Computers and systemic change in higher education

12-campus Commonwealth College plus four additional undergraduate campuses. For the past two years, the Royer Center's mission has been to lead and support a change from heavy reliance on lecture-based instruction to a rich learning environment characterized by active, cooperative learning, supported by technology. Computers and S in Higher Education T he Commonwealth College is making these changes in response to our community's demand for graduates who can work in teams, communicate electronically , solve open-ended problems, and think critically. Convinced that four years of passive lecture reception does not typically build these skills, we committed to expanding our instructional methods, and to building the technology infrastructure needed to support them. The goal has not been to develop online courses. Rather, we seek to improve instruction by offering well-structured active learning for individual students and teams, to extend group as well as individual learning beyond classroom hours with asynchronous con-ferencing, project collaboration, and coaching, and to increase students' ability to access and critically analyze the human and information resources available on the Internet. Thus, the goal implies not only technology use, but, more importantly, expanding the facul-ty's instructional methods repertoire. While this article features the computer component of our work, faculty development in specific classroom techniques as well as in new roles in course development and coaching are equally important and contribute significantly to our success. The Royer Center's goal has been to engage at least 80% of our 850 full-time faculty in this process by the year 2000. With approximately 40% of the currently participating, it appears we will meet that goal. The effort has been made easier by the fact the Commonwealth campuses are primarily teaching, rather than research, locations. Class sizes tend to be relatively small, with only a handful in the 50–100 student range. The campuses have not previously offered regular faculty development programs. Instructional services occasionally included slide or video production. Faculty members have had little if any opportunity to learn ways of teaching other than the content-focused lecturing they experienced as students. In addition, student computer labs and faculty computing resources vary significantly from site to site. The campuses are distributed around Pennsylvania, most often in rural or suburban locations. They serve