Meeting demands of technology

By Heather Lowhorn

Five years ago the Internet had barely left the text-based era and there were no dot-com commercials. At that time AU was among the first colleges to wire all on-campus housing with Internet access. But it’s no news flash that technology moves at a frenetic pace. In technology time, five years might as well be 50. Despite that challenge, AU is striving to keep up with what students expect.

The Office of Information Technology Services (ITS) is responsible for keeping AU’s computers humming. Cynthia Smith, director of ITS, realizes that when using the Internet, students primarily expect speed. “They come today expecting fast connectivity,” she says. “Today [on the Internet] you have all these graphics — jumping this and flashing that. All that takes bandwidth. The network we built five years ago is now kind of a narrow pipe, and students are chaffing a bit because they don’t have the bandwidth that today’s applications require.”

The ITS department plans to increase Internet speed on campus. It’s a big project, but an important one. There is one port for every student living in on-campus housing, and 60 to 70 percent of the students have their own computers. “When the students bring [computers], they expect that the infrastructure will be there.”

Not every student will bring their own computer, however, and even those who do will not have all the expensive software packages needed for class work. That is why AU has approximately 200 computer workstations in labs across the campus.

The machines in the computer labs are kept up-to-date, with the oldest machines being just 2 years old. “We change out the lab computers every other year,” explains Smith. Labs offer expensive hardware and software that many students don’t own themselves, such as Zip drives, CD-write drives, scanners and color printers, and class-specific software packages. “We have a class that uses Quark Xpress®, a $700 piece of software. Students aren’t going to buy Quark Xpress®, so they come to the lab to do that work,” explains Smith.

As technology changes, it is changing education. More professors are embracing the Internet as a tool to get information to their students, and AU now offers some classes over the Internet. While some colleges offer entire degrees through Internet classes, AU still focuses on the face-to-face aspect of teaching. “You’re only face-to-face so many hours in a semester and there is so much information out there,” says Smith. “Spend the class time for what can only be done with the instructor.”

According to Smith, the toughest part of keeping AU wired is staffing the ITS department in a very tight market, a problem that is universal in higher education. “Business knows technology is key to their success,” explains Smith. “They know they need that talent which will generate more money, whereas, we don’t run on the profit mode. We have a whole different mission, though our needs for technology are just as great. ... Over the last three to five years, the gap between what education can pay for technology staff and what business can pay has grown and grown.”

Smith believes that the influence of the Internet and technology on higher education has just begun to grow. “I think we just have a glimmer of where this might be going,” she says. “Our world in 10 years is going to be so different, we’re not going to believe it.”