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.

One in Five Internet Users Uses Twitter

Pew has just released a report indicating that 19.1% of Internet users are now participating on Twitter or another status update service. 33% of Twitter users are under 30. The more internet-connected devices one owns, the more likely they are to Twitter; 39% of respondents with four or more devices are Twitter users.

Read the full Pew Report on Twitter and Status Updating.

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.

Cloud Computing Survey

For those at higher education institutions who work with cloud-based collaboration or social networking tools, please consider completing this survey. We are working on a presentation about cloud-based tools and are looking for examples and experiences from other institutions. As part of the presentation, we are creating a summary "scorecard" which will highlight the top twenty campus collaboration tools as well as the top twenty offerings from vendors.

If the survey doesn't apply to you, please consider sharing it with others who might have an interest. Thank you!

What's Possible with Broadband Stimulus Funding

Just a week away from the first deadline for the responses on the broadband stimulus bill--what was the response from your university or college? I do not think the response to the opportunity is as important as why did you not respond. I do not mean to put you on the edge of your seat, Provost or President, but the culture of the university is becoming clear as the time draws to a close. I do not know about other states (that’s not quite true), but I am very aware of what happened at home. It appears that with almost two billion dollars at stake there are few if any responses ready to go, lots of reasons given, but the truth is we had a difficult time trying to do anything other than the norm for a large university.

A small recap...the broadband stimulus bill was aimed at getting broadband services to the unserved or underserved areas of each state. Bottom line, get broadband to those who do not have the service today. What I observed from most large universities was using the stimulus funds to improve and enhance the status quo, meaning improving our own university infrastructure or regional networks. I would have been excited to find universities reaching out to be change agents for areas of the states that do not enjoy high-speed access to the internet. I guess we should not have been surprised at the results. I look forward to the awards that result from the initial proposals. Will RUSS and NTIA make awards on our best efforts to move ourselves ahead or will the awards be given to organizations reaching out to the remote areas of each state?

I, like most others, hope the second round of grant proposals due next month will provide an opportunity for large research universities to form partnerships with groups that could use our assistance. I envision there are a number of opportunities in health care, saving energy, and education. I am beginning to hope the awards from the first round of grants and the rules for the second round of grants make it clear that all universities and colleges within a state must form partnerships that break down traditional political issues and demand creative solutions to problems that all states are experiencing. Only time and leadership will reveal if I get my wish.

The broadband stimulus grants will be debated for years to come, but they do provide our leaders with the opportunity to change. We will continue to work tirelessly to improve our own universities, or we will reach out and create an infrastructure that would allow our legislatures to improve the overall efficiency of higher education. Without a doubt in three years and 7.2 billion dollars, we will have a different landscape. The fruits of the investment are not as clear. During the same time period we will be experiencing transformational technologies across our campuses. No longer will we have e the ability to maintain an information technology leadership with large capital investments on our own campus. Cloud computing will level the difference between who can or cannot afford complex comprehensive systems. Colleges and universities will be able to enter the IT arena with little more than a good campus network and desktop systems. The need for systems staffs, large pools of application programmers, and data centers will diminish over time.

Now is the time to take advantage of the changing technology infrastructure requirements and team with others statewide to create world-class solutions to solve today’s problems. Just think, if your staff can grasp this vision soon enough to submit a grant, you might be able to get significant assistance along the way. Found it interesting there was an article in today’s New York Times by the founder of Siebel, Tom Siebel, asking the question about the importance of IT in the years ahead. This reminds me of the recent book by Nicholas Carr, The Big Switch.

Back to School in the New Technology Landscape

This fall will introduce a new era of computing to the Chief Academic Officer, one shaped by consumer choice rather than the mandated standards of the university. First, each university must determine its response to the rapid adoption of applications available for smartphones . The iPhone has reformed the landscape of customer expectation through what's possible with applications. The student once happy with out-of-the-box student systems has been exposed to the 65,000+ applications available in the App Store and wants a portfolio of choices that complement his/her lifestyle.

The next product to impact the university technology landscape is the Amazon Kindle, the first highly successful eBook reader. A number of universities are reviewing how the Kindle fits into their environment. Students are vocal about the increasing cost of tuition and textbooks. The extended recession with high unemployment is simply fuel to the fire. University administrators are questioning the traditional methods of acquiring textbooks and are looking at partnerships with publishers. The transition to e-textbooks will be much easier to accomplish technically than it will be able to accomplish politically with the faculty.

The next technology to watch this fall is the cloud offerings from Google and Microsoft. Until a month ago, Google was the outright leader in this area. Google had experienced great success with Google mail (gmail), Google Apps (word processing), Google talk (IM and Voice) and Android (smartphone OS). In July, Microsoft answered Google with Microsoft Office 2010. The new offering has two components: the first is the traditional upgrade to Microsoft Office that has happened every three years for the past 15 years. The more exciting announcement was the offering of Microsoft Office 2010 online for free. We have all been aware of Microsoft Live services available online for the past three years and have considered the product equal to Google Apps. The real difference maker with Microsoft Office 2010 is it will blend the traditional desktop with cloud computing transparently. Microsoft will have an advantage in building on the skill base of millions of students who have used its traditional office products throughout their existence. Microsoft’s vision of cloud computing will have several real advantages and was good enough to level the competitive playing field with Google.

So what do you and your CIO do for the fall with limited budgets—that is the real question. The most important thing you should expect out of your CIO is a two-year vision on where he/she is taking your university. The vision must be comprehensive and include the needs of the faculty and students. You must see a clear road map for commitment to Google or Microsoft. The plan must address the steps your university is planning to take with cloud computing and the partnerships that will make the transition possible. Students will demand that your university address mobility and will expect a response to applications that will make their university experience relevant. Don’t forget to include all the traditional IT expenses that seem to be growing rapidly.

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.

The Changing IT Organization in Higher Education

Presidents and Provosts must continue to pay attention to the status of information technology on other campuses. Watching states like New York, California, North Carolina, Ohio, Michigan, and Florida struggle with funding is requiring academic leaders to reevaluate the usefulness of all the support organizations on campus and to revalidate earlier decisions on how to provide service functions campus-wide. I believe the only communities that will continue without significant change are teaching, library functions (information access), and research. I am certain all traditional administrative functions will be reviewed to ensure their contribution is enhancing the core mission of the University.

It is clear that the funding problems will not abate quickly and that state legislatures are looking for methods to minimize traditional cost. A large number of organizations are looking at outsourcing general services. At one time Information Technology was immune from consideration for outsourcing, but no longer. Two very large and different higher education organizations have successfully outsourced Information Technology: Arizona State University and the Kentucky Community and Technical Colleges. All Presidents and Provosts should become familiar with the two models of outsourcing used. Arizona State is a very large traditional university that has outsourced administrative applications and all campus email systems. Arizona State’s 62,000 students legitimize the upcoming “cloud computing” model works. Kentucky’s Community and Technical College system is located statewide with 67 campuses. KCTCS has over 90,000 students at the different campuses and have outsourced the entire IT function, including administrative systems, networking, telephones, course management systems, email, and video systems. Combine the examples with the efforts of state legislatures to control or lower the cost of higher education, and the day of accountability is here for the universities’ Information Technology organizations.

The pressure to change will only mount as the economic problems refuse to go away and legislatures refuse to change revenue producing practices (taxes) of the past. Information Technology in higher education is inefficient and has redundancy organization-wide. Further, all innovation that appears relevant to today’s faculty and students seems to be coming from technology savvy companies such as Google, Apple, and Microsoft. As you look at the large technology companies serving higher education, you see large investments being made in cloud computing: just look at the recent investments made by Oracle, IBM, PeopleSoft, Google, and Microsoft. If the providers are making 100 million dollar investments in changing the corporate methods of selling to user communities, should universities undertake a thorough review of practices in deploying technology on campus? I suspect Arizona State and Kentucky have initiated a trend IT cannot avoid, only delay.

Senior Academic Officers must look at the university organizational structure and determine what to do with the technology organization. The next few posts will provide several models that should be considered.