. Some universities have prepared well, defining and building the technology necessary to enable their faculty and students to teach and learn in a world where the use of information technology is married to the delivery of instruction. At UC Davis, the Academic Computing Coordinating Council (AC4) sponsored a project called LEAD (Learning Environment Architecture Development). Begun in Fall 1998, LEAD was tasked with identifying the instructional technology needs of UC Davis faculty and students and defining a learning environment supported by technology. The following is a summary of the project's final report and recommendations.

 
Background
Working with a cross-section of the campus community, the LEAD team explored the opportunities to make distributed learning a reality on this campus. (For a more detailed definition of distributed learning and additional background on this project, see "Distributed Learning: LEADing the Campus into the Future" in the November 1999 IT Times.)

"The LEAD project is immensely valuable to the AC4 in providing the elements of a plan for instructional computing on campus," says Harry Matthews, Chair of the Academic Computing Coordinating Council (AC4) and Associate Professor, Biochemistry. "It is partly a set of recommendations for current action, based on a comprehensive needs analysis, partly a process for analyzing future proposals, and partly a description of some barriers to the development of an appropriate academic computing environment."

 
Needs Assessment
"To recommend the necessary infrastructure of a distributed learning environment, we had to first have an understanding of campus needs and the alternative technologies available to meet those needs," says LEAD Project Manager Vicki Suter, IT-Distributed Computing Analysis and Support.

LEAD's report (http://lead.ucdavis.edu/) to the AC4 outlines several basic needs identified by faculty and staff, as well as advice from instructional technology consultants from off campus, collected through a series of surveys, interviews, and think tanks.

• Manage complexity. Included in this category is the need to help faculty more easily re-use their work (presentations, course materials, etc.), use a wide range of information technology tools (from easy to use to complex) for a wide range of tasks, and manage information flow (including email).

• Manage dissemination of and access to information. Included here is the need to help faculty and students collect, publish, and distribute course-related materials more efficiently and cost-effectively and help faculty control access to their intellectual property.

• Facilitate communication and collaboration. These needs are identified as helping faculty connect better to students and fostering student to student collaboration. In general, faculty would like to create "an environment which provides communication and participation options for more reticent students," according to the report. In addition, faculty want an easier way to share work when it is re-usable, especially instructional materials (e.g., simulations, slides, etc.).

• Support "mobile computing" and all platforms (e.g., Mac, PC, etc.). All users need the ability to work from anywhere, anytime, using virtually any kind of computer and operating system.

 
Recommendations
In early April, the LEAD project team submitted nine recommendations to the AC4. Those recommendations, now under consideration, are based on the needs assessment described above.

• Develop role/task-based Web portals to enable students and faculty to manage tasks related to teaching and learning and enable technical staff to manage tasks related to faculty support. (For more information on portals, see "Web Portals Explained" in the March IT Times.)

• Provide faculty with access to full course management functionality. Commercial course management systems are integrated software packages for creating, managing, updating, and archiving complex course web pages, class records and databases. They provide testing and grading functions, support student communication and collaboration, and provide common file spaces for distributing class handouts and collecting assignments. The most advanced systems support automated interfaces with existing campus student information systems.

• Provide access to course Web pages, email, and all related class activities through the student portal.

• Support mobile work for faculty, staff and students. Faculty need to have secure, ubiquitous access on and off campus to the campus network, course administrative systems (such as course management tools like course disk space, class rosters, email lists, newsgroups and chat rooms) and email.

• Provide systems for controlling and authorizing access to intellectual property (e.g., lectures, handouts, syllabi, etc.).

• Evaluate campus distributed computing systems currently used for course Web pages (Web servers, databases, and middleware) to determine campuswide usability.

• Provide design guidelines for campus developers of instructional systems.

• Provide communication tools for informal collaboration.

• Evaluate digital repositories for instructional use.

 
Next Steps
All LEAD recommendations are currently under consideration by the AC4.

"The Council, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice-Provost for Information and Educational Technology, is working towards implementation of Instructional Technology Funds (IFT) projects that address several of the LEAD report's recommendations and also towards dismantling the barriers identified by the LEAD project," says Matthews. "The AC4's Educational Subcommittee, chaired by Professor Matt Bishop, has been taking the lead in these initiatives and will continue to do so."

Some key projects now under development that could address LEAD recommendations include the following.

• MyUCDavis. MyUCDavis is a special Web site that functions like a doorway to many UC Davis-specific online services and information. Designed as a "portal," the current MyUCDavis prototypes are intended for UC Davis faculty and students.

  Ready in the fall, the faculty portal will include classroom information (computer labs, general assignment classrooms, etc.), access to course Web pages, email messages (via a secure built-in email feature), simple course management tools (course disk space, course rosters, email lists, newsgroups, chat rooms, etc.), basic course Web page templates, library resources, and messages from key campus groups (in the Campus Message Center).

  The student portal will include email messages (via a secure built-in email feature), class schedule (add/drop classes, look up classes, change class options, etc.), Web pages for your courses, grades (unofficial transcripts), financial aid and accounting information, Degree Navigator (to chart progress toward degree), library resources (find articles, renew books, check due dates, etc.), favorite bookmarked Web sites, and messages from key campus groups (in Campus Message Center).

• Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol (DHCP). This project could help meet the need for mobile computing. DHCP (an Instructional Technology Funds project) allows users to dynamically configure desktop computers and laptops to access the campus network. This means that with the right equipment UC Davis faculty, staff, and students will be able to easily connect to the network from any port at UC Davis.

• General Campus Network Access Ports and Campus High-Speed Wireless pilot. In addition to the DHCP project, there two other ITF projects (slated for fall) could go a long way toward making mobile computing easier for faculty and students. Available in public areas throughout the campus, the General Campus Access ports allow registered individuals to connect their laptops to the campus network. While convenient for the mobile computer user, these ports are few in number (34) and in high demand. This project will greatly increase the number of these ports on campus (an additional 220), while improving accessibility to the campus network.

  The Campus High-Speed Wireless pilot will test the feasibility and costs of supporting a new type of wireless access that is limited by proximity (~200 foot radius) to the main transceivers in a given location. A small pilot is underway this spring with students to test the wireless capability in an open-access room in the Law Library at King Hall. A similar small test installation at the Extended Hours Reading Room at Shields Library and the Griffin Lounge and Patio at the Memorial Union will occur this summer, in preparation for the fall quarter implementation.

Finally, the LEAD project recommended that campus site licenses be acquired for the top two integrated course management systems (CourseInfo and WebCT) and that pilots be conducted to evaluate the costs and benefits of using such packages. The Division of Information Technology has acquired site licenses for pilots run by the Teaching Resources Center this spring quarter. For more information, see http://trc.ucdavis.edu/courseware/.