Early Followers Reap Benefits and Lower Costs

Number 2 2001 • EDUCAUSE QUARTERLY 63 Early adopters of educational technology have found that most uses of technology to improve learning increase costs both in terms of faculty time and in technology costs. For example, the development of the casebased ethics software at Carnegie Mellon University1 required a significant investment of faculty time to create a rich online environment. While many early adopters have willingly spent the many additional hours required to develop and mount technologyenhanced or online courses, this model doesn’t scale for two reasons: ■ While an early adopter might be willing to devote large amounts of time to a course initially, if the course continues to require significant additional effort, faculty members often find themselves unable or unwilling to maintain the commitment. ■ When other faculty members observe the amount of time invested by early adopters, other faculty sometimes become even less willing to engage in such activity themselves. This issue of additional effort becomes especially troublesome when faculty members face increasing demands on their time from other directions. Many early adopters have also found an increase in costs associated with the technology itself: hardware costs, maintenance costs, software costs, connectivity costs, and more. For example, ■ The studio classrooms at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute2 and the Math Emporium at Virginia Tech3 required significant capital costs to build and equip. ■ Synchronous videoconferencingstyle courses can be expensive in terms of building facilities and recurring line charges. ■ In addition, where students didn’t already have access to computers, the early adopters had to deal with the costs of providing such access. These cost increases can be problematic, especially if the containment of rising costs is a priority at a college or university.