PLAN FOR USE OF TECHNOLOGY FEE

The City College of New York • CUNY

Background.

Introduction.

The Technology Fee Committee agreed on two guidelines for its planning: (1) the funds should be invested in ways that directly and positively impact the experience of students at the College and (2) in the initial years at least, the funds should be invested in a limited number of projects, large enough to have significant visibility and effect. With this agreement in place, the committee identified four goals:

Proposed Activities and Associated Budgets

The Technology Fee Committee, using recently drafted reports and recommendations as guides, identified five interrelated activities to be implemented with anticipated funds. These activities support the goals listed above.

(1) Design, install and operate a Computer Learning Center to offer training for students, so that they learn: use of email, fundamentals of computer equipment use, Internet searching, word processing, creating web sites, use of presentation software, use of graphics, keyboarding, creation and use of spreadsheets, database management/graphing, and adherence to intellectual property guidelines. This would not be such a critical area of need, if there were training programs already available at the College. However, for students, there is no mechanism for receiving training in using computers and software beyond the very limited opportunities provided by a few faculty in their courses and informal, student-to-student collaboration. The Computer Learning Center will work closely with the New Student Seminar to ensure that new students have access to appropriate workshops.

Rationale.
(1.1) Insufficient mastery of high value technology skills by students
The self-study process that preceded the drafting of this year's strategic planning report involved the distribution and subsequent analysis of two surveys, one for faculty, one for students, asking them to rate their confidence in using a number of specific new technology tools and also to describe their access to computers on- and off-campus.
Student results showed areas of need, as indicated in the following data representing the percentage of students who reported that their confidence in using the identified technology tools was in one of the three lowest (of five) response categories:

(2) Develop a Student Technology Intern Program, to provide support for the training activities of the Computer Learning Center and provide help desk and other technical assistance to individual students and faculty. The program will create opportunities for a cadre of interested undergraduates to gain advanced skills in both technology use and in training.

Rationale.
(2.1) Insufficient technical support is available currently to technology users at the College. The College's primary help-desk is staffed by one fulltime and four part-time student employees, not enough, given the increasing quantity and complexity of service calls. The exception to this situation is the School of Education where their PT3 project supports active Multimedia and Computer Centers staffed by two fulltime professionals and six part-time assistants. (2.2) Such a program provides for student interns an opportunity to master high-value technology skills that enhance their pre- and post-graduation employment prospects.

(3) Increase student access to technology on-campus by updating general computer facilities (hardware and software) and initiating a Student Laptop Support Program.

Rationale.
(3.1) Students' survey responses may, in part, be the outcome of insufficient student access to computing resources on-campus. Of the 30+ computer laboratories on campus, 24 are available only to the student and faculty in a specific program and even then, during very limited hours. In a survey of students who left City College before completing their degree requirements, dissatisfaction with student computing resources was the most frequently mentioned complaint. The College will upgrade general computer laboratories in a cyclical manner initially focusing on those facilities whose equipment is nearing the end of their life cycle. In the first year the College will target general computer facilities in the Office of Students with Disabilities, the Division of Humanities, the Division of Social Science, the School of Architecture, and the Library.

(3.2) Access to computers also requires access to current commonly used software. Currently, the College supports a site license for anti-virus software. Licenses for commonly used software are often purchased by the division/school for the computer laboratories in their areas with the result that different laboratories work with different versions of the same software package. The benefits of maintaining college-wide software site licenses agreements are a) reduced cost due to volume purchasing, b) timely upgrades and assistance-college wide, and c) allowing for campus-wide legal use. Our license purchasing decisions are determined by considering cross platform support of campus-based operating systems. We also try to accommodate a wide range of compatibility with user's campus and home-based software. Since we will be purchasing a considerable number of new systems over the next few years (and recycling old systems to new users) these licenses will become more expensive and relevant.
We propose site licensing for a wide-range of applications such as Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint, and Outlook/Entourage) and Adobe products (such as Acrobat, Photoshop, Illustrator, and PageMaker). Such ubiquitous applications allow our students the capacity to produce professional, high-quality documents in a variety of use environments.

(3.3) There is a need to manage and coordinate the increasing use of laptops (both wireless and plug-in) resources at the College and increase access for students with laptops. The students that participate in college programs incorporating laptops (Honors College, and the Engineering Leadership Program), as well as the increasing number of students that are individually purchasing laptops all expect access to college resources via their laptops. The College intends to explore the extension of current laptop programs for other group of students.

(4) Expand the capacity of the Center for Teaching and Learning, a faculty training and curriculum development facility at the College, to
(1) train faculty in basic technology use skills and
(2) support technology-based curricular projects.

Teams will be established, including faculty, programmers and graphic artists, to revise existing courses or develop new ones which can be offered by the college online. This will include the establishment of incentives to motivate and sustain faculty work on instructional technology in courses, including conventional courses and those taught online. Achievement of this objective will require not only that faculty have mastered the fundamentals of commonly used hardware and software, but also that they enhance their understanding of new research on learning and how this connects to the capabilities that computers provide to instructors and students. The staffing and equipment of the Center for Teaching and Learning currently are not at all adequate for the faculty training and associated curriculum development work proposed. The Center has no fulltime staff; the Assistant Provost directs the Center as a part of her assignment, with one part-time student assistant. The Center has a small annual budget for supplies, but has received no College funding for computing equipment, including peripherals in four years.

Rationale.
(4.1) Insufficient mastery of high value technology skills by faculty.
The faculty survey, mentioned earlier, asked respondents to rate their computer skills on a scale 1 to 5, "1" being not confident and "5" being very confident. The results were:

The results suggested that, with the exception of the first four categories, many faculty have not mastered several standard technology use skills. Even in those categories in which the averages were highest, many faculty respondents rated their own confidence as low.

(4.2) Over-reliance by faculty on traditional teaching methods, coupled with generally low levels of use of new technology in teaching. Most faculty conduct courses by lecturing in class and structuring conventional out-of-class assignments that only occasionally involve technology use. When faculty were polled as part of the most recent strategic planning effort about their use of various technologies in teaching. The results were:

(4.3) Limited access to learning resources, including the instructor, by students outside of class hours. As a commuter college, with no dormitory facilities and students who work and shoulder many family responsibilities, around-the-clock access to learning materials is a critical need. As the faculty survey results show, a relatively small percentage (31%) of faculty have course web sites - convenient mechanisms for posting assignments, readings, other learning resources, and for providing opportunities to work collaboratively with classmates. Those faculty who have created course sites and tracked patterns of use, find that their students use online materials at all hours of the day and night.

(5) Purchase and support additional core library databases.

Rationale.
(5.1) All Library technology supports content delivery in support of research, scholarship, curriculum, and information literacy. Library catalog functions, bibliographic as well as collection use, are electronically integrated; some are also web-based, and all will be with CUNY's migration to a new ILS in July 2002. There are a number of library resources that are not available through CUNY-wide resources but which the College has identified as important. These include:

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Proposed Budget: Technology Fee Budget - Year 1

Technology Fee Committee

The membership of the Technology Fee Committee includes faculty appointed upon recommendations of the Faculty Senate, the Divisional Deans, appropriate members of the Technology Task Force, students recommended by the office of the Vice-President of Student Affairs, and staff members of academic computing. The Technology Fee Committee will be the standing college committee that will advise the Office of the Provost on the expenditure of the computer fee revenue. The current Committee members are:

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