Plans for Durham University to become a 'Technology-Enhanced Campus'

(News feature published in Durham University's Palatinate, 25/11/08)

Plans for Durham University to become a 'Technology-Enhanced Campus'

>>Most students feel that Durham University is lagging behind in the technology stakes. But is this accurate? Sophie Maden invesitgates.

DURHAM’S INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY Service has claimed that it is “miles ahead” in terms of technology, after unveiling a strategy to become a ‘Technology-Enhanced Campus’. This project is subject to governmental and research council funding, including £2.2million awarded by government initiatives for the University’s forward-thinking ideas, which could help put the University on the map as an innovator in technology to aid learning.

In the same week that a study published in the Institute for Public Policy Research claiming that UK Universities should be more advanced in their use of online technology, ITS have claimed that both their online infrastructure and future technology projects should help to place them amongst the top-ranking technologically able universities.

Improvements to DUO (Durham University Online) have this year included online student enrolment, the addition of personal blogs, personal podcast spaces, wikis, Google maps and various other new applications. ITS have also made an effort to simplify the site, to make it easier both for University staff to provide better teaching aids and for students to communicate more easily for group projects. This year will also be the first to allow Durham students to register for graduation online.

Further online learning could also be encouraged through proposals to make postgraduate student dissertations available to view online, which could be implemented as early as next term, and an institution-wide initiative to digitise thousands of academic books and make them available for online reference.

Alongside other universities such as Oxford and Loughborough, whose registration processes continue to be heavily paper-based, Durham also has plans to move registration online, with proposals due to be submitted in March 2009. It is hoped that this will speed up and simplify the long registration process, although factors such as requisites and concessions which are individual to each module would suggest that this process will not immediately be fully online based.

Other integral projects to the ‘Technology-Enhanced Campus’ initiative include an SMS based system which is being experimented with, which would enable University staff to contact students registered on the system via text message, with details of seminar cancellations or last minute room changes, for example. Once implemented, Durham would be the first UK University to use this system university-wide.

The ITS department have also written software which will allow a student’s PDA (Personal Digital Assistant) to access wireless hotspots and to receive individually structured information such as if new books relating to your modules have become available at the library, although this remains for the moment an experimental project.

Dr Liz Burd, Deputy Dean of Computer Sciences, said that Durham is “one of the world leaders in terms of research and learning spaces” with the addition of the Calman Learning Centre, completed last year. This suite incorporates a techno café and group facilities such as large plasma screens connected to laptops so that students can share images and documents with each other. Further improvements to the University Library have also taken place over the last three years, improving work spaces and installing more computers for quick email access, as well as a self-service borrowing system.

Although the vast majority of these technology features are situated on the Science Site, plans to relocate various departments onto the site over the next four years as part of the Gateway Project will ensure that more departments can take advantage of these learning spaces, which have earned the University recognition as a Centre of Excellence.

Despite the national focus upon online learning and technological teaching aids, some students feel that a depersonalisation of learning could have its drawbacks. Mike Lehan, JCR IT Officer at St Aidan’s College, said “I am primarily of the opinion that the most important tool in learning is the teacher. If everything we needed was on DUO coming to lectures or even university would be pointless. That is why despite how much I’d like to use a laptop in lectures I still end up with a pad of paper and a pen!”

Dr Liz Burd added that rather than seeking to remove the personal element of university learning, the ITS group are “looking at ways of improving learning inside and outside of the classroom in order to keep learning active”.