Information Technology Council

Minutes for the Meeting of October 6, 1997

1. Lee distributed a draft policy on web pages and suggested that the council will need to look into problems of copyright laws in the distribution of material on web pages.  This issues ties into problems of intellectual property, web publishing, and who should bear the burden of copyright issues.
2. A description of OneNet was given to the council.  Its goals, capabilities, advantages, and disadvantages were discussed.
3. The first set of recommendations from the Mingle report, specifically those dealing with distance education, were discussed.  This was a wide-ranging discussion.  The major points are outlined below:

 
• Four major questions need to be answered:  1)  What are the potential gains and losses of OU's participation (or lack thereof) in distance education?  2)  Who are our potential clients?  3)  Who are our potential competitors?  4)  What is needed for effective participation in distance education?
• Gains and Losses:  There is a large, and ever growing, population of "non-traditional" students who have difficulty getting to campus for regular classes, or are looking for a smaller number of specific courses for training or re-training.  A university ignores these students at its own peril.  However, a strength of a traditional university is its atmosphere and personalized learning environment.  The question remains as to the best relation between distance education and the traditional university.  This goes to the heart of the role of the traditional university in an information economy, and is based largely on what employers will be willing to pay for our students.
• Potential Clients:  Potential clients of distance education at OU are non-traditional students who do not have the time to commute, state-wide students looking for degree programs (assuming regional restrictions on higher education delivery are lifted), and students world-wide who may be interested in courses or programs where OU is a recognized leader.  Equally important, traditional students who want to access course materials from home or dorm are also clients of "distance education" meaning education that is not spatially and/or temporally constrained.
• Potential Competitors:  For specific courses, there are many competitors to OU for both traditional and non-traditional students.  Schools both inside and outside the state, and comercial enterprises will all be transmitting course material to potential students.  Western Governors' University is organized, ready to broadcast into Oklahoma, and has the blessings of the governor to do so.  It is less clear what the competition is for students enrolled in a degree program.  One question that must be explored further is the possibility for transfer of a large numbers of courses to a degree program at OU.
• Infrastructure:   There are several elements necessary for successful participation in distance education at OU.  First, the opportunities will best be identified by individual units or colleges, although encouragement from the administration to find and exploit these opportunities will be helpful.  There must be a reward system in place to encourage this work.  If it is an overload burden on faculty, it will not be done well.  There needs to be support and expertise at the university that can be employed by faculty or departments with a desire to do this.  This will require both technical personnel and top-notch educators interested in the best uses of technology in learning.  Pieces of this type of support system exist in individual colleges, the ITS (formally ISC), and CCE, but better coordination is needed.  This raises the question of the optimal relationship between these entities and the university at large.
 

4. Further discussion of the Mingle report will continue next week.