The Internet and World Wide Web:
Uses for Study Abroad
Gary M. Rhodes
I N T H E F I E L D of international student exchange, administrators and faculty are continually faced with the challenge of operating a college or university program in another part of the world. Administrative offices are operating with decreased budgets, limited staff, and a growing need for additional resources. The Internet provides a resource to support the pro-grammatic needs of administrators, with a limited cost in both financial and manpower resources. The importance of the Internet and the informa-tion superhighway has been stressed by Vice President Al Gore:
"In today's global economy, we have to ensure all Americans access, any time and any place, to quality education and training tailored to their individual learning and workplace needs. This means schools that live up to these world-class standards. And that requires meeting the challenge of bringing the information superhighway to every classroom in America. "
President Clinton and Vice President Gore have challenged the telecom-munications industry to connect every classroom, library, clinic, and hos-pital to the information superhighway by the year 2000. (White House Press Release, 1995)
Those in the international exchange community who have not taken this message seriously are missing out on information important to the effective administration of study abroad programs. The Internet has served the field of international student exchange over the past few years by enabling administrators from around the world to communicate inexpensively with each other through electronic mail, and to take part in relevant discussions on the INTER-L (INTER-L@VTVM1.cc.vt.edu) and SECUSS-L (SECUSS-L@UBVM.cc. buffalo. edu) discussion networks. This has become a vital means of effective communication and program development in this field. The next step will be to increase information exchange through the World Wide Web. According to John Waiblinger, reference librarian at the University of Southern California Doheny Memorial Library:
The Internet, and the World Wide Web specifically, are increasingly changing the way we communicate and transmit information. Because the Net provides both the ability instantaneously to update and trans-mit information on a truly global basis as well as the ability for every reader/user to participate and interact with this information, it is chang-ing the fundamental way we as a society understand and use the "media. " With more than 27.5 million users with e-mail connectivity growing at an exponential rate, the impact of this media on our society will be profound.
The Higher Education community has a responsibility not only to under-stand and use this media, hut also to inform its development. With this new technology, we have the opportunity to move from a consumption- based model of social interaction to one ofglohalparticipation, commu-nication, and community. Our institutions of higher learning can pro-vide a model of such international cooperation and interaction via the technologies of interactive communication provided by the World Wide Web (Waihlinger, e-mail discussion with author)
Many of the questions asked of study abroad administrators can be answered through information available on the World Wide Web. Follow-ing is a list of practical information relevant for study abroad program administrators with their World Wide Web site linkages:
Directories of U.S. Colleges and Universities
Directories of International Universities
Directory of U.S. Study Abroad Program Sites: Non-Profit
Health Issues
Time-Zone Search
Travel/Tourist Information
It is important to note that the above information was not so easily accessible even two years ago. This rapidly expanding technology is being used by a steadily increasing number of people.
The research community is also examining the best way to use the World Wide Web. Some see it as a way of addressing what they define as a "crisis" facing scholarly publishing:
In the last couple of decades, the subscription costs of many scholarly journals (especially those published by certain powerful commerrialPub-lisbers) have escalated at a rate far exceeding the cost-of-living rate of inflation. In addition, many new journals have been started. These two factors have conspired to change the nature ofjournal collec-tions in academic libraries. Although it once was possible for a large academic library to aim to have a comprehensive collection of journals for the subject departments that it served, this is no longer the case. (Parrott, 1995, 1)
The author lists "exploring the possibility of electronic submission of manuscripts and electronic distribution of journal issues to the subscribers" as one possible answer to the problem. Steven Harnad, editor of the refer-eed electronic journal PSYCOLOQUY, in his article "Implementing Peer Review on the Net: Scientific Quality Control in Scholarly Electronic jour-nals," sees "no ESSENTIAL differences between paper and electronic media with respect to peer review" (Harnad,1995, 7). He goes on to say that the availability of journals through the World Wide Web will reach its peak when it provides a truly interactive medium, which he calls "Scholarly Sky-writing"(Harnad, 1995, 9), as opposed to the current method of paper jour
nal publication. "Whatever ideas could have been generated by minds inter-acting at biological tempos are forever lost at paper-production tempos" (Harnad, 1995, 9).
Although this first edition of Frontiers is on paper, future editions may be available on-line.
The amount of useful online information for administrators and faculty involved in the international exchange of students continues to grow. Leaders in this area must now develop and support a challenging level of thought and discussion that will encourage faculty and administrators to take part in the scholarly skywriting" that is already taking shape on the Internet.
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