A New Faculty’s need from Information Technology

I often focus on the emerging needs of students at a university.  The rationale is students are the largest audience for an IT department.   In this post I would like to focus on what a new faculty member needs from the Information Technology Department.   The number one requirement new faculty need is information necessary to be successful in the classroom or with research.   Often new faculty have a limited understanding of what a university information department has to offer.  Many IT departments use email or web sites to exchange information.  Both tools are important but what a new faculty member needs is an individual that is available to answer their many questions.   I assume new faculty often default to asking a peer or taking a stab-in-the-dark.   I have often thought an IT boot camp would be a great way to interact with new faculty and make a new impression.  The event would not be long, possibly a day with lunch provided.   During the boot camp faculty would be presented with all the resources needed to be successful interacting with the technology they are encouraged to adopt.  Several ideas for a boot camp might be:

1. Faculty need a quick guide to locate services available, nothing fancy but a phone number and email address for all technology support groups.  Assistance in person is a major asset for the IT organization.  
2. Information on how to use the campus student information system (SIS).  The SIS provides the faculty a wealth of information on students in their courses and to students they are assigned to advise.   Faculty often are informed of the SIS but are not informed of the wealth of information it contains.  Faculty also need information necessary for entering mid-term and final grades.  
3.  Information on the campus learning management system (LMS) and directions on the support available from the information technology department.   Faculty are often bewildered by what is expected in implementing a course. Expected best practices would be helpful.
4. New Faculty need to be informed of all the support technologies at a university.  Many new faculty have taught at other universities and understand their standards and often adopt the “known” rather that the campus standard.  Provide faculty a list of tools such as Adobe Connect, Goggle Apps, Microsoft Apps and the campus course capture is important to faculty getting support..  Better yet is offering one-on-one training sessions.
5. Don’t forget the basics, be sure to explain to faculty the guidelines for telephone service, cell phone service and any site license software.

A New Business Model

Chief Academic Officers need to be aware of technology changes taking place this fall with learning management systems (LMS). In the past few months we have been introduced to three new contenders; the first was a product from Instructure called Canvas, a second is from Pearson called Open Study and the last is a startup called CourseKit. All three offer students and faculty services from the cloud, IT departments no longer have to purchase servers, buy an application or hire a support staff. All three systems support collaboration through social networking, providing the faculty and students a Facebook like experience. Early responses from universities that have implemented the products are positive and a common response is the LMS in easy to use, intuitive.

Open Study and CourseKit are offering LMS services at no cost to the University. The two LMS systems offer faculty a choice of many third party applications and the cost of the service is added to the cost of the textbook a student purchases. The business model looks like Apple’s iTunes. All three LMS systems offer services today, Canvas is installed at several major universities and Open Study and CourseKit were introduced in Fall 2011. All three products offer Academic support departments need to review the new offerings to see if there is a fit with their university.

Cloud based LMS systems appear to be following the same path that Google and Microsoft offered with campus email systems. Previously, the two services required significant investments in applications, hardware and support staff. The new model removes all three cost from the university budget. Imagine two of your largest expenses will be gone, you will be able to reinvest in other important projects.

Options for Academic Technology

The Chief Academic Officer will soon have many opportunities to determine how to use technology to support faculty and students on campus. We have written about the opportunities the CAO has in the area of desktop services: Google is providing a number of services beyond email and Microsoft is matching Google service for service. Take an inventory against you own campus offerings. Do you provide your students:

1. A full featured email system with at least 5 gigabytes of mail storage that is optimized for all Web 2.0 services and offers everyone mobile-friendly access.
2. A location to save your files: today it is common for Google and Microsoft to offer you another 25 gigabytes of storage space for your PowerPoint slides, your PDFs, your Word and Excel documents, and the ton of video and pictures you want to keep to reuse in your courses.
3. Now we find a number of companies teaming up with service providers to offer additional core services. Dell has combined with MoodleRooms to offer a course management system a faculty member can access from anywhere. Google has decided to offer a product called CourseSmart that will offer a service that will look a little like a course management system and a little bit like a course registration system.
4. Several large companies are offering cloud-based research computing by teaming with low cost server providers and specialized university researchers to offer access to specialized research data sets in the cloud. No longer will the liberal arts college or the regional university faculty member be at a disadvantage because the university cannot offer computational computing on campus.
5. Just this year two new Web 2.0 web sites have emerged: Academia, a location where faculty with like research interest can collaborate or can develop curriculum together, and Einztein, a site just entering public beta where faculty can share their content with the world or can develop a course with peers.
   

What this means to the CAO is you no longer have to invest in significant technology infrastructure capital unless you would rather spend money on technology instead of your academic programs. All of the above do not require a capital investment for the host hardware or software and only a small (or no) recurring services cost. The CAO needs to task the CIO in researching the options available today to create a roadmap that would allow the university to shift capital funding previously associated with technology to academic interests. It appears the only future funding for campus applications will focus in two areas: the devices the faculty, student, or staff uses for access, and a few programs governed by compliance laws that should remain on campus.

Students and University Technology Support Services

An interesting convergence of events during the past three weeks has resulted in this blog post. In the past year it has become evident that most research universities are struggling with student technology support, among the issues:

1. Is the university IT department relevant for today’s students? Most feel that if they are offering the minimal number of services, they must be relevant. Time to ask the students what is relevant in 2010; is the campus meeting the requirements of the present day student?
2. Is the library relevant to today’s students? Does today’s investment in information resources (the library staff) need to be reexamined? Never thought I would ask this question so directly.
3. Does today’s university have the appropriate relationship between campus departments to remain relevant in a technology and information rich environment?

Several weeks ago, the campus IT group spent time with students in two focus sessions. The first glimpse of student impressions was in a senior level marketing class, and the second was a focus group between IT and interested student government leaders. Both groups resulted in similar student perspectives. First, the students did not know who offered technology support on campus and did not feel it was relevant to know the source of services. Second, the focus group had seven seniors/graduate students, and of the seven, only 3 had ever attempted to contact the campus IT department and only one had ever visited the customer support center during their tenure at the university. Third, students all agreed that anything online was preferred to going to a campus department, including the library. It does not take a genius to recognize today’s IT organizations are using yesterday’s methods to meet today’s students requirements, and it does not appear to be working.

The second event was the release of the latest Project Information Literacy Progress Report from the Information School at the University of Washington. The report recognized that students and university professionals are not in alignment. The student is focused on efficiency, and the university departments are focused on thoroughness. Two outcomes were evident in the report: 1) students want to acquire information online and 2) students rely on instructors first, not the library staff or IT staff. As universities focus on retention and graduation rates, Chief Academic Officers must ask several hard questions:

1. What must be done with the university research library to make it relevant to students in a search-oriented, information rich world? It is clear that students are not going to use the traditional methods encouraged by the library staff, so what is next?
2. Today’s IT departments are offering support services the students are not using. Why? Are the services relevant? Are the methods of offering the services relevant?
3. Students are using online library resources and are using the services offered by IT, but the student is not connecting the online resources with the available human resources. Should the CAO consider future organizational alignments that address the students use of technology and library resources? If yes, what would the organization's mission and goals state?
4. Is today’s information resource staff relevant? If it is, why are today’s students not connecting with the professionals? What can be done to bridge the gap between services and professionals in the minds of the students?

Throughout the year, we will address these issues on this blog and will suggest directions the CAO follow to ensure the university is meeting student needs.

Thoughts for the Chief Academic Officer in the New Year

Many students and their families have made the commitment to attend your college or university. This is not new, has happened for years, so what’s the difference this time? The first difference is the renewed commitment to the dream that college will make a difference. Past decades have allowed students to attend your institution and leave with a job waiting. Possibly not true this year, what is probably true is:

1. The father or mother (or both) have lost a job in the past two years and are still unemployed. The commitment of sending their child to your school without a safety net is without precedent in past decades.
2. The student at your college or university is working longer hours than students have in the past.
3. The student will likely graduate without a job and will consider extending his/her time at your institution or go directly to graduate school. Scholarships are more important than ever.
4. The information center of a student’s life is a Facebook account and cell phone, probably an iPhone.
5. Search leads a student’s quest for resources in completing assignments, evaluating faculty, even choosing a college. Search must be a relevant experience on your campus. Very few colleges and universities are using the Google search appliance successfully. Students will expect to find information in your library systems, course management systems, and student information systems indexed and available through a search.
6. Mobility is important to the student; students expect to be able to get to faculty course sites, the library, and other specialized applications from any location.
7. Investments in central support organizations are not important to the student; they are looking for help where they are, when they need it. The closer you can locate your student support services (including technology) to the student and faculty, the better.
8. Consumerization continues to dominate the marketplace; students now expect to access information from an iPhone, and the App Store has set a new standard for campus IT departments delivering services. The Kindle and Nook eText readers are gaining momentum, and Apple plans on joining the eText fray in the spring.
9. The CIO must be forward-looking and be prepared for the changes in the campus technology infrastructure and in meeting the mobility requirements of students.
10. A renewed focus must be delivered by the faculty and staff on the needs of the student, not necessarily to change the curriculum, but to ensure the curriculum remains relevant and accessible.

Mobility and the Academic Library

I thought our readers might be interested in this interview with Doyle about the impact of the cloud and mobility on the future of academic library services. Elsevier interviewed Doyle shortly after a presentation; the interview is on page two of Elsevier's current issue of Library Connect. The complete text of the interview is available on the main Library Connect page.

Higher Education IT in Transition

We recently spoke at the Internet 2 conference updating leaders on what was happening with cloud computing in higher education. The scorecard presented was based on a nationwide survey to leadership groups such as Frye Leadership Institute alumni, Internet 2 technology and academic leaders, and to the Quilt Group.

As we were preparing the scorecard we became aware of an EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR) study, Alternative IT Sourcing Strategies, a report focused on how higher education IT departments were utilizing cloud services in 2009. Our own survey findings were similar to those in the ECAR survey. Our top findings:

1. Higher education funding is at one of the lowest points in recent history; many staff are being terminated, increasing fees and tuition are at unprecedented rates, and states are still cutting budgets. It is very interesting that CIOs are avoiding adopting technologies that would significantly lower costs. It is clear CIOs value control of the technology over providing the university significant recurring savings.
   
   
2. The cloud service with the highest adoption is student email. Adoption is low, only 30-35% of higher education institutions are using the service. Survey results show that offerings (for free) from Google or Microsoft are superior to local email support. The response should be concerning to the Chief Academic Officer; hundreds of thousands of dollars are spent on technology that could have been redirected to the academic mission, and academic leaders are not questioning the situation.
   
   
3. Course management systems are the second most cloud-enabled service adopted by universities. The adoption rate is in the single digits, far behind cloud-enabled email. Course management systems in the cloud have significant opportunities to grow for a number of reasons; most important is the faculty will lead the adoption. Many colleges and universities have limited staff to support course management systems resulting in dated systems with limited enhancements. Cloud vendors will offer feature-rich services by leveraging the advantages of crowdsourcing and web 2.0 vendors.
   
   
4. There are several very interesting projects underway, one being OCLC's Web-Scale Management Services. Imagine a comprehensive Web 2.0 integrated library system. If you understand the wealth of content OCLC manages, you are awed by the possibilities of this offering to students and more importantly to research. Keep your eyes on this project.

New ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and IT

Every year I look forward to this ECAR study of undergraduate student technology use. Some of this year's key findings:

• Laptops are owned by 87.8% of respondents
• 51.2% of respondents own internet-capable handheld devices
• Respondents said they spend an average of 21.3 hours per week on the internet
• Only 45% of respondents report that most or all of their instructors use technology effectively
• Good news for librarians: 73.1% of respondents used the college/university library website at least once during the semester

This one is well worth your time. Read the entire study.

New Computing Lab at Indiana University

Previously we have highlighted innovative campus computing labs such as one at Emory University. This week a new lab has opened at Indiana University in their student center facility. Home to a very successful information commons, this lab is on the other side of campus from the commons, and the planners hope that the space will have a similar energy. The space includes the common complement of whiteboards, movable furniture, and desktop machines, but they are also utilizing collaborative media tables and laptop lockers. The laptop lockers are an interesting concept--students can drop off a laptop in a secure locker for charging, then pick up later in the day. Read more about the grand opening of the renovated Indiana Memorial Union Computer Lab.

Evaluating the Customer Support Experience

Customer support organizations often focus on evaluating the contact with the customer once the individual has made an effort to formally contact the organization. This effort is necessary but can lead to faulty conclusions on the customer contact. Each Chief Academic Officer must understand what is necessary to be a great university. Does the CAO want to measure all contacts and evaluate the results of the experience or is there something else the CAO should focus on? Is there an experience that faculty and/or students are experiencing that is going unnoticed or missed completely?

Let’s be clear, understanding the customer contact is very important; large companies exist to assist in this effort and they will not go away. The question I am asking about is not recognized by our traditional customer contact methods. Specifically I think about a number of areas emerging in the social networking environment. The two most obvious are Facebook and Twitter, but there are many other points of contact we often miss evaluating because of the difficulty. Areas would include friends, social contacts, peers at work, and business contacts. All the above could influence our position on what we decide to do in our university life. The question is: is it worth knowing the value of the early contacts in our everyday university decision making?

My thoughts are starting to focus on early contacts to determine what an effective customer experience means. In the era of instant contact offered by Facebook and Twitter, we cannot ignore the impression faculty and students are forming about the university experience. These new communications tools highlight the thoughts individuals have prior to making a formal contact with an organization. The importance of the two services are not going unnoticed by the consumer industry; the large corporations are mining the data online to catch any disinterest or frustration with a brand. Do universities need to recognize this new phenomena to improve its faculty and student experience? Today universities are spending significant time and money to retain students and are making equal investments to retain the best faculty.

I am confident that traditional methods of measuring customer service only recognize 30% of the overall faculty and student experience. Often by the time a faculty or student makes formal contact with the university, the customer has already formed a lasting impression. To ensure retention programs work, universities must identify methods of recognizing the first touches and ensure they are positive. What should a university do to ensure this happens? The first steps are to go where the faculty and students are…could be the office, could be the traditional meeting places, and often it will be where they gather with friends to socialize. The goal is to get to the faculty and students early and often to ensure we understand what is important and we implement programs that ensure our retention efforts are successful.

Academic Computing Support

The Chief Academic Officer will look at all areas of the university to restructure costs from the administrative functions of the university. One of the first areas to be evaluated for restructuring will be the information technology support areas. Faculty and students are getting tired of having to go to so many places to resolve an issue. Support organizations will need to rationalize themselves. Two events will ensure the evaluation happens in the near future: the first has been discussed in prior posts, the state of the economic downturn for the foreseeable future. The second event will be the influence of cloud computing on functional areas. Legacy practices have allowed IT to request and be allowed to oversee and set the rules for all areas of technology on a university campus. Too often this has allowed support practices to focus on what is expedient for IT rather than the core mission of teaching, research, and service.

The current deployment of applications from off campus cloud computing vendors, known as Software as a Service (SaaS), will allow faculty and students to experience personalized technology support. Legacy practices of IT departments will be challenged by relevant and flexible applications from off campus. Faculty and students will be quick to point out the off campus applications, and these will often cost the university less than legacy campus applications. The probable result will be the CIO meeting the deans to determine the future direction of computing.

The fragmentation of service will highlight the need to restructure technology support on campus. Major SaaS providers will offer point product support, and the campus will continue to support central campus applications (ERP). The university community will require transparent support across all technology. Support might find itself being offered in one of the following scenarios:

1. A likely area to emerge as the technology support area is the library. Why? The primary reason is the library administration has transformed from a campus-based resource to a largely virtual resource successfully. Additionally, the library has introduced the Information Commons that has been a hit, widely received by the students and faculty. Further, the library has been able to transform to the digital world without losing the trust of the faculty. The academic community would welcome one-stop technology and research support located close to the college. The major issue will be if the library is willing to change its traditional culture to become the “information resource” for the academic community.
   
   
2. Another option would be for support to remain in IT. IT will need to create innovative and transparent relationships with the faculty and students to establish a transparent support organization in the minds of the academic community. IT has the skills to be very successful in offering support; the issue is credibility. Many faculty and staff feel that IT has not made the successful transition to the digital world and often suggest IT is a better gatekeeper than a customer service advocate.
   
   
3. The dark horse for IT support on campus would be an outsourced vendor. A number of large organizations have outsourced the customer support function to one of the large service providers. It is clear that an outsourced customer support contract would provide a university with a large number of scenarios that would meet the different needs of individual colleges. An outsourced vendor with clear service level agreements would ensure a defined level of service is achieved. The greatest difficulty with an outsourced relationship will be to get buy-in from all vested user communities. I fully expect individual colleges to establish outsourced vendor relationships and if successful could become the central model of support.

The Computer Lab of the Future

Last month I had the opportunity to visit the Cox Computing Center at Emory University. I write about learning spaces frequently here and on my own blog, and I have to say, the Cox Center is one of the coolest spaces I've seen yet. Even in the middle of summer, walking into the space I felt a definite buzz of activity. The jazz playing in the background probably helped, but I was still impressed to see so many students working and milling around on what should have been a quiet day. During the regular semester, they average around 1500-1800 visitors a day, and I can certainly see why.

One of the first things my colleagues pointed out was the relative lack of computers in the space. When we think "computer lab," many of us still think of elbow-to-elbow desktops in soldierly rows under the florescents. While I believe computer labs will be needed for quite some time to come, I really appreciate the minimum of seven linear feet between machines in this lab, not to mention the movable furniture and whiteboards. The space is extremely laptop-friendly, with many students opting to bring their own or to check one out from the service desk.

I kept feeling like this was an information commons, just without any library involvement. The place is such a hot spot during the school year, they added bean bags, ottomans, and pillows for extra seating, which further contribute to the vibe that this is truly a student space. The lighting is low, food is allowed, conversation and collaboration are encouraged. The student assistants at the desk were friendly and helpful and quite approachable. The furnishings, largely Herman Miller and Steelcase, give the place the perfect level of fun and funky and are still extremely functional.

This is one of several lab/learning spaces I will profile here in the future. I encourage you to visit the Cox Computing Center as my pictures really don't capture the feel of this energetic space.

Translational Technologies on the Academic Front

Historically, academic computing at universities has basked in the shadow of academic freedom. This implies that issues related to supporting the faculty and student has been open to an unstructured environment. It is often possible to find multiple technologies deployed to support a single campus-wide need...an example would be course management systems like Blackboard or Moodle. Often you will find multiple course management systems at a university. The diversity has led to innovation that is often not evident in other areas of the campus IT department. Going forward it appears the instructional areas of information technology will need to become standardized. This does not mean the innovation will be absent, but does imply local control will possibly give way to “cloud applications.” I predict the course management vendors will begin to migrate applications to the “cloud” to ensure a place in the marketplace. I would not be surprised to see Microsoft to offer a course management system to compliment the “Live” services it is promoting to the higher education world. I would expect the other leading vendors to respond aggressively. Do not be surprised to find you will have alternatives to campus-based solutions by 2010.

The good news is the cloud solutions will remove the many “religious wars” that take place today on whose application is the best and focus attention on developing course content. The migration to the cloud will also encourage many campus IT departments to address authentication and authorization using directory federation. Simply put, campus IT staff will be responsible for ensuring its student and faculty are legitimate, and the course management vendor will be able to offer virtual meeting services between higher education institutions. I have high expectations that this service will offer faculty solutions that will enhance their course materials at a very reasonable cost the university. This concept has been maturing in the social networking world and will be easily portable to the academic community.

Next, consumerization of IT will influence campus technology solutions in instructional computing. Campus IT will have to recognize its ability to “tell” users what to use to login is limited. The user will vote with their pocketbook on what device they want to use to access campus applications, some will use a laptop, others will want to use an iPhone, and many will want to use the computer in the home or office. Bottom line is the campus IT department will need to know what the end-user is using and ensure the campus applications will work with that device. The cloud vendors will offer the faculty and students this flexibility. We can be sure the device of choice is going to become increasingly mobile. Over the next 24 months faculty and students are going to migrate to the “smartphone” or “netbook.” The campus IT support organization will need to react to the needs of the user community. Good news is the faculty or student is going to pay for the mobile device, the bad news is the campus must be nimble and able to react to the needs of its community.

The changes coming to instructional computing will be positive to the university. Campus IT departments that are customer embracing will have little difficulty adapting to the emerging environment. Universities that resist the change will find the faculty and students will become frustrated and will use resources offered off campus when possible. The truth is the user community will be strongly influencing IT’s decision and that is good.