tudents in professor Stephen Sapp’s Introduction to Religion class file in on the first day and take a seat. The lights dim, music from Star Wars crescendos, and a PowerPoint slide reads: “Not long ago, in a galaxy not very far, far away…” Having grabbed his students’ attention, Sapp keeps it with what University of Miami technology specialist Bill Vilberg calls “Web-enhanced learning.” All of Sapp’s students enter each class with a printout of lecture materials they accessed ahead of time on Blackboard, the University’s interactive course management system. “That way, they have the basics of the lecture before them and don’t have to write anything down, allowing them to listen to me better,” says Sapp, who proves the approach with improved exam scores. Blackboard is one application on a network where learning and instruction travel through 150 miles of fiber-optic cable connecting students, faculty, and staff on three campuses. Even more ethereal, and recent, is a “cloud” of wireless computer connectivity that virtually blankets the campus in the warm glow of ubiquitous information. With an antenna-equipped laptop or handheld computer, students may access class material, grade reports, e-mail, and more, as well as surf the Web, anytime and anywhere on campus—inside buildings or along the banks of Lake Osceola. University coaches can even summon information from the athletic fields when they need a quick check of team or other records. “Web-based resources help students to be the masters of their own learning,” says Vilberg, who oversees the Blackboard system. “They also extend the teaching mastery that professors primarily brought just to the classroom before.”

While students still can’t “beam up” to class, the wireless network can beam information to them in ways that “will prepare them for careers reaching into the 2050s,” says Mark O’Connell, senior associate dean of medical education at the School of Medicine. “We have begun promoting handheld computers and personal digital assistants (PDAs) as the way physicians access the latest information regarding the diagnosis and treatment of disease.”

The PDA has replaced the stethoscope as the icon for clinical medicine, O’Connell says. “Where’s my handheld? I’ve got to go to clinic,” is the new mantra. Once there, a doctor will use his or her handheld to check medical databases like ePocrates or Medline, which has 11 million journal citations, or to transmit patients’ files to the PDA of a colleague who may be substituting on rounds.

“PDAs provide a way for direct feedback between the professor and a class of students,” says Orlando Alvarez, professor of physics in the College of Arts and Sciences. Alvarez envisions all students with PDAs in a lecture hall responding to a question from the professor, whose screen would then display statistics on their responses. If, say, 50 percent didn’t get it, the professor could adjust the lecture instantly, says Alvarez, who heads a team exploring the approach.

lready firmly in place is the Blackboard system used by Sapp and in 360 other course sections. Many professors develop course Web sites independently, but Blackboard is more powerful because it ties in with the University’s registration system, EASY. At the beginning of each semester, Blackboard talks to EASY and automatically creates a Web site for every course, setting up student rosters, e-mail addresses, grade books, discussion forums, and electronic cubby holes where professors place course information and assignments. The wireless network also talks to EASY to speed set-up of students’ access codes and passwords.

PowerPoint and other presentations, accessible through Blackboard, take on a new twist at the Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science. Forums on tropical storms and hurricanes “allow interactive discussions about current conditions and the real-time presentation of forecast models,” explains Mike Anderson (B.S.E.E. ’95, M.B.A. ’97), Rosenstiel School network specialist. The models can be updated “on the fly” to incorporate new variables.

At the School of Music, freshman Kira Bielfield downloads from Blackboard sheet music for a Bach selection, written for the harpsichord and therefore devoid of marks to indicate staccatos and other expressive features available with other instruments. This assignment for her Music, Computers, and Keyboards class requires that she add her own expressive marks using a MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) software program, which plays the selection and generates sheet music. After completing the assignment, she submits it from her desktop using Blackboard’s “digital drop box.” The professor then receives Bielfield’s submission and listens to her arrangement, following along on the displayed sheet music, to evaluate her work. Freshman Asha Ramcharitar, a double major in biology and music, says her Music Theory II course provides Blackboard links for listening to instructional audios and watching streaming-video lectures on chord progressions.

With courses taught in South America and elsewhere in Florida, the School of Business Administration’s Executive M.B.A. program has “everything on Blackboard Web sites,” says Robert Plant, associate professor of computer information systems. Blackboard enables students to work together no matter where in the world they are.

The Division of Physical Therapy offers a doctoral program via distance education to students who earned their master’s degrees at the University after 1987. As degree requirements have changed, explains Carol Davis, professor of physical therapy in the Department of Orthopaedics and Rehabilitation at the School of Medicine, “the program allows our graduates to enhance their original degree to a newly developed Doctor of Physical Therapy degree.” Davis and colleague Mark Nash conduct a virtual chat once a week with distant students.

“What’s profound to me,” says Davis, “is that this is a whole new culture of teaching.”

Education professor Eugene Provenzo explores this very topic in a range of books about computing and education. “University teaching models are being radically redefined as a result of computer-based media,” says Provenzo, “much as the oral traditions of medieval universities were totally changed by the invention of the book.”

firm proponent of the expanding educational technology milieu, the University of Miami invests about $60 million a year on information technology and support, says M. Lewis Temares, vice president of information technology and dean of the College of Engineering. About $10 million of that is for support, including upgrading faculty skills, he says.

One recent tech-upgrade is the University’s connection to Internet2, a high-speed nationwide network available only to select research bodies. The University uses it primarily for transmitting weather information to NASA, telemedicine videoconferencing, and communicating with distant researchers.

ComputerWorld magazine recently recognized Temares as a “Premier 100” information technology leader, one of only two higher education leaders on the list. Quick to share credit, Temares says, “From the president to the provost and the whole leadership of the University, we have one exciting, forward-thinking team.”

Integral to this team are professors who have many options for help with instructional technology. The Otto G. Richter Library’s new Digital Media Lab “helps faculty create course content, including streaming video and audio,” says Jeff Barry, assistant University librarian for digital library initiatives. Faculty also can turn to Vilberg, of the Instructional Advancement Center, or to Jim Shelley, executive director of academic and research systems, Information Technology. At the Edward H. Arnold Center for Confluent Media Studies at the College of Engineering, technical masters Ali Habashi (M.S.M.E.T. ’98) and Alex Ilieve help with faculty projects and teach digital video editing, audio production, and computer animation using the same advanced technology as studios like Lucasfilm, producer of the Star Wars movies parodied by Sapp.

As a student at UM in 1997, Habashi earned the “best computer-generated animation” honor from the Association for Computing Machinery. Once the Luke Skywalker apprentice, he now is the Obi-Wan Kenobi sage who joins hundreds of others in helping the next generation of students to understand and succeed in the high-tech world.