EDUCATION NEWS DIGEST #11

ELECTRONIC DORM LAUNCHED

Student entrepreneurs at the University of Maryland will receive a 
"high-tech boost" tomorrow at 11 a.m. when the university launches its 
electronic dorm designed and equipped by Avaya, formerly the Enterprise 
Networks Group of Lucent Technologies. The eDorm is designed to give 
students participating in the university's Hinman Campus Entrepreneurship 
Opportunities (CEOs) Program easy access to the communications tech-
nologies they'll need to build their own businesses. From dorm rooms in 
Garrett Hall, the student CEOs will now have access to eBusiness com-
munications tools including desktop video conferencing, multimedia mes-
saging, high-speed data connections, voice over the Internet, and wireless 
roaming technology.

Using Avaya technology, the students' laptops become multimedia com-
munications devices that enable them to make and receive calls and hold 
conferences via their laptops from any place they can connect to the
Internet.  Combined with Avaya's wireless local area network, students can hold 
conference calls from anywhere.

The Hinman CEOs Program is a unique, living-learning program at the 
University of Maryland offered to undergraduate students who have 
demonstrated an interest and potential strength in entrepreneurial ventures.

The program is co-sponsored by the Engineering Research Center of the 
A. James Clark School of Engineering and the Dingman Center for 
Entrepreneurship of the Robert H. Smith School of Business. The program 
provides a team-based, technology driven, incubator-like environment in a 
technologically advanced residence hall. Currently, the eDorm houses 21 of 
the 60 Hinman CEOs. The university plans to increase capacity in the 
future. As part of its agreement with University of Maryland, Avaya also 
equipped three conference rooms, an office and a computer lab in Garrett 
Hall with its eBusiness solutions.

For more information about the CEOs Program, visit 
www.hinmanceos.umd.edu.

DIGITAL-LIBRARY COMPANY PLANS TO CHARGE STUDENTS FOR ACCESS
In January 2001, Questia Media will begin offering a digital
library service that will allow students to electronically
search a collection of roughly 50,000 books and journals by
keyword. Students must pay between $20 and $30 a month for
Questia's service and will be able to cut and paste specific
content into their papers digitally. The service will
automatically create footnotes and will hyperlink footnotes in
papers that are submitted online, allowing professors to check
references easily. Questia says 135 publishers have agreed to
provide some titles through the new service, although many of the
titles are out-of-print. Yale University associate university
librarian Ann Okerson says Questia appears to be creating a
viable collection. Okerson, who recently accepted an unpaid job
on Questia's Librarian Advisory Council, says she hopes to
persuade the company to offer institution-wide licenses so all
students could access the service, since the subscription fees
Questia is proposing are too high for some students.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 14 November 2000)

STATE OFFERS $1.5 MILLION TO BOOST ONLINE LEARNING
Kentucky is providing $1.5 million in venture capital for
colleges and professors in the state to create profitable online
learning programs for the Kentucky Virtual University (KVU). The
program is believed to be the first in the country to help
universities launch for-profit online ventures. KVU is reviewing
three proposals and will select loan recipients in a few weeks.
The interest-free loans must be paid back within three years as
the online venture brings in revenue or cost savings. A
University of Kentucky English professor has applied for a
$10,000 loan to replicate the campus writing center on the
Internet. A second proposal from the Kentucky Community and
Technical College System requests a $170,000 loan to create an
information technology associate degree program on the Internet.
Meanwhile, the dean of Eastern Kentucky University's College of
Justice and Safety submitted a proposal that would develop an
online master's degree in loss prevention and safety.
(Courier-Journal, 15 November 2000)

HARVARD, STANFORD TO ENROLL IN E-LEARNING
Harvard Business School and Stanford University will together
offer non-degree courses over the Internet in a move that stands
to bring greater prestige to the online education environment.
The venture will likely also heighten competition in the online
learning market, which is already filled with top universities
such as New York University, Columbia University, and a large
number of commercial enterprises that offer business courses
over the Internet. Harvard and Stanford intend for their effort
to ascend to the top of the management education sector online.
"Over the last several months, as we have explored the
advantages of working together, we have become enthusiastic
about the opportunity to deliver online an unparalleled
management-education portfolio to executives and leaders around
the world," says Kim Clark, dean of the Harvard Business School.
Online education will likely generate profits in the future.
Distance learning will bring about $1.1 billion in tuition
revenues annually through 500,000 students by the year 2002,
according to a Goldman Sachs report.
(TheStandard.com, 30 November 2000)

CISCO CHIEF: BRACE FOR E-LEARNING WAVE
E-learning is poised for takeoff in the same way
that e-commerce was three years ago.

So claimed Cisco Systems Inc. President and CEO John
Chambers in a phone call to analysts attending the
company's annual conference in New York Monday.

The next wave of computer applications will be in
e-learning, predicted Chambers, who heads the San Jose,
Calif., company that controls three-fourths of the
world's network-products market.

Chambers predicted that Cisco's fiscal 2001 revenue will
be 50% to 60% higher than the $18.3 billion it posted
this year, and earnings will top analysts' forecasts, Dow
Jones Newswires reported.

Cisco is optimistic, Dow Jones said, because
business and government leaders grasp the importance
of networks -- which, Chambers claims, boost
productivity up to 100%.

LEARNING IN THE WEB
E-learning initiatives such as the Web site WebCT must be
analyzed and evaluated in the same manner in which teachers
analyze and comment on knowledge, according to Dr. Ron Burnett,
president of the Emily Carr Institute of Art and Design in
Vancouver, British Columbia. Online learning is still in its
early stages, says Burnett, but most of the courses tend to bring
the conventional classroom experience to the Internet with live
meetings and tutorials to prevent students from feeling isolated.
Essentially, the developers of e-learning sites are still
experimenting with teaching on the Web. Burnett says experts must
decide if learning is merely having access to information or
something more. He says teachers help students transform
information into knowledge. Nevertheless, Burnett envisions
innovative possibilities for Web-based education, a market that
is expected to exceed $11.5 billion by 2003. Burnett says, "What
is most needed is a way of thinking about the Web that
incorporates its specific properties into a new model of learning."
(Interactive Week, 4 December 2000)

THE PAPERLESS CAMPUS IS THE FUTURE, BUT A FEW OBSTACLES REMAIN
The University of Texas is one of several large universities
trying to become paperless--that is, to send messages to students
via e-mail instead of the traditional post. University officials
say such an e-mail system could save the school as much as $1
million a year in postage costs, but Texas is learning, as many
schools already have, that making the switch is not easy. The
school must decide what kind of servers to use and whether to
give its students a choice in selecting an e-mail provider.
Nearly every college and university is wrestling with these
issues now, although many officials say large colleges, with tens
of thousands of students, are feeling more pressure to eliminate
the cost of paper-based communication. At Carnegie-Mellon
University, officials chose an online bulletin-board system for
communication rather than e-mail because they feared that using
e-mail for mass announcements would clog the system.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 18 December 2000)

A MODEL CLASS
Jack Goetz has founded the first fully online law school in the
United States in Concord University School of Law. Boasting a
retention rate of 73 percent, Concord already is drawing
attention as an online initiative to pattern others after.
Concord offers a mix of traditional and high-tech learning tools
in that it relies on traditional law school textbooks for reading
assignments, as well as online chats for professor-led
discussions. Part-time teacher Steve Bracci says he thought
online chats would be a dull learning environment but was
surprised to find out that his online class was full of
personality. Concord uses videotaped lectures, giving students
the added convenience of hitting the "pause" button to stop a
lecture to ponder a thought or take a break. Dean of students
Martha Siegel says she also e-mails students to find out whether
they are encountering any problems. Concord enrolled more than
375 students this year and now has students from 44 states and
seven countries.
(Training Online, December 2000)

SCHOOLS EXPAND ONLINE EDUCATION
Although many colleges and universities have launched online
courses and degree programs, observers say the trend has not been
as clear in the primary- and secondary-school market. However,
that could soon change following an announcement by
William Bennett, the former secretary of education, that he will
launch K12, an online school for students from kindergarten to
grade 12. K12 joins several smaller efforts, mostly charter
schools, that handle one school or a small set of students. In
online education, nearly all work is transmitted over the
Internet from students' homes to teachers, who are often
stationed at a central location. Even work in classes such as
gym, music, and art can be handled over the Internet or given at
nearby schools, proponents of online education say. However, the
online education movement is not without pitfalls. Educators say
it is difficult to gauge student interest without seeing or hearing
them, and there are no established safeguards to prevent the
students from cheating. Also, a recent hacker attack against a
charter school in California demonstrated the security risk online
schools face. Still, with traditional schools struggling to pay
individual attention to the education of each student, online
education may offer an interesting alternative.
(Associated Press, 28 December 2000)

TECHNOLOGY USE IN TOMORROW'S SCHOOLS
As the United States races to bring Internet technology to its
classrooms, it has left students and teachers without the
technical support structure needed to take full advantage of the
technology, according to Barbara Means, co-director of the Center
for Technology in Learning in Menlo Park, Calif. Still, there
are some indications that educators are making strides in
developing technology-enhanced learning activities. For example,
Hands-On Universe, a program of the University of California at
Berkeley's Lawrence Hall of Science, has students using
user-friendly tools to review images from space in order to
search for supernovas and asteroids. Designed to help students
learn astronomy concepts and research skills, the program
produced the discovery of an unknown supernova by students.
However, such programs are not yet mainstream. The problem of
bulky equipment and multiple wires and cords in classrooms could
be solved with the development of educational appliances and
portable handhelds. With an eye toward the next two decades, the
technology could stimulate educators to improve public schools.
(Educational Leadership, January 2001)

COLLEGE COURSES TAUGHT WITH TAILORED SOFTWARE
Several companies now provide software that allows college
professors to build and maintain course-specific Web sites.
WebCT says its product now has 50,000 users at 1,500
institutions. The company was founded by Murray Goldberg, a
professor at the University of British Columbia. In 1995,
Goldberg conducted a test to see whether students studying the
same course material would do better on performance tests
learning that material in a classroom-only environment, a
Web-only environment, or a combination of classroom and Web-based
work. He learned that the combination method worked best and
developed software to assist instructors in developing Web
strategies. Another company, Blackboard, began in 1997 when
several undergraduates at Cornell University worked together to
build Web sites for their professors. Both WebCT and Blackboard
software offer tools to put course material such as syllabi and
schedules online. The software also lets instructors link their
course Web pages to their universities' pages and also to
Web-based textbooks and other academic material. Although both
companies say their software can work with distance-learning
classes, they say the programs are meant mostly for classroom
instructors who want to add a Web component.
(New York Times, 21 December 2000)

LOGGING IN WITH...MARK MILLIRON
Mark Milliron, the CEO of the League for Innovation in the
Community College and lead author of "Taking a Big Picture Look
at Technology, Learning, and the Community College," says
technology is providing community colleges an opportunity to have
a more customized relationship with each of their students.
Milliron does not believe that every aspect of the community
college experience should be based on the Web. Rather, he says
the Internet should be one of many channels open to students when
they first contact a community college. The most important
point, Milliron contends, is that the student has a strong
interaction with the college and is treated as an individual and
not as just another part of an efficient bureaucracy. Milliron
agrees that community colleges lag behind four-year colleges and
universities in funding, but he says his organization has begun
an effort called Legal FundNet to increase awareness of community
colleges and attract greater funding from the business community.
One advantage that many community colleges have is that high-tech
firms such as Microsoft and Cisco are giving their curricula to
the schools so that they can provide the training.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 15 December 2000)

AT UBIQUITOUS COMPUTING CONFERENCE, COLLEGES DISAGREE ABOUT
COSTS AND BENEFITS
Educators from 100 colleges met at Seton Hall University for
the fourth annual Ubiquitous Computing Conference. The conference
saw debate on the advantages of requiring all college students
to purchase laptops. Those who support the policy say it has
made providing ubiquitous access to computers and the Internet
far easier. Officials at Wake Forest University, where a
mandatory laptop policy has been in effect for four years, say
the policy has improved communication between students and
other students and between students and their professors.
Proponents say the key to making the policy work is convincing
the students' parents that it is a good idea. However, those
less enamored of the laptop policy argued that such a policy
creates unrealistic expectations among both students and faculty
that the laptop and its multimedia functions will become the
star of every class. Faculty also said laptops forced them to
spend extra time developing Web-based content for their courses
because few off-the-shelf applications are available.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 9 January 2001)

DISTANCE LEARNING: RUSSIA IS REACHING OUT
Russia is turning to distance learning to make education
available to students in rural areas or who otherwise would
have trouble attending class on a traditional campus. Tomsk
State University, for example, reaches students 250 miles
away with its Prokopyevsk Distance Learning Center. Students
attend online classes and use interactive digital textbooks on
CD-ROMs. In addition, physics students can participate in digital
lab experiments using a virtual particle accelerator. Former
minister of education Aleksandr Tikhonov is responsible for
improving Russia's educational system through distance learning
and technology. Russia now has about 300,000 distance-learning
students, and that number will jump to almost one million within
two to three years, says Tikhonov. The Education Ministry intends
to double this year's spending to over $140 million next year to
improve telecommunications, develop digital textbooks, and equip
schools with technology.
(New York Times--Education Life, 7 January 2001)

DISTANCE LEARNING REVS UP INTEGRATORS
Analysts say that integrators, such as IBM and others that the
Army did not select as vendors for its new distance-learning
network, should not get discouraged. In the coming years, the
federal government should increase its spending on e-learning,
the market research firm Input forecasts. Input estimates a 34
percent increase by 2005, from $200 million last year to $850
million. Total IT spending at the federal level will rise only six
percent in that same time period, Input predicts. Whether any of
those e-learning projects will compare with the Army's project is
questionable. The Army University Access Online will bring
educational programs to soldiers around the world by satellite
and over the Internet. It will launch this month with programs
for 15,000 soldiers at three U.S. bases and could have as many as
1 million students when complete. The Navy has also embarked on
its own e-learning project, the Navy Learning Network, which is
designed for Navy personnel as well as their families and other
civilians. It could reach over 1 million students.
(Washington Technology, 8 January 2001)

THANKS TO CELL PHONES, JAPANESE STUDENTS SWAP E-MAIL IN CLASS
Japanese students frequently use their e-mail-enabled cell phones
in class, a recent study found. Konan University professor
Hiroshi Shimada began his study of 915 university students after
noticing those in his own class had become engrossed in their
phones. His study found that, among the students, 90 percent had
e-mail-enabled cell phones, 65 percent received or sent at least
one e-mail in a class period, and 30 percent received or sent up
to four e-mails in one class. The cell-phone-e-mail craze is
growing even though the messages must be short--250 letters or
kanji characters or less. Also, the cost of e-mailing over cell
phones can be expensive, 3 cents per e-mail, which can quickly add
up. The Japanese students seem undeterred, observers say. Colin
Williamson, a U.S. exchange student, remarks, "It's like
everybody has access to everybody else all the time. It's a
nation of telepaths."
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 16 January 2001)

LOGGING IN WITH...CAROLE A. BARONE
Higher-education institutions must incorporate information
technology and the Internet into their operations, argues
EDUCAUSE vice president Carole A. Barone. Today's students
expect instructors to provide online resources for their courses,
and those institutions that do not meet this expectation may risk
losing students to those institutions, whether traditional or
for-profit online educators, that can. Barone supports such
technology as learning objects, which are software components
that allow instructors to build online content for their courses
with only a minimum of programming knowledge required. This
would allow them to use only the parts of a certain textbook that
they wanted and ignore the rest. The key, Barone says, is for
institutions to affect wholesale change, not marginal changes,
and to devise a support system that lets instructors manage the
online resources of their courses as independently as possible.
(Chronicle of Higher Education Online, 17 January 2001)

HARVARD DRAWS THE LINE AT INTERNET TEACHING
In 1998, famed Harvard University law professor Arthur Miller
produced 11 lectures for Concord University School of Law, a
for-profit online school. Although his previous ventures into
television and books had not provoked any response from Harvard,
the Internet deal with Concord University irritated the
university, which subsequently changed the "conflict of
commitment" rule in the faculty manual to include Internet
teaching. In contrast, Houston Community College-Southwest
professor Douglas Rowlett says the focus of Internet teaching
should not be to popularize a subject but to enhance learning.
He spent $500 to set up an Internet radio station for students in
his English composition class. Broadcasting their poetry and
research on the Web has gained worldwide appreciation for
students' work--students have received positive e-mail feedback
from all over--and Rowlett argues that this increases the
students' interest and participation in the course.
(Christian Science Monitor Online, 23 January 2001)

GET UP AND GO: CISCO ROLLS OUT WIRELESS NET
University and corporate campuses alike are being outfitted with
powerful wireless local networks provided by Cisco Systems.
Using Cisco's Aironet PC cards, students or employees away from
their desks can access high-speed Internet on their laptop by
connecting to transmitters located around the campuses. Already,
the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill has rigged its
freshman class with IBM laptops with the Cisco hardware. Vice
chancellor for technology Marian Moore says the school will save
millions of dollars by not having to equip classrooms with
desktop networks. Students participate using their laptops in
online study sessions with professors and classmates while
anywhere on campus. Microsoft, which provided the encryption
software for the system, has implemented the technology, and
hundreds of other colleges and companies are testing it.
Cahners In-Stat says the market for wireless local networks (WLAN)
will grow from $800 million this year to $2.2 billion by 2004.
(USA Today, 24 January 2001)

A CAMPUS WITHOUT WIRES
Walsh University in North Canton, Ohio, has installed a wireless
system to allow students and faculty to access the university's
network from nearly everywhere on campus. Using a laptop
equipped with a wireless card, students and faculty can access
the network from one of 48 access points across campus.
Officials say the new system will complement, not replace, the
school's existing network. "We've got so much in place right
now, and everybody loves what they have," says Robert Walker, the
university's IT director. University officials decided to build
the new network to assist its graduate students in preparation
for future employment. Students can purchase laptops and
wireless cards directly from the university.
(IT Support News, January 2001)

U.S. IS INCLINED TO LIFT AID BAN FOR WEB STUDIES
Congress may soon have legislation before it amending a
1992 law that restricts federal aid to distance-education
programs--including online schools--that conduct fewer than
half of their courses in traditional settings. Federal aid could
significantly boost online enrollment, as well as bolster the
efforts of many online higher education programs. The University
of Phoenix, which has 19,000 online students, could afford to
invest even more resources into its Web initiatives if the
restrictions ease, says acting president Laura Palmer Noone.
Analysts predict that the elimination of the ban would bring an
extra $3.5 billion in federal aid to Internet-based higher
education and raise enrollment to 3 million by the end of 2002,
up from 1.5 million now. Federal aid, in the form of loans and
grants, already accounts for one-third of all revenue earned by
universities. The U.S. Department of Education has responded to
online education providers by waiving the 50 percent requirements
for 15 programs each year. However, the American Federation of
Teachers argues that easing restrictions would have many
detrimental effects, including the proliferation of fly-by-night
programs and increased tuition for online classes.
(Wall Street Journal, 31 January 2001)

GET CREDIT FOR SURFING THE WEB
Small public schools are turning to the Internet to give students
the opportunity to take Advanced Placement and other elective
courses that they do not offer. At least 12 states now allow
schools to grant credit to students who take such courses online.
For instance, the Virtual High in Kentucky has seen its student
body grow from just 47 to 300 in one year. Although the trend is
gaining momentum in small schools because of their tiny budgets,
lack of teachers, and the low number of students who want to
take the courses, education experts believe that online education
will open up to home schoolers, dropouts, and students who have
scheduling conflicts as well. With online classes, students
use chats to communicate with classmates and use e-mail to
communicate with teachers. Apex Learning, Class.com, and
CyberSchool are among the organizations that are actively
involved in e-learning at this level.
(Kiplinger's, February 2001)

SOME PROFESSORS ALLOW STUDENTS TO TAKE EXAMS ON LAPTOPS
University professors are weighing the pros and cons of giving
exams for students to take on laptops. A number of technological
concerns plague the practice, not the least of which is the
ability to monitor cheating and making sure the hardware
functions properly. Joel M. Smith, director for Carnegie
Mellon's Office of Technology for Education, says professors
often use computers to prepare their students for class but adds,
"you really worry about the systems being reliable and robust."
Some software solutions address both security and reliability
worries. ExamSoft is software that restricts students' access to
information on their hard drive or network, should they be
connected. Securexam is another program that keeps users' exam
safe during test taking, even if their computers freeze.
(Chronicle of Higher Education, 2 February 2001)

RESEARCH UNIVERSITIES FORM DISTANCE ED 
ALLIANCE 
Four major universities have formed an alliance to 
facilitate development of their online distance learning 
capabilities. The University of California, Berkeley, 
University Extension; Penn State University's World 
Campus; the University of Washington; and the 
University of Wisconsin's Learning Innovations have 
agreed to work together to advance online learning 
practices at their institutions. Together, the institutions 
offer 500 online distance education courses in a broad 
range of curricula. The alliance will focus initially on 
four areas: benchmarking institutional practices and 
standards, assessing opportunities from the private sector, 
joint sales efforts and exploring opportunities for 
collaborative program development. Groups from these 
institutions are being formed to study, discuss, compare 
and disseminate standards and best practices.

NEW ED SEC LIKES ED TECH
Proponents of technology in education believe that new Secretary
of Education Roderick Paige is an ally. As superintendent in
Houston, Paige led efforts to bring computers and the Internet
into schools. Under Paige, the Houston Independent School District
networked more than 300 locations with T1 Internet connections,
and the district is now working on establishing a fiber-optic
network. The district's administration improved its efficiency
by using computer-based procurement and student-data systems, and
the district has implemented computer and Internet training for
teachers and runs a help desk. Some educators, however, worry that
Paige might abandon the E-rate program, which has been largely
responsible for wiring the nation's public schools--including
those in Houston--for a program that favors block grants.
Educators fear that, if states receive education funds in a block,
they will be less likely to spend the money on technology.
(Wired Online, 6 February 2001)