Track Abstracts

Track 1: Emerging Technologies and Practices

Today, we have unprecedented opportunities to deploy new technologies and integrate existing ones in new ways. At the same time, we face new challenges daily, from attacks on our networks to budget cuts to the need to integrate (and make sense of) a powerful, but often disparate, range of academic and administrative services. What are the new technologies that require the attention of technologists and planners now or in the near future, and what new opportunities might they provide to our various communities? How can out-of-the-box thinking contribute to the capacity of institutions to deploy and use new technologies effectively? What issues and strategies relate to adoption, integration, funding, and ongoing support for new technologies? With widely ranging topics including wireless technologies and classroom design, portfolios, handheld devices, open-source authentication, Web-based simulations, and learning management systems, to name just a few of the topics represented, our community is experimenting with, implementing, and assessing an enormous range of innovative, leading-edge capabilities, many of which will contribute in fundamental ways to academic excellence. Come grapple with us!

Track 2: Enterprise Computing and Information Systems

This track will examine aspects of the application of information technologies to the operation of the academic enterprise in its broadest sense. Sessions will include discussions of traditional administrative solutions that encompass the management of software systems, hardware, support services, and enterprise resource planning for mission-critical areas of an organization, such as human resources management, financial management, and student administration. Business intelligence and decision support systems are used to access, explore, and analyze data. Such data analysis assists institutions in deriving insights, drawing conclusions, and communicating findings--all aimed at effecting positive change. Portals and integrated information solutions involve a mix of Web servers, application servers, portal software, application software, middleware, and security to facilitate a single interface for students, faculty, and staff. Also presented will be student, faculty, and staff support and training models, which must be effective, scalable, and robust if they are to handle today's demand for increasingly complex applications and remediation of problems caused by viruses and other destructive software. Finally, the many challenges of managing integration of course management systems with other traditional enterprise administrative information systems will be discussed.

Track 3: Information Resources, Digital Content, and Libraries

Libraries are concerned with building digital collections and developing new network-based services for reaching their increasingly mobile users. As a result, librarians and information technologists, working collaboratively, are creating and employing tools to meet users' rising expectations. Among these expectations are seamless university-wide systems for accessing virtual collections, examining the results of scholarly research, and mining massive data repositories. Librarians and technologists are also pioneering ways to educate users on how to use these new tools. In addition, faculty and administrators concerned about copyright and intellectual property law are consulting with librarians when campus policies and practices are developed around these topics. The sessions in this track will highlight examples of how librarians, technologists, and faculty are rethinking how to accomplish the fundamental work of academic and research libraries in less traditional ways.

Track 4: Leadership, Management, and Funding

This track will be all about the capacity to integrate vision and culture. It will also be about effective design of systems and organizations and their timely and efficient implementation. How about finding and retaining the right talents and resources and putting them together in new combinations? Or, how about surviving rapid technological change and meeting ever higher expectations, while addressing core issues with sensible and legally defensible policy? Such is the modern art and science of being a leader in the area of information technologies. Sessions within this track will address how to organize, assess, manage, support, and fund information technologies, as well as how to build and maintain collaborations with internal and external partners and how to develop IT staff. They also will focus on how to assemble the right policy and legal and ethical foundations, from which we can address the relentless waves of challenge to both theory and practice that IT leaders in higher education face every day. Attendees will learn about the tools of both innovation and reason that we can use to set our directions and to manage our success.

Track 5: Networking, Infrastructure, and Advanced Computing

A strategic imperative of higher education is establishing and maintaining a robust technical infrastructure to support both academic and administrative needs while accommodating rapid change. The core services of this infrastructure range from networks, hardware, and operating systems to Web services, database management, network system management, directory and authentication services (middleware), imaging and multimedia systems, and on-demand services. These core services are essential for maintaining the industrial-strength infrastructure required to support the teaching, learning, research, and administrative needs of the e-university. The technology and information assets of our institutions are considered mission critical; however, the "open" environment of higher education creates a high-risk and complex challenge to protect those assets. These challenges include protecting institutional networks, computer systems, data centers, personal and institutional data, communication services, and interinstitutional access to resources.

Track 6: Teaching and Learning

As the use of technology in the academy becomes more mainstream, there are increasing demands to develop and implement standards that measure effective practices. At the same time, there is a constant push to explore the digital frontiers of learning, whether that occurs in a traditional classroom or in nontraditional venues. And, of course, infrastructure and support must always keep pace. Sessions in this track will represent a wide range of perspectives and approaches. Panels and poster sessions will cover topics such as evaluation of education technologies, student portfolios, open-source tools, e-learning and e-collaboration, and innovative uses of new technologies, from iPods to personal response systems.