1990 - 2000 A Decade of Progress

It was as if Herman in Delaware and the folklorist in Atlanta were on stage together.

Around the same time, a columnist for the student newspaper asked the University last fall for “a pause in the growth of its online capabilities.” Not bad enough that students have private baths, kitchenettes, cable TV, even air-conditioning, he wrote, but must there be direct network connections to their desks? “No wonder the halls...are quiet at night!” Students chat with each other and socialize from behind computer screens. His roommate chats online sometimes with as many as six other students at once. What’s happened to just hanging out?

The Office of Admissions staff reports that in fall 2000, 85 percent of the new freshmen used e-mail when they applied for admission. This should not be surprising for an up-and-coming group of young people today, when we know that more than half the households in the country have personal computers. But, it is a new phenomenon—a big change—a legacy of the ’90s.

It seems like only yesterday, in 1991, that the University boldly—among the first in the country—announced that any and all students could use its e-mail for work or play. Initially, a few hundred students took up the offer, and computing technology staff breathlessly wondered what they might have to do to control or limit the students’ use of e-mail. Today, the notion of a student using the network “too much” makes as little sense as a student using the library too much.

The number of students who wanted e-mail grew from this meager beginning in 1992, to 25 percent the next year and to almost 50 percent by 1994. By 1998, all of the University’s students used e-mail, regularly, and not just to chat with their friends. Almost 100 percent said they used e-mail to talk to their instructors.

The members of the Class of 2004 are not excited about e-mail; they simply expect it. It is a necessary part of their lives. They surely admire the campus brick paths, parks and malls, but they take for granted the miles of network that lie beneath, which they use in every part of their lives as University students.

Theirs are not the fond memories of “summers from hell” shared by the network engineers and technicians. During the long, hot months of 1992 and 1993, they ran miles and miles of fiber optic and copper cable and installed hundreds of hubs and switches to build a campus network that connects every dorm room, faculty office, classroom (down to the desktop in some of them), every nook and cranny of the library, the student centers and offices of all staff and administrators to one another and to the Internet beyond.

The accomplishment won the University national recognition in 1994 when it was the recipient of the CAUSE award for Excellence in Networking. As a “model” for campus networking, the University has hosted hundreds of visitors from the U.S. and foreign universities, and UD representatives have traveled to many places to tell Delaware's story. The May 2000 issue of Yahoo! Internet Life Magazine ranked the University of Delaware second among “America’s Most Wired Colleges.”

The motivating idea was to make the campus network available everywhere and free to everyone at the University, says Susan J. Foster, vice president for information technologies. It should not and would not be necessary to first justify a need for the network. The network should be available to students and staff, just as electricity is available—everywhere. Its mere existence would enable anyone to explore and create uses for fast, efficient communication and access to a world of information.

No one, it seems, has rejected the offer.

In 2000-01, more than 90 percent of the students brought personal computers to campus. Students’ top priorities on move-in days in September are getting set up with telephones, VCRs and refrigerators, of course, and network connections—right away.

The students seem “obsessed” with using the network, according to Carol Anderer, manager for Information Technologies-User Services. In past years, a student might try to get to the head of the line for help in connecting to the network with claims of e-mailing a professor. This year, they made no pretenses. Life without the Internet is unthinkable.

A team of 20 students, Residence Hall Computer Consultants (RCCs) spent the early weeks of the fall 2000 semester making the rounds of students’ rooms, helping to get their personal computers connected with full Internet access, trying to accommodate the vast and urgent demand. Each student is given a CD, which walks them through the process of connecting and installing anti-virus software (made available at no cost to the student through a University “site” software license), but many of them have questions and need some extra help.

The RCC program is in its third year. “Having more help available in the residence halls—where the students do most of their computing—is essential,” says Leila Lyons, director, Information Technologies-User Services. “Further, since all the RCCs live in the residence halls themselves, they are particularly attuned to the needs of the students whom they are helping.”

Students who live in off-campus housing have free access to the campus network through a robust dial-in service. This year, new modems were added to it, and several local apartment complexes have paid to extend the University network to their facilities, providing their residents the same computing environment as found on campus.

Students also make heavy use of more than 900 computers available in 27 sites across campus. Lines form at “express” computers in between classes as they check their e-mail messages. There is definitely no lack of communication among students. And, while they wait, they get that chance to hang out.

When the 1990s began, the University aggressively addressed the need and its desire for students to be competent in information technologies—to be computer-literate.

“Will you be managing a far-flung global company? Will you be composing music or directing movies? Will you be a commercial artist or a journalist? You will want to know how information technologies are used in these careers or others you may choose,” members of the Computing Resource Planning Committee wrote in their Final Report in September 1990.

The University made e-mail and the Internet available to all students, negotiated discount price agreements with computer vendors, initiated an online information system, “U-Discover!,” provided a Touch-Tone interactive voice system for students to register for courses and equipped classrooms with data and video outlets.

A handful of faculty became pioneers in incorporating instruction in the use of information technologies in their classes. The introductory writing course, E110, built a computer lab and taught the marvels of word processing. The College of Agriculture and Natural Resouces taught word processing, spread sheets and e-mail in introductory courses.

A Student Computing Initiative Committee began a yearly survey to track the success of the University’s endeavors to make the student body computer literate. By 1993-94, UD knew that 37 percent of the students owned a personal computer and 42 percent used e-mail. Two years later, the number of students owning a personal computer crept up to 43 percent, although 85 percent of them used e-mail. As the new millennium began, 96 percent of the freshmen brought personal computers to campus and 98 percent said they used e-mail.

Students who wanted to use the network connections in residence halls were very few at first—200 in 1993. The number increased to 800 and 1,600 in the next two years and to 4,500 in the fall of 1996.

When they graduated, students in the Class of 2000 had learned, in many ways, how information technologies are an integral part of their daily lives. The Class of 2004 came to campus already very sure of this, and the University was ready for the challenge.

Faculty members are as eager as the students to connect to the campus network. They post their course syllabi on web pages, link to texts the students should read, post lecture notes and sometimes old exams; they set up forums online; and they exchange e-mail messages with their students.

They are actively involved in new approaches to learning—problem-based learning and self-paced learning. Many of them are discovering that information technologies let them change their ways of teaching while improving students’ academic performance.

Francis Doyle, professor of chemical engineering, says that using the World Wide Web in his classes “fostered an atmosphere of community.” He was able to provide “a richer, more interactive learning environment.” His “Muddiest Point Forum” invited students to tell him about these in e-mail—so he could shed light in the next class.

Charlene Hamilton, professor of nutrition and dietetics, used electronic bulletin boards as an active learning strategy. Her large lecture classes had discussion sessions online, posting and responding to questions. She says she wanted the personal interaction this allowed.

George Watson, Unidel Professor of Physics and Astronomy, wanted to “take students out of passive listening to a lecture mode.” His students interacted with computers, each other and their instructor, developing valuable skills, “effective communication, mastery of analytical thinking, team work, independent learning and strategies for making the best use of all available resources.”

More and more faculty are “web-streaming,” not just delivering, their lectures. Students can listen and watch in the classroom or from as far away as Seattle—or, in fact, from anywhere in the world. The lectures are preserved—jokes, solid substance and all—on the web. Students have their instructors’ live performances to rerun and study, when and where they want.

Instructors want their students to talk to them and to their classmates, to express their ideas, to discuss and criticize ideas, to ask questions and to try to find out the answers. They say that they enjoy this kind of teaching and that their students are proving to be good learners in these kinds of active, social environments. Personal contact and socializing are essential, they believe, to learning.