CAUSE/EFFECT

Copyright 1997 CAUSE. From CAUSE/EFFECT Volume 20, Number 1, Spring 1997, pp. 4-7. Permission to copy or disseminate all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for commercial advantage, the CAUSE copyright and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of CAUSE, the association for managing and using information resources in higher education. To disseminate otherwise, or to republish, requires written permission. For further information, contact Julia Rudy at CAUSE, 4840 Pearl East Circle, Suite 302E, Boulder, CO 80301 USA; 303-939-0308; e-mail: [email protected]

Current Issues for Higher Education Information Resources Management

The CAUSE Current Issues Committee is responsible for proposing a list of current or developing issues and trends that are important to the future of information resources management and use in higher education. The following topics have been identified by the committee as key emerging or ongoing issues. We encourage articles for CAUSE/EFFECT on these and related topics.

Next Generation Networks

The higher education community is preparing to launch new initiatives in local and wide area networking. The expected change may be more dramatic than the effects of the current Internet on our research, teaching, learning, and administrative processes. These new initiatives include Internet 2, which will provide a high-bandwidth network with quality of service guarantees among most major research universities. Internet 2 isn't simply a backbone, however. Its applications will require end-to-end connectivity that will lead to major upgrades in our campus infrastructures. The results will be applications enhanced for this network along with new applications only now possible due to Internet 2. Other upcoming trends include the merging of voice, video, and data traffic into a common digital infrastructure; the mesh of connectivity provided through wired and wireless connectivity; and increasing mission-critical reliance on links to services provided by other institutions.

Issues we will need to discuss, if not resolve, in the next year include:

Achieving Widespread Integration of Technology in Teaching and Learning

While some faculty believe it is valuable to integrate technology into their teaching, others are opposed to it. For many others, the jury is still out. Those who are trying it now are the vanguard; they've excited others who want to follow, but many of these would-be adopters find they don't have the skills, can't find the resources they need to make classroom technology work for them, or find current methodologies too time consuming or too complex. Many students, on the other hand, have been socialized in media-rich environments which have led to high expectations about the use of information technology in the classroom and out.

As information resource managers we have a role to play in encouraging curricular use of information technology and in enabling faculty and students to use it as much as possible. To provide effective support, we will need to address a number of issues:

Meeting Insatiable Demands

Increasing numbers of computers and the support required to keep users online results in new challenges for information technologies service organizations in colleges and universities. Campus information resources professionals especially must respond to the management of a distributed user base that demands service in direct support of instruction, often in the face of static or decreasing budgets. This shift towards a new central core of expectations requires us to re-order our priorities and approaches. Strategies might include partnering, rationalizing economic models (investigating student fees, selective service fees for departments, subscription services, outsourcing), managing user expectations, finding ways to economize, increasing user training so that users can become self-sufficient, creating more reliable and more consistent environments, and reversing the "brain drain" (reducing staff turnover). Issues to be addressed include:

Virtual Universities

To discuss "virtual universities" one needs to define what is meant by this term. The most common definition contains terms such as distance education, lifelong learning, and open university. For the purpose of this synopsis, the virtual university is defined as an institution, or a set of institutions, engaged in a delivery of degree granting programs in higher education, using technology and methodology outside a traditional classroom. For example, a single institution offering courses at a distance by use of technology can be said to encompass a virtual university, as students are not required to attend classes at their home institutions. However, a more representative example of a virtual university involves a collaboration of at least two or more institutions. Issues that need to be addressed include the following:

Information Policy in a Networked Environment

Three areas where information policy issues arise in a networked environment are: responsible user behavior, policy enforcement, and the impact of changing technology on policy.

Replacing Administrative Systems

In many cases, the replacement of administrative systems on college and university campuses is being driven by an institutional commitment to business process reengineering; the need to replace systems that are unable to meet our customers' desires for more flexible systems enabled by and interfacing with the World Wide Web; and/or the "Year 2000" challenge -- the inability of many legacy systems to accommodate the new century's date. Areas where issues arise include:

Information Resources Organization and Job Restructuring

Technology is revolutionizing the workplace, enabling new work processes, and radically redefining traditional jobs and work skills. Information resources organizations are not immune to the changes brought about in human resources and organizational structure by technology. In fact, information resources organizations face new vulnerabilities as the marketplace becomes more competitive and staff turnover increases in high-demand areas. Our organizations are also expected to have a natural organizational agility to adapt to technological change. Technological transition is not painless or natural in some areas of information resources management. Without a doubt, the players, rules, dynamics, and requirements for organizational and professional survival and success in our industry have changed. How does an information resources organization reshape itself to address these new human resources issues? Issues include:

Support for Distributed Computing

How can information resources professionals, especially those in central technology organizations, support distributed computing? We must address the following issues:

Enterprise-Wide Management of Information Resources/Assets

Colleges and universities are quintessential information-age institutions. From the scholarly information held in library collections to the administrative information stored in structured databases to the information accumulated throughout campuses in other applications, faculty research, and instructional material, higher education institutions amass an astounding collection of information. Increasingly this information is available in digital form and accessible through a campuswide technology infrastructure. Many institutions are moving toward the World Wide Web as a common platform for information and information systems delivery, but is this being done within a comprehensive, strategic effort that is engaging all of the stakeholders throughout the campus in an articulated plan? How are institutions approaching the management and use of electronic information resources? Are there institution-wide strategies for coordinating activities related to these assets? Some of the issues that need to be addressed include:

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