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Opinion
Cleveland Is Hot
10/31/2003
Some faculty at wireless campuses are beginning to complain about the “sea of screens” that dominate their classes: are students taking notes, searching for content related to class discussion, doing e-mail, or simply wandering in Cyberspace during a dull lecture? Are the undergraduates bored? Are the law students and MBAs searching the Web for content (court rulings, BusinessWeek articles) to enhance class discussions or to ambush their peers and the prof?
Planning for wireless involves the obvious conversations about costs and content. Controlling access and network security are understandably major concerns. Curricular consequences remain largely unknown.
For me, however, the most interesting student issues involve collaboration and compelling convenience.
Over the past two decades, we’ve all seen students gather around the computer. One works the keyboard as the others talk or watch. But what happens when small groups of students work together, each with an untethered notebook computer? D'es the nature of collaboration change? Do students engage in a kind of parallel processing, unbundling the task as each brings new perspectives, informed by new information found from different parts of the Web? D'es technology-enhanced collaboration bring together more parts for a larger (or better) gestalt?
While we know that wireless offers incredible convenience, we should also ask if that convenience is compelling. How do we assess the benefit of investment in wireless, a larger, more encompassing measure than the standard ROI that focuses on financials. For example, d'es wireless provide more (or better) access? If so, for which categories of users? And how should we measure access: Number and kind of users? Or time online?
These are more than just “academic” questions. The continuing campus conversations about IT strategy require real data—real evidence—that these investments generate significant, measurable benefits.
The OneCleveland and Case Western Reserve University wireless initiatives provide an important opportunity—for the campus community and for the Cleveland community—to experience and to monitor the impact and benefits of expanded access and expansive wireless. It will be very interesting to watch Cleveland get hot.
[Editor’s note: Casey Green will co-anchor a special Ahead of the Curve broadcast session, “An Open Discussion About Open Source” from the Syllabus fall2003 conference in Cambridge, Mass. on December 8. For updates, visit www.syllabus.com.]
Kenneth C. Green, visiting scholar at The Claremont Graduate University, is the founding director of The Campus Computing Project, a comprehensive, continuing study of the role of information technology at higher education institutions in the United States (www.campuscomputing.net).
View more articles by Kenneth Green.
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