ACM Computing Surveys 28A(4), December 1996, http://www.acm.org/surveys/1996/. Copyright © 1996 by the Association for Computing Machinery, Inc. See the permissions statement below.
Abstract: This file describes a Virtual Computing College. A research agenda is sketched, but the emphasis is on administrative issues germane to the success of such a college. Finally immediate action in terms of an alliance and funding is suggested.
Categories and Subject Descriptors: K.3.1 [Computing Milieu]: Computers and Education - Computer and Information Science Education; H.4.1 [Information Systems]: Information Systems Applications - Office Automation
General Terms: Management
Additional Key Words and Phrases: Virtual University
Our report "Strategic Direction in Computer Science Education" calls for a Center for Computer Science and Engineering Education. This center would have various functions of which the one emphasized in our group report is to house materials to be reused elsewhere by computer science students and educators. I support the aims of that Center. The part of the Center which I want to particularly address in my position statement is the Virtual University part, which I would call the Virtual Computing College part. My position statement has 3 parts: research issues, administration, and a proposal.
Mapping the right cyberspace tools and methods to subpopulations of students and learning objectives is the main research agenda supported by the Virtual Computing College. The new tools and methods that are particularly germane concern cyberspace and enable the "virtual mode" -- computer networks, multimedia, artificial intelligence, .... For instance, research projects might address:
The Virtual Computing College will not only be a living laboratory for such research, but will also coordinate alliances across government and industry to further our understanding of the principles underlying virtual education and more generally, virtual organizations
Different kinds of organizations offer higher education with different administrations and different cost-benefit factors.
Public university administrators try to get money from the government. They may tell the government that they are trying to be more efficient. Bowen's studies (Bowen, 1980) show that they always spend all the money they get and always say that they need more. To the extent that the administrators get more resources for technology to support education, they may tell government that this has the promise to reduce per student costs, but they tell the faculty that this is a matter of raising quality.
Private universities may want to directly sell quality education at a profit. Distance education may cost more to produce and deliver but distant students may be willing to pay more. For instance, the Boeing Company will pay some universities handsomely to give certain distance courses to engineers at Boeing (Dewey, 1996). A profit-motivated university could take advantage of this opportunity.
A private company that sells a product or service may want to offer education (and I realize this may at times be training but it can also be education) at a distance because such delivery helps it realize its mission of increasing its marketshare in the world. Take note of the educational activities of companies such as Microsoft (1996), Novell (1996), and Oracle (1996).
The different cost-benefit analyses in the different organizations are worth considering as we ponder the future of the virtual computing college. The Virtual Organization frees people from space and time constraints and in the educational sector could lead to increased access for students, improved educational outcomes, and decreased per student costs. Public university faculty often worry about the tension between increased access and increased quality (see Rada, 1995). Companies that educate internally worry about the cost versus the likely gain in productivity. And so on.
For an individual teacher to lecture to a class of 200 students 3 hours a week and give them an exam at the end of the 15 week semester can take less than two person-weeks of work for the teacher. This could well be less work than would be required to manage the same course on the WWW. However, when we try to suit methods of teaching to student subpopulations and to learning objectives, then we would surely find that different methods are best for different situations. Consider for instance the student-side. Many people have jobs or families that are vital to their way of life, yet these people may want more higher education. For them to go to my physical lecture hall at a fixed time may be an enormous cost for them. For some of these people going to the teacher's WWW site is a very low cost. Other examples abound.
The challenge for the Virtual Computing College is to properly position itself to have a dominant position with some subpopulation of students. This dominant position requires that the students (or their sponsors) want to pay the tuition to learn from this College. To gain such a market niche the Virtual College will need to make alliances with other organizations.
Various proposals have been made that are similar to what we might make as a virtual computing college proposal. One such unsuccessful proposal to my School at Washington State University was entitled "Virtual School of EE&CS: proposal for new faculty" (Rada et al, 1995). A consortium proposal was unsuccessfully made to NSF under the title "The Virtual College: A Demonstrator" (Washington State University, et al, 1996).
Many proposals of others have however already become successful. From various directions, we might study the attributes of:
I teach a course entitled the Virtual University (1996) entirely on the WWW. There you will see the above and other initiatives noted.
So what should we do? All the participants in this workshop were from academia but I think critical partners are missing -- particularly industry partners. Would we want to develop a business plan? An individual like myself operating alone has too little leverage. Who are the partners?
Reaching students and maintaining a virtual computing college long-term involves many difficult market moves. Creating and maintaining under government support a repository of public-domain computing education tools and documents is more of a political challenge. Should we ask ACM to serve as an umbrella organization for an alliance of universities represented by those in this working group to make a proposal to NSF for funding to implement a 5-year demonstrator of the "freely reusable library".
Nota Bene: Updated versions of this position statement may be found at http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~rada/research/papers/sdcr.htm
Bowen, Howard, The Costs of Higher Education: How Much Do Colleges and Universities Spend per Student and How Much Should They Spend?, San Francisco, Jossey-Bass, 1980
Dewey, Don "Letter to the Virtual Information Technology College from the Director of Education for The Boeing Company" http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~virtual/vitc/subscribers/dewey.txt, March 4, 1996
Microsoft Corporation "The Microsoft Online Institute" http://moli.microsoft.com/ May 1996.
National Virtual Agriculture College, http://www.ces.ncsu.edu/adec/, 1996
Novell Corporation "Novell's Youngest, Fastest-Growing Certification Reaches 50,000 Certified Novell Administrator (CNA) Program Growing by 10,000 a Quarter" http://corp.novell.com/press/pr00131.htm, May 1996.
Oracle Systems "Oracle Education Americas" http://www.oracle.com/education/, May 1996.
Rada, Roy "How to Empower Students" http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~rada/VWSU/leader/sep15/index.htm, September 1995.
Rada, R, Bamberger, R, Buchanan, C "Virtual School of EE&CS: proposal for new faculty" http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~rada/research/proposals/CENTER.HTM, November 1995.
Virtual University, Computer Science 580, Washington State University, taught by Roy Rada, http://www.eecs.wsu.edu/~virtual/, 1996.
Washington State University, University of Nebraska at Lincoln, The Gallup Organization, "The Virtual College: A Demonstrator", proposal submitted to National Science Foundation, http:/www.eecs.wsu.edu/~rada/research/proposals/vitc/index.htm, 1996.
Western Governors University, http://www.concerto.com/smart/vu/vuwork.html, 1996.