Information and Scholarship (IRIS). Brown's innovative computer environment is now widely recogni...

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Information and Scholarship (IRIS). Brown's innovative computer environment is now widely recognized. At IRIS we are developing many new tools for teaching and learning. Because Brown is a liberal arts institution the tools that we are trying to develop are not confined to engineering or comput€r science but extend throughout the entire spectrum of the University curriculum. Some of the most enthusiastic users at Brown, actually some of the best academic computer specialists, are in humanities departments, such as Classics and English. Brown's IRIS has as part of its charge finding new ways to enhance research and learning through computer technology and information systems. We feel that intense computerization vrill have far-reaching social and educational consequences, and will eventually result in fundamental changes in the patterns of work in the institution. It will change social relationships at Brown, and will also alter basic definitions of teaching and learning there. Given these feeiings, the Office of Program Analysis was established as a self reflective component of our IRIS. Our charge is to conduct studies of the social, educational, and economic effects of the increased use of computers on campus. Research in the Office of Program Analysis is first concerned with analysis of the basic activity structures in higher education. Research focus centers on two areas: 1) institutions in the higher education environment and 2) work and social activity within the academic community. Secondly, OPA research is directed toward looking at change in these institutions and processes as they are affected by technologl,. We are discovering an interesting, unintended consequence of the study of change. We find that we are not only studying institutions and technological impact on those institutions. We are also studying epistemology-the very structure of knowledge itself. In a way it is not surprising that epistemology becomes the real basis for our studies, because if we are really serious about trying to develop new technologies for education we're also talking about changing the structure of knowledge. Thus we have to examine the original structure of knowledge before we can talk about changing it in any way. Our methodology combines quantitative methods rn'ith intensive ethnography. I'm an anthropologist by training, and our research designs include, alongside traditional surveys, participant observation, intensive interviews, and a great deai of self recording of time use and activities in "diaries" so that we're able to determine exactiy what it is that people are doing on a day-today , sometimes on an hourly basis. Many of our research designs are before-and-after studies. We're trying to record activity patterns before they change and then document them following technological intervention. In the case of educational soft'ivare, for instance, we try to look at a classroom situation