CL-1: Learning Through Technology (LT^2): Case Studies:U. Houston-Downtown

University of Houston-Downtown

Putting it in Context: The Institution and its Students
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Student Demographics

The University of Houston-Downtown serves a very diverse, nontraditional student population. Some students are starting college for the first time, while others are starting for a second, third, or fourth time. The average age is 25. For the last two years, UHD has been named the most ethnically diverse western US liberal arts institution, a distinction which indicates that the student body accurately reflects the community it serves: Houston is one-third Hispanic, one-third African-American, and one-third traditional white. An administrator considers the student population's racial diversity an important strength because UHD is able to tap into the best resources of all three groups:

Figure 2. Demographics of UHD by race from 1990-1994.
Click on the image to see a larger image.

Since we are so representative of the community, our students, as they grow in their learning ability, are able to capture the different characteristics of all these groups. So when they go into a work environment, they're fully competent in their ability to know what to expect, how to relate, and how people think. Clearly, each individual group thinks, acts, or behaves a little differently. So our students are exposed to a variety of ideas and backgrounds, which we view as a very important part of our educational process. (George Pincus)

There is general agreement among faculty and administrators that the University serves a largely under-prepared student population that does not place college education at the top of a priority list. This realization lies at the root of many University decisions involving technology use in teaching both college-level and remedial courses. It is interesting to note that most faculty are not discouraged by, or ashamed of, the lack of preparation of their entering students. On the contrary, they see this as a challenge that validates educational institutions and environments like UHD. A faculty member reflects on this:

I think we serve a large portion of under-prepared students and also under-represented students. A lot of them are first-generation college students, so their family may not have any experience with going to school. I think that's our most important audience, although we also serve a lot of people who are working in the downtown area and just are coming here to try to complete their degree at night or whenever they can get off of their job. Most of our students work, and many of them work full-time, so they're not the traditional college students that you would see at a prestigious university like Wisconsin. College is not usually the first priority for them. Many of them have families and jobs, so college is something that they have to fit into their schedule. And they're under-prepared. They're not academically gifted students, or at least that doesn't show up in their records usually. We also have a large group of students who have been to other schools like A&M or Texas and for various reasons have flunked out, so for them we're kind of the second-choice institution. (Bill Waller, Faculty)

According to one faculty member, many students treat UHD as a "junior college," although there are no associate degrees granted. A significant proportion of these students complete only a couple of years of college coursework. This coupled with the open enrollment practice at UHD can have a detrimental effect on the attitudes, commitment, and expectations that students bring to class, according to the faculty member:

Because of the open admission policy of the University, it can occur to a student that day or the day before to attend, as registration is occurring. There's nothing to prevent that student from enrolling. (Linda Becerra, Faculty)

However, those students who do graduate from the College of Sciences and Technology have been successful and have tended to follow one of two paths: They either continue their studies at a graduate institution (for example graduates in science programs, like biology and chemistry, may go on to medical school), or they go into the work force (for example, graduates of computing and mathematical science programs may find employment in the private sector).

Faculty Responsibilities

UHD's primary mission is teaching, and most faculty and administrators are in complete agreement on this priority. Here is one faculty member's comment:

The primary mission of the school is teaching. Teaching is the stated mission of the school, and I think that's the administration's emphasis. There are some faculty who, I don't want to say disagree, but have a different idea of our mission and see it as a more typical research institution. But I think the administration's views are focused on teaching. (Bill Waller, Faculty)

An administrator concurs:

To us, the primary focus is quality teaching, quality transmission of knowledge. If that component is not there, the faculty will not be promoted. The first question we ask is, how is the performance of the individual in his/her teaching activities? We also value scholarship, and I'd say, depending on whom you talk to, you may hear that it's equally weighted. (George Pincus)

There appears to be a small segment of UHD faculty who wish that the University leaned a bit more toward the research university model. However, high quality classroom teaching seems to be the most important criterion in promotion and tenure decisions. Classroom performance is determined primarily by way of student evaluations. Like many other teaching universities, the importance of research or scholarship is established only after teaching. An administrator frames the issue this way,

Well, I think we are still pushing teaching as the main thing. If you are not doing well in the classroom, you won't be able to get tenure. But on the other hand, once one does that, we are requiring more and more that one has to do some kind of-it's not called research yet, but creative activities. So you have to be involved in something professional, whether it be writing papers, giving talks, writing textbooks, something that shows that you are active and contributing, and that you have the potential for continuing to do that.

How important scholarship is in promotion and tenure decisions depends on whom you ask. Administrators are mindful to portray the faculty as current and productive, and faculty scholarship is defined in such a way that it can involve the participation of students:

We expect our faculty to show progress in scholarship, and we define scholarship in a very broad sense, including what is traditionally called research. We like to call it scholarship, because to me it has a better definition of what we expect individuals to do, which is, perhaps, a little broader than writing journal papers. It indicates participating actively in self-development, continuing to develop through, for example, joint activities with students, the kind of activity that we encourage here. So to us, a faculty member sitting in his office working out new theorems, or developing new theories, or writing individual papers is not really what we want. We want activities with students. We do have a large number of professors in the computing and mathematical science department who are very, very active, and they're active nationally-they publish textbooks and papers-but they also have very strong interactions with students. The students are all required to complete a project in their senior year, and this is where much of interaction comes in. (George Pincus)

Despite this broad definition of research, the importance of traditional research seems to be increasing. . The College now has a significant amount of external funding, and many investments in the technology infrastructure come from externally funded projects. One wonders whether in the future there will be pressure on faculty to obtain more of the sort of outside funding that this College has benefited so much from. An administrator proudly touts this accomplishment of the College:

Four years ago, this institution had practically zero external funding. Our college today is running up to two million a year, in terms of externally funded support. A lot of that money is directed towards student support, but some of it is also directed towards supporting faculty scholarship. (George Pincus)

Currently, the high teaching load that faculty are responsible for seems to keep scholarship expectations modest, as indicated by an administrator:

Well, if you are teaching a full load, which is twelve semester hours, we're fairly happy if, for instance you are doing research, if you do a paper every year or every other year; that's, I think, considered sufficient. I mean, we still think 12 hours is a heavy load.

With such a high teaching load, one wonders about the faculty's ability or willingness to engage in collegial activities, such as curriculum reform, departmental and college-level academic discussion, or governance. To further consider this, and to explore the appropriate conditions for change at an educational institution like this one, one might ask how the institution accommodates change and/or adjusts to new ideas. How is change received or tolerated by the faculty as a whole? Is there peer pressure to accept, adopt, adapt, or reject change? Here's how one administrator answered these questions:

One or two instructors could deviate from the standard way of teaching a course, as long as they let us know. They could experiment with something, and I've basically told them that if they find something that is really good and is working, then it's their responsibility to convince the rest of us to change. So, I think there's freedom and people feel like they can try things, but it's very difficult to get the department as a whole to switch over to something. I mean, we can't even get the department as a whole to agree to use calculators in a particular class. There are some who say, "students have got to be able to do it without the calculator; I won't use it."

Thus an accommodating environment lets faculty make changes in their own courses. Beyond that, though, there does not seem to be a process which could be used to allow an entire department or college to adopt reforms. Instead, it is incumbent upon reformers to convince their peers, one by one if necessary, to adopt or adapt their method. It should be noted that in the case of the college algebra course, faculty success in implementing reform might have been predicated by the fact that the three faculty members responsible for teaching the course work well together and advocate for a reform agenda.

Institutional Organization

The University of Houston-Downtown (UHD) is divided into four colleges. One college, an intake unit that accepts freshman and transfer students, is called the University College. The Natural Colleges encompass the other three colleges, and each offers its own degrees: the College of Business, the College of Humanities and Social Sciences, and the College of Sciences and Technology. The algebra course of interest, Math 1301, is offered by the College of Sciences and Technology.

Overall University enrollment is slightly over 8,000 with a target enrollment of 8100 to 8200 students. Approximately one-third of all credit hours taken by these students are earned in the College of Sciences and Technology, though it does not have its proportional share of majors. Only about one-sixth of all majors are in the College of Sciences and Technology, so a major function of this College is to provide service courses for other University programs, especially in mathematics.

The College of Sciences and Technology is comprised of three academic units: Computer and Mathematical Sciences Department, The Natural Sciences Department, and The Engineering Technology Department. It also houses The Center for Computational Sciences and Advanced Distributed Simulation (CCSDS), a research center charged with developing additional external support for the institution and for students. An administrator speaks of the CCSDS's success in supporting the University's teaching mission:

A lot of the funding has been generated by or comes from that center. This is mainly a teaching institution. It's not a flagship university, as they call them in Texas or wherever. The main emphasis is the discovery of knowledge. Our main emphasis is transmission of knowledge, or teaching. Although we have a significant amount of research, the research that we do here is very much student focused. The research really lets students get involved. (George Pincus)

The Department of Computer and Mathematical Sciences, home department for this college algebra course, has some twenty faculty, both tenured and tenure-track. There are about twenty-five more part-time faculty members. A typical teaching load is 24 credit hours per year, but many faculty members teach two additional courses (6 credits) during the summer for extra pay. A Chairperson leads the Department while still carrying a heavy teaching load (6 courses or 18 credits per year).

An accurate count of students majoring in mathematics is difficult to obtain, because many do not declare their major until they reach their senior year. Typically, however, about 35 to 40 math students graduate per year.

In terms of technology, it is clear that the University is investing in both its infrastructure and its people. A staff member reflects that opinion:

I sense that the administration is very committed to technology. We have a big teaching technology learning center, and the people on staff there are very helpful. They have twenty or thirty labs on campus, computer labs that they support, many of which are for the math department. (Phillis Griffard)

The University is increasingly participating in distance learning via television or online course delivery. Because of the composition of the student body, the University is also trying to make use of asynchronous, self-paced materials in its remedial programs.

To me, computer tools are learning tools. I would hope that we are using the better learning tools that are available today. I know that in all the courses that we called remedial there is a requirement that students follow certain tutorials using the Plato system. We do have a Plato Lab set up for them. The lab is open seven days a week, about 12 hours a day, and working there is part of the learning process. So there is a lot of computer-related learning going on in the mathematics area. I do know that we have designated a significant proportion of resources for modernizing our equipment. We have a very nice simulation laboratory, and we have several laboratories where students have full access to a lot of these tools. We have been fortunate in that the state has provided us with higher educational assistance funds, HEAF for short, which is the way the state of Texas allocates equipment funds. (George Pincus)

The need for computer-based remedial activities, like the Plato tutorials, is exacerbated by Texas State law, which limits student enrollment in remedial classes.

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