Alignment and Assessment

A Quality Enhancement Plan for Learning in a Technology-Rich Environment

Tuesday, January 27, 2004
12:50 p.m. - 1:50 p.m. CONSES31

Sharon P. Pitt, Executive Director, Division of Instructional Technology, George Mason University

NLII Key Theme - New Academy

LITRE, or Learning in a Technology-rich Environment, is North Carolina State's quality enhancement plan for reaffirmation of accreditation with the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools (SACS). The process, which ensured broad campus involvement, focused on learning as a priority, and wove assessment into the overarching plan, will be presented.

Accountability As Opportunity: Tapping the Transformative Power of Accreditation

Monday, January 26, 2004
9:25 a.m. - 10:25 a.m. FS01

Gary Brown, Director, Center For Teaching, Learning & Technology, Washington State University

Stephen C. Ehrmann, Vice President & Director, The Flashlight Program, The TLT Group

Joan K. Lippincott, Associate Executive Director, Coalition for Networked Information

Vicki Suter, Director, iCohere

NLII Key Theme - Transformative Assessment

Over the past three years, the Transformative Assessment Project (TAP) team has been working on tools designed to help institutional teams that have been tasked to plan and/or implement a major change for their program or institution to transform teaching and learning with technology, in institutions that:

• are involved in significant institutional improvement of teaching and learning with technology
• use assessment in a variety of ways to guide and support that effort
• share a commitment to the purposeful application of assessment and dissemination of assessment results to support deep change

At the same time, increasing pressures are being brought to bear on higher education for accountability to external agencies and stakeholders, ranging from regents to state legislatures to accrediting agencies. Steve Ehrmann refers to these forces as "lightening strikes" on the institution and notes that institutional responses can dissipate such energy into dysfunctional behavior, or turn it into a force for transformation. Representatives of the TAP team will review the work of the team and of participants at the NLII 2003 summer focus session on the topic; they will present the plans for a kit for transforming accreditation self-study pressures into a catalyst for a new institutional culture of evidence and transformative assessment.

Postconference Resource

Aligning the IT Plan, Budgets, Program Delivery and University Strategic Plan: How to Make It Work

Tuesday, January 27, 2004
10:40 a.m. - 11:40 a.m. CONSES28

John C. Cavanaugh, President, University of West Florida

Christine Pierce, Director, Extended Programs, University of West Florida

Janet Pilcher, Dean, COPS, University of West Florida

Harold M. White, Jr., Executive Vice President, University of West Florida

NLII Key Theme - Strategic Planning & Alignment

Creating an IT strategic plan is (relatively) easy. Aligning it with budgets (especially in tight financial times), various approaches to academic program delivery, and the overall university strategic plan for future growth is quite another story. This session will report on how to make it happen by using existing planning processes, making processes more transparent, getting buy-in, and creating opportunities for faculty and administrators to be highly entrepreneurial. By combining some existing processes with judiciously made improvements in others, the University of West Florida was able to create and implement its first IT strategic plan, blend it with the ongoing creation of online programs, and integrate it with an aggressive strategy for expanding the geographical scope of UWF's primary service region in one year. Implementation success to date will be discussed.

Postconference Resource

Planning for the Effective Integration of Academic and Administrative Technologies

Monday, January 26, 2004
4:30 p.m. - 5:20 p.m. CONSES22

Patricia Fenn, Director of Academic Innovation and Strategy, Rave Wireless

John Grose, Practice Director, Strategic Consulting Services, SunGard Higher Education

NLII Key Theme - Strategic Planning & Alignment

This course presentation will focus on the collaborative interaction of chief academic officers and others responsible at their institutions for the convergence of technology, pedagogy, and administration. Strategic technology planning, organizational alignment, and faculty involvement have become critical components for success—whether implementing Web-based courses, distance learning, new student information systems, or a major instructional technology infrastructure upgrade. The presenters address issues, options, and alternative approaches that have worked well for integrating administrative systems and teaching and learning technologies, and discuss a variety of proven methods for managing a complex portfolio of academic and administrative technology projects.

Seeing the Forest and the Trees: Coordinating Strategic Planning, Technology Initiatives for Innovation in Teaching & Learning, and Institutional Assessment

Monday, January 26, 2004
3:20 p.m. - 4:20 p.m. CONSES19

Vivienne Carr, Assistant Professor, Seton Hall University

Danielle Mirliss, Associate Director, Seton Hall University

NLII Key Theme - Strategic Planning & Alignment

In developing its 1996 Strategic Plan, Seton Hall University found that most faculty saw the potential of Instructional Technology (IT) to improve collegiate teaching but lacked the technology access and support necessary to do so. The resulting University Strategic Plan implemented a number of initiatives aimed at providing faculty and students with the access, support, and training necessary to make appropriate use of IT. These include the Mobile Computing Program (providing laptop computers to all full time faculty and undergraduate students), the Teaching, Learning, and Technology Center (TLTC), which provides a variety of services to support faculty in their use of IT to improve teaching, and the Curriculum Development Initiative (CDI) and a University Teaching Fellows (UTF) program to provide support and incentives to faculty to make effective use of technology in their teaching. Seton Hall University also has a history of assessing the impact of technology of its strategic initiatives - longitudinal assessment of the impact of IT on the learning environment shows that as a result of these efforts, faculty use of IT to support their teaching has grown from 5% in 1996 to 66% in 2003, and students report that faculty use of IT supports effective teaching practices. The University has just launched its Sesquicentennial Five Year Strategic Plan and is undergoing a Self-Study as part Commission on Higher Education’s Middle States Association review. This session will provide a web-based case study to demonstrate the necessary although sometimes tenuous relationships between assessment and strategic planning.

The Partnering Organization

Monday, January 26, 2004
10:40 a.m. - 11:50 a.m. CONSES03

Linda L. Baer, Senior Vice Chancellor for Academic & Student Affairs, Minnesota State Colleges and Universities

Ann Hill Duin, Associate Vice President & Deputy CIO, University of Minnesota

NLII Key Theme - New Academy

The rapidly changing environment in society is cause for higher education to reassess approaches to meeting educational needs. In this interactive session, we discuss a crucial component in designing and building the new academy, which begins with the development of leadership competencies for partnering. We present success factors from a study of higher education leaders who have been instrumental in the success of Learning Anytime Anywhere Partnerships (LAAP/FIPSE). From these findings we have developed a set of partnering competencies that are required if organizations are to design, sustain, and thrive in developing the "partnership environments" required today.