Students plug into high tech demands of college

When asked about buying a computer for new college students, Louis and Karen Coppi draw on 10 years of experience. "We're a 24 semester family," says Karen Coppi. "Three kids times eight semesters. We have five semesters to go."

And that doesn't take into consideration that their two sons are now in graduate school.

All three of the Coppi children are currently attending Bentley College, a business college in Waltham, and Louis Coppi's alma mater. Since 1984, Bentley has required all its students own their own computer.

But in 1989, when the Coppis's oldest son Mark went off to Alfred University in Alfred, N.Y., he had no computer at all.

Mark, who majored in political science, used the computer lab at school "but it was a VAX system and it kept crashing." he says.

He told his parents that he "needed something reliable." His roommate had a laptop computer, which was very unusual at that time.

His parents gave him their Brother word processor. "I lugged that thing everywhere," says Mark, including roaming around the campus during a snow storm that caused a power outage, in search of a place with electricity so that he could print out his paper.

Mark Coppi is now in graduate school at Bentley and works in Springfield. He sees his Toshiba laptop computer as "a communication tool" that lets him work with his group in school even though he is in a different location.

When Jonathan Coppi started at Bentley in 1992, he used a Macintosh PowerBook, which was sufficient to carry him all through his studies at the college. Then he gave it to his then girlfriend and now fiance, Courtney Duff.

Duff, who attended Wheaton College, majored in English and found the computers at the school more than adequate for her needs. "We had a huge computer lab," says Duff, noting that most of the machines were Macintosh. "No one had laptops," she says.

Duff now works as a pre-school teacher and uses Coppi's old PowerBook mostly for word processing although she says that the HyperCard program makes "awesome flash cards."

"I needed the computer (the PowerBook) because I worked on the newspaper at Wheaton," Duff says. "But other than that, a Smith-Corona word processor would have been fine."

In 1997, Elizabeth Coppi went off the Hobart and William Smith Colleges in Geneva, N.Y., and her parents gave her a new Toshiba laptop with 16 megabits RAM.

But once she transferred to Bentley College, she had to have a new Toshiba with 64 megabits.Bentley requires this configuration in an effort to make the computer a freshman would buy last until senior year and to run any anticipated new applications.

Coppi's parents ordered her machine through a mail-order catalog although Bentley College also sells machines.

Bently spokesman Peter Kent says that the college realized 14 years ago the impact that computers would have on business, which is why the college made student ownership of computers mandatory.

"Any good business school is doing this," says Kent, adding that in addition to having "a port per bed" in the dormitories, which connect to the school's network, many classrooms also have a port per chair.

"Students can log in as part of the class instruction," says Kent. "They are learning the software as part of the class.

"What we are doing is using computer technology across the curriculum" mirroring how the technology is used in business today. "Our students are sophisticated users of these business products," Kent says.

Since Bentley admits students without considering the ability to pay, Kent says that the college makes sure that all students have the computer equipment they need. "Students can buy their computers through us and we have lease plans as well," says said Kent. "We do what it takes to make sure that students have computers."

Not only business students need to be able to use the current big programs. Students at Berklee College of Music need to be able to create huge multi-media files with sound and video in addition to any regular classwork.

But at Berklee, students are not required to own a computer, although students are strongly encouraged to bring their own machine to the dorm.

According to David Lustig of Information Services at the college, the dorms all have one port per bed. Lustig is pleased that each dorm has a "tech RA" or technical equivalent of the more traditional Resident Adviser. He or she is responsible for setting up each student's network access as well as for answering generic questions.

Lustig thinks that students learn best by immersion and so he strongly advises students to have their own machines. He personally likes the iMac from Apple over a laptop for the kinds of work most of Berklee students do.

Similarly, Dartmouth College in Hanover, N.H., which calls itself "one of the largest institutions of higher education in the country that maintains a predominantly Apple Macintosh environment" strongly recommends the iMac to its incoming students. Since 1991, Dartmouth has required each undergraduate to own a personal computer. And currently, almost 9,000 of the 10,500 users of Dartmouth's network use Apple computer products and almost all of the curriculum tools are Apple-based.

Asked if Lustig could recommend a machine that would take one of his students through four years of Berklee, he said that "that's one of the impossible questions to answer."

The Coppi family agrees.

Mark Coppi says that he wishes he had had a laptop when he was an undergraduate. "When I look back, it is amazing what has happened."

Jonathan calls them a "must-have."

"You've got to have one and the sooner you start using one the better off you will be," he says.

Elizabeth says that although she rarely used her computer for more than word-processing at her former school, now she uses it all the time and that her professors demand that she use e-mail to file reports.

Louis Coppi agrees that computer literacy is a requirement -- even for the mechanical contracting businesses he manages.

"We won't consider someone without computer skills for even the most entry-level position" says Coppi, who is chief financial officer at Western Mass Holding.

Karen Coppi, speaks from experience when she says, "Just factor in the computer with the cost of tuition."

"And the printer and the zip drive," adds Mark Coppi.

Colleges and universities are grappling with the impact of information technology on curriculum development, distance-learning development, user support, and financial requirements, according to the National Survey of Information Technology in Higher Education Survey, released last Monday.

Of the 571 two- and four-year colleges that responded to the survey, just under half have a strategic plan for Information Technology, more than 60 percent do not have an IT financial plan, and only 40 percent have an IT curriculum plan.

"We know that the technology changes the learning experience" says Kenneth Green, director of the Campus Computing Project and visiting scholar at the Center for Educational Studies of Claremont Graduate University, "but there are no studies that quantify that change.

"We know that technology does not make it less expensive to deliver education," adds Green.

In fact, Information Technology fees that are billed directly to the student are rising across the country, according to Green. About half of the responders of the survey report a mandatory IT fee. The annual fee for four-year public colleges is $120, according to Green, and it is $146 at private colleges.

These fees reflect the cost of the network infrastructure on the campus and the computer support required by the students and faculty.

Green sees three major issues rising from the increased use of Information Technology on campuses: content, delivery and infrastructure.

"Students of all ages and across all fields come to campus expecting to learn about and also to learn with technology" writes Green in the introduction to the survey.

According to the survey, the percentage of classes using e-mail is now 44.4 percent now, up from 32.8 percent last year and 8.0 percent in 1994. And one-third of the classes use Internet resources as part of the class syllabus.

In fact, one-third of the colleges in the survey said that "assisting faculty to integrate technology into instruction" is the single most important IT issue on campus, according to Green.

Delivery of the content is also an issue. "We know that students and faculty are very mobile," says Green and that they use the college network in the classroom, the faculty office, dorms, etc. The survey results were interesting because it showed that faculty used the Internet more often than students on a daily basis.

Meeting the financial costs of the infrastructure is a daunting challenge to most colleges, because the technology keeps changing. Green notes that public colleges and universities are under the most pressure to use student fees to cover the costs of this infrastructure.