Executive Summary
The University in a Changing Information Environment
Never has the need been more pressing for the University of Michigan to examine its relationship to information and communication technologies. The information revolution that is radically altering our whole world at an ever-accelerating pace touches every aspect of university life. Information—the foundation of knowledge—is at the very heart of a university’s mission: the generation, preservation, dissemination, and application of knowledge. If we do not adapt rapidly and continuously to this revolution, we run the risk of failing to sustain our mission in the new age. Fortunately, we have the wherewithal not only to adapt but, in the tradition of a great public university, to help shape the revolution itself.
The future holds much in store: broad access to massive data sets, such as those associated with the human genome project, global information systems, or astronomical surveys; emergence of large-scale multimedia communication; convergence of the Internet, broadcasting, and telecommunications; extensive wireless, mobile, embedded, and wearable computing; smart houses, smart buildings, smart transportation—the list could go on.
At the University of Michigan, Internet usage is doubling annually, and the percentage of students who use e-mail regularly has grown from seventeen percent to ninety-seven percent in just seven years. As the potential for communication increases, so do concerns about security and privacy. Thorny legal and ethical issues are arising as well. During the past year, the University administration has faced decisions about blocking access to the music-sharing web site Napster, and faculty have wrestled with digital copyright issues. At the same time, information has become an increasingly valuable commodity, and new opportunities have arisen for the University to participate in the “knowledge economy.”
The President’s Information Revolution Commission was appointed to consider how we as an institution can best capitalize on the opportunities and address the challenges arising in this ever-evolving information environment. Rather than simply assessing information and communication technology needs, as many other universities have done, this commission and its subcommissions took a broader, deeper look, surveying existing strengths and weaknesses not only in the infrastructure, but also in our uses of the technology and our understanding of its impact on our lives. Members explored what it means to be educated—and to be an educator—in the 21st Century, and how the basic missions of a university must change in response.
What emerged was a sense that the University of Michigan is at a point of precarious balance. With adequate investment in human capital and physical infrastructure, strong leadership, and coordinated, campus-wide involvement, the University can take the lead in redefining higher education in light of the information revolution. Without such commitments, our longstanding position of strength—not only in the application of information technology, but also in virtually all areas of research, scholarship, and teaching—will erode.
An “Ecology of Experimentation”
The myriad changes brought about by the information revolution have been swift and unpredictable. Because we cannot anticipate changes still to come, our best strategy is a flexible one, in which experimentation is encouraged, experiences are shared, and success and failure are viewed as equal partners in the process. The key is to experiment in a systematic fashion, coordinating and exchanging information across the institution, and in the process transforming the University into a living laboratory. From this “ecology of experimentation,” new information and communication technologies—and perhaps whole new disciplines—will emerge, and insights will be gained into better ways of creating and sustaining the educated person. In this way, we not only will participate in the revolution, but we also will help shape it.
The commission identified a number of areas where the University can build on existing strengths and achieve new levels of excellence:
- Developing, deploying and exploring innovative uses of technology-mediated research environments—“knowledge networks”
- Expanding the definition of an educated person in the information age
- Integrating information and communication technologies throughout the University and across the curriculum
- Extending learning opportunities to communities beyond the traditional boundaries of the University
Knowledge Networks
Research and scholarship are increasingly interdisciplinary, collaborative efforts. The Internet and new information and communication technologies are enhancing—and transforming—research and scholarship, enabling users scattered throughout the world to share facilities, instruments, immense collections of multimedia information, and tools for analysis and synthesis. These technology-mediated environments, often called collaboratories or knowledge networks, not only allow scholars and scientists to work together more effectively, across distance and discipline, but also offer whole new approaches to investigating and analyzing concepts and phenomena.
Just as the telescope and microscope revolutionized science by opening up realms that had been hidden from our view, new tools and technologies such as high performance computing are revealing previously undetected patterns and correlations in massive sets of data and text, expanding our horizons of inquiry and knowledge. The excitement that today’s astronomers feel when they discover an unexpected pattern in a vast data set is akin to what Galileo must have felt when he turned his primitive telescope on Jupiter and first saw the planet’s moons. In the humanities, linguistics scholars feel similarly about the ability to analyze millions of instances of human language as it is used day to day.
Over the past decade, the University of Michigan has played a key role in designing, developing, and applying knowledge networks. The University should continue to pioneer by further developing knowledge networking technology, exploring innovative uses for it, and studying its impact on the way we work and learn.
In addition to building on existing collaboratory projects, the University should support a few carefully selected knowledge network experiments that capitalize on the University’s special resources and intellectual assets and are likely to have high impact across all research fields.
“Educated” in Information
Sudden and dramatic as it seems, the information revolution is more an information evolution that has taken place over the past half-century. As such, it has a history. It has affected and been affected by social, cultural, economic, political, legal, and psychological issues. We must address these issues as an institution and make sure that our students understand their implications, not only in the abstract, but also in relation to their everyday lives. University of Michigan graduates need to be able to “swim” in the new, information-intensive environment, wisely managing and evaluating the information that bombards them daily. They need to be wise, masterful, and responsible readers, interpreters, and producers of information that is mediated in new ways by technology. They need to be able to develop knowledge from information, through discovery, analysis, and synthesis, utilizing new technologies while also appreciating their mediating effects. They need to understand how information and communication technology is changing society and the world, and how they can help direct that change in ways productive, responsible, and valuable.
Our students must be skilled in using information and communication technology in their everyday lives. But as educators, we should focus not on merely imparting skills, but on creating opportunities for students to gain essential skills in the course of pursuing broader educational objectives.
A University-wide, Across-the-Curriculum Approach
Examples of teaching and research projects that use information and communication technology in innovative ways can be found throughout the University. In addition, faculty in some departments, schools, and colleges study and teach about the cultural, economic, political, and social ramifications of the information revolution. But a lack of coordination, incentives, and sense of institutional purpose prevents many faculty from undertaking information technology-related projects and hampers the exchange of ideas among those who already are involved in projects.
A university-wide, across-the-curriculum approach is needed, providing faculty with the support they need and offering all students opportunities to use the state-of-the-art technology in education-enhancing ways while at the same time learning to think critically about the implications of the information revolution for the discipline they are studying as well as for the larger world. In our “ecology of experiments,” we must continually share what we learn from these efforts across the curriculum, and build upon the best practices that emerge.
New Learning Communities
The value of information—and knowledge—is being recognized as never before, and today’s “knowledge economy” offers us new opportunities and challenges.
As a public institution dedicated to knowledge dissemination, the University of Michigan has a responsibility to reach out to communities of learners—including alumni and prospective students—beyond its traditional, physical boundaries. As we venture into this new territory, we need to experiment with a variety of approaches—service, sponsored, and commercial—always mindful of our core values and mission.
We must consider as well our responsibility to communities on the other side of the digital divide, recognizing that e-outreach not only allows us to extend the university’s assets to underserved communities, but also helps broaden the diversity of views within the university.
ACHIEVING THE VISION
Our vision for the University of Michigan in the 21st Century is much more than a wiring diagram. However, none of our research, teaching, or outreach goals can be achieved without attention to infrastructure. In fact, increasing dependence on information technology already has strained our existing infrastructure to the point that we are no longer able to provide acceptable quality of service to the University community.
If we act quickly and boldly, we can make significant improvements within one year and regain national prominence in information technology infrastructure within three to five years. The physical infrastructure must be upgraded as soon as possible. We must rebuild our networks—in buildings, across campus, and to the outside world through upgraded Internet connectivity and Internet2 capability. Ultimately, we want to achieve a high level of end-to-end performance, such that faculty and students can move very large amounts of data rapidly from their desktops and labs to other points on or off campus, seamlessly, securely, and reliably.
Because many of today’s high-end technologies will become tomorrow’s basic infrastructure, we must continuously invest in pilot projects involving emerging technologies, such as wireless networking, so that we are in a position to more broadly implement those that prove successful and desirable.
We must also make a long-term commitment to recruiting and retaining sufficient numbers of highly skilled professional support staff and upgrading the information technology skills of all faculty, students, and staff.
Organizational and administrative changes are needed as well, with an appropriate balance between local provision of services and support and central guidance on standards and policies.