BUSINESSWEEK ONLINE : DECEMBER 11, 2000 ISSUE
BUSINESS WEEK E.BIZ -- NET CULTURE The Wired Campus How CMU is aggressively adopting Net technology to pioneer e-education On the banks of the Monongahela River in Pittsburgh, where Andy Carnegie's fire-breathing Homestead Steel Works once stood, you will now find a vast parking lot dotted with islands of commerce. Among them: Target, Giant Eagle, and a gaudy 23-screen movie palace that looks like it was snatched off the Las Vegas strip. In its prime, the steel mill employed 20,000 people and was the very image of American industrial might. Now, all that is left are a half-dozen tall brick chimneys poking out of a sea of asphalt. Homestead's fate symbolizes how violently economic currents can shift, sweeping away icons that had stood immutable for a century. Two miles away stands another institution established by the old robber baron--Carnegie Mellon University. These days, universities face their own set of challenges. Many are frightfully expensive. Others are diploma mills--unimaginative and inflexible. Those institutions that won't or can't change are in danger of being eclipsed by more nimble competitors. In this case, though, Carnegie's offspring isn't sitting around waiting for a trip to the scrapyard. Instead, CMU is aggressively adopting the latest Internet technology and experimenting with new ways of tech-assisted teaching. It's Digital U--the No. 1 wired campus in the country, according to a ranking by the magazine Yahoo! Internet Life. Practically every student has a PC. This fall, CMU installed the first wireless network on a university campus. Students can now take notebook computers or handhelds wherever they go and connect with professors or fellow students via e-mail, log on to class Web sites, and visit libraries with the click of a button. Project teams hold virtual meetings at any time of day or night. And professors create interactive Web sites that replace rote learning. Example: a virtual chem lab for freshmen that lets them learn about mixing solutions without the danger of explosions. ''We're at the edge of possibilities in collaboration and the use of technologies. We're redefining fields and discovering new and different ways of communicating and doing cross-disciplinary teaching,'' says history professor Daniel P. Resnick. Indeed, the doings at CMU could become a model for universities across the country. The school is in the vanguard of a wave of technological and cultural change that could transform higher education in ways that can't be fully imagined. ''If you want to know what the future looks like for the campus-based university, that's it,'' says John G. Sperling, chairman and chief executive of Apollo Group Inc., which operates distance-learning powerhouse University of Phoenix. With 14,000 students now studying online, and the number growing at about 50% a year, the University of Phoenix is the bogeyman for colleges and universities that don't aggressively adopt new technology and innovative teaching methods. A massive tech-fest on campuses seems likely to spill over into business and the economy, too. Not only are universities pushing innovations in software and networking into the mainstream but they're producing armies of graduates who are comfortable with the latest gear and trained to use it on the job. Wired universities beget a wired nation. Beefing up. At CMU, though, they may find that networking the campus was the easy part. Now, the university has to figure out how to take advantage of technology without giving up what's best about a traditional education--face-to-face contact between teacher and student. Even CMU President Jared L. Cohon has concerns about going off the digital deep end. ''I love our technology edge, but we've got to soften the corners,'' he says. His top priority is cross-pollinating science with the humanities. Beefing up technology comes second: ''We do a great job of training students, but I worry that we don't do as well as we can at educating them.'' While CMU faculty have gathered evidence that this stuff works, there are plenty of skeptics elsewhere. Academics worry that e-learning is so much silicon snake oil rather than an elixir for higher education. David Noble, an outspoken history professor at Toronto's York University, is so anti-technology that he doesn't even use e-mail. He decries what he calls the ''automation of higher education.'' He warns against fast and wide adoption of technology for distance learning before its effects have been fully explored. In spite of such warnings, universities everywhere are experimenting with the latest technologies. And it's not just the elites like CMU, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Stanford University. The University of Central Florida in Orlando, for instance, offers 70 courses that are delivered online. Overall, 60% of American colleges and universities offer online-learning programs, and 8% more plan on doing so in the next year, according to a survey by The Chronicle of Higher Education. Course software from the likes of WebCT, Blackboard Inc., and eCollege.com is gaining popularity. According to Merrill Lynch & Co., the higher education e-learning market is expected to grow from $1.2 billion this year to $7 billion in 2003. CMU provides fertile ground for tech-enhanced education. It was started as the Carnegie Technical Schools in 1900 to provide training for the offspring of mill workers. Although now a university, it remains weighted toward science and engineering: 37% of 1,029 undergraduate degrees awarded last year were in these two disciplines. CMU has one of the premier computer science schools in the world and is on the cutting edge of information technology research. It's no wonder that in 1986 it was the first U.S. university to build its own campuswide computer network. The school has spent $50 million on the project. As of this fall, more than 15,000 computers have been connected, and there's wireless access from just about everywhere. While owning a PC is only recommended for most students, the 746 students in CMU's MBA program are required to tote laptops. All CMU's technical prowess isn't worth much for teaching, though, unless educators come up with smart ways to use it. That's why Cohon last July created an Office of Technology for Education--a central bureau to support the use of technology by faculty and students. This kind of coordination is vital on the highly decentralized campus, where faculty members experiment independently. ''You don't want to keep reinventing the wheel,'' says Joel M. Smith, the office's director. To avoid that, he's building a database on the Web to track all the campus projects and provide the latest information about what's being developed. Among CMU's digerati, public enemy No. 1 is the old-fashioned lecture, where a scholar stands before hundreds of snoozing students and drones on for an hour or two. For them, the chief role of technology is to help end boredom. ''In the future, learning will come from doing,'' predicts Professor Raj Reddy, the former longtime dean of CMU's School of Computer Science. ''You abolish lectures, and you don't just read about history, you participate in a simulation of it.'' While that's a vision of the future, a handful of CMU projects already have created electronic tutors that their creators believe are more effective than traditional lectures at teaching students introductory or general topics. Fun, too. These tutors operate like virtual teaching assistants. If a student makes a mistake, he or she is alerted by the software program. If students get stuck, the machine offers hints. They don't have to wait until the next class to get help. Jeff Collins, a PhD candidate in English who used a tutor to learn the Lisp computer programming language, says ''it's much better than any lecture would be. In a lecture, the information flows past you. The tutor waits until you show you actually do get it.'' Some of the more advanced systems learn from the way students interact with them--and modify themselves to improve their effectiveness. ''We're on the cusp of having a science of learning. We're learning how the brain works as well as figuring out what people need to learn,'' says Kenneth Koedinger, a senior research scientist in CMU's Human-Computer Interaction Institute. ''What science has done for medicine, it can do for education.'' Some of these programs are fun, too. Take the Jam-O-Drum. This gizmo is shaped like a circular table and wired so when you beat on it a projector beams down colorful images onto the surface that match the sounds from the drum. Students have incentive to learn how to program so they can play games or make music together. It also teaches collaborative skills, while stretching their thinking about what's possible. ''I want kids to get crazy. You're not trained to do that in your Java programming course,'' says Tina Blaine, a performance artist and visiting scholar at CMU who created the Jam-O-Drum. Another example: Using a virtual chemistry lab, freshmen come up with a mix of fuel for an imaginary NASA expedition to Mars. If they get it wrong, they see a video of a rocket exploding on takeoff. Past research at the university showed that few science majors retain much knowledge from their freshman lectures. ''People were sleepwalking through these courses. We want to engage them,'' says David Yaron, an associate professor of theoretical chemistry who designed the virtual laboratory. Group projects are one sure way to get kids pumped up. CMU has a full range of wires and gadgets to improve the way teams work together. Students can borrow notebook computers or handhelds, and using the wireless network, keep track of their projects and colleagues even while they're on the move. No waiting until evening to answer a crucial e-mail. One collaboration tool, TeamCMU, provides a calendar, discussion boards, and a way to access and keep track of shared documents. Jason Vardzel, an information systems major, used TeamCMU when he led a project group last year that designed a travel Web site. ''You'd get three guys together and work over the documents,'' he says. ''At some places this would be just gee-whiz stuff, but, here, people really use it.'' CMU's technology truly clicks when it acts as a bridge between academic disciplines. A course called Building Virtual Worlds brings together computer science, art, architecture, and psychology students to learn about teamwork by creating virtual reality worlds that are experienced by wearing special helmets and body wiring. Every two weeks, teams of four are assembled to build an environment, such as the world of a bumblebee. The students divvy up duties like software coding and creating 3-D images, then work together on scripts. They learn how to work well with others--a vital skill in the real world. ''There's a tendency to want to have complete control over what you're working on, but in a project like this that's not possible,'' says Clifton Forlines, a graduate student who took the course as an undergrad. ''You meet people with very different values. You may not like them all, but you develop a respect for what they can do that you can't.'' If the Virtual Worlds course provides a taste of what it's like for a team to build something, CMU's Management Game is a five-course meal. Each year, five-person teams of MBA students run made-up wristwatch companies for 14 weeks--using the Web to collaborate, track their performance, trade virtual stocks, and analyze business plans. The students come up with a strategy and make decisions about where to manufacture their watches, what markets to target, and what to charge. The profs occasionally throw them curveballs--such as a product recall--and they're forced to react in real time to the crisis. The computing system calculates outcomes based on how 80 teams at CMU and at universities in Japan and elsewhere operate. For some students, the game becomes all-consuming--soaking up 20 hours a week or more. What's so compelling? The computer simulation makes it seem real. And, since three years of business activity are compressed into four months, they get to see and study results quickly. But it's not all virtual. The teams have real live boards of directors from Pittsburgh businesses and negotiate labor contracts with local union leaders. ''We couldn't gain this kind of experience in case studies or lectures,'' says Hidenori Hayashi, a native of Japan who was ''CEO'' of one of the teams, Millennium Time Inc. The only way to have a more realistic experience would be to actually run a company. And at CMU, that's possible, too. Jacqui Thorpy, a 20-year-old junior from Scarsdale, N.Y., is CEO of TeenFX.com, a community Web site for teenagers that she started at age 14. When she arrived at CMU as a computer science major two years ago, she considered giving the one-woman project up, fearing it would take too much time. But Jack Roseman, a professor in the university's entrepreneurship program, urged her to keep it up--and offered to design her education around it. That's just what she has done. She takes courses in Web site design, marketing, and organizational behavior that feed directly into her daily responsibilities as CEO. Often she'll rush out of a class and dash off an e-mail to her executive assistant, who works at an office in White Plains, N.Y., updating the site based on something she just figured out. Example: A few weeks ago, Thorpy learned in a class the importance of bending the rules to keep customers loyal. Previously, if kids participated in a contest and submitted their answers after the deadline, they didn't get a prize. Now she hands out awards even to kids who miss a deadline. All of this is paying off. TeenFX.com has 23 employees and serves up 3 million Web pages a month to visitors, collecting fees from sponsors. Thorpy plans on eventually taking it public. For students who can't juggle being on campus with their full-time jobs, CMU offers a handful of online degree programs. Nearly 200 students around the country are participating in master's programs in software engineering and information technology. Students get lectures on CD-ROMs and access to a Web site where they see study assignments and reading materials and can participate in class bulletin boards and live chat sessions with the professor and other class members. ''For me, going to Pittsburgh was not an option, but I wanted the quality of a Carnegie Mellon education,'' says Walden Mathews, a computer systems analyst who lives with his wife and kids in Norwalk, Conn., and is halfway through a master's program in software programming. Eventually, CMU expects to offer some undergraduate programs online, too. Already, nonprofit subsidiary Carnegie Technology Education is taking undergrad courses developed by CMU professors and repackaging them for the Web via 17 corporations and colleges--including the City University of Hong Kong and California University of Pennsylvania. The idea is to make some of the university's expertise available to thousands of students at more affordable prices. Students pay tuition that is in line with the norms at their university, and CMU takes a cut. Most of CMU's pioneers see the Net as a way to enrich the on-campus experience, rather than something that would eliminate the need for the campus itself. ''The end result is not that the campus disappears. It's that the campus is used better for human interaction. You offload to technology the things that technology can do,'' says Smith of the Office of Technology for Education. Even as an adjunct, though, there are drawbacks to leaning too heavily on technology. CMU President Cohon is concerned that a Web culture will interfere with building a face-to-face community. ''My fear is we'll have students off in their rooms doing everything they can on the Web, and not interacting with each other,'' he says. Already, some of the student body is uneasy with basic communications. About 40 students attended a seminar on how to carry on a conversation during orientation week this fall. Cohon plans to amend the current online registration process so students are forced to meet with advisers. That way the courses they pick won't be too narrowly focused within their disciplines. Certainly some students are obsessed with technology. Take Grigoriy Reshko. The 17-year-old freshman, a Russian native, this fall designed a three-wheel robot that's controlled by a Palm handheld. He and colleagues at CMU's Robotics Institute published a do-it-yourself recipe for the device on their Web site. Except when he's sleeping or at karate lessons, he spends his hours absorbed in software and gizmos. Eventually, predicts young Reshko, people ''will have robot companions.'' Does all this technology really make a difference? That's far from proven. Thomas L. Russell, a former North Carolina State University administrator who tracks such studies, last year published a book, The No Significant Difference Phenomenon, which combs through studies and concludes that most show little difference between the effectiveness of traditional teaching and e-learning. ''In spite of all the claims, the evidence is overwhelming that it doesn't make a significant difference in learning,'' he says. But advocates of e-learning point to evidence that it can be an effective alternative to lectures, at the very least. Practically every professor at CMU who has experimented has at least preliminary results showing some improvement in learning and test scores. For example, Latanya Sweeney, a computer science professor whose tutoring system is used to teach basic Java programming, says people who use the software get the equivalent of a one-to-three faculty/student ratio--much better than sitting in a lecture hall with 100 other students. CMU online tutors for math have improved standardized test scores by 30% for high schoolers in Pittsburgh public schools. Professors at CMU are so convinced that e-learning has its advantages that they're working on the next generation of technologies. Reddy, of the school of computer science, heads up something called the Aura project. He and his colleagues envision a new era of ''invisible computing,'' where computers are embedded in the walls of buildings and attached unobtrusively to people's bodies. When you walk into a room, it recognizes you and puts all of its computer power at your command. Within a year, they hope to demonstrate how it can work in offices and labs at CMU. ''The idea is to transform computing as we know it,'' says Reddy. Ultimately, he hopes, the technology will be ubiquitous in businesses and homes. Projects like Reddy's will go a long way toward establishing CMU as a laboratory for the 21st century university. If this school and other e-learning pioneers can pull it off, they may indeed change the face of universities. But it's unlikely the brick and ivy campus will disappear anytime soon. The key will be coming up with a combination of real and virtual experiences that will allow campuses to thrive--and avoid going the way of the Homestead Works. By STEVE HAMM _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ BACK TO TOP					e.biz Contents for Dec. 11, 2000 issue RELATED ITEMS The Wired Campus TABLE: Digital U. 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