International Center for Applied Studies in Information Technology

ICASIT welcome in:   Español    Français    Chinese   Arabic    Korean

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Professor Ruth gives a 5 minute video description of his course for Spring 2013

PUBP 710.002 or ITRN 701.002 Globalization and Information Technology: A Public Policy Perspective Thursdays 4:30 PM

Note to Students about PUBP 710.019 for Spring Semester

PUBP710-019 Massive Open Online Courses and Higher Education Policy, Thursdays 4:30-7:10 pm, Professor Steve Ruth

Higher ed policy and ballooning tuition costs—can MOOCs, course redesign and competency-based approaches help?

The aggregate student loans burden in the US has passed $1 trillion—more than all credit card debt. MOOCs, NCAT, WGU, the $10k degree program, and many other approaches have been proposed to help reduce college tuition costs, which have been rising at twice the inflation rate for decades. This course examines policy issues associated with about a dozen significant technology interventions in higher ed from the perspective of reducing, and possibly reversing, spiraling tuition costs. Much of the course will be delivered on-line instead of in the classroom and students will be able to focus on specific research areas after successfully completing early team-oriented assignments.

Stephen Ruth
Professor of Public Policy
ruth@gmu.edu 703 993 1789

Watch the video by Prorfessor Ruth about the MOOC course for Spring Semester 2013

2013 Update--Welcome from Professor Steve Ruth, ICASIT Director

Welcome to the ICASIT web site. Please take a quick look at the tabs above, which tell our story. We have been operating for over two decades and our primary focus for 2013 is what it has always been: studying policy issues that leverage Information Technology. Our projects and applied research aim at evaluating the implementation of IT (a strategic issue), not simply ownership (an operational concern). With cumulative grants and contracts in the several million dollar range and projects in nearly thirty countries, ICASIT has had partnerships with foundations, research centers, and universities around the world. We continue to be very proud of our contribution to the highly successful Nepal wireless project. After starting with only one site, there are now over 20 villages connected along with hospitals and schools in the region. The project leader, Mahibir Pun, won the coveted Ramon Magsaysay award, dubbed the "Asian Nobel Prize", for his work in community development on the project. There is a new article describing Nangi and Mr Pun in more detail and a more recent update which chronicles the continuing growth of the Nepal project. The Northern Virginia Technology Council's journal, The Voice, also featured Pun and ICASIT. To get another look at the project in more detail you can view the slide show from a report to the Asia Pacific Telecommunity

If you have time, check out our popular IT research site for 2013. Many researchers find the site useful since it gives over a thousand links to almost a hundred hot topics like cloud computing, social networking, IT legislation, M banking, telematics, etc. Thanks to SPP PhD student John Gudgel for his imaginative work on this project.

Our newest and highest priority project is the study of the role of Information Technology in reducing the cost spiral in Higher Education. ICASIT gained some recognition for this in 2012 and we now have the capability of designing MOOCs of our own. See the recent video we did and a recent MOOC article—one of several publications we generated in 2012. Also we continue to investigate the payoff of telework and some some of the challenges of Green IT. I have a new article on that subject which aims to sort out this topic for the general reader.

ICASIT continues its outreach to our business partners in the region. in Knowledge Management, Electronic Commerce, Distance Learning, and other areas. By more effectively using corporate knowledge and wisdom, many companies have been able to improve collaboration, operations, and mission performance. Also, during the past year I have given seminars to visiting Chinese telecom executives and also a two day telecom seminar for senior tech managers..

Thanks to a generous foundation grant a while back, we added a unique new area of research -- developing methodologies to determine the true cost of distance learning processes in a university setting. We have produced a half dozen articles on this potentially trillion dollar issue in the past two years—see them in the Publications section (click on my name below). We continue to conduct practical, results-oriented studies of real-world applications of technology aimed at developing activity-based costing models of distance learning. I'm grateful to GMU for the award of a Faculty Study Leave for 2011 and now for a 2013 grant for further study of MOOCs.

If you would like to know more about us, contact me at  (703) 993-1789  or ruth@gmu.edu.

Stephen Ruth
Director