August 10, 2000

For the New College B.M.O.C., 'M' Is for 'Machine'

By LISA GUERNSEY

Left, Jim West/Impact Visuals for The New York Times; above, Barbara Martin for The New York Times WIRED - College students like, left, James L. Carey, and Shaun Encinias use computers for things like music, e-mail and homework.

How 20th century, college students today might say.

The computer, they declare, is the only item that could deserve to be first on any list of dorm necessities. In fact, the computer not only displaces other technology in importance but also replaces the need for some other appliances.

It serves as the stereo for students who listen to MP3 files and radio Webcasts. It makes answering machines less necessary because so much communication occurs via e-mail and instant messages. It can even substitute for televisions and alarm clocks.

The computer has also become the portal through which students do everything they need to do on campus. Using the Internet, they register for classes, turn in assignments, order books, browse the library catalog, listen to music, talk to friends, read the news, write papers, play games, pay bills, watch movies and carry on heated political discussions. Alumni returning to their alma maters will find that the quads and classrooms still exist, but the computer has become almost more central than the physical campus.

"It is an invisible change," said Matthew Pittinsky, co-chairman and founder of Blackboard, a software company that serves more than 3,300 colleges. "But it is probably the most profound change that colleges have seen since the G.I. Bill."

The computer's immense impact on the social and academic lives of college students is just beginning to become apparent. Some students say they are carrying on fewer conversations with their dorm mates and more conversations with friends across the country. Many students say that while they still hit the bars and coffee shops, they rarely go to the library. One study shows that students spend less free time watching television, now that they can be entertained online.

As students pivot toward online information, "something clearly has to give," said Eric Weil, managing partner in Student Monitor, a market research company that polls college students. In the latest Student Monitor survey, conducted in the spring, 56 percent of the 1,200 respondents at colleges across the country said that they had spent less time watching television in the previous six months.

What were they doing instead? About 42 percent said they were spending more time surfing the Web and 49 percent said they were spending more time sending and receiving e-mail. Academics played a role too: 57 percent said they were spending more time doing homework. In many cases, Mr. Weil said, that homework was probably being done on a computer, often online.

But some students say that it is not television that they neglect. Instead, they are spending less time on the telephone or talking face-to-face with their peers on campus. It is not that they are being antisocial, the students say. They are simply communicating with people in a different way, using e-mail, online chats and streams of instant messages.

Eric Kelson, a junior at Syracuse University, said he frequently chatted online with his parents, his sister, his grandmother in Florida and his friends at other colleges. "It helps because calling is expensive," Mr. Kelson said. "And e-mail is good but it is not as personal."

He and his friends often watch television while they chat, he said. And more often than not, he said, he is chatting with people in his dormitory, even though they may be only a few paces away. Instead of picking up the telephone or knocking on his neighbors' doors to see what they are up to, he will send them instant messages.

Students who once said, `See you on the quad,' now say, `Meet you online.'

Mr. Kelson's case is not unusual, said Bennett Fisher, vice president for community at CollegeClub.com, a social site for students that has attracted nearly three million users. "We used to sit in the hallway and talk to students in the dorm," Mr. Fisher said. "Now they do that on the Web."

Even conversations with professors, those moments of stimulating intellectual discussion that some baby boomers may recall with nostalgia, are often supplanted by online communication.

"Office hours are being replaced with e-mail discussions," said Gary Gigliotti, director of the Center for Teaching Excellence at Rutgers University. Some regret the loss, but instead of waiting for those few hours a week when professors open their doors, students would rather talk online, Mr. Gigliotti said. "It is more convenient for them," he said.

The seeds of this shift were planted in the early 1980's, when technologically adept students started taking computers to campus. But back then, the machines were by no means essential. They were primarily used for typing papers, and most students relied on the word-processing programs in computer laboratories instead of buying their own machines. Computer science and statistics students were often the only ones to use computers for more than writing papers.

In the mid-1990's, when the Internet caught on beyond the halls of engineering and computer science departments, that started to change. Large universities began to invest tens of millions of dollars in wiring dormitory rooms in the hope of providing high-speed Internet access to every student. It was the beginning of the race to provide what administrators call "one port per pillow." On average, campuses have wired about 63 percent of their dormitories, according to the Campus Computing Project, an annual survey of more than 500 institutions across the country. Private research universities have gone the furthest: Of those surveyed, all said they offered high-speed access in every dorm.

The availability of Internet access has become a deciding factor for students who are trying to decide where to apply to college. Yahoo Internet Life magazineproduces an annual ranking, "The 100 Most Wired Colleges." EduCause, a nonprofit organization that promotes technology in higher education, has created an online guide to help applicants determine which universities measure up to their needs ( www.educause.edu/consumerguide).

In a sign of how important Internet access has become, students at Michigan State University, where most dormitories are wired, lined up seven hours in advance last spring to make sure that they were assigned to wired housing. To help those who missed out, the college installed voice mail. Everyone in those dorms uses the telephone lines for dial-up access, said James L. Carey, a sophomore, "and students would be online so much they would never get phone calls."

One of the latest challenges facing administrators is whether to require all entering students to bring a computer to college, and if so, whether the computer should be a laptop or desktop. Reports on the Educause Web site show that about 100 universities have such a requirement, which in some cases is imposed only on students in certain programs.

Next fall, the number will probably increase; about 11 percent of the institutions surveyed by the Campus Computing Project last fall said they would have a laptop computer requirement in place by 2001.

Ohio University is one of the universities that have decided to tackle the issue another way. Every Ohio University undergraduate dorm room is equipped with at least one new $1,000 Gateway computer and printer. The cost of the equipment is covered in an annual student fee.

Exactly how much time do students spend on these machines? An increasing amount, according to surveys. In the fall of 1998, according to Student Monitor, students spent an average of 5.6 hours a week online. That rose to 7.2 hours in the fall of 1999 and 8.1 hours this spring.

But many students say those numbers are even higher among students with computers in dorms that have high-speed access to the Internet. Shaun Encinias, a student at San Diego State University, said he spent hours online each day, checking e-mail before leaving his room in the morning, between classes, after classes and after dinner.

E-mail, though, is not necessarily the most important reason for going online, according to the students polled by Student Monitor. More than 44 percent said that "schoolwork-related research" was their No. 1 priority.

Most courses now have an Internet component, professors say, whether it is a Web-based syllabus, an e-mail-based discussion board, an online repository of required reading or an interactive quiz. Some instructors set up online chats with experts and colleagues at other universities across the country. And many students use the Internet and online library resources to do most, if not all, of their research for papers and projects. When they are done, many send their papers via e-mail or click through Web pages during presentations in class.

The presence of the computer can sway some students away from academics, however. Mr. Carey, the sophomore at Michigan State, said he had failed all his classes his first semester. "I was shellshocked," he said. "I stayed in my room all the time." He would log on to the Internet as soon as he woke up and hung out with friends he had made online instead of doing homework or talking with friends on campus. This year, he said, he is doing much better and uses his computer mainly for homework.

he warned, it can also lead to more isolation. If students choose to interact online with people who are just down the hall, for example, they are missing the chance to see other people's facial expressions, how they look when they are joking and what their body language says about their personalities.

Kaycee Swenson, a high school senior in Wichita, Kan., who took several courses at her local college last year, said she talked to people online every day, most of whom were not at her campus. But she said she also hung out with friends in the physical world, listening to music and playing basketball. "You have to balance it," she said.

This fall, she will enroll full time at the University of California at San Diego, and she plans to take a new computer with her, even though she already has one equipped with a Pentium II processor. "It's fast," she said, "but not fast enough."

In fact, she said, when she talks to her mother about what she took to college decades ago, she cannot believe what students had to put up with. "She thought it was great," Ms. Swenson said, "that she was able to take a calculator to college or a cassette player to tape lectures." And when her mother said she had to stand in line to register for classes and to wait for professors to open their offices, she said she could hardly imagine it. "I laugh at those things," Ms. Swenson said, "but I'm sure it wasn't fun, you know?"

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