| Strategic Plan
for the Department of Information Technology and Communication, University of Virginia
by Alf Weaver | |
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[Version history] |
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Jessica had shopped carefully for a university. Living in California, she could not afford in-person tours of all her east coast school possibilities, so instead she had made a list of her top ten choices, taken Internet tours of all of them, read their electronic catalogs, applied by email and provided her own resume as a web page. Now came the waiting, and at last it arrived--an electronic message inviting Jessica to join UVa's class of 2003. Excited by being accepted by her first choice, she spent many an hour during that summer after high school touring UVa using virtual reality. She picked her dorm after taking VR tours of each of her choices. She met her roommates during a videoconference and they talked about what courses they might take. Email kept them in touch over the summer as they waited for the start of school.Jessica arrived at UVa for first-year orientation. After her introduction to the honor system, she was given her master computer account that will be hers for her entire duration at UVa. This account gave her access to course registration, her transcript, her university financial account, some of her medical records, and all of the computing power needed to complete her course work.
Her first job was to complete registration, a job that had begun the previous spring. At the time of her acceptance she had been given initial access to the University's new registration procedure based entirely on the World Wide Web. She had browsed the university's electronic catalog, made a preliminary selection of courses, contacted her new academic advisor via email to discuss course selection, and had eventually constructed a tentative schedule by selecting courses from the electronic course offering directory on the Web. When she finished her selections, the web software allowed her to print a copy of her schedule that included her instructors' names, course times, classroom locations, and a map of the grounds with her classrooms clearly marked to ease the angst of her upcoming first week on grounds.
Now that she was physically present, it was time to complete registration. Using any of the 1000+ public computers on grounds, or her own laptop connected to the UVa computer network, she logged into the system to peruse her schedule. Unsure about her original choice of a commerce course as an elective (over the summer, her friends had indicating they were going to take PSYC 101), she returned to the web-based registration system. She used the electronic catalog to compare the contents and requirements of the two courses; from each course description she accessed the home page of the instructor that provided the instructor's picture, brief biography, office address (with map), telephone number and office hours.
Concerned that her schedule was pretty full, she used the automatic email facility to ask the COMM and PSYC course coordinators about those courses' expected workload. While waiting for the answer, she used the system to access the electronic histories of the courses and the instructors. By clicking on hotlinks associated with the courses, she was able to survey previous students' opinions about each course; a similar facility provided access to last year's student ratings of the instructors. Armed with that comparative information, and the answer to her email question, she decided to change her schedule. She did so with a few mouse clicks and, as she watched her new schedule and map appear on the nearby laser printer, she overheard two alumni talking about the "old days" when people had to stand in line to register for classes or pay bills. Thank goodness it was all electronic now!
Jessica bought her books at the bookstore, ate a meal at Pav XI, and paid for her tuition using her "smart card" that gave her instant access to her financial accounts. A combination of a cash card and a credit card, the "smart card" allowed her to charge larger items (like tuition) but pay cash for smaller items by debiting electronic cash stored on the card. Her family had agreed to deposit money for incidental expenses in Jessica's bank account in California, and the smart card allowed her to move that money electronically onto the card and then spend it as cash at any Charlottesville merchant (all the local merchants had added this electronic capability when they saw the buying power of the 21,000-strong student body).
Jessica had joined the engineering school, and her first class on Mondays was Computer Science 101. She journeyed to the electronic classrooms in Olsson Hall where she plugged her laptop into the desktop network. As the instructor discussed the intricacies of programming in the language C++, she used her laptop to actually implement the program segments discussed in class. Her instructor used the multimedia equipment in the electronic classroom to write and execute programs on-line, to show examples of other interesting programs available for everyone's use in the digital program library, and to access some additional information about the history of computing that was available from the Library of Congress.
At the end of class she moved next door to the programming laboratory, an educational experiment at UVa that treated programming like a physics or chemistry course and immediately followed lecture with guided, hands-on lab experience. Under the direction of her teaching assistant, her lab section of 20 students completed their two-hour lab session and exited with a working program that they would utilize in next week's lab.
When Jessica returned to the dorm after dinner, her day was far from over. Again plugging her laptop into UVa's computer network, she began searching for information for her upcoming paper on "Technology in the Year 2020." She first visited UVa's library, looking for a quote from Thomas Jefferson that could provide a bit of local interest. Then, because her paper was about the future possibilities of mass transit using the National Aerospace Plane, she queried the digital archives of NASA to learn about its early experiences with windtunnel testing of the NASP's giant ram-jet engines. That data showed an unexpected power drop as the engine accelerated beyond the speed of sound, so she followed the data trail to the digital archives of the engine's manufacturer, General Electric, to see what they did about the anomaly. General Electric's digital library provided the details about how they reshaped the engine's air inlet to avoid that problem in the production model. She ran a simulation program provided by GE that showed how the power of the engine had to change as the designers changed the number of passengers that the plane had to accommodate.
On Tuesday, Jessica was back in the lab--a physics lab. She plugged her laptop into the benchtop network, ready to make what must surely be the world's one billionth measurement of the value of the acceleration of gravity. Her laptop gave her access to the electronic lab instructions, plus electronic references to both historical and instructional material about the history and measurement of gravity, ranging from Sir Isaac Newton and his apple to the modern search for gravitons. She ran her experiments and typed her experimental data directly into her laptop; later that night she used her spreadsheet to arrange the data in a meaningful way, then used her word processor to integrate all that information into her lab report, finally concluding (just like the millions who had done this experiment previously) that friction was the culprit when explaining why her measurements did not produce the expected value of g. Like all lab courses at UVa, her physics lab reports was filed electronically with the TA when completed, and grades and comments were returned using email.
On Wednesday, Jessica returned from soccer practice, ate dinner, and retired to her dorm room to join the on-going "electronic office hours" for her math course. The first hour exam was coming soon, so Jessica used the "Grounds-Wide Teletutoring System" to access the on-going class discussion, which provided real-time audio and video among her instructor and class members. The students asked questions, the instructor provided answers, and, using GWTTS's shared browser, information and pictures displayed on the instructor's screen were immediately seen on the students' screens as well. Similarly, any drawings on the integrated whiteboard were immediately seen by the instructor and students alike. Jessica requested attention by clicking an icon, and when she was acknowledged by the instructor, both her question and its answer could be seen and heard by the whole group. The instructor used the video camera and whiteboard combination to illustrate graphically what taking a derivative really means.
Jessica's math test was unlike those she had taken in high school. She was required to take it anytime during a specific week, rather than at a specific time. When she was ready to take it, she registered herself with the examination administration system, again using her "smart card" to provide the digital signature and cryptographic key needed to authenticate her identity, authorize her use of the system, and permit secure communications. The multiple-choice questions were presented on web pages and she clicked on her answers; she typed textual answers and formulae into the text boxes provided for other questions. When she finished that portion of the exam, her score was displayed and she was presented with remedial material for the two questions she missed. Having finished that part, she logged off while she contemplated her answers to the word problems. When she was finished, she logged on again and completed her exam by providing a file that contained her remaining answers.
Thursday's class on "Technology, Culture, and Communications" involved a field trip to the UVa hospital. There she saw the progress in medical imaging that had changed forever the physical relationships between doctors and patients. As the TCC class walked into the Virginia Neurological Institute, they saw Dr. Neal Kassell using his telemedicine system to assess the medical situation of an automobile accident victim in Harrisonburg. The driver had suffered a severe head trauma when his head hit the steering wheel. The paramedics had used their wireless communications systems in the ambulance to provide basic medical telemetry to UVa, including live audio and video from the accident site. With assistance from the emergency room physicians, the paramedics had been able to stabilize the patient and transport him to Rockingham Memorial Hospital, where he had just undergone a Magnetic Resonance Imaging scan of his head and neck. Those images had just been transmitted to UVa using the broadband, fiber optic computer network that was fast enough to transmit very large amounts of diagnostic imagery. From his review of the electronic MRIs, Dr. Kassell's task was to decide whether it was medically justifiable to spend $2000 for an air ambulance trip to UVa, or whether the patient could be satisfactorily treated at Rockingham with additional telemedical consults as needed.
The field trip ended with a tour of UVa's new Picture Archiving and Communications Systems (PACS) that was the repository for all digital patient records, including imagery. UVa had adopted the view that it was more efficient and economical to move medical images than to move people, and thus had invested heavily in telemedicine. Starting in 1997, UVa had abandoned radiographic film as the storage medium for radiological exams; now the Department of Radiology was producing 6 terabytes per year of digitized images from MRI, CT, X-ray, angiography, and cardiography. As a side benefit, the changeover to filmless radiography had decreased the hospital's film loss rate from 23% to zero, a benefit to patients and doctors alike.Jessica watched as one patient at the Forest Lakes outpatient clinic underwent a sonogram to check the health of her fetus, and another patient with chest pains was undergoing an echocardiogram at the Orange, Virginia, clinic. Both of these exams were being viewed in real time at UVa in the radiology reading room, and both patients received expert diagnosis before they left their respective clinics.
On Friday morning Jessica used UVa's "distance learning" center to participate in a class on social change in the former Czechoslovakia since the "velvet revolution" in 1990. This was a small class with only ten students, five of them in a physical classroom at UC-Berkeley, and the other five distributed around the U.S. in various electronic learning centers. After the professor discussed the assignment for the week, she introduced their special guest lecturer--the newly elected prime minister of the Czech Republic, physically present in Prague and participating via Internet videoconference. The students engaged the prime minister in a lively Internet discussion of the ethnic differences of the region, and the expected impact of the two countries' separation on their local economy.
After dinner she returned to her room and called her parents on the Internet phone. After assuring them that all was well, she decided to initiate one more study task before taking a well-deserved respite. For next week's distance learning class, her task would be to make a 15-minute presentation comparing the economic health and rate of growth of the Czech and Slovak republics. Saturday would provide plenty of time to make the presentation slides, but the raw data had to be gathered tonight. Jessica accessed UVa's new Internet search engine and described the type of data she needed; overnight, the search engine would access millions of web pages and hundreds of newspapers and magazines, looking electronically for relevant information. By morning, the search engine would return pointers to hundreds of timely data sources containing specific information about her query. From this wealth of information Jessica would be able to create a coherent picture of the Czech and Slovak economies.
On Sunday, Jessica reflected on her week. An electronic tour of Thomas Jefferson's writings had reminded her of Jefferson's profound desire that UVa should be the most modern of schools. She thought about how the electronic age of computing and communications had made that possible, and about how the infrastructure of the Internet had made possible the integration of multiple, heterogeneous systems supporting pure computation, classroom instruction, library research, scientific research, laboratory experiments, distance learning, and medical imaging.
UVa's strategic investment in computing and communications had given it world-wide visibility in electronically-enhanced teaching and research. That experience had brought with it two important lessons:Like any other educational tool, technology has its proper place. It liberates the faculty and students from drudgery, and it empowers them both by proving access to more information than a human could ever process unassisted.
How had UVa arrived at its particular implementation of a computing and communications plan for the 21st century? It had been made possible by those who, way back in 1996, had exhibited both vision and courage in this arena.These persons had the vision to see that an expanded computer and communications infrastructure could dramatically improve the quality of the university's teaching and research by linking both of these missions into a seamless whole.
They had the courage to make a strategic investment, even during a period of tight resources, because they understood that information access, information processing, and information dissemination were three essential components of a world-class university in the 21st century.
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