Computer Networking Alters College Life : Technology: The institutions are the first to experience the promise of the digital age in social as well as productive behavior and first to tackle its problems.
Ryan LaSalle learned how to use electronic mail on his first day at Princeton University.
Caryn Siegel waited until her second year after realizing it let her easily communicate with a friend at another college.
The PC in LaSalle’s dorm room checks with Princeton’s main computer every five minutes for new messages. Siegel logs in once or twice a day on public machines in academic buildings or one at the Student Volunteer Center.
“All over the campus, no matter where you go, you can always get E-mail,” she said.
Like Princeton, most colleges have become wired societies, already transformed by computer-assisted communication in ways that will take the nation as a whole years to achieve. They are the first to experience the promise of the digital age in social as well as productive behavior and the first to tackle its problems.
“We are ahead of the curve,” said William Graves, associate provost for information technology at the University of North Carolina. “We have a lot of experience with this. It would certainly be a shame if the nation didn’t take advantage of it.”
More than 80% of the nation’s colleges, universities and junior colleges are linked to the Internet, the network of computer networks formed in the late 1960s to join collegiate researchers with the government and military contractors.
Most of those schools provide every student with a computer account that is an address on the Internet, a practice that became common about five years ago as more students brought PCs to campus. Many have also linked their residence halls and academic buildings with high-capacity fiber optic lines.
The Wired Life
As a result, students in most colleges think nothing of accessing the school library’s index or one at another college from their own dorm.
Many schools foster a sense of community by creating topical discussion areas on the campus network similar to those on the Internet or commercial on-line systems like CompuServe.
Many also use computers to distribute campuswide notices. Princeton, for instance, sends its newsletter on outdoor activities and trips via E-mail, saving more than $5,000 in printing.
And a small but growing number of professors require students to download assignments or turn in homework through the campus computer.
Laura Skandera-Trombley, a professor of English at the State University of New York-Potsdam, has her composition students submit their “papers” via E-mail. Her software automatically duplicates the work so she can change one copy while the original remains for comparison.
“In the beginning, students want to print off things because they are used to the hard copy,” she said. “They do that less and less as the semester goes on.”
Professors have become more accessible to students, without having to be in the office more, because of E-mail. That’s especially helpful to part-time students and those who don’t live on campus.
“The feeling among the faculty is we have a little less face-to-face contact with our students,” said Wes Baker, a communications professor at Cedarville College in Ohio. “However, the perception among students is that contact with teachers has risen because they can zip off a question.”
Students of economics at the University of Missouri-Rolla, seeing how much free information is available on the Internet, have started to create databases to share with others, said Professor Linda Manning.
“It puts students in a completely different role, to be information providers,” she said.
And, of course, personal communication is more efficient.
The editors of the school newspaper at North Carolina State University stay in touch with E-mail and also with voice messaging and pagers. LaSalle at Princeton said he gets friends together for basketball games with E-mail.
“Several people I know have used it to keep long-distance relationships going,” said Scott Fritchie, a computer systems administrator at St. Olaf College in Minnesota. “They’re still dating their high school sweetheart electronically.”
Bruce Hickey, a Princeton student who arrived on campus early this fall, said he was disappointed when his account wasn’t activated for two weeks.
“I’m used to just getting comfy and sending E-mail to my friends,” said Hickey, who is in touch with more than a dozen friends around the country. “I can’t imagine any instance where I would need to write a letter to any of my friends.”
One measure of a college’s progress in the digital world is whether mail in the campus post office has been reduced. Grinnell College in Iowa has seen a reduction, but chiefly in all-school notices or advertisements. Other schools say the paper glut continues.
“Habits are hard to break in that regard,” Jeff Hanna, spokesman for the College of Wooster in Ohio, said via E-mail. “And the habit is to tell students as many times as possible in as many different ways as possible to make certain they get the message.”
Indeed, like many companies, colleges are learning the ease of computer messages sometimes yields greater volume but reduced effectiveness.
Spotting Problems
“I think people are now confusing transmitting data with communicating,” said David Davenport, president of Pepperdine University in Malibu. “I think you can really communicate via E-mail. But I think a lot of people are not communicating.”
He said his computer is routinely filled with messages for which he is not the primary recipient, but one of many.
Other digital-age problems colleges are facing include how to provide copyrights and appropriate credit for electronic information, prevent harassment on computer networks and provide everyone with access to up-to-date technology.
Several large groups of colleges are working on statements of electronic rights. A model has emerged from American University, and the American Assn. for Higher Education that says a person has a right to free speech in the electronic world but also a responsibility to behave ethically.
In a recent example of where the two clashed, Santa Rosa Junior College in California last month agreed to pay two female students $15,000 because of derogatory remarks made about them on a men-only discussion group on the campus computer.
“These are old issues. The technology has opened up new windows on them,” said Graves, the North Carolina administrator and director of the Institute for Academic Technology, a resource group partly funded by IBM.
Among the most thorny is making sure students can get the right computers and software. Dartmouth College requires students to own a PC. Princeton rejected that idea several years ago, although more than two-thirds of its students own one.
Public schools have more trouble with such a requirement since they are generally larger, serve a more diverse economic base of students and have government bureaucracies to answer.
The branch of the University of Minnesota in Crookston, in the state’s far northwest corner, incorporates $750 into its fees to provide every student with a laptop computer.
But three branches of California State University ran into criticism last month when they declared an intent to require students own PCs.
Just Another Tool
For all the hype given to video-on-demand and home shopping, the experience on college campuses makes it clear that better communication is the end most people seek in the digital future.
Even then, Princeton students said, technology won’t run a person’s life.
“It’s an information tool,” Ryan LaSalle said. “It’s not the information tool.”
Caryn Siegel said she continues to write letters, make phone calls and trudge through resources at the library. Comparing computers and E-mail to the automated teller machine, she said, “You need to still go into the bank once in awhile.”
