New Standards for Student and Faculty Support

Yesterday’s support for students at universities was departmentally focused; information was highly segmented allowing the communication to become fragmented and often ineffective. Today’s students are quickly becoming frustrated with this type of structure and expect the environment to be more student-centered. You might wonder what I mean by this; it is common for today’s students to go to one location to get resolutions to complex issues throughout their high school careers. High schools are offering comprehensive access to online academic resources, have coordinated student services, and have encouraged collaboration. One can just count the number of smartboards in high schools or review the online student portals offered to find the difference between the student experience in high schools and in universities. Graduation from high school results in the student entering a different support environment that is based on business practices founded in the past decade.

Today's university support services are in need of change. Some examples:

1. A student must call multiple customer support centers to get help on a single issue, such as getting support for an online class. It is not uncommon for the student to be expected to call three areas looking for that support: the Information Technology department, the teaching-learning support center, and the academic department.
2. The library and the teaching-learning center support the faculty member in offering online courses. The student is often expected to know what services each group offers to call the right department.
3. Central Information Technology departments and academic departments offer support services, many times supporting different systems (email, course management systems, collaboration systems). The result is a student being expected to learn all the systems offered by any department.

To correct this, the Chief Academic Officer must establish a standard for faculty and student support. This effort is similar to the centralization of IT ten years ago and for the same reasons: efficient and effective customer services. Today’s technology-experienced students and their parents are demanding a support organization that makes sense. The university that figures out how Apple and Best Buy can satisfy the masses will be able to grow and expand despite declining budgets.

What should be the Chief Academic Officer’s first steps to determine if the university is providing relevant services and support to students and faculty?

1. The university needs to contract with an independent customer service consultant that uses a formal methodology to analyze if the student and faculty services are relevant. The methodology should also provide the CAO with facts on the quality of support being offered. It is clear higher education offers significant support; it is not clear that the faculty or students consider the support relevant in today’s environment. A formal analysis can take the emotion out of the services and support issue and provide a foundation for change.
2. Count the number of groups that offer students and faculty support and attempt to itemize what each support organization is offering. An organization that has 2-3 locations to contact to get support is questionable; any more than three is unreasonable.
3. Spend personal time with students and faculty, determine what is really happening and how well the library, Information Technology, and teaching-learning center are meeting the needs of each group. Focus groups suggest the students and faculty opinions are much different than the leadership of the support organizations.
4. Look at organizations like Google, Apple, Best Buy, and Target and ask yourself what they are doing to be so successful in the eyes of the customer.

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.

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.

Integrating Technology Skills into the Curriculum

Librarians like myself spend considerable effort working with faculty to build information literacy skills into the curriculum. While many assume that finding information is becoming easier all the time (and in some cases, it is), critical evaluation of information resources is now an essential skill for coursework, the workplace, and life in general. Whether finding scholarly resources for a paper or looking for reliable information for a personal need (health or finance, for example), evaluating information is an everyday occurrence.

In my mind, the same goes for technology skills. With Gen Y, we assume that because these students grew up with the internet and are great at texting on mobile phones, they must have all of the technology skills they need. From what I observe in our information commons, this is not the case. We frequently see students who need basic assistance with the Office suite, particularly Excel and PowerPoint. What troubles me more though are the quality of their PowerPoint presentations (too many bullet points, too many cutesy clip art images, too much animation). Where will they learn to create a visually appealing, interesting, and informative presentation? If you had to consider important workplace skills, this would be near the top of the list. Likewise so would be formatting a spreadsheet to prove your case, conveying information on a memo so that it is easily read and persuasive, and so forth.

In addition to spreadsheets and presentations and those things that have long been everyday to you and me, how are we preparing students to use web 2.0 tools? I am particularly thinking of using them for self-promotion to land a job. With today's challenging economy, students should explore every possible avenue toward getting a job. From LinkedIn profiles to the advantages of blogging or at least developing a personal, professional web presence, I worry that today's students are not getting any of this in our curriculum. You and I may twitter; our students may, too, but do they consider how it might help them professionally?

Chief Academic Officers, you need to consider how building technology skills fits into the general education curriculum.

Interesting Student Technologies in 2009

2009 will be a challenging year for universities as campus needs, budgets, and technologies all struggle for our attention. Some key student needs/expectations in 2009:

1. iPhone is the real winner. The iPhone will challenge university IT departments to offer students information in a new user interface. IT departments must develop new applications to allow students to use student information systems and course management systems on mobile devices, particularly the iPhone. Facebook sets a high standard on the iPhone interface that must be met by IT departments.

2. Online course response systems are driving students crazy. Students are requesting university IT departments standardize on a single course response clicker. Currently faculty members are establishing contracts with textbook publishers to use proprietary clickers. Students will demand a single standard clicker for all classes. Several universities have developed course response software for cell phones, and it would be wonderful if Turning Point would establish an iPhone application.

3. Students want universities to develop team study environments. Libraries have taken the lead here with the popular information commons model. Libraries that developed information commons are enjoying success and are finding record numbers of students visiting. The information commons that are most successful are those which are partnerships of multiple campus units, such as libraries, IT, and teaching/learning centers. A good source of information about the commons environment is Stacey Greenwell’s blog, The Uncommon Commons.

4. Facebook is the meeting place for college students. Universities that understand this and successfully integrate Facebook with campus systems will be relevant. Information Technology departments that ignore social networking will be ignored by students.

5. Google and Microsoft have developed very good collaborative tools for the university marketplace. Collaborative learning is very popular with high school and college students, and students have already adopted many free online collaborative tools. University IT departments must find ways to support both Microsoft and Google tools in their customer support centers.

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.

Evolving Customer Support Model

A significant change we are already seeing, and we expect will become more widespread is that IT support will not necessarily be based in IT but at the point of need. One emerging model to support this found at many research universities is the Information/Learning Commons which typically combines multiple library, technology, writing, and other instructional support services in one convenient, student-friendly location. The kind of assistance offered here includes but moves beyond resetting of passwords and other basic functions. Offering technology assistance from the point of learning can strengthen the connection between relevant technology tools and academic tasks. It is evident that both IT and the library, as well as other support units, must continue to evolve in order to remain relevant. The Information/Learning Commons encourages a blending of strengths of the organizations which makes support much more successful.

While I write about Information Commons-related issues on my blog, The Uncommon Commons, I will be discussing the commons here as it relates to technology support. Over the last year our campus has expanded the commons concept beyond the library and into the campus computer labs. We'll discuss that in more detail, as well as future plans and other changes that have made support more seamless for students and faculty.