COLLOQUY

UCLA's Requirement of a Web Page
for Every Class Spurs Debate

By JEFFREY R. YOUNG

If you visit the University of California at Los Angeles this summer, you might hear the furious clicking of computer keys along with some grumbling about going on line. Those would be the sounds of hundreds of World-Wide Web pages being built, and of even "technophobic" faculty members learning how to use them.

By this fall, the university promises, it will provide a Web page for every undergraduate course in its largest unit, the College of Letters and Science. U.C.L.A. officials believe they are the first to make Web pages mandatory across an entire curriculum.

The promise amounts to a revolution in the way the university views the Internet. Instead of supporting a few professors who want to put class materials on the Web, U.C.L.A. is creating an infrastructure to put information about some 3,000 courses on line. It's a change that requires hiring 60 to 80 technology consultants, most of them students, to construct Web pages and teach professors how to use them. It also requires sharply expanding campus computer laboratories -- adding at least 200 new computers and upgrading many old ones. And it means charging students a new "materials fee" of $10 per humanities course and $14 per science course.

Not everyone thinks it's a great idea. Some students complain that the Web sites aren't worth the fees, which will amount to more than $100 a year for most students. Some professors fear that maintaining their Web pages will take too much time, and that students might find so much information on line that they won't bother coming to class.

But administrators say the changes will let the university take full advantage of the Internet. They say the costs of the project are outweighed by the benefits the Web can bring to students -- fostering discussions with classmates and faculty members, providing a one-stop source for course materials, and letting students explore a global collection of educational materials.

At most universities, only professors with an interest in computers take the time to build home pages for their courses. Although many institutions have worked to encourage the use of the Web, it has been left up to each professor to decide whether to use high-tech tools.

Even at a place like U.C.L.A., which has actively supported professors' interest in the Internet, only a small proportion of faculty members have put up course pages. Last year, about 6 per cent of the university's humanities courses and 20 per cent of science courses had Web sites.

Administrators say the voluntary Web pages were such a success that they should be universal. "We need to be making this available systematically in higher education," says Brian P. Copenhaver, provost of the College of Letters and Science. "We ought to be promoting this, because the uses of this communication are so obviously powerful."

To get the attention of even the most old-fashioned professors, the administration issued an unmistakable mandate: All 1,000 courses offered each quarter will now be wired. That means making hundreds of new Web pages in the next few months.

"All of us are aware of a very specific date -- September 25," says Evan J. Nisonson, referring to the date on which classes will resume. Mr. Nisonson, a graduate student who is leading a team of technology assistants for the humanities, says he's been meeting with professors to help design a standard Web-page format that will be used for most of the courses. He's also been working with the technology assistants to build an annotated collection of links to related Web sites. This guide to the Internet will be attached to most of the college's pages.

Many of the Web pages will be made in a cookie-cutter fashion using a computer program called WebCT, which stands for "Web Course Tools." The program, developed by a computer scientist at the University of British Columbia, can produce a Web page with basic information for each course, such as meeting time, course description, and syllabus. Professors will then be encouraged to add readings, slides they've shown in lectures, audio and video clips, links to related Web sites, and anything else they think will help their students. "Essentially it comes down to the faculty," says Mr. Nisonson. "They have to step up to the plate." The student assistants will help faculty members add the content.

Every page will also have a discussion area, letting students "chat" with each other and with the professors. That feature is what most excites Mr. Copenhaver and other administrators. It is similar to a previous effort by the university, in which professors were encouraged to hold "virtual office hours" over their course Web pages. More information about the new program is available on the university's Web site (http://www.college.ucla.edu/).

The collegewide Web-page proposal has met some resistance. A student committee that reviewed the plan last spring recommended against it. Committee members said they supported the plan's goals, but they argued that the new materials fee would finance infrastructure improvements that the university should pay for itself. And they warned that the increase in Web traffic could overwhelm the campus network.

The administration decided to go ahead anyway, saying in a letter that the fee would bring "direct benefit to all undergraduates." The letter also said the fee would pay for enough new computer hardware to handle the increased traffic.

Still, some professors wonder if the Web pages are merely gimmicks. Thomas Wortham, chairman of the English department, says he's heard skepticism among his peers. "Within the humanities, there is a little technophobia," he says, adding that professors wonder when they'll have time to develop the Web pages and answer questions on line. "It's a big unknown. How is this going to work, to do it in every class?"

As he talks about the program, Mr. Wortham stumbles over phrases like "uploading readings" and "going on line." "I'm still not that comfortable even with the lingo," he says.

Though he uses the Web regularly, he acknowledges feeling embarrassed "to ask a 19-year-old kid how to do my job." But on the bright side, he says, "it's a wonderful way of enhancing our own humility."

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