Top 10 Strategic Technologies for 2015 Resources

The 2015 top 10 strategic technologies were selected from the analysis of a vetted set of 107 technologies presented to EDUCAUSE members in a survey in fall 2014. The items below have been selected to provide further information or highlight examples of the top 10 strategic technologies.

802.11ac Wireless Networking Standard

• Distributed Antenna Systems: ACTI Briefing Note. ECAR, 2012. This briefing note from the ACTI Communication, Collaboration, and Mobility Working Group provides an overview of distributed antenna system (DAS) solutions for in-building wireless coverage for cellular voice services on higher education campuses.
• Five Reasons Why Colleges are Taking the 802.11ac Plunge, Aruba Networks blog, August 2013.
• 802.11ac: The New Standard for Very High Throughput [http://www.merunetworks.com/products/technology/80211ac/], Meru Networks. This site includes a white paper and a tech brief on the new IEEE standard.

 

Administrative or Business Performance Analytics.

• Resources for Presidents and Senior Executives: Administrative Systems and Services, September 2014.
• Administrative and Enterprise IT Systems, EDUCAUSE research snapshot, July 14, 2014
• Building Organizational Capacity for Analytics. This 2013 EDUCAUSE report provides information about how leading institutions in higher education and vendors are building capacity in analytics to improve student success.
• Analytics for Enterprise Efficiency and Effectiveness. In this 2012 Sprint webinar, Arizona State University highlights how is analytics used in the institutions enterprise area. For more information on how ASU uses their BI dashboard, see Enabling the Data-Driven University, EDUCAUSE Review Online, August 2012.
• Miami University’s Institutional Analytics Program [https://www.miamioh.edu/it-services/initiatives-and-projects/institutional-analytics/]

 

Business Intelligence Reporting Dashboards

• Resources for Presidents and Senior Executives: Administrative Systems and Services, September 2014.
• BI Reporting, Data Warehouse Systems, and Beyond, April 2014. This Spotlight focuses on data from the 2013 Core Data Service to better understand how higher education institutions approach business intelligence (BI) reporting and data warehouse systems.
• Reimagining Learning Tools for Qualitative Research, EDUCAUSE Review Online, June 2013. ThequalQuery tool, which uses a dashboard and checklists, was used to support undergraduate research in a course.
• Enabling the Data-Driven University, EDUCAUSE Review Online, August 2012. The business intelligence team at Arizona State University created a dashboard to track usage of the various existing dashboards and tools.
• Big Data for Education: Data Mining, Data Analytics, and Web Dashboards, The Brookings Institution, September 2012.  In this Brookings Institution report, author Darrell West, examines the potential for improved research, evaluation, and accountability through data mining, data analytics, and web dashboards.
• University of Texas System Productivity Dashboard [https://data.utsystem.edu/SASPortal/main.do]

 

Enterprise Identity and Access Management Solutions

• InCommon. Operated by Internet2, InCommon provides a secure and privacy-preserving trust fabric for research and higher education, and their partners, in the United States. InCommon operates an identity management federation, a related assurance program, and offers certificate and multifactor authentication services.
• IAM Tools & Effective Practices Wiki: This wiki provides a set of resources for IAM Architects to use in implementing a cohesive program on their respective campuses.
• CommIT. Common Identity and Trust Collaborative. CommIT intends to, Ease the process for high school students preparing their college applications, Assist higher education IT departments, Admissions Officers, and Registrars in accepting applications from and provisioning resources to prospects, Improve the offerings of the participating vendors, and improve the quality of prospect credentials.
• Identity Ecosystem Steering Group [http://www.idecosystem.org/]. The Identity Ecosystem envisioned in the NSTIC [http://www.nist.gov/nstic/] is an online environment that will enable people to validate their identities securely, but with minimized disclosure of personal information when they are conducting transactions.

 

Incorporation of Mobile Devices in Teaching and Learning

• Turning the iPad into a Dynamic Hub in the Language Classroom, EDUCAUSE Review Blog, February 2014. Colin Keaveney outines his use of the iPad in a French language course at USC.
• Tablets in the Forest: Mobile Technology for Inquiry-Based Learning, EDUCAUSE Review Online, November 2013. To support an inquiry-based field research experience, McGill University gave environmental biology students mobile devices to gather rich data in the field and to support learning through real-time interaction with their instructor and the larger research community.

 

Mobile App Development

• Developing a Campus Mobile Strategy: Guidelines, Tools, and Best Practices , January 2013. ECAR Mobile Strategy and Application Development WG.
• 7 Things You Should Know About Application Development Tools, ELI, September 2012.
• 2013 Planning Guide for Application Delivery Strategies: Mobile, Cloud, Social, and Information, Gartner.
• The Best Tools for Mobile App Development, Creative Bloq

 

Mobile Apps for Enterprise Applications

• Evaluation Criteria for Enterprise Mobility Management Suites, August 2014, Gartner. This Gartner report seeks to help organizations evaluate EMM suites.
• Mobile Advising: Engage Students and Contain Costs, April 21, 2014. This EDUCAUSE Review Online case study provides an example of how digital records and mobile technology improve communication between students, departments, and offices while reducing administrative tasks and costs.
• How Embry-Riddle Successfully, Affordably, and Painlessly Launched Its Mobile App with ERP and LMS integration This presentation from the 2012 EDUCAUSE Annual Conference discussed Embry-Riddle University’s use of DUBLabs for their institution’s mobile app.  
• uoMobile: uOttawa's mobile web application [http://www.ccs.uottawa.ca/uomobile/]
• Adventures in Mobility, EDUCAUSE Review Online, July 2012.  This article details the University of Mississippi’s use of the SAP mobile platform.

 

Mobile Apps for Teaching and Learning

• Mobile Advising: Engage Students and Contain Costs, April 21, 2014. This case study provides an example of how digital records and mobile technology improve communication between students, departments, and offices while reducing administrative tasks and costs.

 

Mobile Data Protection

• An Introduction to BYOE Mobile Data Collection , April 24, 2014. This paper serves as an introduction to the four main types of Modbile Data Collection —passive, public, crowdsourced, and private—highlighted with exploratory use cases that demonstrate how learning, research, and community engagement can leverage this new technology space.

 

Unified Communications and Collaboration

• Unified Communications: How We Got There and Saved Money Doing It. In this EDUCAUSE podcast, along with session slides, Minot State University  shares its experience, from start to finish, of designing, testing, and implementing a pure unified communications environment.
• Colleges Gradually Adopt Unified Communications, EdTech.  May 2012.
• Integrated Communications Technology Survey. This survey was conducted in late 2011 by the ECAR-CIA (Communications Infrastructure and Applications) Working Group, and initial results were shared with ACTI members during the January 2012 ACTI Member Meeting.

 

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