A Year of Web Pages for Every Course: UCLA Debates Their Value

The strategy has worked, say administrators, pointing to the home pages that they have helped create for more than 3,000 courses this year, as well as to an increase in Internet use by professors and students. But critics, both on and off the campus, call the approach heavy-handed and argue that not every course benefits from a Web page. Students themselves have complained that many of the Web pages aren't worth what they're paying for them.

U.C.L.A.'s unusual effort to build a Web page for every course in the main undergraduate college is called the "Instructional Enhancement Initiative." It is a plan with which the university's administrators hope to weave technology inextricably into university life.

At most universities, only professors with an interest in technology take the time to build home pages for their courses. But the search is on at many institutions to find ways to broaden the use of technology in teaching -- both to meet perceived student demand and to improve instruction and student services. Virginia Tech, for example, gives professors new computers for their offices if they agree to sit through three-or four-day workshops on using technology in the classroom. Other colleges now require incoming students to buy computers, and the requirements have inspired more professors -- although not all -- to put the machines to use.

U.C.L.A.'s approach is to offer to make Web pages for professors who aren't interested in doing it themselves. The university created a $4.1-million-per-year infrastructure to support the Instructional Enhancement Initiative, or I.E.I., hiring about 80 technology consultants and adding about 700 new computers along with other new equipment. The consultants use templates to create a basic page for every course, work with departmental offices to get information, and then encourage professors to add material and participate in on-line discussions with their students.

Some professors say the program infringes on their academic freedom by putting an unwanted teaching tool in their courses. "This was seen as an administrative intrusion into the faculty," says Katherine C. King, an associate professor of classics. "Nobody's going to tell me how I have to teach."

But administrators say they're not forcing anyone to participate. "Faculty are not being mandated, faculty are being provided with something," says David Wilson, assistant dean of humanities for the College of Letters and Science. "It's their course. If they don't want to use it, they don't have to." The university has spelled out the same message in letters to department heads.

The administration's message to students, however, is that every course will have a Web page, and that the pages will include, at a minimum, a course summary and a reading list. Those and other features were outlined in two-page advertisements describing the program in campus publications early this academic year.

"We've been getting a double message," says Sarah Morris, a professor of classics who is chairwoman of the department. "We've been strongly urged to make use of it. On the other hand, it's true that they can't really force us to do it."

Some professors have refused to participate because they want to keep tight control over their course information. Some suspect that the university might try to claim ownership of any course materials on the network. Others fear that Web surfers might steal their ideas.

When asked by a U.C.L.A. staff member to send in a syllabus, one professor wrote instead: "The big issue is intellectual property rights and their protection from being ripped off. ... If I choose to make [the syllabus] available to someone, student or colleague, I do so on an individual basis."

Other professors with similar concerns have created two versions of their syllabi: a bare-bones version for the Web site, and a complete version to hand to students. A professor can also choose to limit access to sites, so that only students in the course can use it.

Such reluctance has led some teaching assistants to joke that professors are afraid to show their shoddy work in public.

But other professors have welcomed the program. They say it has given them the support they need to try new things.

"I'm truly not technological, but I love these resources," says Elissa Tognozzi, a lecturer in the Italian department whose Web pages play Italian rap music as they are opened. She gives the necessary materials to her department's technology assistants, and they take care of the rest. "They're the nicest people on campus, because it's a new project and they have to prove themselves," she says.

They've helped her put up segments from Italian films and links to Web sites for radio stations and daily newspapers in Italy. "These are things you used to find, like, one example in a textbook," she says, explaining that such examples of the language in use in its own culture can capture the imagination.

Some professors who were already using the Web in their courses say they're glad that more of their colleagues are getting involved. "What it has succeeded in doing is establishing a minimum level of computer literacy amongst faculty and students," says Katherine Hayles, a Web-savvy English professor. Most professors were already using e-mail, she says, but the program has led more of her colleagues to venture onto the Web as well.

Professors in the sciences are more comfortable on the Web than are those in the humanities, and have voiced fewer concerns about the program, says Craig Merlic, an associate professor of chemistry who chairs a technology committee that is evaluating the program's progress campus-wide. Many science professors were already using the Web in their research, he adds.

Mr. Merlic says the biggest benefit of the Web is that it simplifies distributing material to students. "I no longer post anything in the library," he says. "I put everything on line." Before the emergence of the Internet, he recalls, chemistry professors regularly displayed answers to tests or problem sets in a glass case in the hallway. "Students used to stand there 10-deep and copy things out of the glass case," he says.

The Web-page program has led to some unexpected innovations. The most prominent example is "My.ucla," a service that automatically makes a private Web page for every student at the university -- more than 30,000 of them. The pages guide students to the Web sites for the courses they are enrolled in, as well as to sites for other campus resources (The Chronicle, October 24, 1997).

"Had it not been for I.E.I., there wouldn't have been a My.ucla," says Eric J. Splaver, director of information services for the College of Letters and Science. He thought up the idea, he says, while working on the I.E.I. About 20,000 undergraduates have used "My.ucla" at least once.

The focus on Web pages has led other parts of the university to offer services on line, too, he adds.

Student reaction to the initiative has ranged from praise to picketing. A student committee that reviewed the plan last year recommended against it because of the student fee it included. A small group of students held a protest in November, and their main concern, too, was the fee. But the Daily Bruin, the student newspaper, gave the program a "thumbs up" in a staff editorial in September. "The Web pages are a valuable resource for students and are well worth the cost," the editors wrote.

The fee adds up to about $10 per humanities course and $14 per science course -- more than $100 a year for most students. Students seem very aware of the fees and are quick to complain when a particular course page doesn't seem worth its price tag.

One student took action when he saw that the discussion area of his sociology course's Web site was blank. He tried to get things going by posting his photograph and a message that said, "We pay $10 per class for these Web sites to be incorporated into the class. Please, don't waste our money." No one responded.

Neelam Patel, a freshman, says that in her psychology course, the professor didn't know how to use the Web site, and so Ms. Patel never looked at it. "In some classes, it's not even needed," she says. "And you still pay the fee."

In such cases, some students ask for their money back, but administrators refuse. "We say to those students, You're still getting good value in other ways," says Mr. Wilson, the assistant dean of humanities. He points out that not all of the fee supports the Web pages -- some of it is used to buy computers. And even basic Web pages offer some information about a course, he says. But, he acknowledges, "you would be getting much better value if the professor was making a contribution."

Other students are fans of the program. Bronwyn Gangnes, a freshman who plans to major in electrical engineering, says he was up at 4 a.m. on the night before a midterm exam, and posted on his course's Web page a question about something he didn't understand. His professor answered by 8 a.m., in time for Mr. Gangnes to learn the information before the exam. "That was worth all the fees I paid for all my classes, because I probably wouldn't have done as well on the midterm," he says.

A survey of 4,000 students conducted by the university in the fall found that over 60 per cent felt that the Web pages had increased their interaction with professors.

The real value of the Web sites, some students say, is as a tool in choosing courses for the next quarter. The sites often give more information than the traditional course listings published by the university. "If you're going to sign up for classes, it's good to know what in the world they're about," says Dana Schankman, a freshman.

Helping students choose their classes is one of the biggest benefits of providing Web pages for every course, says Brian Copenhaver, provost of the College of Letters and Science. "Students will be able to learn huge amounts about what they can expect in a course before they even take it," he says. "And I think that's a really profound transformation in the way that we communicate about the curriculum."

Meanwhile, some of the harshest criticism of the Web-page initiative has come from outside the university. In a two-part essay, David F. Noble, a history professor at York University, in Ontario, said the program was a prime example of efforts to turn university instruction into a commodity. Mr. Noble said he feared that U.C.L.A. might try to market on-line materials used in undergraduate courses.

It won't, responds Mr. Copenhaver. The Web-page program has "utterly no commercial goals," he declares. "None. Zero."

Such a scenario would never become a reality, not even down the road, he adds. "I would regard it as part of my job not to permit it, because what we need to be doing is giving all our students and all our faculty ways to take advantage of these new ways of talking in a way that is not at all threatening to any of their individual interests."

That said, he acknowledges that fears about the program are understandable, because the Web is still so new in higher education. "There haven't really been many times when the university has been through a technological change of this magnitude," he says.

Some faculty members, however, say they're bothered less by the magnitude of the change than by the haste with which U.C.L.A. made it. "I think the way it was implemented was unfortunate," says Ms. Morris, the classics professor. She adds that the initiative has created "ill will" between administrators and faculty members who aren't ready to experiment with new technology.

"All of us support the idea of becoming more enlightened" by learning about the Web, she says. "But not all of us were well prepared for this."