Information technology, Georgia. University System of Georgia. Board of Regents. Office of Information and Instructional Technology

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Nov. 1995 - Jan. 1996: Volume 7, Number 3
Contents
z From the Vice Chancellor z Status of the Chancellor's Funding Initiatives z Libraries Without Colleges z Statistics on GALILEO Usage z GALILEO Enhances Learning z Publishing Information
From the Vice Chancellor
** The BANNER implementation project continues to make steady progress. Training for groups one and two is complete. Numerous mock registrations will be performed through the spring with the first live registration in May for summer quarter. Group three will install software in late January and begin group training in March. Group four will begin implementation in the spring. Now that we have approximately one year's experience working with the first two groups of schools, I want to re-emphasize that the most important aspects of a successful project are the participation of all involved elements of the campus and the active support of administrators.
*** The final EDP audit reports for the four research universities have been reviewed along with the draft report of the centrally supported systems. Although no serious problems were cited, the auditors found areas in need of improvement. Generally, the reports indicate a need for increased emphasis on strategic planning, management controls of software changes, and security and disaster recovery planning. Each of the entities audited will provide written responses to the State Audit Department regarding the auditors' recommendations and actions to be taken.
*** The division of Business and Finance Systems has relocated its office to Suite 1204 West Tower, 200 Piedmont Avenue SE, Atlanta, GA 30334; phone (404) 656-1734; FAX (404) 657-1345.
*** The OIIT welcomes Cynde Kline as Administrative Secretary to both the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Information Technology and the Assistant Vice Chancellor for Instructional Technology.
*** The Request for Information (RFI) for new business systems software was mailed to vendors in mid December. Responses are requested within six weeks.
J.B. Mathews, Vice Chancellor
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Status of the Chancellor's Funding Initiatives

GALILEO (GeorgiA LIbrary LEarning Online-One Statewide Library) is providing universal access to materials and information services to students and faculty in the University System.
PeachNet connections are in place at all System and off-campus resident center libraries. The databases, which provide citations, abstracts, and full-text in the humanities, social sciences, general sciences, and business and management, have been available via GALILEO since September 20. Additional databases such as newspaper abstracts covering twenty-nine U.S. newspapers and dissertation abstracts will be available winter quarter. The University of Georgia and Georgia State University are the service providers for the GALILEO electronic resources. Approximately 268,262 of 650,894 catalog records have been converted to computer format.
Automation for the remaining non-automated seven libraries is imminent: four libraries will use the Georgia State University PALS system, and three libraries will use the DeKalb College DRA system. To support universal borrowing, a database containing information about library patrons is being established; fax machines have been installed in all libraries; and a courier service has begun transporting library materials around the System. Additional databases of 7,000 journals, which provide citations and abstracts for a variety of disciplines, will be available via GALILEO in January. Work is underway to prepare Georgia census data for electronic access through GALILEO in winter quarter 1996 and to scan and prepare state publications for inclusion in the GALILEO database structure.
The initiative Connecting Teachers and Technology is increasing the number of courses which integrate technology into the instructional process by preparing teachers to use various technologies, to teach over distance, and to explore the contributions of technology to instruction.
Campuses were provided funds to employ an individual to provide instructional technology support for faculty. Georgia Tech and Georgia State are working in conjunction with GPTV to produce state-of-the-art, satellite-based courseware on the Olympics, to be offered to System institutions beginning spring quarter.
Funds will support the development of local P-16 councils for the purpose of achieving the five purposes of the P-16 Teacher Education Initiative. In addition, funding has been provided to initiate the Fast Track Program, a component of the P-16 initiative which focuses on developing programs designed to support at risk 7th grade students.
A demonstration classroom will be equipped for the purpose of training faculty on the multiple uses of technologies for instruction. Institutions with only one GSAMS classroom are installing a second; institutions already in possession of two or more had a choice between GSAMS and computer technology. Universities were provided two installations, and the seven centers have been awarded one installation. One satellite uplink installation will be located in the state through initiative funding. The location for this equipment is under review.
The Request for Proposals for institutions to develop high quality instructional technology and/or distance learning courses will go to campuses in January. Up to thirty courses may be funded.
The initiative Connecting Students and Services will allow students to electronically acquire accurate and timely information about required college preparatory courses, transferability of college credit and career opportunities, and college admission information.
In December, several institutions will take delivery of the automated EPOS Voice Registration System, and the OIIT will take delivery of the Voice Registration Support System. Other institutions will order at the appropriate time in their BANNER implementation schedule. When the computerized advising/transfer system is completely operational, advisement will be enhanced by providing counselors with online tools such as EDI Smart and BANNERQuest. The EDI Smart implementation committee is nearing completion of its recommendations. DeKalb College and Georgia State University are running tests. BANNERQuest software is ready for distribution. In order to provide systemwide degree audit for advising support, funds will be distributed to institutions as they begin BANNER implementation.
FOCUS and FOCUS Express are being distributed to improve network access for faculty and staff doing advisement. Training on this software will continue. Several institutions and the OIIT are using both products. Funds for disk drives will be distributed to each institution.
The implementation study on providing e-mail and PeachNet access to students and faculty is complete, and notification of award amounts has been made. Institutions will be given equipment to start e-mail programs or funds to enhance existing programs.
Dr. Barry Fullerton, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Student Services, is addressing electronic networking to link minority students with mentors.
The Request for Information (RFI) to increase dial-in access to extend PeachNet to link with high school guidance

counselors and public libraries has been returned and is being reviewed. Extending PeachNet will improve on-line access to information for all students in the state.
A proposal was accepted from Georgia State University to provide access to the Georgia Career Information System (GCIS) over PeachNet. Funds have been transferred, and development is beginning.
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Libraries without Colleges
or Virtual Imagination: The Eccentric Musings of a College Head Librarian by an anonymous library director
The following article, reprinted with permission of the author, was fabricated during the larval stage of the statewide library.
Confounded Information Overload April 1, 1995
In response to the often-quoted article published in Newsweek concerning the new college in Fort Ord, California, to be built without a library ("Wiring The Ivory tower," Newsweek, January 30, 1995, p. 62-66), directors of the University System of Georgia libraries have decided to extend the concept one step further by creating a library without a college. In fact, the new statewide library in Georgia will be created without thirty-four colleges and universities.
This new library, to be named appropriately for an early free-thinking scientist condemned in his own lifetime for heretical thoughts, will have no physical existence at all. It will not have a well-defined place of origin, since the information from this library, to be made available across the state, will be maintained in two separate locations, each of which is to be a clone of the other. This cloning technique is known as the "library/database-as-barbershopmirror redundancy principle," or the creation of library databases that copy other databases that are themselves copies of the databases they have copied, much as barbershop mirrors reflect an infinite array of images within images so that the original, if it ever existed, is lost within the maze.
The scientist for whom the new statewide library will be named is also well-known for the development of the astronomical telescope, an appropriate device to serve as a symbol of the new library since students in locations all across the state will access the new library-without-a-college by peering into computer screens that will reveal, from a great distance, the wonders of the intellectual universe.
Students without Colleges
Emboldened by the example of their library directors, the administrators of the University System of Georgia have decided to continue this heretical concept by authorizing students to "attend" college classes without physically setting foot on a college campus. These students will be allowed to remain in their home towns and receive collegelevel instruction through the medium of interactive television.
Library materials for these distant students will initially be transmitted through the facilities of the new statewide library to a nearby public library. As dial-in connections become more common, the materials will be transmitted directly to students' homes. Beaming information directly into a distant student's brain is the ultimate goal. However, because colleges have difficulties with this information transmission process (ITP) for students who seem to be physically present in existing classrooms supposedly listening to lectures delivered by actual professors, transmission of this critical material over longer distances may present an even more daunting technical challenge.
Colleges without University Systems
As college administrators realize that students can be reached through distance learning techniques and that these distances can often extend across state or even national boundaries, we expect to see the explosive development of the educational programs of individual colleges as they are marketed to individual students throughout the world. Each college in Georgia may enroll students anywhere in Georgia-and South Carolina, Kansas, and Bangladesh, as well. Since existing university system administrative patterns are linked to rigid political boundaries, these cumbersome central systems may have to be dissolved to allow for the full and unrestrained expansion of the worldwide educational process.
Libraries without Directors

Since much of the planning for the new statewide library has been accomplished by library directors meeting every other week in various locations across the state chosen for their proximity to an interstate highway exit, the remaining staff members at the college libraries have become quite proficient in operating their libraries without the intervention of the directors. Upon administrative review of this interesting new development, the new position of Director Without The Library (DWTL) has been created to make it possible for existing directors to continue their interstate wanderings.
Students with Libraries
To review these new developments, we could soon have only students and libraries remaining in the educational process, having eliminated the need for local colleges, university systems, and library directors. We seem to be back where this process started-a thousand years or so ago-students and books, reading and thinking, imagining strange new worlds as if seen through a distant telescope, and then reaching out to touch and embrace the new creation.
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Statistics on GALILEO usage
by William G. Potter, University of Georgia
GALILEO became operational on September 20, 1995, barely 150 days after the Governor signed the appropriation of funding. Initially, two databases, Periodical Abstracts and ABI Inform, were available. Copies of both databases are loaded on the two cloned GALILEO servers at the University of Georgia and at Georgia State University. Combined, these two databases provide indexing and abstracts for about 2,600 journals and the full text for about 1,100 of these journals.
Usage of GALILEO started slowly. During the first week of operation, users conducted 7,000 searches and retrieved the full text for 3,000 articles. Throughout fall quarter, use of GALILEO began to accelerate dramatically. During the week that ended November 15, users conducted over 50,000 searches and retrieved the full text for 39,000 articles. Not counting the first week, when few students and faculty knew about the system, usage of GALILEO grew by about 20% each week during fall quarter.
In addition to the two databases mentioned, access was also provided to an online version of the Encyclopedia Britannica. Just after the end of classes, another database, Business Dateline, was added. More databases will be added over the Christmas break, and use is expected to grow during the remainder of the academic year.
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GALILEO Enhances Learning
by Dr. Charlotte Stephens, Columbus College
During the last two case study presentations in my Principles of Systems Development class, the student teams demonstrated remarkable sleuthing capabilities. They had done "real world" research on businesses in a very short period of time. They had found phone numbers and called the companies; talked with company financial officers, and in one case, the company founder; requested and received information; and become completely involved in what had developed into very real problems for them. If this had been a blind experiment and I as the instructor not been told that these students had new search capabilities with GALILEO, I would have concluded that this was my most extraordinary group ever.
One case study involved a very small company employing eighteen, a start-up software company selling mail order systems. The students searched GALILEO many different ways all afternoon until one search revealed a phone number. They talked directly with the founder and president, who did not realize that his company had been featured in our textbook as a case study. The student team proudly conveyed to the class that they had copied the appropriate pages and faxed them to him. The president was delighted and intrigued by how much they had learned about his company. He, in turn, spent a significant amount of time talking long distance to the team about his experience as a software entrepreneur.
Attributable to the implementation of GALILEO in September 1995, this quarter's exploration yielded much richer studies, and the entire class became so involved with these case studies that I had to limit discussion time rather

than try to promote discussion. For my part, it was exhilarating to see the subject come to life and to find students thoroughly engaged, eager to go beyond the requirements.
Without the electronic exploration capabilities of our Georgia library resources, as well as the Internet, these students would never have been able to find so much so fast-and to find such current information. The companies that they contacted were not only impressed by their knowledge, but were eager to learn how these students had successfully searched for the information via GALILEO.
In my Topics in Computer Information Management class, the capstone class for the major, I am finding that students are able to locate not only more information on their selected research topics, but more current information. They are often able to contact professional researchers directly via homepages and e-mail addresses.
For the most part, these students work and go to school, and so they see many "real world" applications. For example, one student is the respiratory therapy director for a local medical complex. He came back to school to add an information systems major to his undergraduate degree because he understands the role that information systems will play in the future of health care. He was also able to use GALILEO to research a particular type of imaging system and systems for physicians to use during patient care sessions.
In the few months that it has been available to us, I can already see the transformation GALILEO can make in learning experiences. Perhaps most importantly for those of us in smaller colleges and universities, GALILEO connects us to the larger community of scholars, allows us to fully use our own resources, and to connect with those outside our geographical area who share common interests or common problems. This enlarged sense of community, the sense of exploration, and the success rate for locating information creates a renaissance in learning. As a professor, I can expect more, and students can achieve more with the same time expenditure.
All applications are too numerous to list, but perhaps it would be useful to include some of the applications that I have observed during this quarter:
z finding further information on topics introduced in the textbook, either for clarification or interest; z case study analysis and updates; z sources for research papers, especially on current technology topics; z locating articles and books not in the Columbus College collection and requesting interlibrary loan more
frequently; z finding and communicating with individuals who have expertise in a specialized area of interest-these
individuals can be anywhere on earth, not just in our region; z following up on ideas from classroom discussion, exploring the subject in depth; z contacting the author of a textbook (via that institution's homepage, if applicable) and asking questions or
informing the author of what we believe to be errors. Getting a response again personalizes learning and stimulates students to be more committed. z selecting a personal computer system given a class budget. Students searched for evaluations of different systems, information on scanners, color printers, and other related items. z international students keeping up with events and family in their home country.
Oftentimes, great success is revealed in the transformation of ordinary day-to-day actions. My observation has been that solitaire is no longer the most popular student pastime for a few minutes relaxation. Now, instead of a simulated deck of cards, I see students using GALILEO-for fun!
It may be too soon to have anything other than anecdotal and qualitative evidence of GALILEO's benefits. Nevertheless, I believe that GALILEO ranks among Georgia's foremost accomplishments. As time goes by and hard evidence mounts, I have no doubt that we will find that it has been one of our wisest investments.
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Publishing Information
Information Technology, The Office of Information and Instructional Technology (OIIT) News Bulletin, is published by the Board of Regents, Office of Information and Instructional Technology, 244 Washington St. SW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30334. Suggestions and contributions are solicited. Unless otherwise stated, permission to reprint articles in whole or in part is granted provided appropriate credit is given.

z Editor: Jayne Williams z Office: Georgia Southern University z E-mail: jayne_williams@oit.peachnet.edu
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