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Posted by Kyle Johnson on January 24, 2013
Rob, I've stepped into a role similar to where you are. Our IT organization is good at the utility computing, but has a reputation for not really working with the faculty/staff very well. I've been focusing on a few things (based on a report we had done by an outside consultant before I got here). 1- Enhancing our educational technology (and support for it). 2- Creating a formal governance process so everyone feels the have a voice and are involved in the IT decision making process. 3- Develop a customer service focus. As Gene said, much of the utility portions can be done by anyone, but an organization with a customer service focus and a willingness to work with faculty and staff to help them be successful can't really be outsourced. 4- Documenting systems of record for all our data types and integrating systems where needed. This is a pretty big one, as we have many unconnected systems with conflicting data. 5- Focus our limited investments on things that provide a competitive or comparative advantage. Everything else needs to get done as inexpensively as possible. The last one speaks to what Gene said about things you stop doing. And to your question of what the conversation looks like if resources are unconstrained, I don't think that changes. No matter how much your institutional leadership says resources will be unconstrained, when you come back for the third million dollar check, things will be constrained. It is, in my opinion, unwise to begin planning without acknowledging and incorporating the reality of your resource constraints. One other thought regarding "technologically rich" environment (and Megan touched on this as well). You should get some clarity from the institution on exactly what areas that includes. In my case, one original draft of our plan said IT should strive to be an "early adopter." When I started listing all the different places we could be early adopter (office automation, network design, system utilization, green energy, pedagogical support, etc), we realized we had to pick something and focus on that. For us that's going to be pedagogical support. Good luck as you move forward. It's an exciting transition to work on. /kyle --- Kyle Johnson : Dean of Information Services Chaminade University of Honolulu : http://www.chaminade.edu 808.739.8552 (w) : kyle.johnson@chaminade.edu ---------------------------------------------------------------------------- Cylons. Why debugging matters. ********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

Comments

Rob,

Interesting question.  I’ve met a lot of IT leaders (and staff) who felt like “if we could just get more $... or if we could just get more staff…  we could get stuff done and all would be right with the world.”  Unfortunately, their Provosts and Presidents didn’t necessarily have more resources to provide or they didn’t feel IT was the right place to spend it.  If waiting for more resources is the only answer, you could be waiting for a very long time (and facing campus frustrations along the way). 

On the other hand, if that “constrained resources assumption” might be challenged on your campus (i.e. the limits on budget and staff positions were “not so constrained”) it might be possible to make the case for additional resources to do good things.  I have seen that happen in certain cases when the IT organization was able to create a rock solid plan that accomplished things that the decision-makers believed to be essential to the welfare of the campus.  To capture that opportunity, the IT organization needed to be seen as “being strategic, expressing a vision, and aligned with campus needs” (as understood by fairly high administrators).  Being seen as strategic, visionary, and aligned could help build support and possibly pry loose additional resources; without those, it’s a hard row to hoe.

So back to your original question… what’s the next strategic, visionary and aligned thing for us to do?

Gene

 

Posted by: gspencer on January 24, 2013
Robert,

That sounds wonderful for you.

For me, a technologically rich environment is not about technology, it is about using technology to address the wickedly hard problems facing higher education. For me, a technologically rich environment focuses on these areas.

1. How to use technology as a component or catalyst in courses to significantly increase student success in areas that need improvement (e.g. STEM, writing, critical thinking). How to identify what is working and how to move pilots to scale.

2. How to use technology to reshape the humanities and social sciences to teach the digital literacy skills necessary to thrive as a communicator and critical thinker in the 21st century. We have used digital storytelling and multi-media to rethink many courses in the humanities.

3. How to support research in a data rich world; what are the tools, techniques, and capacities necessary for researchers to be successful in the 21st century and what does that mean for technology. How do you support your institution integrating research into the undergraduate and graduate experience and how can technology support them?

4. How can use technology to connect your community to the idea of civic engagement and community. Can't technology play a role is service and experiential learning?

5. How do your administrative systems support best practices in student success so that undergraduate advising, career planning, and graduate student progressions (especially toward PhD completion) are focused on continuous improvement.

6. How do you develop a data-rich environment that allows you to evaluate your progress and make informed corrections along the way.

To me those elements are what I think about in building a technology-rich environment on campus. For me, my job is to make certain I have an IT organization that is agile and able to move quickly as new opportunities arise to innovate and collaborate on these areas  with partners on campus sharing the same vision.

jack



Posted by: jack on January 24, 2013
For years I've seen technology replaced with newer technology with little evidence of improved learning or improved productivity.  The old stuff was rarely used well and the new stuff isn't either.  Technology in medicine, manufacturing, and other areas clearly has an impact but we're talking about education.  Borrowing from a phrase I first saw in a Gartner Group publication, a technologically rich environment might be described as one that maximizes the potential of people, processes, and technology. 

I wonder if providing a class of students and their professor Z-CoiL shoes and having them spend 50% of their class time on their feet instead of in their chairs might have more dramatic impact on teaching and learning than a box of iPads.  Can you imagine what we might think about a technologically rich environment then?  Or maybe focusing on the people and processes can produce more richness than new technology.

Keith Nelson
Chief Technology Officer
Alma College

From: "Jack Suess" <jack@UMBC.EDU>
To: CIO@LISTSERV.EDUCAUSE.EDU
Sent: Thursday, January 24, 2013 4:20:17 PM
Subject: Re: [CIO] Next steps

Robert,

That sounds wonderful for you.

For me, a technologically rich environment is not about technology, it is about using technology to address the wickedly hard problems facing higher education. For me, a technologically rich environment focuses on these areas.

1. How to use technology as a component or catalyst in courses to significantly increase student success in areas that need improvement (e.g. STEM, writing, critical thinking). How to identify what is working and how to move pilots to scale.

2. How to use technology to reshape the humanities and social sciences to teach the digital literacy skills necessary to thrive as a communicator and critical thinker in the 21st century. We have used digital storytelling and multi-media to rethink many courses in the humanities.

3. How to support research in a data rich world; what are the tools, techniques, and capacities necessary for researchers to be successful in the 21st century and what does that mean for technology. How do you support your institution integrating research into the undergraduate and graduate experience and how can technology support them?

4. How can use technology to connect your community to the idea of civic engagement and community. Can't technology play a role is service and experiential learning?

5. How do your administrative systems support best practices in student success so that undergraduate advising, career planning, and graduate student progressions (especially toward PhD completion) are focused on continuous improvement.

6. How do you develop a data-rich environment that allows you to evaluate your progress and make informed corrections along the way.

To me those elements are what I think about in building a technology-rich environment on campus. For me, my job is to make certain I have an IT organization that is agile and able to move quickly as new opportunities arise to innovate and collaborate on these areas  with partners on campus sharing the same vision.

jack



Posted by: mictakrn on January 24, 2013
Keith,

I partially agree with you. We didn't give every student iPads or do other things that might look more "technologically rich" but technology is a catalyst and enabler for redesigning courses here and that is making a big difference.

We redesigned the chemistry recitation component. It uses an high-tech active learning classroom, students work in teams, use technology to manage their work, collaborate afterword through the LMS. We actually block getting off-campus so students can't just google things and have to work through problems. Pass rates have jumped by 20% and we the chair has quantified they are actually grading harder than they did before (less of a curve) but students are doing much better overall. 

The chair that led this said it could never be done without technology because it would be too time intensive for an instructor to lead and too expensive to teach in very small sections an instructor could manage.

The above has led to a push to redesign many of our gateway stem courses to use active learning that is technology enabled. We redid our introductory writing courses through new labs but a change in approach to use more peer review enabled by the technology, Similarly, a large number of humanities  majors  are using digital storytelling in their courses (I did a game changer piece on this).

Your point, that it is a combination of people, process, and technology that need to go together is absolutely correct; but lets not forget that usually you could not begin to rethink people and process without the technology enabler.

Where this moves from interesting to strategic is when you tie these courses to analytics and identify  candidates for course redesign based on poor student success or where you analyze faculty usage of LMS to find instances of teaching that can be models for redesign. The latter happened with us where we noticed a few instructors that seemed to be making very high use of the LMS. One was using adaptive release and one was using team-based learning. We highlighted their work and have seen this adopted more broadly based on the success their students were demonstrating in follow on courses.

Maybe instead of technology-rich we should be focused on creating the technology-enabled to highlight it is more than devices.

jack

Posted by: jack on January 24, 2013
What an exciting opportunity!  I think you have great ideas from the group.

I would start with a paraphrased question that I heard from James Hilton years ago:  what would your community do if technology was not an obstacle to anything they wanted to do connected with the mission of your college?  I think it is important to not apply a resource filter (I.e., people, funding, time, knowledge, space) at this stage.  Resource filters constrain your thinking.  I think it is especially important for leaders not to apply resource filters too soon in any idea development process. I've seen my staff start filtering out great ideas because "there is no money" before I've even heard about the idea or tried to find funding.  

What is the most you can do with technology in every direction?

How many different "classroom flavors" can you imagine, for example?  What is the most advanced on-premise classroom, with presentation systems?  Classroom capture?  How can you create different online classroom experiences?  For example, an online classroom for math might be different from ethics, might be different from nursing. 

How well is your environment considering the fading from web sites accessed with standard desktops to closed networks and access of small modules with smartphones?  How will you transition service delivery to road maps and component access on smart phones?

Is your campus prepared with a variety of network infrastructures to handle all this?

Wow, I'm excited just reading all these posts.

Good luck!
Theresa

I think you have a unique opportunity to let all the ideas flow. 
On Thursday, January 24, 2013, Robert Paterson wrote:

A little background:

 

We’ve each have come into an institution as a technology leader and been charged (directly or indirectly) to “improve” the existing technology circumstances. This charge means different things to different people and the specific improvements all depend on the existing starting points.

 

In my career I have generally come into institutions that have been early in the their technology evolution, so my charge has been clearly to go from “mom and pop” shops to some kind of sustainable production environment. I am now presented with the opportunity of taking the next step….My institution want to be known as a technologically rich environment.

 

My question is:

What are your thoughts on what it might take (what kinds of things) to move an institution to from a sustainable environment to a technological rich environment? I have some ideas I’ll share but would appreciate some blue sky thoughts from you all.

 

Best,

Rob

 

Dr. Robert Paterson

Vice President – Information Technology, Planning and Research

Molloy College

Rockville Centre, NY

 

********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.



--
Theresa Rowe
Chief Information Officer
Oakland University
 
********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

Posted by: rowe on January 25, 2013
Just a quick thought:  whatever "technology rich" means, it would seem that those next steps should impact your students pretty directly. 
They are after all preparing for an increasingly technology-mediated life.

Unless your infrastructure is falling down around your ears--but your question didn't indicate that.

********** Participation and subscription information for this EDUCAUSE Constituent Group discussion list can be found at http://www.educause.edu/groups/.

Posted by: geverett on January 25, 2013

Thanks Theresa…. And to all who have responded. I am grateful to have such ready access to folks that really think these things through.  Keep those “cards and letters coming” and I’d keep you all posted on the progress we make…..Best, Rob

 

Dr. Robert Paterson

Vice President – Information Technology, Planning and Research

Molloy College

Rockville Centre, NY

 

Posted by: rpaterson on January 25, 2013
Rob and all,

Thanks for the great discussion. Although a bit late, here are my "2 cents":

  1. This discussion certainly highlights that need for inclusive IT governance and strategic planning. YMMV
  2. Suggested reading: IT Savvy by Weill and Ross from the MIT Center for Information Systems Research

Good luck with the next steps, and thanks again for the discussion topic.

Best,

Fred

Posted by: fmiller on February 6, 2013
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