Eight years ago, UCLA was a pioneer online. But the digital
aspect of our university has become stagnant. From MyUCLA to class
Web sites, UCLA is stuck in the era of dial-up ““ to the
detriment of its students.
Every quarter, undergraduates must trudge through an
unnecessarily complex set of Web sites of varying usefulness:
department homepages to check requirements, the registrar’s
course listings and MyUCLA to plan classes, UCLAprofessors.com to
read reviews, URSA to enroll and pay, then a mix of Blackboard,
E-Campus and social science Web sites (all with unique interfaces,
login requirements and features) to interact with their
classes.
The fragmentation is hardly useful and, as the pace of Internet
innovation has quickened, UCLA looks painfully stuck in 1997.
In those eight years, the Internet has unquestionably become a
tightly woven aspect of undergraduate education. For example, on
the first day of classes this quarter, more than 21,000
undergraduates logged on to MyUCLA 73,000 times, according to UCLA
College, which maintains the site.
The magnitude and speed of the university’s initial online
push was impressive. Ask any alum (even from the Class of 1996)
about standing in line at Murphy Hall to register for classes or
pay fees, and you’ll appreciate the strides MyUCLA and URSA
has made for students. The jump from zero course Web sites to
thousands is equally impressive. But UCLA has been dragging its
feet. What we need today is an equally exciting period of
innovation. Technology has matured, but Web sites at UCLA have
not.
It would be naive to pretend the resources aren’t
available. UCLA has ample access to 24,000 undergraduates who have
lived and breathed zeros and ones for much of their lives. Even if
every student can’t program, they can suggest and critique
ways to bridge the digital divide between the university’s
current offerings and its potential. Administrators say they plan
to actively tap the minds of students ““ smart, but long
overdue.
Those same students are also forking over $6 per unit for most
classes, which generates nearly $3 million annually. The
instructional enhancement fee funds much of the software, hardware
and manpower behind UCLA’s current set of digital offerings
““ but because there is so much isolation and duplication in
utility among the services, it’s easy to suspect some of the
fee money is going to unproductive waste.
Students should be able to use MyUCLA for every aspect of their
academic lives. MyUCLA should host the schedule of classes and,
after building your study list each quarter, automatically enroll
you when your appointment arrives. Course and professor evaluations
should be searchable (despite the reluctance of the university to
make such data accessible). And, MyUCLA should aggregate messages
from classmates, notices from professors and due dates for
assignments directly on your homepage.
MyUCLA doesn’t need to serve as the portal for student
life ““ thefacebook.com and bruinwalk.com serve that
purpose.
Unifying, centralizing and updating UCLA’s academic Web
services is a daunting task, but the pace of change should quicken
under strong and focused leadership.
The Internet is no longer a novelty. It’s a vital and
still under-utilized component of our education. The quicker UCLA
addresses the fragmentation and stagnation plaguing its online
presence, the quicker its students will benefit.