We are bombarded daily by local news channels and trade periodicals including The Chronicle of Higher Education, Campus Technology, University Business, EDUCAUSE Quarterly and many others with news of the latest innovations happening on our campuses. I am always fascinated and eager to learn about new ideas and innovations advanced by our faculty to leverage technology to improve teaching and learning. It is nearly impossible to keep up with the uses of technology finding their way into everyday classroom use—screencasting, podcasting, wikis,Web and video blogs and social bookmarking, to mention a few.

On the other hand, I am also struck by how little progress we have made in understanding the changing technology landscape on campus and leveraging such changes to innovate our delivery infrastructure, change the way we do business and free up resources for today’s priorities. How many university presidents, provosts and trustees see headlines about campus technology and view them as newsworthy successes in building a better university support infrastructure, rather than as a failure to use technology to innovate? For example:

Investing today’s and tomorrow’s scarce institutional resources to build large shrines dedicated to general-purpose computing? Building one-stop facilities to have one line instead of five, rather than leveraging portal technology? Building classrooms with the latest technologies but restricting their use? Ordering students in a large complex university
to buy the same brand of computer? Is this innovation or are we simply paving old cow paths to look like modern highways?

Constantly reinventing and changing the way an institution does business is not easy. Those who risk being first often risk their careers and are subjected to criticism. They must be prepared to contend with wide-ranging arguments concerning tradition, culture, institutional uniqueness, the need for lengthy advisory processes and why“that will never work here.”There are few rewards for innovation, and often swift penalties for failure. Following is always easier than leading.

Fortunately, embedded in the culture of Drexel University is a long history of innovation. Drexel’s mission embraces the values and challenges of an urban location, an academic program founded on cooperative education, leadership in technology and being first to innovate.

In a collaborative effort involving faculty, staff, students and the administration, Drexel was first to establish university-wide integration of computing across the curriculum. In 1983 (before most of today’s students were born), Drexel required all students to have access to a personal computer, and the University standardized on the Apple Macintosh. The goal was to minimize support issues, provide everyone with the same tools and maximize the potential for a successful teaching and learning experience from this innovative initiative. Students purchased a computer from Drexel, and extensive support
services were created including a distribution and repair unit. (This is similar to today’s ThinkPad university model.) A number of general-purpose Macintosh computing laboratories were built on campus. Although integration of computing into the academic program was facilitated by this 1983 policy and hailed as a great success, the policy required significant resources and was costly to both students and the institution.

Although technology changed rapidly after 1983—the ubiquity and variety of computing devices grew, high-speed networks with mobile access were established and access to information from any place at any time became accepted by all and demanded by most—it would still have been easy to continue business as usual. Drexel, however, was quick to recognize
the changing technology landscape and the need to innovate. Drexel abandoned its “one size, one vendor fits all” computer requirement and distribution facility in 1996 and opted instead for a new model—a virtual computer store accessible via Drexel’s Web site that emphasized students’ choice of vendor platform.All students are still required to own a personal
computer, but Drexel is out of the costly and labor-intensive businesses of purchasing, distribution and maintenance. Instead, Drexel’s role is developing computer specifications, negotiating competitive pricing with vendors and maintaining virtual storefronts.

Today, nearly $2 million worth of personal computers are selected each year by students via Drexel’s Web site and distributed directly to them from vendors such as Dell and Apple.A new dormitory stands in place of the 10,000-square-foot distribution center, and the eight technicians who staffed the facility were long ago reassigned to more productive duties. Drexel recognized that the personal computer did indeed change and grow to become a device of personal choice rather than an institutional decision.

Pursuing its strategy of first to innovate, in September 2000 Drexel went 100 percent wireless, providing access anywhere, anytime across its 62-acre University City Main Campus as well as its two other Philadelphia health sciences campuses.Wireless brought both new challenges and new opportunities.Wireless was not simply a new way of
providing Internet connectivity to the Drexel community but rather a conscious strategy to change the way Drexel does business. As a result of wireless capability, the University could now pursue shifting resources from building, maintaining and supporting generalpurpose computing labs to other priority areas.

Students already had a history of making their own personal computing platform choices, often long before entering the University. The ubiquitous wireless infrastructure, however, influenced choice overwhelmingly toward mobile laptop devices.Today, Drexel has 21,220 registered wireless devices.As more students bring laptops and other mobile devices to class, demands for large, general-purpose computing labs, as predicted, have declined. Since establishment of the wireless network, the public access computing center has transformed itself to a Bring Your Own Laptop (BYOL) center providing power, connectivity and space for collaboration.

Drexel’s Hagerty Library also transformed itself to provide general-purpose computing resources. In a recent six-day study, the library observed 1,015 uses of library workstations versus 1,344 uses of personal laptops. If the library had to provide workstations to meet students’ demands for online access to the Internet, library e-resources, e-mail, blogs, wikis, mp3 files and everything else, the computer equipment budget would need to double along with the need for space for fixed workstations. In addition, the library would need to fund network connections for at least another 100 workstations and
increase the number of live electrical outlets. Students who BYOL to the library not only are more productive, they allow the library to shift resources to other priorities such as subscriptions to a growing number of electronic journals.

Our students have come to expect University services that previously required a wait in line to be available any time, any place via DrexelOne, the University’s portal. DrexelOne serves as both an umbrella for services previously available from different Web sites (e.g., administrative system access, Web-based email, online course sites, library databases) and a home to new services (e-portfolios, software media fulfillment, online music service registration).The University has established portal integration as a key technical requirement for the selection of new purchased systems.

Concerns about privacy and security served as an impetus for the launch of DrexelOne in 2000. Prior to the advent of a single sign-on portal, a variety of credentials was needed to access services, including Social Security numbers, birthdates, personal identification numbers and passwords; further, not all of these systems provided adequate encryption of credentials and transactional information.With DrexelOne, only a single user ID-password combination is needed, and all communications can be secured.

Two years after the portal’s launch, DrexelOne Mobile was created to extend the portal’s key services to mobile devices including cell phones and PDAs such as the BlackBerry, Palm/Treo and PocketPC. Since 2002, students have been able to check their schedules and grades, get campus and world news and receive text messages regarding schedule changes, record holds, posting of grades and even emergency closings on their mobile devices at any time, from any place with cellular service.

Today’s university student has grown up with computers, video games, handheld devices, cell phones, digital music players and digital cameras. Students are comfortable with these devices for education,work and recreation and have developed their own modes of using these devices, often more than one device at a time, to accomplish their personal and professional goals. Laptops and handheld devices are common, and students bring them wherever they go. Instant messaging is quickly replacing email as the preferred method of student communication; cell phones and BYOLD (Bring Your Own Long Distance) have replaced dorm phones; and sites such as MySpace, Facebook, MSN Video and YouTube are preferred places to share all sorts of information including video clips.

The evolution of technology has demanded that universities be nimble and agile to provide today’s students with the level of learning and flexibility they desire.Technology has also provided institutions with the ability to change the way they do business, and pursue initiatives that share both responsibility and service infrastructure costs.

The move away from general-purpose computing facilities and the expansion of business done via the Web are just two of many generational shifts enabled by today’s technological environment and embraced by students. Students prefer the mobility and flexibility associated with services via the University’s portal and a BYOL strategy (even though costs have shifted from the institution to them) over fixed general-purpose computing labs.

Drexel will continue on its path, looking for new opportunities to innovate, sharing costs where appropriate and improving services by leveraging technology to institutional advantage.

For more information, please contact:
John A. Bielec, Ph.D.
Vice President for Information Resources and Technology and CIO
Drexel University
3141 Chestnut Street
Philadelphia, PA 19104
215-895-1434
jbielec@drexel.edu

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