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Over cups of coffee with Marian Moore, Faculty Chair Sue Estroff got curious.
So what do you have planned for an encore, Estroff wanted to know, once the
Carolina Computing Initiative is done.
What Estroff did not know was that Moore would have an answer -- an answer that
Moore, the vice chancellor for Information Technology, offered a tantalizing
glimpse of during a Feb. 16 Faculty Council meeting.
Guttenberg got around to inventing the printing press a while ago.
Moore thinks it's time for a new invention of sorts, bearing the Carolina
stamp. Moore has envisioned the creation of a "digital multi-media center" that
would replace the old linear world of paper and ink with an interactive world
of "media books" that faculty members here could both create and control.
By all estimates, knowledge is doubling every 10 years, Moore said, and a new
tool is needed to not only keep up with new information but also to impart it
to students.
That form could be media books that would be created under the intellectual
property domain she would call "Knowledgeworks@Carolina."
It's only in the idea stage now, but Moore said it is important that the
University never be content to sit on its haunches, especially in the
fast-moving world of technology when the latest greatest thing can turn quickly
into yesterday's news.
"I don't think there is a department on this campus that isn't affected by this
explosion of knowledge," Moore said.
Moore does not think college students will be required to attend college
longer. What that means, she believes, is that professors will be called upon
to find better ways of teaching more of what there will be to learn within the
same four-year span of time that most students have now.
The idea of doing away with paper textbooks might seem futuristic, even by
Moore's standards, but the groundwork for making it possible has already been
laid by the laptops that all students at Carolina will eventually get through
CCI, Moore said.
"At Carolina, right now, we have the opportunity to take something that we are
giving the students, the laptops, which have the potential for the replacement
of textbooks with a much better and richer approximation of the real world."
In one hand Moore held up an old textbook, with the other hand she clicked the
mouse on her laptop to project an image of the media book. As she talked, she
ran through a quick demonstration of how interactive videos could be interwoven
into the digital text.
The whole idea of this textbook is to impart the experience of some real-world
thing, whether that happens to be a three-dimensional interactive object, an
animated sequence of a complex process, a passage out of Hamlet or a foreign
language. And none of these areas lend themselves well to the flat, static
representations found in books.
A student of architecture, for instance, might get more out of a
three-dimensional, interactive media book than a two-dimensional drawing in a
textbook.
"What I believe is we can do a better job with this form of knowledge
impartation to students," Moore said.
The next step in moving beyond the idea phase will be to take the idea to the
Faculty Instructional Technology Advisory Committee (FITAC) to determine all
the processes that such a project would require to make it work. Such an
enterprise would require the assembly of a staff skilled in video production
and courseware design. It would also allow more collaboration to occur among
faculty inside and out of their own disciplines.
Moore held up the textbook one more time. This kind of technology has been
around for centuries. The question is if there are better ways of representing
the real world.
Moore's emphatic answer is yes.
Also at the Faculty Council meeting, Chancellor James Moeser gave a brief
update on the state's worsening budget picture and how it will likely affect
the University over the next five months.
A month ago, the state was asking that the University give back 1.5 percent, or
roughly $5.4 million, of its state operating money appropriated for use through
June 30, the end of the fiscal year.
After the budget picture worsened, N.C. Gov. Mike Easley moved to establish a
$1 billion escrow account to draw from if need arose to cover whatever
shortfall there is when the fiscal year ends.
Instead of the 1.5 percent reduction previously announced, the University,
along with the other campuses in the UNC system, will be required to make 2
percent reductions.
"That's the bad news," Moeser said. "The good news is that the University has
been treated very fairly."
The best part is the flexibility that the universities have been granted to
decide how to return the funds. It will allow the University to make cuts, not
through a blunt instrument, but with the kind of precision needed to nip and
tuck and trim without doing damage to academic programs.
Moeser said he could say emphatically that there will be no layoffs at the
University, nor any significant disruptions of services.
General Faculty meeting March 2
A special meeting of the General Faculty will be held at 3 p.m. on March 2 to
welcome the new Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Robert Shelton. The
reception will be held in the Alumni Hall of the Carolina Club.
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