Not everyone wants to drive down the information highway, and not everyone is convinced that cyberspace is close to heaven. Some faculty find it hard to imagine a learning community with students they never see. Still others believe the personal touch of classroom instruction is vital to the learning process.

Just as online teaching isn't for all faculty, Glidden says universities need to use technology to enhance and reshape the curriculum and be careful that they "don't get carried away with technology for its own sake."

"The thing that technology can do right now that we desperately need in education is provide ways to engage the learner," Glidden says.

Stinson says, "What technology has enabled us to do is increase the knowledge building of students. By using technology - the Web, the way you can access OhioLink at the library, multimedia/CD support and delivery systems - we give students more responsibility for their own learning and put faculty members in the role of coach or guide by the side, instead of the sage on the stage."

Ohio University's Center for Teaching Excellence has investigated the subject of using e-mail and the Internet in the classroom and whether technology improves learning. According to a study conducted by the center, students do learn more about course subject matter as well as Internet use as their familiarity with the technology increases.

"The more students communicate electronically, the more they gain from their courses, and the more they are becoming prepared to enter a world where computer-mediated communication is increasingly the norm," center Director Karin Sandell said.

In the spring of 1995, the center, a part of University College, ran a study of different computer-based communication applications in 13 classes to explore different models for using e-mail in the classroom, study ways of enhancing student familiarity with and use of e-mail, and examine the impact of e-mail use on subsequent learning. Seven hundred students in subjects ranging from mathematics to music to management were surveyed about both e-mail use and attitudes as well as how much they learned in their courses.

This spring, 10 faculty followed up on that project by putting their fall and winter course syllabi on a World Wide Web page to be accessed through the Center for Teaching Excellence's home page. The project is designed to show ways of exploring the Internet in a meaningful way - "not only how to find things but how to evaluate them, too," said Sandell. "If students can have access to a syllabus, they can explore links and prepare for the class early."

The Web syllabus project is overseen by Associate Professor of Journalism Bob Stewart. This spring, he taught the first of what has proven to be a high-demand class titled "Journalism on the Web." In the class, students explored journalism Web sites and created a Web publication of stories they wrote and uploaded to a page they designed. The first publication's topic: the virtual university. Among concerns students reported in the survey last spring were a need for better access to e-mail and more technical support with computer technology. "With e-mail in the classroom, the access issue was phenomenally important," Sandell said.

Increasing e-mail and Internet availability was a primary goal of Glidden's when he arrived on the Athens campus from Florida State two years ago with a high-tech reputation. Today, several technology initiatives are under way at the university. For starters, more than $1.5 million has been added to the campus' base budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 to fund a major networking project that will result in the connection of "every faculty and staff office, every lab and every classroom on the Athens campus to the network" within two years, said Paul Gandel, named the campus' first associate provost for information and instructional technology last summer.

Also included is $200,000 toward replacing outdated computer equipment in student labs and increasing students' access to e-mail. More than 13,000 active accounts were in use spring quarter on the campus' e-mail system for students. By the end of June, 85 percent of offices of Athens full-time faculty and 50 percent of administrative and classified staff offices were expected to be connected to the campus e-mail network.

Other funding will go to upgrading classroom technology, support services and computer labs. Gandel said $200,000 in technology improvements will be made to 13 classrooms in three buildings on campus, including the installation of large-screen video projects, VCRs and monitors.

Also, 950 rooms in eight residence halls on campus will become the first to be wired with direct high-speed Ethernet Internet connections by the end of fall quarter as part of a $400,000 project funded by residence hall and dining accounts and a one-time Ohio Legislature technology allocation.
Students in other residence halls and off campus will continue to have modem access to Internet services through the university's Bobcat Connection: DialNet, a service launched in January that offers discounted rates for high speed dial-in access.

Administratively, the university is redesigning and reorganizing its home page offerings and planning to offer additional electronic options, such as an online application process for prospective students. This past winter, Athens campus students applying for upperclass scholarships began completing electronic applications using e-mail or the World Wide Web. The system is designed to reduce paperwork and allow students to submit the financial aid applications at their convenience from home or laboratory computers.

Soon after arriving on campus, Gandel formed the 26-member Information Resources Council (IRC) as a way of coordinating a massive technology planning effort. The IRC, which includes five program groups, meets monthly. Gandel said the council currently is drafting a computer use policy and developing a plan for improved technology support throughout the campus. Gandel hopes the IRC can complete a "full-scale strategic plan" for campus technology by late this fall.

Many of those in tune with technology at the university agree that OU has been playing catch-up with comparable universities in online curriculum advancement. They also agree that the university has made dramatic progress since Glidden's arrival.

"The number of people who have access to e-mail has increased dramatically," Glidden said. "I've been very encouraged and very gratified by the openness of faculty to all this."

Let's just admit it: It's impossible to highlight all innovative uses of computer and related technologies in cur- riculum and research efforts at Ohio University. Glidden says there are pockets of technology excellence throughout the Athens campus. In particular, he points to University Libraries, and the colleges of Engineering and Technology, Business, Fine Arts, Communication and Osteopathic Medicine.

It's hard to overlook what's taking place at the College of Osteopathic Medicine (OU-COM). With a long-term commitment to technology enhancement, OU-COM is becoming a showcase for telemedicine: Online curriculum resources, a sophisticated patient simulation lab for students, and a new distance-learning system that will eventually connect the college to clinical training sites at 13 teaching hospitals in Ohio.

OU-COM has been computerizing parts of its curriculum "intensely" over the past five years, says Doug Mann, coordinator of instructional development-academic and clinical education.

Numerous interactive, multimedia programs supplement lectures in such subjects as gross anatomy, dermatology and microanatomy. For students learning clinical skills, an interactive program using sound and animation shows how to read chest X-rays. Clinical case simulations allow students to complete a diagnostic study on a computerized patient. And a user-friendly curriculum database that includes the full text of syllabi and many lecture notes is often used by faculty and committees seeking to reduce course duplication and plan curriculum changes.

These programs, Internet access and the "Slice of Life" image bank - a video database of 38,000 medical slides - are among what's available to OU-COM students in the Grosvenor Hall Learning Resources Center. The lab is outfitted with 15 interactive Macintosh computers.

Unveiled last fall, the CORE system ­p; or Centers for Osteopathic Regional Education ­p; is designed to link the member hospitals by e-mail, the Internet and interactive video communication using the latest in compressed video technology.

The system is designed for education and training programs at the clerkship, internship and residency levels.

Eleven of the 13 hospitals were linked to COREnet, an extension of OU's wide area computer network, and the Internet as of early June, says Brian Phillips, BSC '83, BSC '88, coordinator of informational technology for OU-COM. The video component of the project, expected to be operational by September, will offer videoconferences, case presentations, residency seminars and surgery demonstrations for students.

Actually, OU was considered a leader in Ohio in distance-learning technology in the 1980s. The Eastern Campus in Belmont County has been offering courses on audio cassette since 1983 and currently has 21 courses on video and audio tape.

The St. Clairsville campus also has been one of the primary users of the university's Higher Education Microwave Services (HEMS), which debuted in 1983 and was the first two-way interactive audio and video system in Ohio operated by a university. Today, HEMS allows faculty to teach in Athens and reach students at each of OU's five regional campuses using a high-quality two-way system that incorporates 14 microwave signal towers and microwave dishes located on each campus. The microwave system also provides low-cost phone, high-speed data, and FM radio and TV broadcast services.

An average of 15 courses involving more than 300 students was made available to the regional campuses over the microwave system each quarter in the 1995-96 academic year, according to HEMS Coordinator Bob Hails, BSC '75, MED '82. More than 60 percent of the students were over 25 years of age.

A new $250,000 HEMS classroom in the basement of Copeland Hall - the third such classroom on the Athens campus - and a cable TV connection are the latest advancements for the distance-learning system. This fall, registered students in the Ironton area will participate in an interactive business management course by watching the class on a local cable television station and dialing a toll-free telephone number to participate in class discussion. A pilot class offered last spring on Ironton's cable TV system was a success, Hails said.

"This will be perfect for people who work all day, who don't feel like driving to class, who have child care problems," says Hails.

Ohio University's College of Education has used a HEMS classroom in McCracken Hall and fiber optics in helping to develop a network linking 22 elementary, middle and high schools in Central and Southeastern Ohio to the Learning Community Link (LCL). The link will provide interactive voice and video technology over which OU professors will conduct teaching development and promote collaboration among educators, and will connect students, too.

The network is an expansion of the Appalachian Distance Learning Project the college created in 1991. That project linked three elementary schools to the college's Video Education Interactive Network.

LCL, which begins operations this summer, is being studied by the North Central Regional Education Lab in Oak Brook, Ill., as a possible national model for "telecommunities" involving schools.

"The technology allows students to communicate more. The more they communicate, the more they retain and the better they understand concepts," says Colleen Sexton, assistant professor of curriculum and instruction and an LCL project co-director.

Bill Estep is editor of Ohio University Today. Emily Caldwell, BSJ '88, is an assistant editor and writer for University News Services and Periodicals.

[go to 'A day of technology' online photo gallery]