EDUCAUSE | Strategic Planning, IT

The “Developing Country” Model of Information Technology

ckeller — Thu, 28 Aug 2008 11:44:39 -0500

The authors discusses the struggle to keep a school's technology up to date and the ability to finance it without breaking the bank.

Educating Future IT Leaders in Portfolio Management

drupal — Fri, 30 May 2008 12:34:57 -0500

Those of us in IT organizations have limited resources and a plethora of requests. How do we objectively determine which projects or systems should move forward and which ones must wait? How can we involve others in the decision-making process, and how do we logically explain the result? Are there tools that can help us reach the best decision?

A Changing Profile

elilly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 12:48:15 -0500

The new infusion of new technologies is strongly impacting higher education. Entering students expect high levels of IT support. It is challenging to predict future technologies and have the time to plan for it. Higher education is becoming more customer-driven.

Creating a Five-Minute Conversation About Cyberinfrastructure

elilly — Mon, 14 Apr 2008 11:28:42 -0500

Thoughtful consideration of the issues relevant to cyberinfrastructure in higher education will help you pull out key points to discuss with specific audiences

Centrally Coordinated/Locally Directed: An Innovative IT Management Model for Decentralized Institutions

drupal — Fri, 04 Apr 2008 12:00:24 -0500

Cal State East Bay has designed and implemented an innovative IT management and service delivery model in collaboration with the deans, vice presidents, the IT advisory committee, and the academic senate. This process included yearlong pilots for two colleges and one administrative division. IT@CSUEB is now guided by a shared governance model, baseline SLAs, and coordination teams.

Challenging IT Leaders to Mashup, Twitter, Tag, and Poke: New IT Strategies for a Digital Society - Sponsored by CDW Government, An EDUCAUSE Platinum Partner

drupal — Wed, 02 Apr 2008 10:00:01 -0500

Today's youth are digitally titillated, visually stimulated, and socially connected. To educate and engage this new breed of learners, institutions of higher education are revisiting and revising the basic tenants of a general education by asking, What does it means to be literate in today's society? As educators transform the way they teach and conduct research, IT leaders also must alter their institution's IT strategy to best support a mobile, global digital citizenry.

Leading Ahead of the Curves

drupal — Tue, 25 Mar 2008 10:29:56 -0500

Three curves—technical possibility, social desirability, and economic feasibility over time—describe the forces that shape college and university IT challenges. The consumerization of technology, insourcing and outsourcing, edge or leveraged services on campus, and multi-institutional community source are timely opportunities for IT leaders who can wisely discern these curves.

Learning from the Future - EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference Opening General Session

llarsen — Wed, 05 Mar 2008 12:40:16 -0600

Summary of the EDUCAUSE Mid-Atlantic Regional Conference Opening General Session, January 15, 2008.

Learning from the Future
Malcolm B. Brown, Director of Academic Computing, Dartmouth College

Abstract: With information technology evolving at a seemingly breakneck pace, trying to predict the future of IT seems every bit as daunting as predicting movements of the stock exchange. Yet we as IT professionals must plan appropriately for new and emerging technologies that have relevance for teaching, learning, and creative expression. The Horizon Report, a project of the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, is one of many tools we have to help us map the future to the present. In this presentation we will consider ways tools like the Horizon Report can help us chart our course.

This session was recorded for podcast and is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/educausepodcastlearningfr/46108

A pdf of the slides are available at http://www.educause.edu/MARC08/Program/13415?PRODUCT_CODE=MARC08/GS01

The Horizon Report is available at http://www.nmc.org/horizon

Malcolm Brown began his presentation by adding a subtitle to his presentation so that it read: Learning from the Future, or how I learned to stop worrying and embrace hyperchange

And with apologies to George Santayana (Life of Reason) he revised his famous quotation to say: “Those who cannot learn from the future are condemned to miss it.”

Brown said it would be good if the topic could be characterized with just one word. In the 1960s film, The Graduate, that word was plastics. The word today with respect to change and innovations might be Google – these words indicate a boundless energy to innovate and bring new things on board.

Innovation is the way we learn from the future, by change and anticipating innovation, not just building a better mousetrap. Innovation is defined as a new method, idea, or product. A few synonyms for innovation are change, alteration, revolution, upheaval, and shake-up.

Innovation is change and change is innovation, ergo, innovation happens.

Innovation is edgy, risky enterprise, a pain, lots of fun, overrated, underrated, but – is it cool?

Brown used a photo of a Cane toad (the environmentally disastrous Australian amphibian with toxic skin and no predators) as the response face to innovation with reactions such as “what?!? We have to upgrade again!” and “you IT people always need money” to indicate that sometimes innovation is downright ugly.

But he went on to say that innovation can be “cool” and described the dimensions of innovation. Both the stapler and the electronic voting machine were innovations but it is hard to claim which is a major innovation and which is a minor innovation.

Innovation can be

Incremental (evolutionary) or sweeping (revolutionary)
Reinforcing or disruptive
Small scope or large scale
Current paradigm or emerging paradigm

Brown said context determines the dimensions of the innovations and innovations are always embedded in context.

Diffusion:

Quoting diffusion theory from The Diffusion of Innovations by Everett Rogers, he described the elements of diffusion to be:

Innovation
Communication via channels
Time
Within a social system

He offered an illustration of diffusion which was the expansion/diffusion of courses in a course management system. The dimensions of diffusion, as Brown sees it, control the rate of propagation and are

Relative advantage of the innovation - Is this new gizmo? with a large or small advantage?
Compatibility – Is it compatible with what you are doing now?
Complexity – How complex is the innovation and it’s potential implementation?
Trialability – Can we try it out? With minimal risk?
Observability – watch what happens – has my colleague tried it out and survived –much like penguins gather at the water’s edge until one falls in and the others watch to see if it gets eaten.

Brown said that, for an innovation to be diffused, it must be sustained, nurtured, cultivated, and revised.

Paradigms

Thomas Kuhn, whose 1962 seminal work on the structure of scientific revolutions brought paradigm and paradigm shift to our common language, set out in his Kuhnian paradigms the following elements:

Set of beliefs or consensus
Coherent
Shared implying community
The paradigm gives us our agenda – the bases for research and problem solving

Brown gave an example. As we’ve asked “what is light?” over the centuries the pace at which technology increases, the pace in the change of paradigms increases

Newton in the 17th century thought it was material corpuscles
Young & Fresnel in the 19th century thought it was transverse wave motion
Einstein & Planck, in the 20th century thought it was quantum mechanical

Lord Kelvin said “There is nothing new to be discovered in physics now. All that remains is more and more precise measurement” but Brown argues that this is within a paradigm. When observation shows disruption then we switch to a new paradigm.

Education becomes learning as it moves from transmission (publishing, big content, authority, control) to collaborative learning (participation, micro-content, cooperation)

Hyper-change can be a period of

Rapid paradigm shift or
Multiple shifts going on at the same time or
A gradual major shift or
Some combination of all three

Brown referenced The Innovator’s Dilemma by Clayton Christiansen

Sustaining innovations are incremental, established paradigm, valued by the current customer, and are predictable

Disruptive innovations under-perform, are a new paradigm or quest of a new paradigm,

appeal to a niche group, and are unpredictable.

His example was the natural ice harvesting industry that went from shipping 7 tons in 1806 to 150 tons by 1850. With ice cutting innovations they increased production and harvest and by 1870 14 firms in Boston were shipping 700 tons. As there were cost differentials in shipping to the south, ice plants were created within the South. The Boston firms only needed to harvest 200 tons by 1886 because of better shipping methods. However, the 1930s coup de grace was the invention of the electric refrigerator which caused the demise of the natural ice harvesting industry by 1945.

The lessons from this example were

Failure to recognize the implications of the ice plant innovation
Creativity was directed toward defending and enhancing existing methods
Demise was obscured by a growing market for ice
Success tends to entrench us and cause our own downfall

Sustaining innovation works within the current paradigm

Disruptive innovation works within a new paradigm

We have to be careful about putting all of our energies into the current paradigm and the business at hand. We need to put some of our energies into discovering new paradigms outside our day-to-day work.

Technology and the future

“Technology has often played a vital role in the emergence of new science” (Thomas Kuhn)
- Discover Magazine says – “Discoverà Science, Technology, and the Future”
- The Graduate (1960) said “there’s a great future in plastics” (Plastics today include light emitting polymers, rolled up screens, wearable TVs, videophones, and cars changing colors.)

Success and Failure

Brown gave examples of a number of innovations that were failures. The reasons for failures were:

Key missing technologies (or underperforming technology)
Problems in scaling production
Economic power of rivals
Timing is wrong
Prejudice - timing is wrong – why ethanol fuel is in favor now but not earlier.

Brown suggests we can foster innovation by scanning the horizon for a good model. We should be on the lookout all of the time for new developments. It helps tremendously to be in tune with technology. He described the annual Horizon Report Project that is a collaboration between the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium. The Project goal each year is to ask the questions and identify six technologies that will have significant impact on learning and creative expression over one year, 2-3 years, and 4-5 years.

The Horizon Report Project board is eclectic. It has multiple inputs/perspectives from higher education internationally, industry, museums, press, etc. They use a process timeline that keeps them on track that includes Wiki orientations (establishing a collaboratory), press clippings & research questions (research phase), review of past reports, and then they rank and vote to confirm their short list.

Brown outlined the predictions from the Horizon Reports from 2004 to 2007. The 2008 report was not available at the time of the presentation.

Each of the reports embeds the technologies within the context of the trends and challenges. They provide real-world examples and offer additional readings.

The key trends for 2007 were

Rapid change is occurring for higher education
Increasing globalization
Information literacy as a growing challenge
Agreement that the faculty reward system is out of sync
Collective intelligence is pushing scholarship
Technology divergence between faculty and students

The key challenges for 2007 were

Assessing new forms of work and expression
Leadership within the higher education to exploit rapid change
Copyright and IP issues
Skill gaps between knowing tools and knowing how to create content
New forms of assessment needed for collaborative learning
Increasing pressure to deliver content to new technology formats/devices
Faculty rewards are out of sync with the technology

Brown suggests that good ways to use the Horizon Report to your benefit your institutions are

Give copies to senior administration
Form discussion groups
Model the HR methodology on your own campus
Act on it

Step One: Scan for emerging technologies

Review the Horizon Reports
Network with folks in industry
Gartner reports
Watch your students
Watch your own kids
Data mine help desk reports
Form a local futures council
Read key publications such as the MIT tech review
Keep tabs on the Blogosphere.

Step Two: Make it an explicit priority (Are they visited on us, or stumbled upon, or is it an explicit effort.)

Consult your local paradigms – how do you think about yourself. Read your mission statements. See where you spend your dollars.
Talk to your students.
Encourage staff to be a bit risky and innovate.
Fence off space (framework) for innovation – Google Mac Developer playground - time off to look at innovation
Expect to fail - Brown quoted Christensen’s Innovator’s Dilemma “Failure is intrinsic to the process of finding new markets for disruptive technologies”

Points:

The first time you might fail so you need to be persistent.
Fishing expedition illustration - expect to fail but increase your chances of success by getting the right bait, location, etc.
Must be open but decide when enough is enough

====================

Q&A

Q: When do you know when to stop going down a “bad” path? When do you decide you have failed?

A: Understand why something failed - example: HPs Kittyhawk drive – 1.8inch drive for PDA market (Newtons) that didn’t take it off but had no resources to dumb it down for the video game market.

Q: How do you choose among possible innovations when you don’t have infinite resources?

A: You should focus on your target audience.

C: You can’t just present the new technologies. You need to get early adopters and get past disruptive stage.

C: Faculty rewards are out of sync with the technology – they are based on refereed citations – but now the focus is shifting to collaborative/community based content

This session was recorded for podcast and is available at http://connect.educause.edu/blog/gbayne/educausepodcastlearningfr/46108

A pdf of the slides are available at http://www.educause.edu/MARC08/Program/13415?PRODUCT_CODE=MARC08/GS01

The Horizon Report is available at http://www.nmc.org/horizon

Strategic Planning for Enterprise Application Services

drupal — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 12:52:02 -0600

This presentation will discuss the strategic planning process the Rutgers University Enterprise Application Services leadership team followed in developing a multiyear strategic plan. Along with the process, a discussion on the strategic plan deliverable and next steps will be discussed.

The 2007 Campus Computing Survey

drupal — Fri, 30 Nov 2007 13:39:00 -0600

Begun in 1990, the Campus Computing Project is the largest continuing study of the role of computing, e-learning, and information technology in American higher education. The session will present the results of the 2007 Campus Computing Survey, including new data on P2P policies, open source deployment, IT security issues, strategic and financial planning for IT, instructional integration of IT, campus IT standards, course management systems, and Web site services.

Strategic IT Planning in Higher Education Environments

drupal — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:24:33 -0600

This workshop covers information technology strategic planning in higher education environments. Participants will receive an overview of different approaches to strategic planning for technology, including best practices and analyses of the advantages and disadvantages of each approach. Three case studies will be presented; each covers a different aspect of strategic planning. A hybrid approach to strategic planning will be developed using the lessons learned from these case studies. The workshop will be of interest to those engaged in any type of planning activity that involves deploying or supporting IT in large organizations.

Right-Sizing IT Planning: The Same Process for Enterprise and Department

drupal — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 09:24:33 -0600

Computing Services developed tactical planning in 2004 for the 200-plus staff at the enterprise level. University Libraries adapted the process for their IT group of four, and both groups have used the process for two to three years.

Big Team Planning: Bringing Together Leaders to Produce Results

drupal — Wed, 07 Nov 2007 13:04:27 -0600

IT priorities can be effectively linked with "big picture" educational goals by creating effective conferences and planning events. Learn how to create large team planning solutions and align goals for your institution without leaving your people behind.

IT Project Management Methodology: How Much Is Too Much? It Depends!

drupal — Tue, 06 Nov 2007 11:04:17 -0600

With focus from leadership and commitment across IT, the University of Rochester has developed and implemented a flexible project management strategy. It helps align projects into manageable programs that support the university's strategic mission. This presentation will highlight the development process, challenges, and implementation of a successful project management methodology.

Strategic Planning as Driver for IT Services Governance

drupal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:48 -0500

To achieve the USP computing Center's main goal of operational excellence in IT services provision, a strategic plan involving the entire organization was developed. This presentation will demonstrate how this strategic plan was used to drive IT services governance and enforce the operational excellence search.

IT Strategic Planning for the Smaller Institution: A Lightweight Approach

drupal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:48 -0500

Dickinson College created an IT strategic planning process aligned with its governance structure, budget process, project management function, and personnel evaluation process. Adapted from the best practices of larger institutions, this "lightweight" approach will appeal to colleges seeking the advantages of planning while minimizing the overhead associated with this activity.

Strategic Planning in the Changing World of ERP

drupal — Fri, 02 Nov 2007 16:56:47 -0500

Vendor acquisitions, open source initiatives, and the emergence of service oriented architectures have drastically changed the landscape for ERP systems. In this session, we will share how the University of Michigan planned and continues to plan for the future of its enterprise administrative systems in this dynamic environment and what others can learn from our planning efforts.

IT Strategic Planning: Many Paths, One Destination

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:41 -0500

IT leaders from four universities will discuss IT strategic planning process successes and challenges. This session will explore how to succeed when an institution-wide strategic plan doesn't exist, how to involve the community, and lessons learned, as well as what's still missing from our plans.

Charting the IT Path: Unifying IT Strategic Planning with Central and Decentralized IT Goals

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:39 -0500

While the challenge of IT strategic planning might be similar across institutions, the individual approaches used are influenced by many factors including those unique to an institution. SMU's approach for an IT strategic plan takes into consideration the desire for one unified plan that includes the goals and objectives of both centralized and decentralized IT.

Relationship Management: Stronger Partnerships to Inform IT Planning

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:38 -0500

Relationship management is a holistic approach to understanding customer IT needs that augments existing relationships between customers and IT service teams. The goals are to position central IT to understand customer priorities and to inform operational and strategic planning. This panel discussion will offer three institutions' approaches and the successes and challenges they face.

IT Strategic Planning

drupal — Tue, 30 Oct 2007 13:42:31 -0500

This meeting will address the challenges involved in developing an IT strategic plan and maintaining its relevance. The discussion will focus on crafting a strategic planning framework: what to include, what works, and what doesn't. Participants will share experiences and can ask questions of fellow attendees.

Now Available: Latest Core Data Report on Campus IT Environments

ecoghlan — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 16:50:40 -0500

The EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report has just been released. This report summarizes data for the past fiscal year collected from more than 950 colleges and universities about their campus IT environments, practices, and policies. Respondents represent all enrollment sizes, Carnegie classes, and types of governance, as well as international institutions, providing a broad and deep view of the current IT environment in higher education. The full report can be viewed online free of charge.

Among the notable findings from the report are the following.

The percentage of top-level IT leaders at all reporting institutions who sit on the president’s cabinet increased nearly 2% over last year, to about 48%, but once again a higher percentage of community colleges reported this to be the case (about 63%, up from 59%).
Looking at the total number of centralized FTE IT staff this year compared to last year, there was a significant mean increase of 1.85 FTE staff for all responding institutions.
There was a significant leap in deployment of wireless security technologies since last year at all types of institutions, with an approximately 7% increase in deployment overall and about a 34% increase over the last two years.
There was an increase among all respondents in offering many kinds of support to faculty in the use of IT in teaching and learning, with “faculty training on request” the most employed support mechanism, reported by more than 94% of respondents.

EDUCAUSE Core Data Service: Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report

ckeller — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 15:27:17 -0500

EDUCAUSE Core Data Service Fiscal Year 2006 Summary Report summarizes much of the data collected through the 2006 EDUCAUSE core data survey about campus information technology (IT) environments at 933 colleges and universities in the U.S. and abroad. The report presents aggregates of data through more than 100 tables and accompanying descriptive text in five areas relevant to planning and managing IT in higher education: IT Organization, Staffing, and Planning; IT Financing and Management; Faculty and Student Computing; Networking and Security; and Information Systems. Appendices include a brief historical context, a list of participating campuses, the 2006 survey instrument, a glossary of terms from the survey, and Carnegie classification definitions.

A Model of American Higher Education in the Middle East

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:48:19 -0500

The American University of Kuwait relies on its technology infrastructure to support and deliver the American model of higher education in the Middle East.

Strategic Planning for Technological Change

ckeller — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 16:25:44 -0500

Building technological change into the strategic planning process prepares an institution to anticipate, recognize, and adapt to change

IT Matters! - A Panel Discussion from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Enterprise Conference

gbayne — Thu, 21 Jun 2007 17:48:26 -0500

In this podcast, we present a panel discussion from the EDUCAUSE 2007 Enterprise Conference, entitled "IT Matters!". The panel is moderated by EDUCAUSE Vice President Richard Katz and includes:

David Koehler, Director of Enterprise Systems, Cornell University

James S. Roberts, Executive Vice Provost, Finance and Administration, Duke University

Susan E. Thorin, University Librarian, Dean of Libraries, Syracuse University

When we get together at a forum like Enterprise 2007, it's a wonderful opportunity to interact with our colleagues at other institutions, hear from thought leaders on various topics, and compare solutions and approaches, but sometimes we forget to consider what brings us together in the first place. We all have a tremendous impact on how our institutions are run. In this session, a panel of higher educational functional officers will explain their perspectives on the role of IT and share how IT has transformed and will transform their business practices.

Vendor Relations: If You Don't Ask for It, You Won't Get It

drupal — Wed, 30 May 2007 14:07:22 -0500

Why is it so difficult to establish a solid relationship with vendors? Negotiation isn't a four-letter word—it's a process and an expectation. Bids should get you started rather than dictate who you choose as a vendor. You might have a question or two concerning the reduced number of vendors who remain in business. This session will offer intriguing questions and answers about the vendor-selection process.

Developing a Shared Vision for Academic Technology on Your Campus

drupal — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 10:17:00 -0500

Many institutions grapple with the challenge of developing a shared vision for academic technology. Academics may not know what's possible, while technologists may not fully understand the needs of those whom they serve. In this session, we present a campus-wide participatory process for identifying possible priorities, mutual education, and informed decision making.

Building an Enterprise Architecture Program at Saint Louis University

drupal — Thu, 15 Mar 2007 15:50:54 -0500

Enterprise architecture (EA) focuses on aligning technology and process with strategic objectives. EA achieves this end by employing a rigorous methodology and governance model to control change and to align a "future state" architecture with university strategy. This presentation will explore our journey of starting an EA program at Saint Louis University.

Planning and Creating an IT Infrastructure: One Branch Campus's Experience from the Middle East

drupal — Tue, 23 Jan 2007 16:15:37 -0600

This presentation will involve a summary of shared experiences by a first-time CIO deployed to a branch campus of Virginia Commonwealth University in Doha, Qatar. An overview of challenges, obstacles, and interesting experiences will be provided in hopes that participants can learn from them.

Higher Education TechQual

drupal — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 11:11:21 -0600

The Higher Education TechQual+ instrument is being developed by a group of higher education institutions to gather systematic feedback from its community of end users so as to provide objective data for strategic and project planning.

How Much Infrastructure Is Enough?

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:51 -0500

IT decision makers from small liberal arts institutions will share strategies for coping with the demand for increased hardware and software. Session leaders will describe policies and procedures that help create an equitable process for meeting needs.

Calming the Waters: Facilitating Technology Change at Your University

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:45 -0500

This hands-on seminar addresses the driving forces behind educational technology change and helps participants outline strategies for how their institutions can deal with these changes from the theoretical "innovation adoption" and "change process" perspectives as well as practical approaches. We will present a case study of the process used at the University of Missouri-Columbia including statistics to collect, partnerships important to nurture, and "costs" to consider in a successful migration scenario. Participants will then work on developing consolidation/migration plans and discuss those strategies.

The EDUCAUSE "Grand Challenges" Initiative

drupal — Wed, 18 Oct 2006 15:56:41 -0500

This session will present the EDUCAUSE "Grand Challenges" initiative, which will be the major focus of the association's initiatives in 2007 and beyond. Higher education faces major issues of access, affordability, and accountability; how IT can make a difference in these arenas needs to be demonstrated. This session will highlight EDUCAUSE's ongoing process of evaluating and identifying IT's role in these issues and the initial projects that will contribute to this linkage.

Asking Good Questions by Starting with Key Decisions

drupal — Wed, 20 Sep 2006 16:59:30 -0500

In this presentation, Keyek-Franssen explains the assessment framework for educational technology planning at the University of Colorado at Boulder. She also shares some of the key findings and lessons learned from its development and implementation.

Virtual Computing: A New Strategy for a New Era

drupal — Thu, 14 Sep 2006 11:25:23 -0500

Students and faculty at all educational levels want anywhere, anytime access to a leading-edge, resource-rich computing, learning, and research environment—and CIOs and IT professionals want this visionary environment to be affordable, scalable, usable, and supportable. Responding to these competing needs and constraints, North Carolina State University has developed and implemented a next-generation computing strategy and architecture for the universal delivery of computing services. This environment is now in campus-wide production status. The architecture is highly uniform, extensible, scalable, malleable, sustainable, and supportable. Collectively, these characteristics combine to produce an innovative advancement with the potential to radically transform the access, functionality, and economic benchmarks for the current university computing paradigm.

Tune In September 14: Virtual Computing: A New Strategy for a New Era

cluckett — Mon, 11 Sep 2006 15:16:05 -0500

Tune in Sept. 14 to hear from Samuel Averitt and Mladin A. Vouk about North Carolina State University's next-generation computing strategy and architecture for the universal delivery of computing services. Unable to tune in? Visit the archives.

A New CISO's To-Do List

vvogel — Tue, 05 Sep 2006 10:25:13 -0500

Security Task Force member, Brian Nichols (LSU), shares his top “to-do” list for new CISOs in the September 2006 Campus Technology.

The North Highland Company and the University of Central Florida - Team-Based Strategic Planning

drupal — Mon, 26 Jun 2006 14:18:06 -0500

To address customer satisfaction issues related to high university growth rates, Bob Yankello of the University of Central Florida partnered with the North Highland Company to provide collaborative strategic planning expertise in a strategic planning project. This presentation will review the approach, tools, and results as well as some of the lessons learned.

The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps; Student Information Systems: A Guide to Implementation Success - Book Reviews

drupal — Thu, 22 Jun 2006 14:11:08 -0500

As both of the reviewers note, these two books are both geared toward providing suggestions and strategies to the IT manager. The first review on The Visible Ops Handbook: Starting ITIL in 4 Practical Steps, notes that this book is an invaluable guide to IT change management. The second review is on Student Information Systems: A Guide to Implementation Success, which discusses how to navigate the implentation process of a student information system (SIS).

IT Governance

drupal — Thu, 01 Jun 2006 12:19:14 -0500

Executive management has long realized the need for institutional governance of human, financial, and physical assets. Most senior managers also realize the need to extend effective governance to IT and to provide the leadership, organizational structures, and processes to ensure an institution's IT strategy is aligned with and extends the enterprise's strategies and objectives. Effective IT governance allows institutions to stop thinking about IT in isolation and start developing IT as an institutional competency. This presentation will explore some problems with establishing effective IT governance in higher education and some good practices from both the private sector and higher education.

Survey Report Spotlights Top Campus IT Challenges

ecoghlan — Thu, 04 May 2006 11:51:36 -0500

Which IT issues have the greatest strategic importance to higher education institutions today and which ones are likely to be important in the future? Find answers to these questions and learn about other current trends in the 2006 EDUCAUSE Current IT Issues Survey report, published in the current issue of EDUCAUSE Quarterly.

The 2006 survey gathered responses from 628 primary representatives (typcially CIOs) of EDUCAUSE member institutions, representing public and private, and associate- through doctorate-granting institutions of all sizes.

Among the report's findings:

Security/identity management has replaced IT funding as the top strategic challenge
Disaster recovery/business continuity has joined the list of top ten strategic issues.
Portals are no longer among the top ten strategic issues.

The report is accompanied by a collection of helpful resources on the top issues. And a condensed version of the report is available from the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review.

The Prince Ain't Coming: IT Strategy with What You've Got

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:01:55 -0500

This presentation discusses an interrelated set of methods, strategies, and preliminary projects for administrative system changes. This approach reduces risk, lowers cost, softens peak load staffing, and reduces downside consequences. Arguably, when budgets are tight and management attention is increasingly pulled in multiple directions, a reasonable consensus strategy becomes more important than ever.

Sailing the waters of technology strategic planning (TAC)

drupal — Mon, 01 May 2006 11:01:54 -0500

Since communication and information technologies underpin the ability to meet current educational demands, a Technology Advisory Council (TAC) must be a viable means for establishing a clear vision and direction for future technology usage and for making recommendations and taking action on any campus. In this presentation, CSUSB will share its strategic technology plan.

Do It Yourself IT Metrics

drupal — Mon, 20 Mar 2006 12:58:14 -0600

Do it yourself IT metrics combines the right balance of theory, tools, and lessons learned regardless of your role or experience level with measures. This presentation will give a brief overview of how metrics should be created, evaluated, collected, and reported. Takeaways will include tools for implementing a useful program.

Beyond the Rhetoric: A Midterm Appraisal

drupal — Mon, 06 Mar 2006 12:30:39 -0600

Leo I. Higdon Jr addresses the comprehensive strategic technology plan that the College of Charleston has implemented to ensure effective IT management. During an informal assessment, three issues arose as the most critical factors in determining success: internal communication, recurring funding, and transparent and collaborative decision-making.

Creating a Technology Forum for the Whole Campus

drupal — Tue, 28 Feb 2006 12:14:14 -0600

This presentation will discuss the benefits of creating a cross-campus user group to establish best practices in working with technologies that touch the campus community. Many institutions maintain these groups as standing committees that meet on a regular basis to discuss the ongoing needs and concerns connected with technology.

All the Moving Parts: Designing a Merged Library/IT Organization

drupal — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:44:10 -0600

In 2004, Dickinson College decided to merge its library and IT departments. This session discusses the events leading up to the merger, the service and organizational models used, and how the new organization aligned itself with the college's strategic planning, campus governance, budget, and personnel processes.

Using Business Partners for Smoother Sailing

drupal — Wed, 18 Jan 2006 10:44:09 -0600

Swarthmore College leveraged the people and technology of an IT infrastructure services organization to enhance their service delivery model while focusing more of their internal efforts on strategic IT initiatives. The results are both increased service capabilities and greater emphasis on IT topics critical for their institutional success.

The 361° Model for Transforming Teaching and Learning with Technology

drupal — Fri, 11 Nov 2005 11:21:29 -0600

Focusing technology initiatives on learning while aligning them with the institutional mission can transform teaching and learning.