Putting Faculty First

The learning management system world might be changing soon with the announcement of Open Class from Pearson. Pearson introduced Open Class at Educause 2011, the interesting fact is the learning management system is focused on faculty. Previously universities were required to make a university wide commitment to an enterpris system, one size fits all. Open Class is a cloud alternative that allows adoption by individual professors. Each professor can customize the learning management system to fit their unique requirements. Best of all, the system is free and the IT department does not have to buy servers or hire administrators. An early view and buzz suggests Open Class will be a strong competitor to Blackboard and others.

Another interesting fact is Pearson has integrated Open Class with Google Apps. Imagine a student logging on to their Google account to access their course materials, very interesting. Now imagine a student wants to work on an assignment with a peer, they make IM contact and decide to use Google Docs to complete their work. If they need to talk Google + is available.

Over 500 universities are testing Open Class. Will faculty use the new learning management system? Time will tell.....

Additional thoughts by Michael Feldstein on his e-Literate blog. Feldstein's review give faculty insight on the similarities and differences between Blackboard and Pearson's learning management systems.

A man who made a difference - Steve Jobs

Steve Jobs taught the world to be passionate, to envision a different future and to listen to an inner-calling. Steve Jobs is described by many as the best CEO in the last 50 years, I agree. Steve Jobs looked into the future 30 years ago and recognized technology could revolutionize an individuals life while other technology companies focused on corporations. His early ideas resulted in offering an alternative to the PC, later he change the music industry and recently he inspired the tablet. Can you imagine a world without his touch, I can't. He taught me to be passionate about my beliefs and to be willing to take a risk. Thank-you Steve Jobs.

Educational Technology

The adoption of Web 2.0 technologies is transforming the use of Educational Technology in the classroom. The personal purchase of tablets and smart phones from Apple and Google provide faculty a new medium to deliver course materials. Today's student is able to access university resources anytime, from anywhere. Today's technology allows students to work on a learning management systems, participate in a virtual classrooms or watch a lecture online. The innovative professor is able to offer course information 24/7 365 days a year.

The next era of technology to emerge is HTML5 web sites, the technology offers a university the option of creating a single web site that presents the same information to all mobile devices without having to create a unique client for each cell phone. Deploying this technology with a learning management or library system will be exciting and provide students with a rich academic resource. Imagine a text book that has interactive simulation or video rich demonstrations of a concept.

Tablets and smart phones are becoming less expensive and data plans can be purchased for twenty dollars a month. A recent add in the paper allows a student to purchase a smartphone for $1.00 with a two year commitment. Apple's announcement of the 4GS iPhone lowered the cost of a 3GS to "free" with a similar commitment. The total cost for the phone and the data plan is less than $50.00 a month, similar to the cost of only a phone two years ago.
Electronic textbook vendors are offering multiple options to keep the cost of textbooks low. Today the student has the option of monthly or semester rental, or the option to purchase a text book. A low cost tablet like the Amazon Fire offers students an attractive new option in acquiring textbooks.

Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps are available to students. A student is able to access traditional desktop applications in the "cloud" from any mobile device. Collaboration and virtual access changes the way students will work on projects. The purchase of Skype by Microsoft and the introduction of Google+ to add voice and video to enrich the collaboration experience is exciting.

The responsibility of universities today is to work with faculty to ensure they are aware of the resources available to use with their courses. A second responsibility is to work with departmental IT staff to ensure they have the skills to assist faculty implementing the technologies. The next few years will be transformational for students.

Amazon Fire

Amazon released a new tablet called the "Amazon Fire". The new tablet introduces a new era by combining a low cost mobile consumer device with online access to one of the largest retailers today. The intrigue of the of the "Amazon Fire" for higher education is mobility, textbooks and entertainment. Amazon is the vendor of choice by university students for textbook purchases, offering both digital and print versions. The "Fire" will provide Amazon a solution to offer to college students textbooks at a lower cost The company will be able to offer the student a mobile device that provides one stop shopping for all textbook requirements and provide access to unlimited entertainment on is popular "Amazon Prime" video services. Combining this with Amazon's cloud music platform is a powerful Treo for today's student.

An innovative university might see the "Amazon Fire" as a one-stop-shop for student textbook requirements. Amazon has proven with it's Prime service it understands how to be successful selling entertainment to the masses for a low cost and be profitable. A university could team with Amazon to create a subscription model for student textbooks, imagine signing up for a fixed monthly cost for all your textbook requirements. Amazon has the resources to change the marketplace.

Universities have invested in wireless technologies to create a mobile friendly environment. Many students already use services like Hulu and iTunes to access entertainment. Providing a total solution for textbooks, music and entertainment is a possible hit for today's student. Imagine everything available, anytime and everywhere at a low cost.

Consumerization

A Provost watching students use technology on a university campus today recognizes consumerization rules technology adoption. If you doubt this I suggest you count the number of smartphones, tablets, and laptops owned by your students. Students are impressed when the college enterprise systems are friendly with mobile devices and frustrated when the library, class registration, email, and learning management systems only work with computers. Students' purchase of mobile devices have relieved the college of the need to invest in student computers. The result is a CAO should consider reinvesting in mobile-enabling enterprise applications. The forward thinking IT departments have developed a roadmap for the campus and have started the necessary changes. The New York Times had a story on this topic titled "More Offices Let Workers Choose Their Own Devices" in the September 23, 2011 edition.

Interesting E-Text News

Quoted from Indiana University's e-texts at IU news page:

Indiana University has announced eText agreements with the following publishers: John Wiley & Sons, Bedford Freeman & Worth Publishing Group, W.W. Norton, and Flat World Knowledge, along with Courseload, the provider of the eText eReader software. These agreements will result in lower cost options for eTexts that save students money on required course materials and provide new tools for teaching and learning. The IU agreements evolved from two years of pilot testing and substantial input from students, faculty, textbook publishers, and authors. For more information see http://ovpitnews.iu.edu/news/page/normal/19482.html.

Since 2009, IU's objectives around eTexts have been to:

1. Substantially drive down the cost of digital educational resources (eTexts) for students
2. Enable access to high quality educational resources (eTexts) -- in both digital and hardcopy formats -- that are valued by faculty and students
3. Enable new tools for teaching and learning (e.g., social annotation, ease of access)
4. Shape the terms of eTexts models to favor the interests of IU students and authors

The Frequently Asked Questions provides more details on IU's evolving pilot and trial studies.

Wake up Blog

Translational Technologies is reborn. The last year has been busy with job responsibilities and a new doctoral program. The future of the blog will be Provost-focused academic emerging technology suggestions, educational technology, and leadership. Look forward to posts each week. Prepare for brisk discounting of tablets this fall followed by a renewed interest in e-texts.

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.

Two Cloud Reports

Two reports of interest have been issued recently: the first is Shaping the Higher Education Cloud and the second is The Future of cloud Computing. The chief academic officer will find both reports informative and should assist in future planning efforts.

The first report, Shaping the Higher Education Cloud, is a joint report from EDUCAUSE and NACUBO. The report provides the findings from a meeting held earlier this year in Tempe, Arizona attended by CIOs from many colleges and universities. The outcome of the meeting was a list of issues each campus must address prior to implementing cloud computing services; the topics are all the familiar ones led by security and content location. The CAO needs to be aware of the issues that are coming from a single voice on campus, Information Technology. Another report needs to be developed from a faculty and/or student perspective. The right plan for a campus will always exist between the early adopters and the departments being asked to change. IT has always been eager to ask colleges to change but have been reluctant to follow that advice with emerging cloud computing technologies.

The second report is from the Pew Research Center, The Future of Cloud Computing. The theme of the report is two emerging technologies will impact higher education by 2020. The first is change will be future access to university IT resources will be with a mobile device. The success of the Apple’s iPhone and Google’s Android are defining the future requirements of our students. The second change will be cloud computing. Microsoft and Google have established a new model for campus IT departments and have shown many CAOs that the University can save money using the cloud. Recently the State of Kentucky moved 700,000 students and teachers to Microsoft mail and saved millions of dollars. There are many examples of Universities implementing Google’s mail solution and experiencing similar savings. The future will be defined by many of today’s university IT application providers moving their software to the cloud and sell the application to the university on a software as a service (SaaS) platform. What this means with regard to students, faculty and staff has yet to be imagined. The report is very clear the change is coming, and universities need to be prepared.

Relevant Actions for the Next 18 Months

Higher education leaders must ask themselves the age-old question: will today’s technology change the university experience? We predict some elements of legacy practices will survive to ensure existing good experiences continue, but overall higher education must change business processes to remain affordable.

To achieve this goal, the Chief Academic Officer must wisely choose what remains and what changes. Faculty will be faculty and the migration to a technology-enriched learning experience should happen in an orderly manner. Further, technology will offer the faculty member productivity enhancements that will be embraced and adopted. Faculty adoption will be gradual and manageable.

Student adoption will be different; today’s student will expect an online world, a rich web experience, instant access, and a user-friendly experience. The day of limited university email systems, dated library systems and many one-off vertical applications is over and judged wanting by the students. A recent dialogue with student leaders suggested that students would believe the university cares when it begins to address the above issues. The question for the CAO is how relevant is the student's request to adopt emerging Web 2.0 technologies.

What relevant and affordable actions can be completed in the next 18 months?

Several of the suggestions are similar to earlier suggestions but are worth repeating:

1. Software portfolios must be rationalized. The CIO and Deans need to create a strategy of technology support that makes sense and is not duplicative. A good start would be single sign on to all core systems, a simple but powerful student system for registration, a user-friendly library system, and student -centered customer support. The change suggested does not require the university to change applications. Implementing many of the above ideas will save the university real dollars.
2. The CAO, Deans, and CIO must agree to work together to improve the adoption of technology by faculty and students. Students frustration with multiple support organizations and multiple applications is growing and students are beginning to understand their tuition dollars are paying for inefficiencies that are frustrating. Further, the university cannot afford to offer duplicative services without value being added.
3. The university should look at outsourcing its email. Recent research suggests only 25% of universities are using cloud services from Google or Microsoft. The cost for providing cloud based email for all students, faculty and staff is zero!!!!! Many universities are spending thousands of dollars annually to offer an inferior campus based service and hiding behind security or compliance rumors that are false. Both the Google and Microsoft solution far exceeds what universities are offering locally on campus.
4. Google search is a verb, students know and understand its value and use it daily. Faculty and administrators must ask how the existence of Google Books, Scholar, and Search available at no cost could enhance the student learning experience.
5. Students are familiar with Rate My Professor, myedu.com and Wikipedia and have incorporated them into their university experience. University supported applications will be evaluated against what is available on the Web and the student will expect the experience to be equally rich.
6. Facebook is central to the social life of the students. The CAO must understand how Facebook will change the student life experience and incorporate it into the technology plans of the university.

The above changes will not require a significant financial investment by the university. The above changes will require organizational changes and coordination in offering technology services. The above changes could be made in less than a year and result in a savings of thousands of dollars annually.