EDUCAUSE | Presented at EDUCAUSE Annual Conferences and Higher Education Transformation

The Role of Information Technology in an Age of Access, Affordability, and Accountability

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:34 -0500

Approximately a year ago, the Commission on the Future of Higher Education formed by U.S. Secretary of Education Margaret Spellings issued its report, A Test of Leadership: Charting the Future of U.S. Higher Education, which called for dramatic improvement in the national higher education system. Focusing on issues of access, affordability, quality, and accountability, the report outlined significant shortcomings and recommended sweeping changes. Our panelists, all members of the commission, will address issues raised in the report and the role technology can play in support of the recommendations.

The Tower of Google

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:42 -0500

Legend tells us that when humans attempted to scale the heavens by building the Tower of Babel, their language became so confounded they could no longer understand each other. Today, presidents, provosts, professors, parents, prospective students, and IT professionals speak different languages about technology. Each has different hopes--and fears--about technology's interaction with teaching and learning. How can we develop the skills needed to translate among these constituencies?

Uncovering the Science in Computer Science: Challenges for the 21st Century

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:42 -0500

Progress on the hardware side of computer engineering has been impressive, but software has lagged behind. Security continues to be troublesome at the operating system level, network level, and various application levels in computer networks. Some collections of computers (called "bots" or "bot armies") are used in abusive ways to send spam by launching distributed denial-of-service attacks. We may not be configuring the hardware of our basic computing platforms to assist in improving security. Where should we be spending time, money, and brainpower to significantly enhance our ability to provide deeper roots for computer, system, and network designs for the future?

An Eye to the Future with a Brief Look Back at the Past

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:26 -0600

As we look forward and plan for the future, it is useful to review where we have been, to highlight some of the processes and decisions in the higher education IT community that have worked well, and to identify missed opportunities and areas where we could have done a better job. The focus will be on the challenges we face going forward.

Designs for Learning to Meet 21st Century Expectations

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:26 -0600

Colleges and universities today educate a large, diverse population of students, foster scholarship in new areas, and offer opportunities in new settings and formats, including online. Yet many facets of higher education have remained relatively untouched, sometimes to our detriment. To meet 21st century needs, leaders inside and outside of higher education recognized that our missions and practices need reinvigoration. Perhaps consensus can be reached about new expectations for students, the curricula, and given its infusion into society, technology. This plenary session will engage the audience in dialogue about how we can help reinvigorate higher education.

Dynamic Stability

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:26 -0600

Technology is a liberating force that helps American universities continually reconceptualize their environments of learning, discovery, and transaction. While we are increasingly invigorated by the exploding opportunities for innovation, we are also challenged by the need to remain steadfast in our unalterable core values.

Rewind to Fast Forward

drupal — Tue, 01 Nov 2005 12:34:26 -0600

To move forward, it helps to look at past events to get perspective on future events. In this session, an IT leader will journey nostalgically into the past and trace its influence on current issues, identifying clues to predict future directions for higher education IT.
WINNER: 2005 EDUCAUSE Award for Excellence in Leadership. Award sponsored by SunGard SCT, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner.

Glenn Ricart - Diversity Hastens the Multiversity

drupal — Tue, 30 Nov 2004 16:07:19 -0600

Glenn Ricart, Director of the Computer Science Center at the University of Maryland/College Park (Currently on sabbatical and working as Program Manager, Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA)), will offer a vision of how technology may change the fundamental character of higher education, in "Diversity Hastens the Multiversity."

"Will faculty and students find digital classrooms with digital hyper-textbooks and digital libraries a more conducive environment for education? The most innovative uses of information technology in our institutions, if widely adopted, may tend to encourage groups of higher education institutions to work much more closely with each other. In time, these groups will diminish institutional identity and encourage the formation of new multiversities."

Barry Munitz, President and CEO of the J. Paul Getty Trust, Speaking at the EDUCAUSE '99 General Session.

drupal — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 16:25:43 -0500

Higher education is moving from a cottage industry monopoly to a competitive knowledge industry, with new players and new rules. This session will address the roles of specialization and niche marketing in the emerging knowledge industry, and the unbundling of traditional institutional functions that must accompany them. Information technology is a critical strategic asset for competing in this new environment, but not the only one. A checklist of institutional survival strategies, drawn from the academic, corporate, and non-profit sectors, will form part of this discussion.

Rethinking the Land Grant University for the Digital Age

drupal — Tue, 21 Sep 2004 17:00:57 -0500

The twentieth century has seen research and preparation of professionals at land grant universities as significant factors in making American agriculture and industry flourish. The dawn of the new century sees a different America: a larger, more diverse, complex, and predominantly urban society; new industries requiring a more highly skilled and educated workforce than before; new demands on elementary and secondary as well as higher education. Land grant research universities have the opportunity and the obligation to create a new vision of service to the nation--a vision whose implementation will be built upon computer-based technologies and the Internet.