QueensboroughCommunity College

Academic Senate

COMPUTER RESOURCES COMMITTEE

Report on QCC Computer Resources

Spring 2004 draft 2-3-04

Summary…………………………………………………………………………..2

Overview…………………………………………………………………………..2

Vision……………………………………………………………………………….3

Highlights………………………………………………………………………….3

Response to Middle States Periodic Review ………………………………5

Technology Plan: Schedule and Adherence………………………………..7

Student Technology Fee Plan: Schedule and Adherence………………..8

Academic Senate Policy on Maintenance and Upgrading…………….…9

Academic Department Uses and Needs………………………………..……10

Faculty Uses and Needs……………………………………………………….11

Student Uses and Needs……………………………………………………....12

  • Library…………………………..………………………………………………12
  • Student Government …………………………………………………………12
  • Classroom Access…….……………………………..…………….12
  • Wireless Network…….……………………………..…………….…12
  • Special Needs-Disability Issues…………………..…...... 12

Administration: Uses and Needs…………………………………..…………13

  • Office of Information Technology……………………………………
  • Three Networks .………………………………….…………………
  • Email System………………………………………………..………
  • College Website……………………………………..………………
  • Academic Computing Center………………..………………………17

Distance Education: Status and Needs……………………………..………20

Problems………………………………………………………………………….21

Recommendations………………………………………………………….…..24

Appendix One: Middle States Periodic Review Items……………….…..26

Summary

This report is a quick sketch of the current status of computer resources at the College. It highlights some of the remarkable advances made by the College and the increased capacity and potential now available for communications and educational applications. It also presents a number of problems related to the planning process and decision making structure. It concludes with a series of recommendations. While it is of uncommon length for a report to the Academic Senate it is so due to the tremendous number of advances and activities involving computer resources.

Overview

This report is intended to inform the college community on the current status of the college’s computer resources. The primary focus is on the educational technologies associated with computers and access to the instructional program offered through or with computer equipment in any form. The report does not offer a great amount of detail; rather it is a sketch of the current situation offered in support of recommendations. It also offers brief suggestions as to where we might be and perhaps should be in the not too distant future.

There has been a planning process begun at the College and legitimate attempts have been made to make planning part of the culture of the institution. Further, there have been several and large expenditures on computer resources and there are revenue sources for a continuation of such expenditures. This report makes no recommendations that are not thought to be reasonable and feasible in the current situation and climate. The Committee makes what it believes to be important and needed recommendations for the welfare of the College.

The college has made great strides in attempting to follow the recommendations of the prior Middle States Team Response Report pertaining to educational and information technologies (See the following section and appendix one) in all of its items related to technologies and in particular educational technologies. Of particular note is that the College now has what are termed technology “plans” where before there were none. Furthermore, and most visibly, the college has made great strides over the last few years in increasing both the number of computers and the variety of uses for those computers. Most notable is that in some ways the College has been a leader in CUNY in the installation, development and use of computer technologies for administrative and educational purposes. Unfortunately and of our concern is that in other ways the college is still lacking in some fundamental elements needed for an institution of its size, capacity, population and functions.

The college has a physical communications infrastructure that has become in many ways far superior to its current use. The basic college network reaches all parts of the campus and involves all basic units. The wireless network is virtually college wide. The classrooms of the college have access to one or more information networks. While the administration proceeds steadily to develop, employ and improve on computer applications in its operations that save on personnel effort and make operations more efficient, the use of the technologies in the instructional programs does not proceed on pace with that of the administration in either the variety or scope. Further, while the administration has proceeded to offer services to all students via the technologies (registration, advisement, bursar, transcripts, grades), the faculty as a whole has not yet adopted the technologies available in the provision of its fundamental instruction and support services.

The lack of widespread adoption of the educational technologies by the faculty is not necessarily a negative condition for the college. This is so because at the present time there has been no effort to ascertain the effectiveness or value of the present use being made of the educational technologies. If the adoption and adaptation of the technologies provides for more effective learning the lack of its more widespread use would not be a good sign, certainly not in terms of the resources being directed towards increasing the number and capacity of such technologies. If the adoption and adaptation of the technologies does not provide for more effective learning, then the lack of its more widespread use would not be a bad sign but instead a warranted indicator of such anegative assessment and it would be an indictment of a waste of the College’s limited physical and financial resources.

The College is at a critical juncture that it can choose to ignore to its own detriment. It can proceed without assessment and careful planning or it can take the effective measures to determine what has been going on, what works and what does not and then decide on the resources it wants to make available with which it will deliver its instruction, services and programs that fulfill its mission in a technological culture. To conduct such an assessment would require a general and meaningful plan for educational technology at the College.

The College must also take a critical look for how the supervision of the information technologies, both administrative and academic, has been assigned within the administration. The current allocation of responsibilities may not be the most efficient or economical. There is overlapping of functions and responsibilities that creates delays and consternation amongst members of the community awaiting services and equipment. A reconsideration of the division of responsibilities with a view towards realignment is in order.

Vision

Where will this college be in five years with respect to its computer resources and its educational technologies? The College Administration awaits an enunciation of an answer to this by the community. Faculty and administration working together to formulate a clear and detailed plan that can be accomplished with the available funding is what is most needed. Where would that bring us?

Easily conceived and within our capacity is to arrive at a point in five years where every teaching location for group instruction has in it available technologies for those faculty who choose to use them. The facilities can be equipped so that faculty in their classrooms, labs and studios might choose to provide instruction as was typical circa 1984 or to use projections of video off of tape or disk or information contained on computers and from the internet onto a screen within the room. Each room would have at the very least white boards to be written on with grease pens as well as a board or surface onto which projected images can be displayed and marked and altered.

Faculty would have the training and support systems to make use of individual websites along with course websites with a course management program (e.g, BlackBoard) and thus can choose from standard form, web assisted, hybrid or asynchronous modalities for the delivery of instruction.

Faculty and students alike would be using the wireless system on campus in ways that do not distract from but rather reinforce and support instruction.

Administrators, faculty and students alike would be aware of and using the College email systems in ways that support the instructional program and assisting the college in its mission.

Student services offered by means of the college website would increase in their number and quality and ease of use.

Faculty would receive rosters and submit attendance forms and final grades via a website application increasing the efficiency and economy of these operations.

Faculty and the Office of Student Affairs would be operating a highly computerized advisement and registration system.

The faculty would be participating in offering classes linked with faculty and/or students on multiple CUNY classes via the CUNY media distribution system (MDS): an enhancement to current and future joint programs and articulations.

All sectors of the community will be using computers in effective ways that improve upon what we are doing here at the College.
Highlights

This report presents some remarks on the various components of the college community and the variety of technologies and their uses. There now exists a basic information technology infrastructure that is capable of supporting a wide range of activities and for delivering a wide range of services and instructional programs. There is not a concentrated effort or plan on how best to utilize the capacity created by the College’s administration.

The College has an email system that is second to none within CUNY. It is constantly being safeguarded and upgraded. It offers numerous features for the community on campus and a growing number of features for those making access from off campus. The system offers a wide variety of ways in which members of the community can transmit information or make it available to others.

Nearly every member of the community has an email account. Faculty, both full time and adjunct, have accounts. Students have been given email accounts and this creates a number of possibilities for how the email system may be used by the instructional staff in support of the instructional program. Thus far there has been no organized or planned attempt to make these knownand realize some of that potential value for the academic program and for student services that would return the investment made on this system.

The college has been the first within CUNY to offer registration online. Payment is also available online and most recently a form of academic advisement has been added to the ever expanding list of services for students being offered through the use of the communication technologies. While the college has the ability to admit and register students completely online it does not have a plan for providing instruction completely online, or even a deliberate decision on whether or not to offer such in any organized manner that fits within the overall plan and the mission of the College.

The College has not one but three separate information networks to be accessed by computers. One of them is the wireless network that has reached nearly every location on campus. This is a remarkable achievement and all the more so as it is almost unknown on campus by most people and, to the best of anyone’s knowledge, it is seldom used. This network offers tremendous possibilities but there is as yet no effort even being planned to educate the community and realize some of that potential value for the academic program and for student services that would return the investment made on this network.

The College has created an Academic Computing Center (ACC) that provides workshops on all manner of educational technologies for faculty and for other computer applications for faculty and staff. The training program is second to none within CUNY in its variety and quality. Unfortunately the ACC has also been assigned numerous responsibilities beyond the academic area and without the resources needed for them that have diminished its capacity to discharge those responsibilities in a timely fashion.

The College website is under constant development and improvement. The website is being used for a variety of purposes including the provision of services to students via an increasing number of applications and the offering of basic information about the college and the marketing of the college through web pages and features aimed at prospective students. The current state of the website is one of prolonged transition to a new appearance and improved functioning. In transition it suffers from several problems that will hopefully be addressed and corrected to facilitate the actual delivery and operation of a website of some positive distinction.

Response to Middle States Periodic Review

Below are listed 11 items from the Periodic Review and very brief indications of the status as seen by the Computer Resources Committee. The sections following provide more details.

  1. The College should consider the immediate development of a technology plan that includes both equipment and staff training for academic programs,**** based on internal and external needs assessment. (page 16 – Middle States Team Response Report)

The plans thus far developed need to bemore fully developed as genuine plans and not expenditure lists and then incorporated into one and made a meaningful part of the Strategic Plan of the college.

The Middle States report calls for the immediate development of a formal technology plan. Implicit in any such plan is

  1. an underlying pedagogical philosophy as to the role of Information Technology in learning and teaching,
  2. an assessment of which specific tools will implement or facilitate that teaching/learning experience, (and which are no more than expensive bells or whistles)
  3. a source of funding, and a timetable for its implementation.
  4. a procedure to evaluate the effectiveness and appropriateness of the plan

To date, no such pedagogical vision has been articulated, nor have the specific elements amongst the vast number of possible choices offered by existing and emerging (and costly!) computer technologies that would be appropriate for the implementation of this pedagogy been identified. No formalized plan for their acquisition, implementation and maintenance of these selected technologies based on such an assessment has been developed or promulgated.

Instead a series of ad hoc fixes have been applied to areas of the college where the deficiency of funding or support has been so significant that the teaching of current curricula has been hampered, or faculty and staff have been unable to do their work effectively. These fixes have been described in the draft, and this description offered retrodictively as the outcome of an implicit, but as yet unformulated, unarticulated and unpromulgated plan to do exactly those things.

Admittedly, several individual items specifically requested in the report have been addressed in this fashion such as the provision of “Internet access to all students as soon as possible”, and (to some extent) the provision of increased funding for the acquisition, maintenance, and replacement of instructional laboratory equipment. The technology fee plan is definitely a commitment to expend funds for the purposes outlined in the report, however, a commitment to spend is not the same as a spending plan (the devil being in the details) and one should be developed and be available for review and comment.

Additionally, there is no mechanism in place by which to assess whether this ad hoc plan, in fact, is effective in addressing the Association’s recommendations. For example, are the appointments of paid student interns sufficient to provide the needed departmental services? Or, given the socio-economic demographic of our student community, will the creation of a wireless network throughout the campus, in fact, provide useful Internet access for our students? Or will 30 additional laptops available from the library be sufficient to cover the need for laptops to allow students to access this network in a meaningful way. Perhaps more PC workstations in mini labs around campus would have provided a more realistic, and practical benefit to a student population for whom ownership of a suitably configured laptop might represent unrealistic financial commitment.

  1. A formalized plan should be implemented to ensure the continued maintenance, repair, and upgrading of computer hardware, software, and laboratories and other instructional equipment.

Not yet accomplished but possible due to funding from the Student Technology Fee revenue and the Community College Investment Plan CCIP but must be made part of the College’s regular OTPS Budget.

  1. The College should assist departments in establishing and maintaining the computer support needed to deliver the curriculum and keep it current.

Not yet accomplished but possible due to funding from the Student Technology Fee revenue and the Community College Investment Plan CCIP but must be made part of the College’s regular OTPS Budget.

  1. While much of the technology infrastructure is being acquired with capital project and grant funds, the College must consider ongoing funding for technical support, faculty and staff development, and maintenance and replacement costs. (also include in faculty development)

Not yet accomplished but possible due to funding from the Student Technology Fee revenue and the Community College Investment Plan CCIP but must be made part of the College’s regular OTPS Budget.