1. How do we address educational technology issues in our strategic planning process?

What are the strategic goals which should be established for information technology. In the Strategic Plan of 1987 there was no mention of education technology, computing, or the network; yet within four years, the summer of 1991, the campus was wired with IP access to the Internet available in every residence hall room, in every faculty office, and in every administrative office. This strategic planning process must address the educational technology issues.

2. How do we address the cost/benefit question as we plan for information technology?

We have been pushing to get faculty involved with technology for two decades. Now that we are being successful, how do set priorities for supporting faculty?

3. How do we organize to support the faculty efforts?

The effect of our success in making faculty more aware of the possibilities for using educational technology is to make it difficult to provide the support necessary to allow them to change the way they conduct their classes. How, without increasing staff and without substantially increasing costs, do we provide the support necessary?

4. Institutional Leadership:

Leadership at the campus, school/college, and department levels. Greater commitment to the structure of campus-wide support. Improvement of synergies between academic units and centralized support services

5. Institutional Vision:

Creating an appropriate technology vision worth working toward. Assessing future trends and developments.

6. Institutional Values:

Changing rigid institutional structure to accommodate need for good practices. Modifying the reward system to make it conducive to adopting technology. Knowing how to assessing technology effectiveness.

7. Planning:

Developing an implementation plan
Budgeting creatively for lifecycle turnover

8. Development:

Staff development, training, and re-tooling Providing incentives

9. Resources:

Having the time, money, and expertise to establishing base level support services and be able to sustain adequate support and maintenance Budget constraints on capital and operating and the limits it imposes on incorporating new and changing technology

10. Infrastructure:

Maintaining a network infrastructure
Equipping classrooms with adequate and appropriate technology Developing standards
Providing a minimum level of desktop access for faculty, staff, and students

11. Staff:

In my seven months here, there has been a complete staff turnover and in re-writing various positions we have been able to move from only 2 real hands-on-able tech positions to five, we are developing another staff person, and will probably add two in the next year. Of course this may still not sound like much in size, but here the cabinet says it is unbelievable progress. In the next two years the tech folks will be challenged in implementing SCT Banner 2000 (the vanilla approach) and all the web modules, as well as Innovative Interfaces ILS, and there will be more pulling of the campus out of its thin net and replacing the PBX. Added to or on top of this, we are now merging a fairly healthy library staff with ITS.
I am taking time out to gather my thoughts on what to do next, and would clearly like practical suggestions on the always more stretching of staff?

12. The Library Of Old:

In these seven months we have been re-inventing the main library. On the first floor we have about cleared everything of tradition out (moving to other floors) and are keeping reference, circulation and current periodical issues. We are developing an expensive older resort/convention center look with side areas containing three classrooms, an art main entry, an expresso bar, and some of the ITS offices. There is a Cyber/Internet Cafe now going in and in the fall we will money for high end and casual lounges and maybe we would like a player baby grand. On two floors we will hang 300 pieces of worthwhile art. Fall social events are being planned. The fuller concept is not just to bring creative/interactive folk together with the through, detail logical types, underneath this, the real purpose and fruit, is instructional technology, normal coursework and retention. For jocks and probably anybody else, this fall it seems like we will be able to have set weeknight attendance hours for retention supervised by an educator-librarian. For non-retention we just received a grant for a neuroscience computer classroom, and are working for a virtual classroom. What we are developing here is probably an academic institution (like the first library) within an academic institution.

13. The Big Challenge: How to forge a larger unified, collegial, and effective division from four separate organizations with distinctive but related missions and four different organizational cultures.

Explanation: For many reasons, the units that form the "information infrastructure" on the USC campus evolved into four distinctive agencies: an academic computing group; an administrative computing group; a telecommunications group; and a library group. Coordination among these groups took place occasionally but irregularly, and most would characterize the general nature of the relationships among them as somewhat adversarial.

14. The need to create a better planning capacity

15. The desire to develop an organizational structure that will be effective for the next generation

16. The need to maximize the value of information and information tech budgets

17. The need to deliver better service in an environment in which the old borders among the divisions have grown less distinct and the customers are often confused

18. Providing high speed interconnectivity for both teaching and research faculty.

19. Enhancing the teaching and learning process through effective use of technology. This includes both engendering creative uses of technology and ensuring a commensurate support infrastructure to optimize its continued use.

20. Development of more learner-centered, as compared to teacher-centered, modalities for learning. Shifting faculty activities to include more mentoring and facilitation through the use of technology.

21. Web applications development for electronic "commerce" including activities such as admissions, research and academic administration, student and faculty records, etc.

22. Development and maintenance of infrastructure to make the applications in #1 accessible to students, faculty and outside world.

Networking with other institutions and service providers.

23. Technology literacy, development and assessment for students, faculty, and staff

Should there be baseline competencies for faculty, staff, and students? What are they? How will these baseline competencies will be achieved?
How much emphasis should be put on technology as an important component in the learning process both in and out of the classroom?
How will the university determine whether information technology (IT) is being used effectively to achieve individual and university goals? Who will be responsible for doing this assessment?

24. Funding and administrative structure necessary to support technology activities

What kinds of policies, procedures, and resource allocation strategies need to be created to provide students, faculty, and staff with the hardware, software, and support necessary to achieve both individual goals and university expectations? How will information technology be paid for?
What standards should be adopted campus-wide? What mechanisms should be established to ensure compliance with agreed-upon standards?
How will the university decide the appropriate balance between centralized support and departmental or unit support?

25. Using technology to improve administrative services

How should key administrative processes that support the educational process, such as registration, advisement, financial management, etc., be modified for greater efficiency and accuracy? To what extent and at what pace should the university continue to upgrade its processes? What is the optimal mix of expenditures for IT hardware, software, maintenance, training, and support?
How can we streamline processes, improve services, reduce costs and achieve greater efficiencies among administrative areas? What guidelines should be established for standardizing, optimizing, and sharing data and information and for protecting its access, use, and confidentiality across unties? How can an environment that encourages cooperation and trust across campus be created so that units are willing to cooperate in setting standards for data integrity?

26. Technical And Instructional Support Staff:

We need a significant number of new positions (at high salary levels) to provide the right technical and instructional support for faculty and students who are now ready to move decisively forward in changing teaching, research and learning with information technology resources.

27. Libraries:

As we move ahead with the electronic dimension of our libraries, we need also to strike the right balance with core collection, periodicals, etc. which are still required in paper and book format. How far should we move now with the electronic dimension of libraries?

28. Partnerships With Faculty:

What are the key success factors in establishing enduring learning and research relationships between faculty members in the academic departments and staff persons in the information technology organization? We have a small number of these underway now, but we would like to grow the quality of the relationships and find ways to make them more productive as the numbers increase.

29. Scale up the penetration of technology to redefine instruction, learning

30. Use technology for a new, knowledge intensive environment for the pursuit of scholarship, learning and research. Integrate Library & IT processes towards a seamless environment.

31. Keeping our technology and software state of the art and available to our faculty and students.

For each of the last three years we have made major investments in network infrastructure, classroom technology upgrades and we are about to make major investments in software systems for student and personnel information. For example, in classroom upgrades we have invested between 300 and 500 thousand dollars a year and have made only a dent in the need. The software system packages will be multi million dollar investments over several years.

32. Faculty and Staff Training and Development is a major priority, but even with special Web support teams for training and development, only 30-50 faculty a year have been trained in either course delivery by the web or for web enhanced courses.

That is a small fraction of a faculty of over 800. The cost of development for web based courses is approximately $8,000 per course. The magnitude of the problem is obvious.

33. Support for the equipment and software is a major challenge as we acquire more and as the number of users grows.

We have over 50,000 accounts on our computer network system and numerous servers, computers etc. on the systems. Currently we are migrating from a central support system to a college or unit based support system. That process will take years and the demand for technical support continues to grow as support teams are hired, trained and made available.

34. To assess the existing IT environment in support of learning & research;

35. To create a "UC in the 21st Century," IT vision & strategy inclusive of learning and research;

36. To develop a prioritized strategic IT plan in support of the vision.

37. Focusing on the product

Aligning IT to the mission and core business of the Institute.
Teaching, learning, curriculum - how are they defined and delivered in the 21st century?
Servicing distributed learners as though they were on campus.

38. Shifting the Culture while improving the outcomes

Helping our customers - to manage increased self-responsibility for their learning outcomes, and preserving the benefits of learning in communities.
Designing acceptable, logical and outcomes-driven pathways for change.
Competition or collegiality-we used to share what we developed and createdÖwe may now be looking to sell it!

39. Grabbing the Info-Tiger by the Tail! (without getting chewed-up too badly!)

Keeping up and paying for it - do we need State-of-the-Art, or State-of-the-Practice?
Sustainability.
Making the right technology choices.

40. What impact will a cultural change, from a didactic environment to one which extends the learning environment well beyond the traditional scope of the university, have on the integration of technology and the learning process?

41. Funding. It appears that technology defies the traditional laws of funding. Do we need to develop a 'state-of-the-art system' for gaining approval for huge technology expenditures ...(hardware... infrastructure... staffing... etc.>)...year after year....after year... or aren't the keepers of your purse strings looking at you askance?

42. Not only do we need living organizations...we need living systems. The problems associated with managing the increasing requirements for more bandwidth, more system resources, the latest technological innovations, extended network services and better pro-active support services are growing faster than our ability to manage the change. Is it time for a cultural change (other than de-centralization!) in our ranks?

43. Success in bringing a new $5 million student/finance/HR/alumni integrated information system on line by 1999 -- all the issues associated with that.

44. Distance learning and the Western Governor's University.

45. Resources for technology (voice, data, and video) in a state that is especially "frugal" and in a university where the central administration is not very computer literate and may not understand the impact.

46. How can we create, collect, maintain and make information available that is needed to support teaching and research activities now and in the future?

In this case information is defined as a full continuum including institutional records and publications as well as library resources available at the home institution and remotely.

47. How do we create a documentary record of the ways in which computer technology is now used in teaching and research activities so that these developments can be studied more fully?

To create that documentary record we would have to be able to capture and preserve the electronic evidence of these activities.

48. Beginning 9-1 academic computing services will be organizationally merged with academic computing/telecom under the VP for Admin?Finance (me).

There is total campus support for doing this. Even after good planning and assessment, what pitfalls have others experienced in such a consolidation?

49. The University is actively growing it programs offered via non- classroom based delivery systems.

This includes many programs via guided independent study, televised learning, and multi-media (CDrom, internet, etc.) programs. Under University academic philosophy, this comes with an expectation of extensive interaction with advisors and faculty through technology. What are some of the more economically sensible, refined ways that other institutions are handling the technical aspects of these modes of interaction?

50. What are the real and practical comparisons between buying and leasing PCs for student lab and administrative use?

51. Distance Ed

As a small residential campus, maintain enrollments and prepare for competition from virtual universities, industry-provided training programs, and colleges in other states offering distance ed programs.

52. Infrastructure and Technical Support

As a wider range of faculty use IT, develop plans to budget for rapidly obsolescent computing hardware, for spiraling technical support requirements, and for a shift in faculty perceptions of the services a university library should be offering.

53. Information Access

Identify ways to use IT to deal with the twin problems of :

- rapidly increasing costs for traditional scholarly communications (i.e. journal prices)

- growing availability of (often low quality) scholarly information on the world wide web

54. Educating our share of "Tidal Wave II" - a projected additional 300,000 to 500,000 students who will be seeking admissions to the California higher education system over the next 5-7 years.

55. Changing our modes of instruction to address the needs of our increasingly non-traditional students who seek constant retraining to cope with job displacement due to technological change.

56. Changing our styles of instruction to accomodate the wide range of learning styles that are now typical of a California classroom.

57. Reviewing institutional mission and goals and, in that light, setting "goals for Learning and Research in the future";

58. Assuming that our "goals for Learning and Research in the future" are broad, institutional goals, to facilitate reconsideration of courses and programs in light of those goals to determine the changes called for, and the ramifications of such changes;

59. Planning for provision of resources necessary (e.g., hardware and software replacement, support services) to meet our "goals for Learning and Research in the future" and resulting programmatic changes.

60. Year 2000 conversion

Working with key vendors
Retaining key staff
What will we overlook -- what will fail on 1/1/2000 that we didn't anticipate?

61. Asynchronous Learning

Western Governors University
Cost of class preparation and delivery
Technology assistance for the on-campus student
Appropriate technology

62. Campus Computing Support

Increasing demand for services
Increase competition for resources
Role of central unit vs. distributed support
Classroom technology
Site Licensing
Student computing
Technology churn

63. To foster the development of disciplinary information specialists

Our networked infrastructure continues to break down barriers, distribute resources, and empower individuals. Now, more faculty and students want "just-in-time" support services to get their jobs done with technology. To achieve this, we seek to shift from centralized support services to distributed support services that enhance learning and research at the department level. The challenge is to foster the development of disciplinary information specialists who are schooled in the disciplines, technology, and librarianship. The challenge is to undertake such changes without adding new positions, but through professional development and staff replacements.

64. New and useful technologies arrive on the scene faster than we can, or are allowed, to drop support for older technologies.

We therefore accumulate obligations for support. To keep up, we often need to accumulate specialized skill sets among our staff. Many small colleges have IT staff to student ratios that are enviable, but the absolute number of IT staff is very small. Given such small numbers of staff, the challenge is one of scalability. How can we partition a growing list of specialized skills among a small number of staff? It can be unrealistic to expect a staff of 25 to maintain currency in 50 or more advanced technologies that are being used broadly in higher education.

65. Who is the learner and who is the teacher?

We have a high percentage of faculty involvement with technologies in learning and scholarship (>70%), and student ownership of computers (>90%). Many of our classes involve students in technology-enhanced collaborative projects, web, and multimedia publishing, and independent research, but not all students are involved, and there is no general technology requirement. Should skills in modern information resources become required elements in the liberal education for all our students? Vocational skills are not part of the traditional liberal arts focus. Is this an exclusive role of the faculty? These concepts often involve difficult conversations about who is learner, who is teacher, and the deconstruction of authority in the classroom.

66. Develop politically acceptable and practical support policies and technical solutions to meet these divergent needs

Some faculty want and need nearly complete autonomy in their uses of networked technologies. Others want and need a digital appliance, or information tool about which they need know little.

67. New paradigm for higher-education; how to make a transition away from an instruction-based organization and become a learning-centered institution.