POLICY ON TECHNOLOGY FLUENCY UNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, COLLEGE PARK MAY 1, 2002 I. OVERVIEW It is the policy of the University of Maryland, College Park, that all graduates shall, at a minimum, be proficient in basic information technology skills. The current minimum list of basic competencies is found in Section II below. In addition, conditions shall be established that will insure that the great majority of students achieve proficiency in many additional skills. A representative list of such additional skills appears as "Intermediate Competencies" in the same Section. Furthermore, every graduate shall have achieved proficiency in those up-to- date technology skills (including information technology) that are needed for success in his or her major discipline as it is currently evolving. A preliminary inventory of what some of these skills are is also provided in Section II. This policy and its rationale are fully incorporated in the University's May 2000 Strategic Plan "Building on Excellence: the Next Steps." Initiative One of the Plan is "Continue to elevate the quality of undergraduate education in order to provide all students an enriched and challenging educational experience." One of the three major steps intended to help accomplish this initiative is "Systematically integrate the use of information technology into our instructional programs, so that all faculty and students can fully exploit new technology as an essential tool in teaching and learning." A significant component of this step is "Bring all students to a level of information technology proficiency appropriate to their disciplinary needs." Strategies for implementing this policy include the following: 1. Provide the infrastructure and training required to give students easy access to the information technology tools and resources they need. 2. Make information technology an integral part of all aspects of University life, both inside and outside the classroom, so that students want to use it and must use it in order to succeed. 3. Ensure that program curricula provide up-to-date training in the technology skills required for each major discipline. Elements of Strategy 1 include the maintenance of a state-of- the-art network infrastructure, the extension of this network to student residence facilities, the provision of remote access capacity to students off campus, the technical support for students to connect to the network, formal and informal training in basic information technology skills, and the maintenance of computer laboratories and similar facilities for student use. A more detailed look at what has been achieved in these respects is found in Section III.1, below. Elements of Strategy 2 include the pervasive use of information technology in instruction, in student services, and in student social activities. This strategy is well represented in the Strategic Plan. One of the six major steps designed to help implement its Initiative Five is "Accelerate and support the migration of student and business services to an online environment." Components of other steps in the Plan include support and training for faculty to migrate courses to an online environment and the upgrade of classrooms to support these information technology enriched courses. A more detailed look at progress related to Strategy 2 is found in Section III.2, below. Strategy 3 includes an annual review and update of the technology skills that are appropriate in each academic discipline, along with an analysis of major courses or other means that are in place to train students in these skills and to ensure their competence. Strategies for assessing implementation of the Policy include the following: 1. To the extent that information technology becomes pervasive in the environment, each student's proficiency in the basic skills will be demonstrated by his or her success in registering for and passing academic courses. Registration and other student services are almost entirely online. Academic courses increasingly require the use of the basic skills. Section IV.1 provides more detail. 2. Students' own views of their achievement of intermediate skills, both skills on the list and additional skills, will be measured in annual surveys conducted by the Campus Assessment Working Group (CAWG). Actual achievement will be measured by student success in those courses, both academic and non-academic, that teach or require the use of these skills. Section IV.2 provides additional details. 3. Annually each college will be asked to update a list of skills required to be achieved in each of its academic disciplines. It will also be asked to match these skills against those that are taught in major courses or elsewhere, and specifically against those major courses where success requires effective exercise of these skills. Additional details are in Section IV.3. II. SKILLS LISTS AND DISCUSSION These lists of basic and intermediate competencies are based on the National Research Council white paper "Being Fluent with Information Technology." 1. Basic Competencies a. Familiarity with using a computer. b. Using email and other electronic tools to communicate with others. c. Using a word processor to create a formatted text document. d. Using a Web browser to locate information. e. Locating Web pages and evaluating their content. f. Retrieving and evaluating scholarly electronic resources (e.g. e-journals, databases). 2. Intermediate Competencies g. Creating and using databases to access or sort information. h. Creating and using spreadsheets to organize data and text, do calculations or analysis, or model simple processes. i. Using electronic presentation tools. j. Using graphic/multimedia software. k. Creating Web pages. l. Selecting the most appropriate technology for a particular task. 3. Additional Competencies Academic programs expect students to demonstrate skills with advanced and/or discipline-specific software and hardware. Examples include: a. Symbolic manipulation software, such as MatLab and Mathematica. b. Statistical software, such as SAS and SPSS. c. Computer-Aided Design (CAD) and other specialized design software, such as AutoCAD and ProMechanica. d. Geographical Information Systems (GIS) software, such as ArcView. e. Programming in one or more of a wide variety of computer languages. f. Computer-based data collection tools. g. Computer controlled materials processing tools. h. Visualization, image processing, and animation software. i. Computer-based controls, such as for theatre lighting. Beyond these specific skills, it is important that graduates achieve a broader understanding of the social, ethical, and political context and consequences of the information technology revolution. This includes issues concerning intellectual property rights, privacy, new economic paradigms, and changes in social and workplace relationships. Courses within History, Sociology, Government and Politics, Public Affairs, Business, Information Studies, Education, Health and Human Performance, and Computer Science, among others, are beginning to address these issues in depth. II. IMPLEMENTATION 1. Infrastructure and Training The University maintains a robust data networking infrastructure at all levels, from the individual desktop through its connectivity to the outside world. On-campus communication is fast and reliable, resident students have direct network connections, and access from remote locations is readily available. The residence halls provide a 10 Mbit shared data connections to every bed. Resident students currently activate more than 10,000 connections, while offices and classrooms activate another 17,000. The university maintains a pool of 874 56-Kbit modems for remote network access, 782 of which are local to College Park and 92 to Baltimore. We continue to maintain a large network of open and discipline-specific computer laboratories for student use. We are now beginning to deploy wireless nodes as well. Wireless connectivity to the network is currently available in 32 buildings and in the major campus open spaces. The Libraries offer access to a large and increasing number of online databases and journals, in addition to a substantial collection of materials in a variety of formats and media. University Web pages include such information resources as catalogs, schedules, calendars, and listings of departmental events, as well as interactive resources that facilitate academic course scheduling and the review of a student's progress towards a degree. Students entering the University are offered an introduction to available computing resources during initial orientation. The Office of Information Technology (OIT) offers Peer Training for students, a program in which experienced students receive specialized training for teaching a wide range of IT courses to fellow students. The Libraries also offer training in information search and information evaluation, both within regular class settings and on a stand-alone basis. Librarians conduct about 1,000 class sessions each year, reaching over18,000 participants. Most library classes are tied directly to course requirements and assignments and are focused on computer-based information resources (electronic full-text of articles, e- journals and e-books, electronic reference books, and scholarly Web sites), or the online access tools to locate information resources (online library catalog and periodical databases). There are other specialized training opportunities such as TILT (The Information Literacy Tutorial), a Web-based interactive tutorial that also teaches basic searching skills to freshmen. Over 3,000 students use TILT each year. Many courses designed for freshmen include additional training in making effective use of these resources, and this training is reinforced through students' use of online student services and the need to use IT- based information sources for papers and other assignments. The most effective source of training, however, may be the informal training that happens through the student's interaction with his or her peers, now that the vast majority of students in the residence halls and elsewhere are experienced and comfortable in the online environment. We are sufficiently confident in the infrastructure and training opportunities offered to students that we now publish in the Undergraduate Catalog the statement "Any course at the University may require the knowledge of basic computer skills (e.g., e-mail use, Web browsing, word processing) without special notice being given in advance." 2. IT Pervasive Environment There has been enormous growth in the use of IT in classes. For example, English 101 is required for most freshmen in their first year, and students are now expected to have the basic skills prior to the beginning of class. To complete the course, students must be able to use a Web browser to find information, use a word processor to create a formatted document, locate Web pages and evaluate their content, and retrieve and evaluate scholarly electronics resources. These skills and also the use of electronic presentation tools are reinforced in the Professional Writing courses that almost all students take in the Junior year. In addition, support for use of the WebCT course environment was initiated in the summer of 1998. The number of student seats in courses using it almost doubled from 11,208 in Fall 2000 to 20,237 in Fall 2001. The Fall 2001 number represents 10,477 distinct students, indicating that almost half of our undergraduate students were exposed to the WebCT environment that semester. Classes using the WebCT environment feature online syllabuses, access to electronic resources, chat rooms for students and faculty, online access to instructors, and other IT-based enhancements to teaching and learning. To facilitate these changes, the University maintains 54 technology classrooms, seating from 25 to 506 students, each with internet access and built-in facilities for projection of multi- media materials including tape, DVD, online, and computer- generated sources. Another eighteen such classrooms are coming on line next semester. Additional classrooms achieve the same capability through use of equipment delivered on rolling carts. The University has now expanded its inventory of teaching theaters to four. These facilities include computers at each student station and software that allows interactive teaching/learning in a very flexible manner. The University has made great strides in the past several years in expanding the suite of online and Web services available outside the classroom. Students can apply for housing, easily compose online a class schedule that meets their requirements, and access a suite of course registration activities, including registering for classes. Students can also verify financial aid and bill payment status, register for parking, change their addresses, check progress towards their degree, assess the impact of a change of major, apply for graduation, request transcripts and enrollment verification, and view their academic record and grades. Furthermore, the general social use of information technology in the community culture is a strong force helping to raise all students to a high level of comfort and proficiency. IV. ASSESSMENT 1. Basic Competencies Every student will take courses that require the basic competencies for success. For example, every student must pass at least one of (and usually both of) Freshman English and Professional Writing, each of which requires these skills. The use of IT-based instructional enhancements in a rapidly increasing number of other courses also reinforces this need. Most majors will include courses that require these competencies and go far beyond them. In addition, the need to use IT-based applications to access ordinary student services makes it extremely difficult for a student to complete a degree without having achieved these competencies. We are confident that our graduates will have achieved them. 2. Intermediate Competencies Most students will achieve most of the intermediate competencies, although we do not believe it appropriate to require all of them for all students. We will monitor the level of achievement through self reporting and through an analysis of the skills required for success in the advanced courses in specific majors. The Campus Assessment Working Group (CAWG) has been collecting student data from various surveys for several years. CAWG surveys provide insight into the student experience with information technology at two critical junctures. First year students are surveyed annually in their 8th week of class and students in junior level English are surveyed every other year. Specific questions will be included in these surveys to assess the intermediate competencies and how they evolve over the student's career on campus. We will ask the colleges to evaluate the use their programs make of the intermediate competencies, to determine when success as a major implies the corresponding mastery. 3. Discipline Specific Skills The basic and intermediate competencies are about being able to use commercial computer applications effectively and being able to judge the quality of academic resources. Commercial applications are readily mastered by interested students who have the need to use them; the development of good judgement about resources is an essential part of any academic program. Indeed, many students will have achieved most of these competencies by the time they have enrolled at the University. It is the University's unique responsibility, however, to make sure that its graduates have developed the specific technology skills required for success in their major disciplines. The specific responsibility rests with the faculty who must design a curriculum that imparts these skills and makes sure that their mastery is a requirement for program completion. Assessment will be at the program level, where each program faculty will articulate the skills needed in its discipline and then match these with the courses that offer the necessary training and that require these skills for success. This assessment will be updated periodically, to maintain currency in the face of rapid changes in the technological landscape.