EDUCAUSE | Institutional Strategic Planning

California Bill = Path Around Curricular Bottlenecks Through 3rd-Party Online Providers

Wed, 13 Mar 2013 13:59:43 +0000

As numerous mainstream and higher education media outlets have reported--for two, see the New York Times and Inside Higher Education--the California state senate president is poised to introduce a bill that would provide students with a pathway around curricular bottlenecks--introductory courses that they have to have to fulfill degree requirements, but for which they face long wait times to take due to limited capacity. This problem has been particularly severe in California as several years of state budget cuts have reduced institutional capacity to deliver must-have general education courses at the same time as demand for higher education has grown in the face of a difficult economic climate.

Sequester Impacts: Army, Marines Suspend Tuition Assistance

Mon, 11 Mar 2013 13:40:53 +0000

The American Association of State Colleges and Universities (AASCU) recently reported about another impact of the across-the-board automatic federal budget cuts known as the “sequester" that is likely to be of significant Interest to many EDUCAUSE member institutions. AASCU has learned that the Army and Marine Corps “have suspended active duty tuition assistance programs indefinitely as a result of sequestration.” (It is not yet known whether the Air Force and Navy will follow suit.) On the positive side, this suspension only impacts new tuition assistance awards; existing or already approved awards are not affected.

Building Organizational Capacity for Analytics

Mon, 14 Jan 2013 22:12:43 +0000

Optimizing student success is the “killer app” for analytics in higher education. Intelligent investments in optimizing student success garner wide support and have a strong, justifiable return on investment (ROI). Moreover, improving performance, productivity, and institutional effectiveness are the new gold standards for institutional leadership in the 21st century. Enhanced analytics is critical to both optimizing student success and achieving institutional effectiveness.

This report provides information about how leading institutions in higher education and vendors are building capacity in analytics to improve student success.

Federal Report Highlights The Economic Case for Higher Education

Fri, 04 Jan 2013 16:14:14 +0000

The U.S. Departments of The Treasury and Education recently announced the release of a joint report highlighting the economic value of higher education achievement for individuals and the country as a whole. Entitled The Economics of Higher Education, the report confirms the continuing importance of postsecondary success to economic progress, including key findings such as the following:

· There is substantial evidence that education raises earnings. The median weekly earnings of a full-time, bachelor’s degree holder in 2011 were 64 percent higher than those of a high school graduate ($1,053 compared to $638).

Improvisation and Innovation: Rhetoric and Reality - Sponsored by Tuition Management Systems

Tue, 11 Dec 2012 01:29:15 +0000

We are unlikely to achieve the kind of institutional agility we desire—openness to new ideas, responsiveness to a changing world—if we persist in addressing questions of innovation, improvisation, and collaboration outside the context of our institutional reality. Hence the address will focus on issues of institutional design as they relate to the likelihood that improvisation and fresh thinking (for that matter, thinking at all) is a serious option.

Macro Analytics: Getting in the Game

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:32:28 +0000

This session will focus on macro analytics, or using expectations to bring about change. This simple-to-apply yet difficult-to-master concept will help attendees gain an understanding of how analytics should be used. There is a growing acknowledgement among leadership that the use of "targets" is trending toward ineffectiveness and will soon no longer be an acceptable tool for motivating, encouraging, or inspiring change. Macro analytics provides leadership with a new norm: "expectations." Expectations are how we currently lead when we truly care about the organization; incorporating them into our improvement efforts is a logical and healthy step toward success.

Aligning IT with Institutional Strategy: Learning to Think in a New Language

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:32:23 +0000

Aligning technology with institutional strategy is about technologists learning to think and act in the language of the institution's success. That means they need to understand how to measure success by institutional measures and to adjust how they describe, value, advocate for, and implement technology that's necessary to achieve institutional goals. This session will demonstrate a strategic framework that IT organizations can use to build a plan that aligns enterprise architecture with institutional goals and a process for keeping the implementation schedule flexible and relevant to the tactical and strategic pressures of today's institution.

Project Management Lollapalooza

Mon, 26 Nov 2012 20:02:18 +0000

Join us for a whirlwind tour of project management. We'll cover the basics you need to know from getting started to cost containment and we'll allot significant time for smaller group in-depth looks at the specific areas you are most interested in learning about.

Getting Started
The decision to move to project management sounds great - now how do you do it? No matter where the decision originated, we will show practical steps to move from fractured development practices to building a process to increase efficiencies and productivity.

Essential Project Management Tools and Skills
Learning to use and apply project management is a valuable and important skill. By focusing on the big picture and getting back to basics, anyone can master simple project management concepts like roles and responsibilities and if-then thinking.

Gathering Business Requirements
Gathering requirements can feel like being trapped inside a complex maze without a guidebook. Learn the secret codes and handshakes needed to successfully elicit the real business requirements and how to present those requirements in an understandable and compelling manner.

Building a Project Management Communications Plan
Communications is key to a successful project. Integrating communications into each of the four project phases ensures key stakeholders are informed, expectations are managed, and the campus constituents are well-informed and prepared for the new service.

Establishing Your IT Portfolio
The role of the Portfolio Management Office (PMO) is more than just reporting; it is a facilitator of processes that enable selection and management of IT projects. Many factors can influence project prioritization such as: cost, risk, client impact, alignment to organizational values, and IT governance. Managing these factors in a consistent and transparent way can greatly enhance the value IT delivers to an organization. The discussion will focus on what is IT Portfolio Management, the benefits, and tips on successfully establishing a Portfolio Management Office.

PM and PPM Tools - A Low Cost, Cloud Based Solution
An effective PMO, which manages multiple, concurrent projects, requires tools which track proposals, projects, and resources at both the project and portfolio levels. We take a brief look at a relatively low cost solution using standardized templates and readily available, cloud based tools.

"Someone is going to write the software that eats higher education"

Wed, 05 Sep 2012 18:16:59 +0000

Kevin Carey, director of the New America Foundation’s education policy program and previously policy director at Education Sector, has actively engaged in the debates around the potential of technology to disrupt higher education for some time, largely on the pro-disruption side.

The analytics journey is not for the faint of heart

Tue, 24 Jul 2012 02:37:41 +0000

We learn much from spectacular success but we learn even more from failure. Such is the case with the use of analytics in both the public and private sectors. Education is no exception. Most education organizations believe that having data/information and technology are enough to become an analytics-driven organization. But that will only get you so far. Often missing and what contributes to a souring of the use of analytics is the lack of an analytics process and culture within the organization. These are critical for the success of any analytics journey. There are three things you have to know:

1. What you're measuring

2. Why you're measuring it

Podcast: Ganesan Ravishanker on the Democracy and Pitfalls of Data Analytics

Thu, 12 Jul 2012 20:02:35 +0000

Ganesan Ravishanker is Chief Information Officer at Wellesley College. In this conversation he shares his cautious insights into the challenges and benefits of analytics.

2012 ECAR Study of Analytics in Higher Education

Mon, 11 Jun 2012 21:21:42 +0000

ECAR RESEARCH HUB, PUBLISHED JUNE 22, 2012

Author: Jacqueline Bichsel

Analytics in Higher Education: Benefits, Barriers, Progress, and Recommendations

The objectives of this research were to assess the current state of analytics in higher education, outline the challenges and barriers to using analytics, and develop a maturity index to provide a common means of assessing progress in analytics.

A Collaboration Between:

Report and Supporting Materials

Report

Infographic

Slide Presentation PPTX

Data Tables

Maturity Index

Survey Instrument

2012 ECAR Study of Analytics in Higher Education is publicly accessible thanks to generous support from The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Seminar 04F - Crafting a Strategy and Action Plan for Analytics for Your Campus (separate registration required)

Fri, 25 May 2012 19:39:57 +0000

We'll use a Toolkit for Building Organizational Capacity for Analytics, supported by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, to review the basic concepts of analytics organizational capacity—technology, processes and practices, people and skills, culture and behavior, and leadership—to learn how to assess readiness for analytics. After discussing how to craft and execute an action plan and strategy for building analytics organizational capacity for the campus and exploring how to integrate and leverage existing processes—strategic planning, strategic enrollment management, professional development, resource allocation, accreditation, and institutional effectiveness—you'll learn how to create rapid victories demonstrating the power of evidence-based decision making, focus leadership on optimizing student success, and set stretch goals and targets. You'll also learn how to use all toolkit resources, including case studies illustrating best practices in optimizing student success through analytics and crafting action strategies to accelerate analytics capacity building.

Enterprise Analytics and the CIO

Wed, 09 May 2012 16:05:48 +0000

Analytics has been the hot topic in business circles and is becoming increasingly important in higher education. CIOs play a special role in establishing and advancing analytics initiatives within their institutions. In this presentation, Jerry Grochow will discuss what CIOs need to know and how they can work in conjunction with their administrative peers to ensure that their analytics programs are successful. *This presentation is part of the Spotlight on Analytics series. View the series archive.

Chapter 2: The Questions We Need to Ask First: Setting Priorities for Higher Education in Our Technology-Rich World

Thu, 05 Apr 2012 18:36:57 +0000

College presidents face daunting challenges as they lead their institutions through this volatile period. In this chapter, the author suggests a set of “prior” questions that both educational and policy leaders should ask before setting their priorities—including those related to technology.

New Business Models: $199/month tuition

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:30:19 +0000

Speaking of the potential for technology to facilitate disruptive change in higher education, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports that a new, for-profit online university, New Charter University, has been launched with a business model that "...sidesteps the [federal student] loan system by setting tuition so cheap that most students shouldn't need to borrow. The price: $796 per semester, or $199 a month, for as many classes as they can finish." Based on the competency-based assessment model of Western Governors University, New Charter believes it can increase affordable access to higher education and still make money by avoiding the costs associated with meeting the regulatory burden that comes with qualifying for federal financial aid programs.

Rethinking Higher Education Business Models

Thu, 29 Mar 2012 15:04:41 +0000

Stemming from a January convening of CIOs, other higher education thought leaders, and business process experts co-hosted by the Center for American Progress (CAP) and EDUCAUSE, the organizations have jointly released a white paper by Robert Sheets (University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Stephen Crawford (George Washington University), and Louis Soares (CAP) highlighting the potential of technology to advance the evolution of higher education, "Rethinking Higher Education Business Models." A companion piece to the paper written by Greg Jackson, EDUCAUSE vice president for policy and analysis, entitled "IT-Based Transformation in Higher Education: Possibilities and Prospects," this brief explores the concept of "disruptive innovation" in relation to higher educatio

Analytics that Inform the University

Wed, 21 Mar 2012 20:21:19 +0000

This session will describe the Center of Distributed Learning's top-down/bottom-up approach to using data for strategic decision making at the University of Central Florida. The process capitalizes on existing institutional data by designing responsive extraction models that facilitate an understanding of how the distributed learning initiative impacts virtually all aspects of the university. The top-down approach collates information about programs and modalities and the degree to which colleges and departments have implemented online initiatives. The bottom-up approach provides continuous monitoring of outcomes attributable to distributed learning. This session will demonstrate that (1) much extant university data can provide analytic insights, (2) analytics can be instrumental in strategic planning, (3) large data sets do not have to be daunting, and (4) systemic data collection and analysis is advantageous.

The Game Has Changed

Tue, 06 Mar 2012 22:04:59 +0000

Colleges and universities have long competed against one another, measuring themselves in comparison to each other and holding tightly to their idiosyncrasies as defining elements of their status. But today, the distribution and reuse of information digitally via the Internet is rapidly changing the game, rewarding those who instead aggregate and scale toward a common infrastructure. It is becoming increasingly clear that neither the challenges that confront colleges and universities nor the solutions to those challenges are unique to each institution.

Medieval Models, Agrarian Calendars, and 21st-Century Imperatives - Sponsored by Vology

Wed, 29 Feb 2012 20:15:55 +0000

In this new century, three forces—declining funding, rising expectations, and rapidly developing technologies—will transform higher education. The loss of public funding has already reshaped the financial landscape of public higher education. Calls for more and better educated Americans will force much greater attention on learning outcomes and student success. Technology will enable us to discover, aggregate, and use information in new, networked, more powerful ways. These three forces are challenging our institutions to rethink the entire enterprise. In an era of change and loss, where are the opportunities for institutional renewal and revitalization?

EDUCAUSE Now - #47 - 1) The ELI 2012 Annual Conference Preview 2) Colin Ashurst on Intelligent Portfolio Management

Thu, 12 Jan 2012 19:52:02 +0000

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This episode of EDUCAUSE Now features:

The ELI 2012 Annual Conference Preview
(:42-5:04)
The ELI 2012 Annual Conference takes place Feburary 13th through the 15th in Austin, Texas. We spoke with ELI Directors Malcolm Brown and Veronica Diaz about what participants can look forward to at this year's event. The conference is offered both in-person and online.

The 2020+ Project: Using WordPress to Organize, Evaluate, and Discuss the College of the Future

Thu, 01 Dec 2011 18:40:21 +0000

The provost of Providence College asked the Library+Commons to compile scholarly materials on the future of higher education in order for the Academic Affairs Committee to prepare for the college of 2020. The committee needed an easily accessible, annotated "bibliography" that would allow for commenting and more. The research and education librarians focused on topics like teaching and learning, accountability, and student and faculty characteristics. The research end was challenging, and the librarians continue to explore avenues to find appropriate resources online. They experimented with many platforms before choosing WordPress as the best open-source vehicle to organize and present the multimodal scholarship.

Developing an Information Strategy

Thu, 06 Oct 2011 16:41:50 +0000

In the modern university, information management is, or should be, at the heart of both strategic and operational management. So how can we best ensure that information management, broadly defined, will both influence and facilitate institutional strategy?

The Undereducated American

Mon, 27 Jun 2011 15:34:33 +0000

A new study by the Georgetown University Center on Education and the Workforce confirms that over the past 30 years, the demand for college-educated workers has outpaced supply, resulting in economic output below potential and growing income inequality. The current recession and grudging recovery, however, hides the fact that we are underproducing college graduates. .... This study finds that if the U.S. is to make up for lost ground in postsecondary attainment and respond to future economic requirements, we will need to add an additional 20 million postsecondary-educated workers to the economy by 2025.

A "Plug-in" Approach to Information and Technology Services Strategy

Wed, 01 Jun 2011 15:56:09 +0000

The University Technology Council at Framingham State began developing new recommendations and proposed initiatives for updates to the University’s strategic plan in 2010. The resulting 5 major recommendations and 25 proposed initiatives provide a coherent guide for Framingham State University’s strategic use of information, application of technology, and provision of related services beginning in 2011 through 2015. A rigorous and custom designed process was used that borrowed from various best practices and consisted of primary and secondary research, information sharing and analysis from multiple points of view. Each recommendation and proposed initiative "plugs into" a strategic imperative of the university (cultivation of academic programs of distinction, enrollment growth and student success, development and application of know-how, alliances for institutional advancement and educational partnerships, and development and stewardship of institutional and environmental resources). The intent is to better align and integrate the strategic use of information and technology with these strategic imperatives in order to help further advance the overall mission of the institution.