This report summarizes the results of a census of courses at the University using any of the following instructional technologies: class web sites, video streaming, live video streaming, interactive television classroom, web-based distance education courses and video tape based courses. We note at the outset that these technologies have somewhat heterogeneous purposes. Some technologies improve the reach of instructor resources to more students; others improve the quality of instruction for individual students.

For example, a satellite broadcast of course lectures to remote locations clearly increases the number of students who can access a course, but does not necessarily improve the quality of the class experience for any individual student. A distance learning technology might even be cost-efficient but actually reduce the individual student's quality of learning. Conversely, a course web site can improve the educational experience for the students who are enrolled in the course, but the web site itself won't necessarily increase the course's enrollment capacity. In fact, some instructional technologies may actually constrain enrollment capacities while improving quality.

The University's investments in instructional technology address both reach and quality objectives. Instructional reach is easier to gauge than instructional quality, and can translate readily into tuition revenues. High-quality instruction that results in high quality learning can also be measured.

Improvements in instructional reach and learning quality can both be viewed as returns on investment in the various instructional technologies supported by the University. Analysis of these returns will help inform strategies for future investments in these technologies.

Methods

We created seven categories into which we assigned all classes taught at the University. These are the categories used in the study.

1. Courses captured to the web and streamed synchronously-These classes are available "live" on the Web through video streaming. Students view the class in "real time," allowing for active participation in the campus classroom. Students follow the University on-campus schedule. Requirements include high speed Internet access such as ISDN, T-1, or Ethernet connection.
2. Course captured to the web and streamed asynchronously - Video streaming and synchronized PowerPoint presentations on the Web allow students to see and hear actual faculty lectures, review notes, and link to related resources online. These lectures are stored on the University's computers and may be accessed throughout the semester. A more powerful computer and higher speed Internet connection may be required for optimum course access. 
3. Course supplemented by material on a Website - the course has a website, this website may have any of the following attributes (syllabus, calendar, reading list, readings, old/sample exams, lecture notes, assignments/solutions, links to resources, chat/listserv etc.) Course web sites vary in the content they deliver. Components of course web sites are analyzed.
4. Courses delivered via Two-way Fiber - The course is taught in an interactive classroom and broadcast to students attending the lecture in another interactive classroom. The faculty and students in both locations can communicate with each other during the lecture.
5. Web-based distance learning courses - Web-based courses are developed and delivered entirely on the Internet. Course syllabi and assignments are posted on the Web. Students communicate with faculty and classmates using e-mail, newsgroups and/or chat rooms. In some courses a CD-ROM supplements the Internet course material. Students need a Windows^TM or Macintosh computer and an Internet connection.
6. Tape based distance-learning courses - Courses offered by University faculty are taught in specially equipped video classrooms. Each lecture is videotaped in an unedited fashion and tapes are shipped to students at their work site or home. Tapes are returned at the end of the semester.
7. None of the technologies described above were used. - We acknowledge that there may be some courses using some of the technologies listed above that were not captured in this study. For instance, an instructor who published his web page on a server outside of the University domain would not be counted.

We began the project with a list of all classes included in the University of Delaware Undergraduate & Graduate Catalog 1999-2000. The list was structured as a Microsoft Access database. Fields include course number, course name, and College. Next, we used the Fall 1999 Undergraduate and Graduate Registration Booklet to identify all courses taught in the fall 1999 semester, recording the instructor names. The complete database includes the following fields:

• Course Number
• Course Name
• Instructor
• Instructor Login - Used to identify pages in faculty directories on Copland
• College - Not listed for UNIV and ORES courses.
• Course Checked - date the web site was reviewed for this project
• Last Year Offered - last year the course was offered
• Technology Used - YES/NO was technology (as defined by groups 1-5 above) used (indicates a web page was found, the course was offered through the distance learning program as a web-based course, the course was delivered via streaming to the web, or the course was offered with Two-way fiber)
• URL - the URL of the course website
• Syllabus on-line - YES/NO is the syllabus on-line
• Course Calendar - YES/NO is a course calendar on-line
• Reading List - YES/NO is a reading list on-line
• Readings - YES/NO are the readings in the list available for viewing/printing on-line
• Old/Sample Exams on-line - YES/NO are previous or sample exams on-line
• Lectures on-line - YES/NO Are lectures or lecture notes on-line (notes on whether these notes are in pdf, PowerPoint, or other form are included in the comments section.)
• Assignments on-line - YES/NO Are assignments/homeworks and/or solutions online.
• Links to resources - YES/NO are links to related resources on the web available
• Chat/Listserve - YES/NO is there Chat or forum opportunity available to the class, this includes chat, newsgroups, etc.
• Comments - Comments on the web page. May include one of the following 
• PRESENT - the instructor used the PRESENT in preparing the course website.
• ITUE (the instructor attended Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education training).
• Pdf - lectures and other pages available in Adobe Acrobat format
• PPT - lectures and other pages available in Microsoft PowerPoint format.
• Password - web pages are restricted to registered users.
• CMS - YES/NO Course uses courseware management software (CMS).
• Video streaming -The course was streamed to the web either asynchronously or synchronously
• Two way fiber -The course was taught in an interactive video classroom and delivered to students in a remote location.
• Distance Learning (web-based) - YES/NO
• Distance Learning (tape only) - YES/NO
• Candidate for IT feature - The page is exemplary and would be a good candidate for inclusion as an IT web page feature.

Servers

Class web pages at the University of Delaware are distributed on many servers including the UD central server www.udel.edu, the University student and faculty server (Copland, aka udel.edu ) and college, departmental and personal servers, (e.g. bluehen.ags.udel.edu, www.be.udel.edu, lo.afs.udel.edu etc.). Since there is currently no formal process for faculty to "register" a course web site, all of these potential servers were searched.

The first phase of the search process involved a scan of the University website www.udel.edu using the Find-It search utility to search for each course by course number. When a web site was found, it was reviewed and the fields for the course were entered.

The second phase involved a search for course materials not found on www.udel.edu, e.g. course websites served by a college's or department's web server. Course websites found in this pass were reviewed and entered into the database.

The third phase involved a search for course web sites in faculty web pages on Copland, the faculty and student web server. For security and privacy reasons, this server is not indexed. Thus, to find web pages on Copland we identified the instructor for each course (this information was available for Fall 1999 only), looked up the faculty login and checked the personal directory (e.g. http://copland.udel.edu/~facultyid). 

In addition to these searches, we used the ITUE and User Services Present web sites to identify faculty members who had used these services.

UD Media Services provided a list of courses taught through UD-Online, video streamed and taught in ITV classroom. These courses were added to the database noting what method of delivery is used.

User services provided a list of courses that use Serf courseware management software. These courses were reviewed and added to the database.

Results

A preliminary analysis of the results show that of the 1,579 courses taught in Fall 1999, 465 (29.45%) used technology which for the purposes of this study means the course was streamed to the web, was taught in an interactive video classroom, was a web-based course or the course was supplemented with a website. This number does not include video tape-based distance education courses.

There are 3,768 courses listed University of Delaware Undergraduate & Graduate Catalog 1999-2000. Of these, 698 (18.52%) used technology. This figure is probably low because many of the courses listing in the catalog are not taught every year and some have not been taught in several years.

Table 1. Use of technology in classes for all terms.

	Number	Tech used	% of total	Web page	% of total	Async. video  streaming	Live video  streaming	ITV	Distance Learning web-based	CMS
All courses	3768	698	18.52	682	18.10	12	7	19	11	75
Undergraduate	2356	515	21.86	510	21.65	11	4	3	10	60
Graduate	1412	183	12.96	172	12.18	1	3	16	1	15
Agriculture and Natural Resources	273	53	19.41	52	19.05	0	0	1	0	6
Undergraduate	178	38	21.35	37	20.79	0	0	1	0	3
Graduate	95	15	15.79	15	15.79	0	0	0	0	3
Arts and Sciences	2184	351	16.07	352	16.12	2	2	0	2	16
Undergraduate	1503	277	18.43	277	18.43	1	2	0	2	15
Graduate	681	74	10.87	75	11.01	0	0	0	0	1
Business and Economics	205	56	27.32	55	26.83	2	0	0	0	2
Undergraduate	124	38	30.65	37	29.84	2	0	0	0	2
Graduate	81	18	22.22	18	22.22	0	0	0	0	0
Engineering	291	99	34.02	98	33.68	1	5	1	0	14
Undergraduate	141	63	44.68	63	44.68	0	2	0	0	9
Graduate	150	36	24.00	35	23.33	1	3	1	0	5
Health and Nursing Sciences	293	64	21.84	64	21.84	1	0	1	5	21
Undergraduate	213	59	27.70	59	27.70	1	0	0	5	18
Graduate	80	5	6.25	5	6.25	0	0	1	0	3
Human Resources, Education  and Public Policy	436	57	13.07	51	11.70	6	0	4	4	16
Undergraduate	185	38	20.54	35	18.92	6	0	1	3	13
Graduate	251	19	7.57	16	6.37	0	0	3	1	3
Marine Studies	69	16	23.19	8	11.59	0	0	12	0	0
Undergraduate	2	2	100.00	2	100.00	0	0	1	0	0
Graduate	67	14	20.90	6	8.96	0	0	11	0	0

Table 2. Use of technology in classes Fall 99.

	Number	Tech used	% of total	Web page	% of total	Async. video streaming	Live  video streaming	ITV	Distance Learning web-based	CMS
All courses	1579	465	29.45	448	28.37	12	6	19	10	55
Undergraduate	1140	360	31.58	355	31.14	11	4	3	9	46
Graduate	439	105	23.92	93	21.18	1	2	16	1	9
Agriculture and Natural Resources	93	29	31.18	28	30.11	0	0	1	0	3
Undergraduate	69	23	33.33	22	31.88	0	0	1	0	2
Graduate	24	6	25.00	6	25.00	0	0	0	0	1
Arts and Sciences	894	237	26.51	237	26.51	2	2	0	2	12
Undergraduate	693	194	27.99	194	27.99	2	2	0	2	11
Graduate	201	43	21.39	43	21.39	0	0	0	0	1
Business and Economics	106	41	38.68	40	37.74	2	0	0	0	2
Undergraduate	75	29	38.67	28	37.33	2	0	0	0	2
Graduate	31	12	38.71	12	38.71	0	0	0	0	0
Engineering	118	53	44.92	52	44.07	1	4	1	0	9
Undergraduate	61	36	59.02	36	59.02	0	2	0	0	6
Graduate	57	17	29.82	16	28.07	1	2	1	0	3
Health and Nursing Sciences	144	45	31.25	45	31.25	1	0	1	4	14
Undergraduate	118	42	35.59	42	35.59	1	0	0	4	13
Graduate	26	3	11.54	3	11.54	0	0	1	0	1
Human Resources, Education and Public Policy	196	44	22.45	38	19.39	6	0	4	4	15
Undergraduate	119	34	28.57	31	26.05	6	0	1	3	12
Graduate	77	10	12.99	7	9.09	0	0	3	1	3
Marine Studies	22	14	63.64	6	27.27	0	0	12	0	0
Undergraduate	2	2	100.00	2	100.00	0	0	1	0	0
Graduate	20	12	60.00	4	20.00	0	0	11	0	0

Technology is used more often in undergraduate than in graduate courses. In Fall 99, 1,140 undergraduate courses were taught, of these 360 (31.58%) used technology. 439 graduate courses were taught of which 105 (23.92%) used technology. Looking at all terms (all 3,768 courses in the catalog) there are 2,356 undergraduate; 515 (21.86%) use technology. There are 1,412 graduate courses, of which 183 (12.96%) use technology.

The numbers were broken down by College. The following table and charts show the distribution of courses taught and courses that use technology by College.

Table 3. Courses taught by College.

	All Terms				Fall 99
	Number	% of total	Used technology	% of total	Number	% of total	Used technology	% of total
All courses	3768	100.00	698	100.00	1579	100.00	465	100.00
Agriculture and  Natural Resources	273	7.25	53	7.59	93	5.89	29	6.24
Arts and Sciences	2184	57.96	351	50.29	894	56.62	237	50.97
Business and Economics	205	5.44	56	8.02	106	6.71	41	8.82
Engineering	291	7.72	99	14.18	118	7.47	53	11.40
Health and Nursing Sciences	293	7.78	64	9.17	144	9.12	45	9.68
Human Resources, Education and Public Policy	436	11.57	57	8.17	196	12.41	44	9.46
Marine Studies	69	1.83	16	2.29	22	1.39	14	3.01

For the Fall 99 term, the colleges of Agriculture and Natural Resources, Business and Economics, Engineering, Health and Nursing Sciences and Marine Studies had a higher percentage of classes that use technology of all courses that use technology than the colleges' share of courses taught in the University. For example, the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources taught 93 of the 1579 (5.89%) courses offered by the University in Fall 99. Of the 465 courses taught at the University in Fall 99 that used technology, 29 (6.24%) were offered by the College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. 
 

The figures are similar when data for all terms are considered.

We looked at courses that had web sites. The content of these sites varied from site to site. Our database records several components of each web site. Most class web sites contained only a syllabus and class calendar. Table 4 shows the components of undergraduate and graduate course web sites used during Fall 99.
 

Table 4. Components of course web sites Fall 99.

	Web site	Syllabus	Calendar	Reading List	Readings	Old/Sample Exams	Lectures	Assignments	Links	Chat
All courses	448	427	370	128	67	40	100	185	169	26
Undergraduate	355	336	289	104	55	39	84	149	145	21
Graduate	93	91	81	24	12	1	16	36	24	5

We looked at the number of courses currently using CMS by college. 
 

Table 5 Courses that used CMS Fall 99.

Fall 99	Number	Technology Used	CMS	% of technology courses that used CMS
All courses	1579	465	55	11.83
Agriculture and Natural Resources	93	29	3	10.34
Arts and Sciences	894	237	12	5.06
Business and Economics	106	41	2	4.88
Engineering	118	53	9	16.98
Health and Nursing Sciences	144	45	14	31.11
Human Resources, Education and Public Policy	196	44	15	34.09
Marine Studies	22	14	0	0.00

Technology Infrastructure at UD

When analyzing the results of this study, we must consider the exceptional technological infrastructure available at the University of Delaware.

• The University is a charter member of Internet 2. It is connected to the commercial network at 15 MB. Connections to Internet 2 via Abilene exceed 155 MB/second.
• Central computers available for students and faculty include Sun Sparc Server E4000s, a Cray J90, and an SGI Power Challenge. Storage space on these systems in approaching 1 terabyte. Every student has an account on the central servers and is allocated at least 4MB of disk space.
• A permanently funded faculty refreshment program ensures that each faculty member gets a new computer at least every 4 years.
• Over 900 PC's are available for student use in University-administered computing sites located throughout the campus. Approximately 75% of these computers were purchased within the last year.
• All dorm rooms and offices have network connections. All classrooms on campus have network connections. Many classrooms are equipped with power outlets and network connections at each seat.
• A recent survey of students at the University of Delaware shows that 86% of current students own a computer. 
• The IT Help Center, provides computer support to students, faculty and staff 45 hours per week. The PRESENT is a service offered by User Services to assist faculty integrate technology into their courses. The Center for Teaching Effectiveness offers training and funding to help faculty implement technology in their courses. The Institute for Transforming Undergraduate Education (ITUE) provides training and resources to help faculty improve the quality of their instruction with technology.

University of Delaware Distributed Education Courses - Active Fall 1999, K. Troutman UMS.

University of Delaware Undergraduate & Graduate Catalog 1999-2000

Fall 1999 Undergraduate and Graduate Registration Booklet

Yahoo Internet Life Survey 2000 - prepared for the University of Delaware by Chris Murphy, Systems Planner, UD User Services.

1999 IT User Services Computing Survey, UD User Services and Office of Institutional Research and Planning.