But as we in academia know, there's nothing so simple about revolutionizing human communication, providing voice to billions of individuals who have hitherto been unheard, promoting and predicting innovation adaptation, tracking technological changes that have the power to turn age-old geopolitical boundaries into myth, and globalizing our education to the point where our students are just as likely to collaborate with someone half a world away as in the next dorm room.

The impact of digital communication is just beginning to be felt in the Western world.  While some of us might conclude that the dramatic changes we have experienced in the last five years represent the bulk of the impact digital communication will have on our lives and our teaching, many educators suspect we have only seen the tip of the iceberg.  New global wireless communication technologies are only now being deployed and soon we will see streaming video to the hand held computer and full voice and video communications with devices as small as our current cell phones.

The impact of these changes on the political, economic, cultural, and private lives of the entire human race - connected or not - will be the critical issues of the next few decades.

Information poverty - an individual's or group's inability to access information that would otherwise inform their choices - has always played a role in the long history of human civilization, but never so much as in our current high-speed digital world.  On the other hand, new breakthroughs in digital communication technologies are poised to break down the digital divide that has been building over the past couple of decades and we could possibly see whole societies upended by communication technologies that will transform their information and power structures seemingly overnight.  Already, it is estimated that three times as many people currently have access to email than ever had access to telephones.  Finally we have come upon a decentralized communication technology that promises to scale to virtually every economic class.

What is here that we would NOT want to study?

There's not a discipline in the university which is unaffected by digital communication technologies and its potential ubiquity; certainly no international area study can deny its impact.

Why the University of Iowa?

So how does assisting in the adoption of digital communication technology in Africa serve the University of Iowa?

For starters, we have an array of internationally-known Africanists here whose collaborations with their African colleagues are significantly enhanced - and less expensive - using reliable digital communications systems.

Our Nigerian relationship goes back to 1970, when the UI was awarded a Rockefeller Foundation Institutional Development Grant. At least three faculty members participated: Michael McNulty (Ibadan), Joel Barkan (Dar Es Salaam), and Ed Jennings (Dar Es Salaam). Continuing relationships with these institutions have had dozens of faculty, as well as graduate and undergraduate students, benefiting from ongoing research and teaching projects.

On the Nigerian side alone, professors Michael McNulty, Joel Barkan, Rex Honey, Gerald Rushton, Christopher Roy, Rebecca Roberts, Joe Ascroft, Ab Gratama, Charles Hinds, John McClure, Fred Woodard, and Cliff Missen have visited or worked in Nigeria over the past few decades, primarily with the University of Ibadan and the University of Jos.  Professors Jim Giblin and Adrian Wing, as well as many of the above-mentioned professors, have worked in other areas of Africa.

As well, the University of Iowa has active exchanges with the University of Ouagadougou, University of Ghana in Legon, University of Dar Es Salaam, and the University of Natal, South Africa.  Our African Studies librarian, Edward Miner, assisted by Paul Soderdahl, has visited several African institutions in Uganda, Ghana, Kenya and Tanzania and has trained librarians to digitize their research and creative works so that academics here at Iowa and around the world can have access.

These linkages have promoted faculty development and scholarship as well as led to a whole series of other exchanges.  Dozens of graduate and undergraduate students have been involved with research opportunities as an outgrowth of our direct links with these institutions.  These linkages have allowed us to extend opportunities for area teachers throughout the state via a recent Group Fulbright.  (Fulfilling our mandate as a national resource. )  Between 1990 and 1993, dozens of faculty and staff from Iowa State University, the University of Iowa, Northern Iowa University, and the Des Moines Community College traveled to Nigeria.

These linkages have resulted in scores of visiting faculty and staff from African institutions to the University of Iowa, the largest of which were drawn from Nigeria.  In the past two decades, we have had over 36 long- and short-term visiting faculty from Nigeria alone.  Others have come from Ghana, Burkina Faso, Kenya, Tanzania, and South Africa. These visitors have brought culturally diverse professional perspectives that have benefited both the students they came in contact with and the general community.

The following departments have benefited from these linkages:

Such linkages gave us the ability to offer courses we might not have otherwise offered, numerous opportunities for team teaching, and have led to numerous scholarly publications as well as successful competition for research and training funds.

These African links have contributed in significant ways to the university's mission of teaching, research and service and are entirely consistent with the new strategic plan. (See http://www.uiowa.edu/~intl)

The WiderNet Project has helped host over a dozen visiting staff and faculty in the last few years ( see http://www.widernet.org/visitors/widernetvisitors.htm ) and has brought over 55 African university administrators to the University of Iowa for training programs.

Creating Opportunities for UI Students

These linkage programs provide UI students with critical exposure to the issues of international communication and provide them with ample practical opportunities to test their newfound skills and ideas.

In today's highly competitive and technical job market, every graduate of the UI's International Studies program needs a wide variety of practical digital communication skills.

One avenue to gain these skills has been the Internetworks in International Development course.  This course provides a overview of the ways the digital communication technologies are changing the developing world and our perceptions of those in the developing world.  Half of the course is theoretical as the students are asked to put together a Web-based research project on the use of digital communications in the development of a third-world country, but a good deal of the course is practical as students learn a wide array of digital communication technologies (listservs, discussion boards, Web site design, chat, etc.)

An unusual aspect of this course is that it is taught simultaneously at the University of Jos in central Nigeria.  Students from both universities read the same materials and "discuss" them via email and the class Web server.  This exciting and innovative use of digital communication technology gives students unmediated first-hand interactions with their peers in a developing country and, as they report to me in class evaluations, it changes their minds.

International Programs' sponsorship of this course demonstrates how inexpensive cutting-edge technologies can improve teaching and open the classroom to wider audiences and more international participants.  In fact, several other UI faculty have sat in on the course over the years to experience the technology and a couple had adopted some of the techniques for their courses.  Over time, we will define a new way to teach international studies courses and will identify more ways to get our students interacting with students and professors from other countries.

Over 60 UI students have been employed at the WiderNet Project over the last three years -- representing over $256,000 in payroll.  Twelve graduate students and interns from Computer Science, Geography, Library Information Science, Third World Development, Social Foundations of Education, Management Information Systems, and Public Health have used the WiderNet Project as a platform from which to expand their understanding of digital communications in developing countries.

Finally, another 150 students have volunteered at the WiderNet Project to assist with our computer donations program, which has delivered over 800 used computers to our African partners in the last three years. 

Conclusion

These linkages have grow organically out of the University of Iowa's long-term relationships with African universities -- particularly those in Nigeria -- as well as Cliff Missen's teaching and research in this fledgling field and his successful Senior Fulbright Fellowship at the University of Jos.

These linkages provide us the opportunity to continue as a visible forerunner in this field; opening doors to manifold research and collaboration opportunities as well as bringing dozens of prominent Nigerian academics to the University of Iowa.

At the most basic level, in offering technical assistance to our Nigerian colleagues, we are building a digital bridge.  Today we must focus on the bricks and mortar and the heavy lifting to build the bridge.  But, in years to come, we will be able to use the bridge to deliver courses, conduct mutually beneficial research, collaborate with our African colleagues at will, and provide our students with unmediated interactions with their peers from other cultures.

This is a rare opportunity for the University of Iowa to lead in the development of creative uses of digital communication technologies and to demonstrate to other academic institutions how such communication with the developing world can broaden their teaching and research opportunities.