Strategic Principles

Coordinated Autonomy - A Statement of Principles for Information Technology at UCLA

by Jim Davis, Associate Vice Chancellor for Information Technology, UCLA

The changing university reveals strong threads of individualism and autonomy but in a way that is open, public, world wide and fully engaged. This marriage of autonomy with connectedness becomes a defining principle for the deployment of IT. We use the term Coordinated Autonomy to describe this and to remind ourselves about its constructive, counter intuitive nature.

Although most of us agree there is great programmatic potential for Information Technology (IT) in higher education, realizing this potential beyond instrumental tasks (e.g. word processing, document exchange, information access, etc.) remains difficult. At UCLA, we have been asking whether we could better deliver on that potential by focusing on social aspirations that underlie our programmatic goals in higher education. A quote by John Seely Brown captures this sentiment¹,

"I believe [an interesting shift] is happening: a shift between using technology to support the individual to using technology to support relationships between individuals. With that shift, we will discover new tools and social protocols for helping us to help each other, which is the very essence of social learning."

Frank Rhodes, former President of Cornell University, provides an effective starting point for discussion with eight characteristics of the American University for the Future². Motivated by the implications of these, we believe we can better understand how to integrate IT into our institutional mission to enhance the potential of technology:

1. Institutional autonomy, lively faculty independence and vigorous academic freedom but strong, impartial public governance and decisive, engaged presidential leadership.
2. Increasingly privately supported but increasingly publicly accountable and socially committed.
3. Campus rooted but internationally oriented.
4. Academically independent but constructively partnered.
5. Knowledge-based but student oriented; research driven but learner focused.
6. Technologically sophisticated but community dependent.
7. Quality-obsessed but procedurally efficient.
8. Professionally attuned but humanely informed.

Although we draw inspiration, the intent is not to discuss or even defend the individual points. Rather, we note, as did the article, that these characteristics merge traditionally distinct and seemingly contradictory social dimensions of higher education. TheSeptember 22, 2005ructively energized by the tensions created when general dimensions of individualism and community are brought together. The co-existence of this kind of social tension creates an important capacity for new perspective and insight and forms a basis for the research university of the future.

It is in the context of how the constructive nature of combined individualism and community can help define the success of the future university that we consider the role of IT. We argue that the convergence of these emerging ideals for higher education with the emerging capabilities of IT offer a strikingly aligned venue for change if there is a confluence of potential rather than a conflict. We are reminded that both higher education and IT are fundamentally about people.

How then do we relate these kinds of constructive tensions to IT? The first level of IT alignment must rest with longstanding core values in higher education. Indeed higher education already is shifting toward new practices to enable old values redefined in terms of the promise of IT:

If Insight is about new understanding, then new insight is possible through the perspectives and perceptions afforded by visualization and the presentation of digital media. The richness of insight is enhanced through IT by a significantly expanded diversity of perspective, e.g. science and artistic researchers working jointly on medical imaging.

If Literacy is the ability and the capacity to understand information then the convergence of human-machine media into a single digital language of data that can be sorted and organized can promote literacy. However, literacy itself is re-defined in part as IT allows unprecedented combinations and compilations of once inaccessible data, e.g. the effects of web resources on understanding and qualifying information.

If Information Assimilation is a new form of literacy then networked repositories of digital media become new and significant vehicles for efficiency, insight and conceptualization. These repositories require data structures that reflect the requirements for merging, linking and managing diverse, interdisciplinary digital assets, e.g. curricular information portals.

If Collaboration is about insight from testing and tying together diverse views then the outcomes of collaboration are significantly expanded as inclusion of new communities of expertise, irrespective of physical location, are brought together. Virtual centers of topical expertise and new kinds of civic spaces are the meeting grounds for these communities.

If Conceptualization is about new ideas, then we now talk about trans-disciplinary theory to define the disciplines of the future. There is high anticipation about new "meta disciplines" growing up around assimilated data as a new medium for doing research, e.g. informatics. The IT infrastructure provides the necessary virtual home and digital media will provide the digital language, flexibility and nimbleness to accommodate the dynamic and distributed nature of new ideas.

While associating IT with these core values is a necessary foundation, it is insufficient for defining its full potential in higher education if the future indeed reflects a new energy spurred by a constructive marriage of individualism and community. Because IT can readily accommodate the contradictory implications of autonomy and connectedness, Coordinated Autonomy becomes the corresponding principle for deploying IT in the service of these desired social tensions. The term Coordinated Autonomy indicates first and foremost that IT should be deployed to actively preserve and support individual and institutional autonomy. Coordinated Autonomy allows this individual pursuit to be harnessed in a worldwide community. This coordination supports and defends the individual's chosen direction by bringing it into new patterns and conversations to serve the "public good," a core social value and responsibility of higher education.
By juxtaposing individualism and connectedness we capture five deployment principles for achieving Coordinated Autonomy, and escape the apparent oxymoron of the phrase:

Mass Individualism

Mass individualism refers to broadly disseminated information but with a focus on the needs of the individual. We wish to deploy IT so that the individual can surround him or herself with the resources relevant to local inquiry or objective. Mass individualism also captures the implications of access, the notions of data as an institutional resource, portal and reporting strategies that integrate information services but offer flexibility for local configuration, ready collaboration, and personally relevant learning.

Robust Flexibility

Robust flexibility is an infrastructure concept that recognizes an infinite number of possible user applications. The front-end investment in infrastructure, commonly used tools, data and information, and standards that support modular deployment of applications is not only fiscally responsible, but critical to coordinated autonomy. This principle positions the university better for responding to opportunities.

Community Direction

A key outcome from the convergence of IT and the notion of coordinated autonomy is open review, rapid feedback and the potential of improved value. It brings forward the idea that it is better to invest less in big application, deterministic planning and more in planning of the form that includes rapid prototyping and multi-user feedback. This planning process involves the university community earlier and can produce more buy-in and earlier adoption. It widens the potential of drawing upon the wisdom of an engaged community.

Persuasive Standardization

Imposed standards philosophically, and sometimes in reality, cut at the core of autonomy. Yet, standards that are appropriately accepted, coordinated and managed are critical to autonomy. IT deployment for coordinated autonomy creates value that is persuasive. Infrastructure and policy decisions become justified on that value.

Managed Openess

Data constitutes the digital resource providing the key for people to interact intellectually on a very broad scale and to pursue lines of inquiry on a very individualistic scale. While serious security and access issues must be addressed and managed, there is enormous intellectual value in accessibility. This argues for openness and accessibility of data as the starting consideration.

At UCLA we are now considering these principles across a spectrum of research, learning, curricular, administrative and outreach IT initiatives. While they are not necessarily pointing to any different technology choices, they do surface important questions about programmatic purpose and push toward a more comprehensive, technology, policy, fiscal and programmatic-implementation process. As an example, we are deploying a GIS-based community information system platform with the first application a directory of UCLA activities in Los Angeles County (Robust Flexibility). Decisions on next modular applications are coming from emerging individual and multi-disciplinary faculty proposals and community requirements (Community Direction). System functionality and protocols have been based on faculty and community input while participation is voluntary, but encouraged, by value associated with significantly enhanced internal and external interaction and collective image (Persuasive Standardization). The functionality of the system is designed for aggregating, packaging and disseminating information for local use (Mass Individualism). The system is designed to be its own appropriately open research database for longitudinal studies of activities in Los Angeles (Managed Openess).

Ultimately, we are motivated to foster an emerging culture that encourages individual but engaged exploration to enable core institutional values of UCLA. Coordinated Autonomy captures the IT planning and implementation processes needed to realize this goal.

1 John Seeley Brown, "Growing Up Digital: How the Web Changes Work, Education and the Way People Learn," March/April 2000.

2 Frank Rhodes, The New University, Challenges Facing Higher Education at the Millennium, edited by Werner Z Hirsch and Lue E. Weber, The American Council on Higher Education and The Oryx Press, 1999.