News and Information
Emory University
Atlanta, GA 30322

Release date: April 7, 1999
Contact: Elaine Justice, Assistant Director

APRIL 1999

TECHNOLOGY AT EMORY CHANGES WAY LEARNING TAKES PLACE

Emory University is harnessing technology to create a learning environment that changes how teaching and learning take place. Like many universities, Emory has invested tens of millions of dollars over the last decade to expand and upgrade the technology infrastructure of its computer labs, classrooms, offices and residence halls. As a result of these advances, faculty, staff and students across the university are approaching teaching and learning in new ways. For instance:

The merger of library and information technology services at Emory is making it easier for students and faculty to conduct research, ask complex questions and even generate new knowledge.

The spread of library and information support services to all parts of the Emory campus and the Web means that students can make use of all the university's resources at any time, from anywhere.

Emory's internal network, LearnLink, with some 18,000 users has become a vehicle for online discussions, class assignments, and links to the Web that has created "a virtual university within the university" where students are active players in the learning process.

Distance learning technology at Emory is being used to expand international education opportunities as students hold discussions and gather information and ideas from around the world.

LIBRARY, INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY MERGE TO CREATE NEW KIND OF LEARNING ENVIRONMENT

Emory University has joined the growing movement on U. S. campuses to combine library and computer services with the opening last spring of its Center for Library and Information Resources (CLAIR), a 65,000-square-foot addition to the university's conventional six-story Woodruff Library. Unlike its predecessor, stuffed with shelves and a study carrel in every nook and cranny, CLAIR's major feature is an "Information Commons," which is not so much a place as a new desktop computing environment. At these workstations, students faculty and staff can:

Look up books in the electronic card catalogue;

Get access and do research using a host of electronic resources and data bases (that's in addition to the Web), and;

Use software such as Word, Excel or Power Point to create a final product.

Emory's library and information technology services aim to take information outside library walls: to faculty in departmental offices, to students in residence halls and to learning sites across campus and beyond. Librarians and information technology professionals have forged a partnership role in the change, whether they're helping students and faculty navigate burgeoning electronic resources or providing access to the latest learning technologies.

RESNET SETS STAGE FOR "24-HOUR CAMPUS"

At all hours, Emory students can be found checking e-mail, joining online chats on the latest crisis in a foreign country, or staging a live webcast of a campus event. This new type of out-of-class time has "the most profound impact on learning," says Benn Konsynski, Kraft Professor of Decision and Information Analysis at Emory's Goizueta Business School. Every student residence hall at Emory is wired for video and data communications through a program called ResNet, which offers each student room access to the Internet, numerous satellite networks, Atlanta and campus TV stations, and connection to the campus computer network via a high-speed Ethernet connection.

In addition to its 24-hour, 7-day-a-week computer labs, Emory also provides students with software and on-site support in their residence halls, each of which has a student expert on computer hardware and software living on the premises. When students have problems with their computers, printers or programs, the consultants are on hand to help, which can be especially convenient early in the morning or late at night when computer usage is heaviest.

Last summer Emory's Residence Life staff had a chance to show off these advances to representatives of more than 150 colleges and universities as hosts of ResNet 98, an annual conference where university communications professionals learn about the latest tools and technologies for networking student residence halls.

EMORY'S LEARNLINK CREATES "VIRTUAL UNIVERSITY WITHIN THE UNIVERSITY"

University classes used to mean interacting face-to-face with professors and fellow students two or three times a week, then hitting the library. But students and faculty at Emory interact with each other whenever they turn on their computers using an on-campus computer network called Learnlink. The system is being used in more than 600 courses in departments across the university and by 300 student interest groups as a campus-wide forum for discussion and a way to share information. With LearnLink, students receive course materials, ask professors questions, participate in study groups and turn in assignments. LearnLink also allows students to access Internet e-mail, newsgroups, listserves, files, graphics, sounds and private conferences without a high degree of technical knowledge. LearnLink has become part of the virtual university within the university, say its creators. Currently the system has more than 18,000 students, faculty and staff users.

LearnLink also interfaces easily with the Web, meaning that students and faculty can confer with their counterparts at other universities or experts from around the world. LearnLink administrators are frequently invited to share information on Emory's internal network at national conferences.

DISTANCE LEARNING HELPS STUDENTS, FACULTY REACH THE WORLD-TOGETHER

Distance learning at Emory doesn't necessarily mean students are connecting with their professors from remote locations-after all most of the students live on campus. Instead, faculty and students are using distance learning technology to visit and investigate sites around the world, brush up on their language skills or collaborate with students and faculty at other universities. The Emory Center for Interactive Teaching has played a key role in these efforts with its videoconferencing resources. For example, in a course on culture and the arts, Emory students used distance learning to bring experts from a Denver museum into their class discussion. Students in Emory's geosciences program collaborated with elementary education majors at Dakota State University by submitting their geoscience research papers over the Internet for feedback by Dakota State students and for use in elementary school lesson plans. In the international arena:

Students in a class on the early Roman empire discussed the topic with students at the University of Augsburg, Germany, using videoconferencing;

Students in a course on journalism in South Africa had videoconference discussions with students at the University of Durban in South Africa; and

Students at both the Oxford and Emory campuses practiced their Russian by having a three-way, intercontinental, face-to-face videoconference discussions with students at the University of Dubna in Russia.

As part of its new partnership with The Washington Campus, Emory's Goizueta Business School is offering a distance learning course this spring that is giving students new insight on the relationship of business, government and the private sector. Each week students at Emory, George Washington University, University of Texas-Austin, Texas A&M and the University of New Mexico, hear different guest speakers (from host campus George Washingon), ask questions and interact not only with the remote speaker, but with students at the other campuses as well.