2014 IT Issues Resources

The items below have been selected to provide further information on the 2014 top-ten IT issues. These resources may include articles, conference presentation materials, blogs, feeds, webinar archives, and podcasts that you can access by browsing and searching particular issues and topics in the EDUCAUSE Library.

  1. Improving student outcomes through an institutional approach that strategically leverages technology
  2. Establishing a partnership between the IT organization and institutional leadership to develop a collective understanding of what information technology can deliver
  3. Assisting faculty with the instructional integration of information technology
  4. Developing an IT staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility
  5. Using analytics to help drive critical institutional outcomes
  6. Changing IT funding models to sustain core service, support innovation and facilitate growth
  7. Addressing access demand and the wireless and device explosion
  8. Sourcing technologies and services at scale to reduce costs (via cloud, greater centralization of institutional IT services and systems, cross‐institutional collaborations, and so forth)
  9. Determining the role of online learning and developing a strategy for that role
  10. (tie) Implementing risk management and information security practices to protect institutional IT resources/data and respond to regulatory compliance mandates
  11. (tie) Developing an enterprise IT architecture that can respond to changing conditions and new opportunities

 

1. Improving student outcomes through an institutional approach that strategically leverages technology

Leveraging technology to improve student outcomes continues to be an important issue for higher education as public policy and funding models increasingly focus on the completion agenda.

 

2. Establishing a partnership between the IT organization and institutional leadership to develop a collective understanding of what information technology can deliver

To establish an effective partnership, IT and institutional leadership must start with a shared vision. IT leadership must be able to understand the institutional missions and strategic priorities and align resources to support and achieve them. Recognizing that both institutional leadership and IT bring significant perspectives to the table will benefit all.

  • Good BI Governance is Just Good Business, EDUCAUSE Review, December 2013. Business intelligence success is contingent on three key concepts: the nature and drivers of BI, the quality of the BI governance model, and the operating culture in higher education.
  • Five IT Questions Presidents Should Ask Their CIOs, EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2013. To provide a framework that presidents and CIOs can use to discuss technology, we queried a number of presidents, CIOs, and other institutional leaders and identified the following five basic IT questions that presidents should ask their CIOs.
  • Substantive Collaboration: Are We Ready to Lead?, EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2013. Can campus IT leaders drive a collaboration transformation both within our individual institutions and collectively with peers?
  • The 4Rs of Metric System Design, EDUCAUSE Review, September 2013. When annual service satisfaction survey scores for students, faculty, and employees is less than 50 percent and descending, significant change and process improvement are required. This was the challenge facing the Yale University CIO, and the impetus for a new metric design and service improvement plan. This case study shares one of the initiatives implemented to address this challenge.

 

3. Assisting faculty with the instructional integration of information technology

It is time to actively help faculty develop higher levels of competence in both the technical literacy required to effectively use the available tools and in pedagogical approaches that integrate technology into teaching.

 

4. Developing an IT staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility

Today's IT demands require a different kind of professional. Staff can no longer pick a technology platform or role and make it a career. Managers have to prepare staff for technologies and service models on the horizon, developing the talent as the technologies and models emerge. This entails hiring agile staff who are comfortable with change, building flatter organizations that allow for quick decision making and innovative thinking, and continually developing staff.  

  • Today’s Higher Education IT Workforce, January 2014. This ECAR research incorporates results from a comprehensive survey on more than 2,000 IT professionals as well as focus groups to provide a description of the current state of today’s IT workforce, how it has changed in the past three years, and what changes may need to be implemented to retain and strengthen IT staff.
  • The 4Rs of Metric System Design, EDUCAUSE Review, September 2013. The four rights (4Rs) approach focuses on measuring the right things in the right way and taking the right actions at the right time.
  • 2013 CDS Executive Summary Report, February 2014. These reports summarizes results from the annual EDUCAUSE Core Data Service (CDS) survey, which provide a detailed look at the most pertinent and interesting IT financial and staffing findings, with a high-level summary of the state of IT services.
  • IT Career Development of the Future, EDUCAUSE Review, May/June 2013. As colleges and universities move away from directly supporting services to outsourcing services and as legacy technology skills fade, the author asks, what new opportunities will emerge? How do we build staff members' skills to make that transition and encourage self-development?
  • 7 Things You Should Know About ITIL, EDUCAUSE 7 Things brief, October 2010. The Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) is a framework for guiding the design and delivery of IT services.  

 

5. Using analytics to help drive critical institutional outcomes

Analytics provide a powerful tool to help guide student learning outcome assessment if implemented appropriately. Given that these tools are often connected to course management systems, they may most easily be used with hybrid and online courses. However, the potential is there for learning outcomes to be measured for all students. These tools can also be tied to various retention tools, such as just-in-time intervention and intrusive advising.

  • Building Blocks for College Completion: Learning Analytics, NGLC, September 19, 2013. Six projects awarded grants by Next Generation Learning Challenges (NGLC) in its first funding wave, “Building Blocks for College Completion,” sought to develop specific tools for learning analytics and then scale them at other institutions.

 

6. Changing IT funding models to sustain core service, support innovation and facilitate growth

Universities everywhere are under significant financial pressure. This is naturally translating into pressure on the IT budget. CIO’s will need to employ increasingly innovative strategies to attract new funding to sustain core services, provide space for innovation and facilitate growth.

 

7. Addressing access demand and the wireless and device explosion

The BYOE trend has not been shaped by any institutional policy or plan but rather by student expectations that they have the same resources on campus as they have in their home or at Starbucks. This dynamic has already placed demands on technology infrastructure and resources. While some of this use of resources is academic, a great deal is directed to students’ personal use of the internet.  

 

8. Sourcing technologies and services at scale to reduce costs (via cloud, greater centralization of institutional IT services and systems, cross‐institutional collaborations, and so forth)

The funding crisis for higher education is placing pressures on institutions to make available dollars stretch as far as possible so as not to reduce services. Information technology, which accounts for a median of 4% of institutional budgets, is central to many institutions’ plans for cost reduction or at least containment: It represents a concentrated source of spending, and therefore savings, and it offers the promise of automating work or otherwise introducing efficiencies that will thereby reduce costs. Of course this duality can challenge IT organizations, who may feel called to lower their spending at a time when they are also being asked to resource new initiatives. Something has to give. Fortunately, several alternatives are emerging that may help IT and thus institutions reduce their costs if they are prepared to make the changes that will truly deliver efficiencies.

  • Straight Talk about the Clouds EDUCAUSE Review Online, February 24, 2014. Higher education institutions can choose from a range of cloud computing approaches. As these three senior IT leaders explain, the "right" solution for a given institution depends on many factors such as size, existing investments, the availability of system-level services, and campus culture.  By being mindful of these issues and collaborating with campus constituencies, you can choose the approach that best suits your institution's specific needs.
  • Navigating the Clouds with an Enterprise IT Strategy, EDUCAUSE Review, December 6, 2013. Furman University, which is pursuing an aggressive move to cloud services, shares models of cloud services as well as the risks, opportunities, and ways other campuses can benefit from and plan for using cloud services successfully.
  • Enterprise Application Projects in Higher Education, ECAR Research Study, August 2013. This ECAR study represents an initiative by EDUCAUSE to begin addressing some of those gaps in our knowledge. What emerges is a blend of incremental change in some areas and rapid shifts in others, with some common lessons across all, and perhaps the first systematic collection of cost data across system areas and institutional classifications.
  • The Marketecture of Community, EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2012. IT leaders need to examine the lessons learned from the last decade of network-enabled communities to envision how to best innovate solutions to the shared challenges that lie ahead.

9. Determining the role of online learning and developing a strategy for that role

A key strategic issue regarding online learning is not whether to engage, but how. Increasingly, the issue is focused on content that is electronic and how that content gets delivered through various mechanisms (e.g., course management systems, YouTube, MOOCs, etc.). The strategic discussion should be focused on: (a) the quality assurance of the content; (b) access to the content; and (c) the ability to aggregate the content into various "packages," such as courses.

10. (tie) Implementing risk management and information security practices to protect institutional IT resources/data and respond to regulatory compliance mandates

Information security organizations were early adopters of risk management practices—and it served those organizations well in prioritizing risks and responding to them. However, foundational risk management practices, such as risk identification, prioritization, and response activities need to move beyond the purview of just the information security organization to protect institutional data and resources. Increasingly institutions are turning to enterprise IT risk management programs to look at the strategic, operational, financial, legal, and reputational risks inherent in operating information technology systems. Whether homegrown or based on a well-recognized standard, these programs offer a more holistic approach to understanding a variety of types of risk across the institution and prioritizing strategic resource allocation accordingly. Looking across the institution for risks also provides the best opportunity for protecting institutional resources and data.

 

10. (tie) Developing an enterprise IT architecture that can respond to changing conditions and new opportunities

One the key challenges and opportunities facing IT leaders is how they optimize the mix of technology services delivered from on-premise, cloud, or hosted sources. Each week, new software-as-a-service (SaaS) offerings become available that may solve key issues at your campus. Similarly, new infrastructure-as-a-service (IaaS) are coming online that allow institutions outsource components of their infrastructure that might never have seemed possible years ago.

  • The NACUBO/EDUCAUSE Working Group on Administrative Services and Systems, February 20, 2014. NACUBO and EDUCAUSE convened a joint working group to explore how best to maximize the cost-effectiveness of administrative services and systems. Over the course of the group’s work from September to December 2013, members determined that the value of administrative services and systems making. derives from the degree to which they improve operations (e.g., quality, speed, cost), legal and regulatory compliance, and decision.
  • Enterprise Application Projects in Higher Education, ECAR Research Study, August 2013. This ECAR study represents an initiative by EDUCAUSE to begin addressing some of those gaps in our knowledge. What emerges is a blend of incremental change in some areas and rapid shifts in others, with some common lessons across all, and perhaps the first systematic collection of cost data across system areas and institutional classifications.
  • Is Our Software Designed for Change? Successes and Challenges in Using Service Oriented Architecture, ECAR Research Bulletin, March 2013. In 2012, to find out how institutions are using SOA to prepare for changing software needs, members of the EDUCAUSE Enterprise, Business, and Technical Architects (ITANA) constituent group conducted a survey, receiving responses from 27 institutions. This research bulletin discusses the survey results and implications for higher education, for institutions, and for IT organizations.
  • Building a Modern Computing Infrastructure at Princeton University, EDUCAUSE Review, May 2013. Over the past 10 years Princeton University developed and implemented an institutional strategy to support research and administrative computing.