March 10, 2000

After researching student access to information technology (IT) the Information Technology Management Council (ITMC) Universal Access Whitepaper Committee concluded:

• Growth in student demand for access to information technology is unbounded for IT services that are both free and perceived as having value.
• To control costs and modulate increases in demand, students are increasingly asked to pay for both regular and "excess" use and /or to provide portions of their own IT resources. Increasingly students are paying for their own Internet Service Provider (ISP) service, printing and computer hardware.
• Increased student computer ownership and sophistication has not resulted in decreased demand for campus IT services. Engendering greater student reliance upon technology tends to increase their needs, and therefore campus expenditures, for software, support, training, networking, fileservers and computer labs.
• A basic toolkit comprising a word processor, a web browser and email is no longer sufficient to meet the pedagogical needs of all students, however discipline-specific software is often expensive and beyond the capabilities of student-owned computers.
• Laptop computers and mobile devices are starting to drive demand for wireless access.
• Higher education institutions are seeking to leverage resources by purchasing site licenses for software– everything from large library systems to discipline specific courseware, partnering with vendors for ISP service, and mandating student computer ownership. However:

• Regional availability of resources varies greatly and affects choices.
• Large schools can exploit economies of scale that small ones can’t.
• Smaller schools find pooling of resources, outsourcing and sharing increasingly necessary.
• The lack of e-commerce capability will soon begin to reflect negatively on traditional institutions in the minds of students. This requires infrastructure to identify and authenticate student populations and manage their relationships to services.

While the UW System has embarked on a number of impressive past and current initiatives to help meet these access challenges, keeping pace will require ongoing vigilance. Important IT efforts to date by UW System to support student access include:

• The UW System schools have built a basic infrastructure of student computer labs, using UW General Computer Access Funds. Students rate the labs highly at all campuses. Our research underscores the importance of maintaining, upgrading and even expanding them in terms of size, hours, types of services and the quality of equipment and software provided. The Educational Technology Fund also gives campuses a resource that they can tailor, within limits, to the particular needs of their students. Note, however, that the magnitudes of these funds are fixed, whereas student demand for technology is increasing by leaps and bounds.
• The UW System is taking a broad, comprehensive look at the issues of Identification, Authentication and Authorization (IAA) instead of dealing with them piecemeal on a campus-by-campus basis. However, much work remains to be done.
• The UW System is a leader in licensing a common library software system (Endeavor Voyager) that is installed at all campuses. Ongoing development projects will enhance its capabilities further. UW System also coordinates the purchase of many electronic library resources for systemwide sharing.
• To leverage software and support costs, the UW System is investing in standardized software and training platforms for both students and faculty. Many of the institutions are moving to PeopleSoft as a common platform for providing student information services. Site licenses for common productivity software have also been negotiated with major vendors such as MicroSoft.
• The UW System is undertaking a bold experiment by supporting web course hosting utilities at four institutions for systemwide use. These utilities are helping campuses step into distance education and providing a selection of tools to those faculty that want to enhance their traditional face-to-face courses with technology. As these online courseware products mature, they are also expected to provide consolidated environments of services to students, including individual and shared file space, email, and integrated suites of Internet-based productivity applications.
• The UW System has also commissioned, and received, a report on improving access to technology for individuals with disabilities and an implementation working group has been appointed.

The committee worked throughout the fall of 1999 and made an interim report at the joint ITMC/CUWL/LAM/EMTC/LTDC/Networking conference at Green Lake on November 8 and 9, 1999. The committee continued to work through the remainder of 1999 and early 2000.

The above domains will be discussed in order from the center of diagram to the periphery. Within each this whitepaper will present:

• the current state within the UW System
• the current state within higher education
• trends and challenges

Access to multiple types of information is vital to our students. While we have the ability to provide and package information in technically creative ways, the major challenges involve human factors. Rather than a competition between high tech and high touch, what is evolving is a hybrid learning environment where technology supplements human contact.

The Endeavor Voyager software system purchased by UW System for all its campus libraries supports full web access. It

• access their library records
• renew and recall items online
• see up-to-the-minute additions of newly acquired materials
• have access to collections of UW System libraries statewide
• have both web and remote telnet access to the online catalog

A phased-in implementation of the Endeavor Voyager system at all UW System schools has recently been completed and provides an electronic gateway to more than 20 million books, journals, maps and other documents housed in campus libraries. This places the UW System in a strong position to provide integrated library resources. Later in the year 2000, the Endeavor Voyager system will allow students to search the online catalogs and make direct requests for materials from all CIC institutions (Big Ten plus the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois-Chicago) from their desktop. Another feature called WorldCat will allow students at UW-Madison access to selected materials from around the world. An Endeavor task force is defining the specific UW System requirements for this project. The UW System libraries also all participate in direct request via the Online Computer Library Center (OCLC), identifying a needed book at a UW System library and targeting its delivery.

The UW System is also a leader in coordinating the purchase of electronic resources for systemwide sharing. Shared licenses range from the Encyclopedia Britannica to scientific journals to business citations. Recent additions, as of January 2000, include a premier arts and humanities citation database, business and legal information, government databases and life sciences. UW-Madison also participates in certain resource licenses for all or a subset of the CIC.

Home-built library software is being abandoned in favor of commercial software. While Endeavor Voyager is the choice at many schools, some schools are running other vendor software. One example is the University of Idaho, which uses a product vended by CARL Corporation. Speed, stability, and easy networking within a multi-library consortium are key needs. Only the largest academic libraries are able to build actual content databases for library use and serve as their own publishers.

To make access easier from any location, higher education libraries are moving away from platform-specific interfaces to web interfaces. And to provide an even more seamless environment, institutions like the University of Pennsylvania use Endeavor Voyager with web tools like Cold Fusion for database applications. Additional features offered at leading campuses include the ability to:

• receive customized email messages about new citations in the library's databases
• use web-based forms for interlibrary loans
• search several separate databases at once
• network easily within a multi-library consortium

Underscoring the move to quick, easy assess, the Campus Computing 1999 Survey (http://www.campuscomputing.net) reveals that of the 530 participating institutions:

• three-fourths already make their library card catalog available via the web
• two-thirds provide access to academic journals via the web
• only one-fourth provide library-based course reserve materials on their web sites

To leverage scarce resources, many statewide and regional university library consortia are working to coordinate access to both information and licensed products. Many libraries belong to the Research Library Group (RLG) and OCLC, the two primary library utilities that enable librarians to locate and share resources in the United States. Other consortia are taking electronic sharing one step further. Similar to the UW-Madison/CIC project, the University of Pennsylvania is working on a BorrowDirect project that will allow students to search the online catalogs of the Penn, Yale, and Columbia University libraries and initiate an interlibrary loan request from their desktop.

Technology in itself is not sufficient, however. At some colleges high touch and high tech are blending to provide a seamless environment to accessing information. For example, the University of Buffalo created "cybraries" with 24-hr access, and its librarians, not IT staff, provide workshops and individualized training on how to use Internet resources. The University of Washington is combining their help desk with the reference desk at their undergraduate library. Colleges are also offering library advisors online.

The biggest issue facing libraries is how to organize and present electronic information to students. Content providers are building pathfinders into their systems; however, no integration standards currently exist for these systems to talk to each other. Campuses are exploring a variety of tools and evolving standards to provide access to images, audio, video, and a wide array of digital objects. Because of the specialized needs of the academic community, outsourcing of library services has not been seriously considered.

Other issues related to electronic libraries and resources are:

• digital collections are often built with one-time money
• rapid obsolescence of hardware and software makes it difficult to ensure "permanence"
• proper authentication and authorization are necessary for those holdings that are licensed for academic use only

According to the reports from Yahoo!'s 1999 top twenty "Most Wired" campuses, student web space offered ranges from 1 megabyte to unlimited, with an average of 19 megabytes. Of the 100 "Most Wired" campuses, 13% offer students unlimited web server space. Campuses report that students quickly become dependent on central file space and want more. It remains to be seen how much of the exploding usage is education-related and how much is discretionary use. Georgia Tech, for instance, offers 5 megabytes of central storage per student and is finding that limit inadequate as they move toward more Internet-enhanced courses. With the increased exchange of files between instructors and students and the increased sizes of files that include animations, video, etc., one gigabyte per student may not be unreasonable in the near future.

A variety of space allocation models exist. At some institutions, individual colleges and/or schools offer local storage capabilities for their students. At other colleges, space allocations are handled on a class-by-class basis. A number of colleges are relying upon the web space that comes with web-based learning systems. Northwestern and Wake Forest University both use CourseInfo from Blackboard for course web pages because it has storage capabilities for assignments. Wake Forest University has been developing a file sharing capability tied to student home pages, which is still being tested. At the University of Pennsylvania storage space is associated with student email accounts, and the size varies depending upon the student's school or program. Some colleges also offer students a "temp file" to allow for the exchange of materials. The University of Texas at Austin does not have free disk space, but it is very low cost: about 3-4 cents a day, depending on usage. Students use this for personal web pages, assignments, and permanent storage.

Stanford University, UC Berkeley, George Mason University and Case Western Reserve University are piloting central storage space with an external provider (I-drive) that has targeted the academic community. I-drive markets itself as an "online backpack" and offers unlimited space for anything clipped from the Internet, plus 50 megabytes for desktop-based information.

It can be costly for a campus to build its own central storage system.

To provide access to online student administrative information, a number of UW System institutions are moving to vendor-produced software. As of this writing, the PeopleSoft integrated student information system is operational at UW-Platteville, UW-Oshkosh and UW-Madison. The system

UW-Eau Claire has a legacy system that is satisfying their needs. UW-Parkside has an older system from a vendor that has left the market. UW-Stout recently installed a system from DataTel. UW Extension is running a combination of a purchased system for some elements, e.g., registration, and a legacy system for others.

As of this writing, only UW-River Falls is offering web-based registration. UW-Oshkosh was one of three beta test sites for web-based registration with PeopleSoft. Additional features, such as online advising, are being investigated at UW-Madison.

According to national surveys, a wide range of post-secondary institutions are in the process of moving their administrative, academic and even commercial activities (e.g., selling books and athletic tickets) to intranets. Many see student self-service not only as a way to cut costs and deliver services faster, but as a means to reach out more effectively to remote and non-traditional students. And many universities see it as a competitive tool.

Online course registration is being offered by 30% of all the institutions that completed the Campus Computing 1999 Survey (http://www.campuscomputing.net). Public universities averaged 60% and public 2-year colleges averaged 20%. However, fewer than 5% of those surveyed say ecommerce on the web is an important issue for campus computing over the next 2-3 years. Two-year institutions lag behind other higher education sectors in providing web services to serve and support students.

Finding ways to organize Internet resources efficiently for student use is a challenge. Meanwhile, students appear to want to access more and more services from Internet devices.

Higher education institutions, in general, lag behind other sectors of the economy on ecommerce issues. Most have yet to embrace a range of ecommerce activities that will support the educational experience of students.

In terms of building versus outsourcing, the Gartner Group predicts slower growth in university ecommerce than in the business community. Many feel that it doesn't make sense to launch an online university bookstore in competition with the major commercial players. In fact, last year, Case Western Reserve outsourced its online bookstore to Barnes and Noble Inc.

In order to meet the needs of a diverse and changing student population, institutions must make information easy to access. Gartner Group analyst Michael Zastrosky says that public institutions need to provide access for an even broader range of people. Students will also come to expect information organized as a special "community." To remain competitive, Zastrosky states that all institutions will need to have Intranets in place within the next 3-4 years.

The 1999 UW System Survey of Computing Resources (http://www.uwsa.edu/olit/survey) provides many interesting statistics on how students use computing and the general access computing labs in particular. About a third of all students said they used computers five or more times a week for academic work and another third reported using a computer two to four times a week. Only 2 percent indicated that they never use a computer.

Eighty-five percent of the students said that general access computer labs were either "very important" or "important" to them. This number was consistent across all UW System schools. Providing additional PCs in the general access labs was rated as either "very important" or "important" by more that two-thirds of the students surveyed and 68 percent indicated that upgraded hardware in the labs was either "important" or "very important" to them.

When asked about the highest priority improvements in computing resources, UW students indicated additional/updated computer workstations were the top priority. The second priority was extended operating hours for computer labs, followed by computer software upgrades.

The increase in student ownership would lead one to logically conclude that the demand for general access labs should be declining. Statistics and anecdotal information indicate the opposite is happening. Research was undertaken to determine why students who own or have access to personal computers continue to rely on the general access labs, and why universities are continuing to see growth in the demand for these facilities. The following will briefly outline reasons for the paradox.

Institutions that have mandatory computer ownership programs report that students still regularly stop in computer labs to check email, visit a web page, etc. In addition, many faculty are using these resources to communicate with students, assign coursework, receive assignments, etc. Therefore, students often need to check email or web pages several times per day. Since students generally do not carry their computers with them, the general access labs are a critical resource for students to remain in constant communication. They do not want to wait until they return to their residence to find out that an instructor has placed an item on reserve in the library that they need to check out to complete an assignment.

More courses are requiring the use of computers—"It’s not just for Computer Science majors anymore." Instructors are using email, shared disk space, and common online resources to teach. Course materials are often now placed on the web. It is common for an instructor to add a component to a course that cannot be completed without using a computer. For students who do not own a computer, or do not have high-speed Internet access at their residence, the general access labs provide the only realistic means to complete class assignments efficiently.

Faculty often assign projects that require students to work together in groups. The general access labs provide a setting where students can get together to complete these types of assignments.

Distance learning has impacted the need for computers via such products such as Web Course in a Box (WCB), LotusNotes/Learning Space, WebCT, CBT Systems, etc. The UW System actively encourages the use of such products, and most campuses are expanding their distance learning offerings in order to provide a competitive edge.

Specialized, curricular-specific software packages are not often available on student-owned computers. Many software packages are extremely expensive for the student to purchase and many students do not have the technical background to install and configure them. Software versions change regularly and students are expected to use the same version as the instructor. Students are reluctant to make a large investment in a software package that they will use for only sixteen weeks. Even if the software is applicable for a student's desired career, it is likely that the version will be out of date within a year or two. The relatively short life-span of software is a deterrent to a student making a personal financial investment in it.

Even though many students have access to a computer where they live, they may not find in their home or dorm room a quiet, structured setting in which to study. Studying in computer labs and libraries is often preferred over studying at home because of the environment. For this reason, students will continue to look to the university to provide a study setting that contains the necessary tools and atmosphere.

The increase in the use of technology across the curriculum, as well as the increase in student ownership of computers, has made students much less wary of technology. This familiarity with technology has resulted in an increase in demand for access to it at all times, and for a greater variety of computer-based services. Students are entering higher education with a technological comfort level that raises the bar on their minimum expectations from the campuses.

General access labs often have better quality printers and color printers than a student can afford to own. Many students who own computers do not have printers. Some courses require the use of scanners, digital tablets, and other devices that a student is not likely to own. Mandatory computer ownership programs often do not address these needs.

General access labs usually have a faster network connection than is available from the students’ home computers. Those students who do have Internet access are often working over phone lines at network speeds far below what is available in a general access lab. With the proliferation of web-based research, network speed often becomes important from a time-management standpoint. Also, students at home often do not have access to the same university resources that are available on the campus network. Access to selected library resources may be unavailable, and other areas of the network may be restricted to on-campus use only. In many instances students may be competing with roommates or family for the use of a phone line in order to access the Internet. If the phone line in the residence is also used by others, a student may be reluctant to tie it up for hours at a time (or housemates may insist they restrict usage). In addition, by using general access labs, a student may eliminate the need for, and the cost of, an ISP completely. However, even if all Internet-based applications are run in the general access labs, students will still use their personal computers for word processing, spreadsheets, and presentation software.

The computers available in general access labs are often more powerful or have larger screens than those available to the student at their residence. For reasons of efficiency, the student may still prefer to use the better, faster machines on campus. When a student's personal computer breaks they often don't know how to go about getting it fixed in a timely fashion and they switch to using computers in labs.

Even though more students than ever own computers, the sheer number of students using computers is still increasing. Until we reach a saturation point in demand, we will continue to notice an increase in demand for university-owned resources.

Students are also doing more non-class related activities with computers. They are often used to keep in touch with family and friends, to research non-class related topics over the web, and as a form of entertainment. With the exponential growth in computers throughout the general population, the general access labs are often used as a place to conduct social interactions via the Internet. The gigantic increase in services available via the web is resulting in a proportional increase in demand for access to it.

Some institutions allow their general access labs to be used as classroom space. This increases the demand on the labs from two directions. They become more sought after by the faculty in terms of classroom scheduling, and it reduces the number of hours that students can use them.

The percentage of students who own computers is increasing, yet at the same time, the demand for general access labs is increasing.

Students are clamoring for increased access to general access computers both in terms of the number of computers available, as well as the number of hours per week that the labs are open. On many campuses, the number of stations available in general access labs is still increasing. Seton Hall reports that in spite of their mandatory laptop ownership program, they are nevertheless finding it essential to increase the number of general access labs on campus. Similarly, Sonoma State University reports that 45% of their information technology budget is going towards general access labs. They indicate that the cost per station for general access labs is also continuing to increase. They attribute this to the need for labs to be equipped with higher-end resources than in the past. It is no longer sufficient to just provide a PC that runs a few basic applications, because more discipline-specific software is being made available in the general access labs.

Before universities can consider rechanneling funding that is currently being used to support general access labs, they must be able to address the above reasons why students are currently dependent upon the general access labs. Changes in technology over the next several years will have an impact on addressing these issues, especially smaller computers that can be carried more readily and pervasive wireless networking. Universities need to watch these changes very closely to capitalize upon their impact.

Based on the 1999 UW System Survey of Computing Resources (http:// www.uwsa.edu/olit/survey), 73% of all students in the UW System have access to a computer where they live. In addition, 65% of students own their own computer. Desktop computers are the most common type of system available to students with laptop computers a distant second.

As of yet, none of the UW System schools has instituted a campuswide mandatory purchase program. A few of the campuses have looked into it and some are instituting a laptop program for particular programs or disciplines.

Based on the Campus Computing 1999 Survey (http://www.campuscomputing.net) the number of students who own a personal computer is rising every year. In 1997, 45.8% of all students at public universities owned their own computer. By 1999, that percentage had risen to 61.8%.

Only 3.1% of public universities require mandatory microcomputer ownership. This number is actually less than the 1998 percentage which was 3.6%. However, the percentage of mandatory ownership within individual academic units or schools rose slightly, from 30.4% in 1998 to 31.7% in 1999. IBM reports that 120 institutions participate in their ThinkPad University initiative.

The following table shows a number of major institutions that have instituted mandatory computer ownership programs, the costs of the programs and their implementation dates. A larger list of colleges and universities that have implemented mandatory laptop computer ownership programs can be found at http://www.vcsu.nodak.edu/offices/itc/notebooks/other.htm.

Sonoma State University, one of the first two public universities in the country to require computer ownership, listed the following major advantages of a mandatory computer ownership program:

• The growing amount and changing nature of knowledge.
The total amount of recorded knowledge in the world is growing so fast that it is no longer possible for traditional tools to keep up with it. To access this flood of information we need to utilize information technology, and it needs to be available to our students whenever and wherever they need to use it.

The trend is that more and more students are buying computers regardless of whether the campus has a mandatory ownership program or not. They are finding ownership is more convenient than using computer labs, especially if they are off-campus and most of their work is using word processing, sending/receiving email and finding information on the Internet. As the cost of computer ownership goes down, more students will continue to purchase their own systems, but the need for general access computer labs is not expected to decrease.

Within the UW System, the breakdown of the percent of students using different types of software is as follows:

The data emphasize the ubiquity of word processing, Internet tools, and email in higher education. However, the 1999 UW System Survey of Computing Resources (http://www.uwsa.edu/olit/survey) reports that the use of word processing and Internet tools are relatively consistent across the UW System campuses, whereas the use of email is not. The adoption of these software tools by students is initiated, in part, by their faculty. Within the UW System, "over three-quarters of faculty reported using email in their courses, over half have students use the web for class, and about a third each (sic) reported using computer simulations or presentation software in classes".

The widespread use of word processing, Internet tools, and email is also reinforced by widespread ownership and access to personal computers. Seventy-three percent of UW System students report they have access to a computer at home and nearly two thirds of students report owning a computer. If access to a computer at home is combined with general access computing labs on the UW System campuses, we may conclude that access to productivity applications is practically universal. Experience suggests that problems with accessing these applications are most likely to occur among students with disabilities or among non-traditional students who lack access for monetary or logistical reasons.

The widespread use of computing software by students within the UW System is paralleled by its widespread availability. Of particular note are a series of systemwide contracts that enable students to have easy access to the software products they need most.

• The UW System, along with the Wisconsin Technical Colleges System, has negotiated an enterprise agreement with Microsoft Corporation that makes a wide range of productivity applications and programming languages available to students at very reasonable costs.
  
• The Division of Information Technology (DoIT) at UW-Madison has negotiated agreements with Corel and Apple corporations for permission to distribute various products to UW System students at remarkable discounts.
  
• The UW System has established four hosting utilities for web-based integrated environments, thus enabling faculty and students to take advantage of web-based, or web-enhanced, instruction that is both user-friendly and universally available wherever there is Internet access. The hosting utilities are Web Course in a Box at UW-Milwaukee, Blackboard CourseInfo at UW-Milwaukee, Learning Space at UW-Eau Claire, and WebCT at UW-Madison.
  
• Online training is available to students throughout the UW System via the training packages published by Smart Force Corporation and licensed systemwide.
  
• The geographic information system (GIS) products manufactured by the ESRI corporation are available to campuses throughout the UW System for both individual and classroom use.

The School of Business at UW-Milwaukee has been experimenting with the use of Microsoft Terminal Server (MTS) to enable students to run PC applications on a central server from remote locations. They have encountered challenges in three major areas:

1. Application compatability and appropriateness.
A minority of applications don't run in the MTS environment. The general rule is if it runs on NT Workstation, it will run on Terminal Server, although some applications are very difficult to configure. Applications that are highly graphical (e.g., AutoCad) or CPU intensive are not good candidates. However, many organizations are using MTS to implement their Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) systems, such as PeopleSoft, because of the complexity and difficulty of installing the dedicated clients, as well as the cost of upgrading the client workstations. An article from the Gartner Group recommends using a terminal server environment to implement ERP systems if it's necessary to run across a WAN because Terminal Server requires less bandwidth than a standard client server application.
2. Licensing
. Each application software license must be considered separately. Some vendors are as yet unfamiliar with Terminal Server and are unsure how to license their products in conjunction with it.
3. Security and authentication.
Beyond the obvious dangers of opening a campus network further to the Internet, a reasonable implementation of Terminal Server/Citrix requires individual user IDs. If unique IDs and passwords are not implemented anyone with access to the Internet could run the hosted applications. In addition, there is no longer any physical security, e.g., the applications cannot be restricted to a computer lab.

The trend within the UW System toward more instructional technology in the curriculum is mirrored in higher education across the nation. Although not a direct survey of students, the Campus Computing 1999 Survey (http://www.campuscomputing.net) reports there is increasing use of IT within the curriculum. The report states:

Note, however, that the national figures are most likely a pale reflection of those in the UW System. The Campus Computing 1999 Survey is a measure of instructional technology usage within courses, whereas the UW System survey cited above is a report on the percent of faculty making use of instructional technology. Insofar as over 75% of faculty within the UW System make use of email within their courses, it is likely that more than 75% of the courses within the UW System make use of email. This number is much higher than the national average.

Student access to productivity applications within the UW System is in line with US higher education at large. Fully 62.4% of institutions responding to The 1999 National Survey of Information Technology in Higher Education indicated they had standardized on Microsoft Word as their word processor for the institution, and 66.6% of the responding institutions indicated they had standardized on Microsoft Office as their office suite. Only 2.7% currently standardize on the Corel WordPerfect Office Suite.

Interestingly, the Netscape browser is still the most popular among reporting institutions with 37.1% naming it as their standard, whereas Microsoft's Internet Explorer is listed as the standard for only 13.6% of reporting institutions (p. 12).

The greatest challenge is to deliver applications to students anytime and anywhere they need them. The rapidly changing network infrastructure, the changing demands of both students and faculty, and the changing architecture of the software itself make this a difficult challenge indeed. Several trends can be identified.

• The expanding growth of Web-based environments.
The Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a Department of Education study finds a 72% growth rate in distance education classes from 1995 to 1998 with the web as the favored vehicle for course delivery (http://chronicle.com/infotech, January 7, 2000). Although data are not available at this writing, the last two years have seen an enormous increase in web-based pedagogy, both in the area of course enhancement and total course delivery.

The 1999 National Survey of Information Technology in Higher Education rates "internet resources for instruction" along with "computer-based classroom presentation facilities" as the two issues of highest concern affecting the future of campus computing (p. 13).

Based on a October 1999 email survey of UW System CIOs conducted by the ITMC, UW-Colleges, UW-LaCrosse, UW-Milwaukee, UW-Oshkosh, UW-Platteville, and UW-Whitewater continue to offer free printing in general access labs. UW-Milwaukee notes that they are considering rationing or charging in the near future. UW-Milwaukee and UW-Oshkosh also note the use of technology fees to support general access printing (this may be true of the others and just not noted for the survey). Students either bring or pay for paper on three campuses (UW-Eau Claire, UW-River Falls, and UW-Stout). At least five campuses (UW-Green Bay, UW-Madison, UW-Parkside, UW-Stevens Point, UW-Superior) have pay-for-print methods in place. Three of these institutions provide a certain amount of free printing per student before charging.

An excellent summary of the issues to consider when setting up a printing chargeback system was emailed to the UW System CIO Council and the ITMC by David Kieper of UW-Green Bay in May 1999 (see Appendix A).

The websites of the Urban 13 universities were examined, and follow-up requests for information were made with several of them. Questions were also asked of college/university computer lab managers via a national listserv, and responses to a July 1999 survey of university libraries provided by the System Administrator at University of Alabama at Birmingham, Lister Hall Library of Health Sciences were examined.

In addition to information about printing cost-recovery systems, the lab managers were also asked about the availability of color printing, large poster size printing, plotters, transparencies, etc. and their predictions of challenges facing printing three years from now. In total, data were received from approximately 35 universities regarding general printing issues and an additional 35 responses were received from the library survey which addressed library printing, and in some cases also included general access lab printing.

The percentage of pay-for-print methods installed at these institutions was overwhelming. The data indicated that approximately 88% of the respondents for general access printing have pay-for-print systems installed. The library survey was harder to interpret for general access printing, although it appears that approximately 62% of the libraries surveyed were charging for print. Many libraries that are not currently charging for print noted they were investigating the possibility.

One system currently being used by a public university not currently charging is "the hope and pray system...hope they don't use too much, and pray we don't run out of budget."

Other comments received from those institutions that did not charge for printing included:

• We are moving to charging.
• We have not yet found an acceptable way to charge.
• We don't charge directly but use technology fees for costs.
• The Provost won't let us charge.
• It would be bad politically to charge.
• Tuition costs are already fairly high.

Specific cost-recovery schemes were more difficult to assess from the responses. Most responses reported recovery for paper, toner, and staff time. Some mentioned including replacement equipment in cost-recovery, while others mentioned using technology fees for the equipment itself and charging per page to recover supply costs.

The reported charges were fairly consistent from institution to institution, with the majority charging between seven and ten cents per page for black and white laser printing. Color laser printing was usually reported at $1.00 per page, with a few institutions charging less. Only two campuses responded that they provided students with large poster size print, and both were offered via an arrangement with the art department.

The actual systems used for tracking/charging printing varied across institutions. The most frequently mentioned vendor systems were UniPrint (Pharos) and PCounter. A product called GoPrint was also mentioned by several of the libraries.

Wake Forest University instituted a mandatory laptop ownership program and attempted to distribute printers across campus. However, they determined that the costs for distributed printing were on the order of $100 per student per year, and it was therefore cheaper to give each student their own $100 color inkjet printer along with their computer.

Based on the data, the majority of institutions are either charging already for printing or plan to move to pay-for-print systems for both financial and environmental reasons. Most of the respondents provide students with a certain amount of free printing per semester before beginning to charge. The initial amount of free printing varies among institutions. Some provide a certain number of printed pages while some provide a certain dollar amount.

Only one computer lab manager was willing to speculate about the future of printing, and anticipated a greater demand for color printing and color photocopying.

It would be logical to speculate that with the cost of color printers continuing to drop more students would be purchasing their own color printers for home use. However, since this whitepaper concludes that mandatory computer ownership programs do not decrease the use of general access labs, an increase in student-owned printers does not necessarily imply a decreased demand for printing on campus.

The 1999 UW System Survey of Computing Resources provides useful information about the current uses, needs and desires for remote access to the Internet by students, faculty and staff (http://www.uwsa.edu/olit/survey). The following tables contain selected survey data from the two UW System institutions that have made the largest investments in remote access technologies, i.e., UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee, as well as averaged results from the other UW System institutions (http://www.uwm.edu/IMT/UWStudy/1999).

Data from the 1999 UW System Computing Survey

All data represent the percent responding "yes" unless otherwise noted.

The data in Part 2 above show that faculty at UW-Madison are heavier users of their campus modem pool than those at UW-Milwaukee or those at the other UW System institutions. This reflects the significant investments that UW-Madison has made in its campus modem pool. At UW-Milwaukee, about the same percentage of total faculty (85%) access the Internet through dialin connections as at UW-Madison, but the usage is split between the campus modem pool (55%) and commercial Internet Service Providers (ISPs) (30%). It should be noted that metropolitan Milwaukee is a very competitive ISP market.

The situation at the other UW System institutions is generally the reverse of the two largest campuses. At these campuses a smaller percentage of faculty typically use dialin access to the Internet (66%), and the usage is split in the opposite fashion, i.e., more faculty use commercial ISPs (39%) than campus modem pools (29%). These results are to be expected given that the other UW System institutions have typically made proportionally smaller investments in dialin Internet access for faculty. For detailed statistics on each institution, see the aforementioned URLs.

It would be logical to expect the data from the companion student survey, as reported in the following table, to follow the same pattern as the faculty data. This is generally true for UW-Milwaukee and UW-Madison where students are more dependent upon the campus modem pool than they are on commercial ISPs.

Data from the 1999 UW System Computing Survey

All data represent the percent responding "yes" unless otherwise noted.

At the other UW System institutions there is less use of modem Internet access in general, which may reflect the residential nature of many of the institutions that give students convenient access to campus computer labs, residence hall labs and dorm room Ethernet connections.

More students at the four-year campuses get their dialin Internet access from ISPs than from the campus modem pool, which is the opposite situation from UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee. This again reflects the lack of modem pools or smaller investments in modem pools at the four-year campuses. However, the student responses to Part 4 of the survey indicate student agreement systemwide on the importance of supporting campus modem pools.

It is interesting to note that at the four-year institutions a typically much larger percentage of students than faculty use the campus modem pool. Since both students and faculty at these institutions have roughly the same level of ISP usage this confirms that fewer of these faculty access the Internet from home than at UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee.

It is interesting to compare the student responses to Part 9 in the above table with their responses to Part 2. The percentages in Part 9 are much less than those in Part 2, even though, on the surface, the questions are essentially the same. When asked about their methods of Internet access all students rate campus computer labs much higher than campus modem pools. Especially notable is that although Internet access through the campus modems is rated lower in Part 9 than the similar question in Part 2, the percentages of students who report that they access the Internet through ISPs is quite high.

These results imply that a lot of students access the Internet from home through campus modems, as reported in Part 2, but when a similar question is asked in conjunction with campus computer labs and residential hall networks, they select the latter choices in much higher proportion. Perhaps there is some confusion in the wording of the two questions, or students are reporting that when they surf the web, they prefer the fast connections on campus but are content to dial in for email or other tasks that they don't view as Internet access.

The survey results reported in Part 4 of the above table indicate that a significant proportion of students across the UW System rate commercial ISPs as important players in the overall scheme of Internet access, even at UW-Madison where substantial investments have been made in the campus modem pool that is used by 80% of the student body. Typically 60% or more of the students rate campus modems as either "very important" or "somewhat important" and about 50% rate ISPs similarly. Therefore, whether or not campuses have formal arrangements with local ISPs, it appears that commercial ISPs are important partners in providing Internet access to UW System students.

Despite the fact that over half of the UW System students use campus modem pools, much smaller percentages feel that they are the highest priority for new resources, as reported in Part 6 of the survey and summarized in the following table. Students systemwide were much more in favor of additional or updated computer workstations (presumably in general access computer labs).

Unfortunately, the companion question on the faculty survey did not offer dialin access as a possible response.

A survey of the UW System CIOs that compared campus resources was conducted in October of 1999 before the semi-annual meeting of the ITMC. The remote access offerings of the various institutions are summarized in the following table, which shows that not every UW System institution has deemed the provision of remote access to its own electronic resources, or to the Internet in general, to be part of its mission. Each decision to provide, or not provide remote access, was based upon the local mix of available resources, policies and campus culture.

As a consequence of "facilities-based" competition, UW-Madison does not pay monthly phone line charges for its modem pool. This saves UW-Madison tens of thousands of dollars per month. The supplier of the modem lines is TDS Metrocom, an alternative local exchange carrier. TDS underwrites the cost of the electronics that handle the communications as advertising and promotion costs. Ameritech also pays TDS for each call into the modem pool as part of the practice of "reciprocal compensation" whereby local phone companies must pay each other for Internet calls completed on one another's network. TDS makes perhaps a half cent per minute from these calls; and maybe another 2 or 3 cents per minute from another charge for switched access. Unfortunately, unlike UW-Madison, other UW System institutions are typically not disproportionately large telephone customers in their local markets.

Two local Madison telecommunications companies are offering digital subscriber link (DSL) service to residences. Within the next couple years this service is expected to replace the limited number of ISDN connections that have been supported at the UW-Madison campus. DSL service will soon be available in other communities as well but, at least initially, it will cost significantly more to people at home than standard modem connections.

At UW-Eau Claire, a local cable company is offering high-speed cable modem service to local residences for about $30 per month. It provides connectivity that's on a par with working at a computer in a campus lab; however, network congestion has been noted in neighborhoods where many students live.

The future of the UW-Milwaukee modem pool is currently under consideration by two campuswide committees. As reported in Appendix B, their modem pool has 447 modems at 33.6Kbps. Its annual cost is on the order of $94,000. The modem pool experiences severe congestion and busy signals on weekday evenings between dinner time and bedtime. Increasing the modem speed to 56Kbps and doubling its size is projected to cost on the order of $700,000 in first-year expenses and $300,000 per year in ongoing expenses. A committee that is composed primarily of administrators and computing center staff is in favor of setting a sunset date for the modem pool and getting out of the business. A second committee that is composed primarily of faculty is strongly in favor of keeping and expanding the "free" modem pool.

A recent questionnaire designed by two Columbus State University professors surveyed computer center directors listed in the 1998 Higher Education Directory to identify recent changes in Internet access and usage, and how schools are responding to demands for technology (http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue4_11/fleck/). Of the 137 responding institutions, 39 report an increase over the last year in the number of hours students spend on the Internet, and 50 reported an increase in the number of sessions. The schools also reported increases in the number of computers installed or used for Internet access and increased network traffic. Some institutions reported increases in student access to email and the World Wide Web on the order of 300%. It is noteworthy that only about 40% of the institutions even offered dialin access to their students.

In December 1999 and January 2000, the committee conducted a telephone and web survey of the remote Internet access facilities of many of the "Urban 13" institutions. The results of this survey (see Appendix B for details) indicate that different institutions are attempting to deal with the exponentially growing demand for Internet access in various ways including:

• complete outsourcing
• limits on session time
• monthly usage quotas
• separate modem pools for students and faculty
• charging for access
• limiting dialin access to non-web activities

In some cases institutions are employing more than one of these strategies simultaneously.

The University of Massachusetts at Boston and the University of Memphis have evidently decided not to further expand their modem pools, regardless of busy signals. The University of Houston is gamely trying to find a mix of services that serve the needs of its population, including both free and chargeback campus modem services. Virginia Commonwealth University has taken the notion of campus chargeback services to the limit by owning and operating an ISP that serves only its students, faculty, staff and alumni. However, in both these cases the campus charges do not appear to be significantly less than what is generally available in the ISP market.

Wayne State University and the University of Illinois at Chicago have both attempted to extend the reach of dialin access to those who live outside their local areas. Through its own phone lines and a partnership with MICHNet, Wayne State University offers access throughout Michigan, New York City and Washington D.C.. Wayne State has even hired its own full time Remote Access Coordinator.

About half of the institutions encourage their students, faculty and staff to use the services of local ISPs. In some cases they present a hard sell or an official partnership agreement; in other cases, the recommendation is more informal.

The responses to the questions on the Campus Computing 1999 Survey (http://www.campuscomputing.net) relating to remote Internet access are summarized in the following table.