Balancing Acts:  Making IT Work for Everyone - Notes and link to Podcast

2009 EDUCAUSE Southwest Regional Conference

Opening General Session

February 25, 2009

Title:  Balancing Acts:  Making IT Work for Everyone

Presenters:  Alan Levine, Vice President of NMC Community and CTO for the New Media Consortium (NMC) and Susan M. Zvacek, Director of Instructional Development and Support at the University of Kansas.

Abstract: Our day-to-day work presents us with problems that are complex and expensive to solve, and even the easy solutions have their unintended consequences. Some of us face outward to the user community and to our customers, and some of us remain behind the scenes working aside peers and colleagues, but we all wear many hats. Fortunately IT professionals are well suited to balance multiple perspectives because we know systems. We work in relationships of all types and know that every cause has an effect. We balance loads, supply & demand, capacity, and budgets. We do this so successfully and so constantly that we hardly notice. We strive to balance the need to be quick with the need for quality and the need for thrift. This session reviews the tragedy and the comedy of IT’s quest for balance and the many characters that carry our story’s plot.

This session is available by podcast at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/balancingactsmakingitwork/48282.

Notes:

Alan and Susan talked about their history and the work they actually do and from which they drew inspiration for the session.  For the presentation they explored the roles they play in that work.

The talk was formatted as three one-act plays

Two conference attendees meet in the bar to network and to talk about what’s going on.

Their lead-in to the play was a take off on the rolling script that opened Star Wars.

Act 1

Us vs the “IT Guys”

Alan was the IT Guy (blackberry ringing all the time)

Susan plays the faculty role

At the bar they play out the discussions of the IT Guy who says “you/we can’t do that because” of cost of IT, of vulnerabilities, of underappreciated staff, of not enough time, of not understanding what’s truly available, to Susan’s faculty member who wants to try new things that she’s seen or heard about.

Discussion followed on:  Where is the Balance?

Q 1) Have you been involved in these stories – either as disgruntled faculty or the disgruntled overworked staff.  There was quite a bit of  “Yes”  …laughter

Q 2) What brings us together and what pushes us apart?  We need to look for similarities and for common goals.  Our problem is that our communication styles/language often differ.

We do have common goals and we need to identify them so that we can work towards them together.

They described a faculty member who devised a summer of working as an intern with different units in IT and Susan told us that KU has an ombudsman for IT/faculty relations.

Act 2

My ­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­­_______ Doesn’t Get It  (fill in Faculty or Administrator)

Alan plays the faculty member

Susan plays an administrator

Alan the faculty member saw a presentation on hybrid learning and then trying to describe it to Susan the administrator says they don’t attend class all the time.

Susan the administrator doesn’t want headlines that say you are paying more for classes but don’t go to class as much.

Alan asked “What are our goals for students?”

Susan says “We’re not going to get rid of lectures.  She follows saying that the faculty went kicking and screaming into distance education and were only appeased by allowing them to do traditional lectures that are then broadcast.

Alan says that “Classes can share physical space” in the hybrid scenario.

Susan admits that the administration would love this aspect because they can save money re: doubling enrolment.

Discussion – Where is the Balance?

Excitement can be shut down by practical issues.  There are lots of logistics and funding issues. 

How do we do accountability with old standards?  We need new models for both.

What really makes a difference?  We need to not be overly exuberant over the technology itself.

“Heat seekers” are people who will revamp their whole course after seeing new things at a conference.

Notion – flip the way homework and schoolwork are done.

Role of student is changing as much or more than the role of changing faculty and IT staff roles.

Act 3

It’s All IT Isn’t It?

Alan went to techie sessions

Susan went to other sessions

Alan:  You have all these tech needs but you don’t know what it takes to do them.  Why don’t you come to us earlier.

Susan:  We don’t come to you because you always say “no”

Susan:  We just need to move data.  Why do we only have a 2 port solution.

Alan:  Remembers when it was new and fun and now it’s just infrastructure.

Susan:  Just one wall after another when we want something.

Alan:  “you’re snakes on the network”

Susan: “so we’re just snakes on the network?”

Discussion

What is the Balance?

Again:  commonalities, accountability, project integrity are needed.  And we need to be working collaboratively.

We need to share more and to blog our IT failures

EDUCAUSE good at building collaborations

What next?

The script and resources for this session are located at

http://bit.ly/balancingacts

Alan and Susan are onsite and can meet and talk this week

Otherwise responses can be posted to

http://bit.ly/whereis balance

Ideas from the audience:

Need someone to take ownership of the issue when there is division

How to challenge the balance of time – setting expectations – omsbudsman – role.

One form to fix a jack but a different form to reactivate the jack.  As a result of this issue, the way that IT serviced rooms was enhanced significantly.  Now it’s a good thing for us that we still have Parking so everyone has “at least one campus unit to hate.”

Alan and Susan said they would be in the bar later…