Higher ed learns notebook PC lessons

WORCESTER, MASS. - More colleges and universities are requiring students to have notebook computers. And the notebook growth is sparking far-ranging changes in the way these institutions do computing.

One issue is simply scraping up the added resources for deploying, maintaining and managing hundreds or thousands of student and faculty notebook PCs. But a larger issue is giving students a range of collaboration tools, including RSS feeds and Weblogs, and giving faculty course management applications and helping in instructional design so that computing becomes part of the very fabric of a school's education.

At Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in Troy, N.Y., that larger issue has a name: ubiquitous computing. It is a combination of applications, support, collaboration tools, wireless LANs (WLAN) and other resources to support the school's goal of interactive learning through real-time access to individualized information.

"This is a key theme for Rensselaer," said Sharon Roy, director of the school's academic and research computing group, speaking at last month's annual conference of the North East Regional Computing Program (NERCOMP ). Several NERCOMP presentations dealt with notebook computing issues.

Roy said that the interactive learning project is a way to reduce the number of lectures, increase student participation in class, let them work in teams and shift faculty into coaching roles instead of the traditional "sage on the stage."

At the end of the 2004 school year, the campus boasted about 1,624 notebooks compared with just 292 desktop PCs. All students now are required to have a notebook PC. RPI offers students a deal on IBM Thinkpads, models T30, T40 and T50. In an innovative working relationship with IBM, a standard RPI image is installed during the manufacturing cycle, which saves time in distributing the notebooks to students.

The school launched a series of student surveys to track how they actually use their notebooks, and how those use patterns change over time. That data will make it possible to identify problems and opportunities for IT response.

The influx of portable PCs has spurred the school's efforts on mobile computing for faculty, too. Some early adopters have used notebook computational software heavily in courses on math, physics, chemistry, CAD and biology. "These early adopters now are good role models [for other faculty]," Roy said. "Peers in the departments are now an important source of knowledge on educational computing."

IT staff at three Massachusetts state colleges, speaking in another NERCOMP session, echoed a number of Roy's conclusions and recommendations.

Worcester State College saw notebooks as a way to free students from having to wait to use desktop computers in nearly 50 computer labs at the school's 56-acre campus. The labs were expensive and required lots of support resources, said Donald Vescio, the college's associate vice president of academic affairs.

He, like many others, stressed the benefits of having standard notebook platforms with standard software loads. "It simplifies support and training, it creates process efficiencies, and it's predictable," he said. "We wanted no surprises."