Presented at Midwest Regional Conferences

Western Michigan University has been operating electronic messaging for students, staff, and faculty for many years. Aligning the strategy and overall policy with actions is key to success. See how WMU has addressed the challenges in the past and is doing so today. Find out what challenges we foresee in the future. Additionally, Sun Microsystems will present its vision for addressing the challenges it sees.

Come learn about innovative work being done in the Midwest region at this brisk, lively showcase of five-minute presentations from ten of your peer institutions. Time will be allotted for Q&A, and informal interest groups may be formed on the spot at the end of the session.

A new "action research" model for fostering the use of videoconferencing for faculty collaboration will be demonstrated and described. The project team provided behavior models that engaged the faculty directly rather than focusing on training and techniques. Evaluating the project's success using survey and interview data will also be presented.

Illinois State University used prime space in the student center to create a new avenue for students, faculty, and staff to receive technology help and also added fee-based services. See how the computer store, residential networking, and the help desk came together to meet rising support expectations on campus.

Learn about UW–Milwaukee's experiences designing and implementing a campus-wide system for tracking tutoring, mentoring, and advising activities. Topics will include creating a cross-division taskforce to define requirements, building support at administrative and department levels, leading a user-driven iterative development process, promotion, training, and creating a support network.

The Collaboratory Project is a Northwestern University initiative that provides web-based resources, tools, and services for K–12 teachers and their students. Students use the Collaboratory to create, share, discuss, and publish short stories, annotated research, and journals in web-based document templates using a variety of media. Students are publishing for an audience of peers.

Led by Lake Forest College, Chicago-area academic, cultural, and civic institutions are developing VBI, the Virtual Burnham Initiative, with 3D models re-creating the 1909 Plan of Chicago housed on a project website. VBI is a project about the Chicagoland community that builds community between academic institutions, area organizations, and the greater public through technology.

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.

Academic IT leaders have much to learn from IT leaders in other businesses and organizations. The Duluth Area CIOs Consortium has members from local business, health care, government, and education. This session will describe the consortium's establishment, goals, and meeting structure, as well as the benefits of membership.

This session will use the InfoCommons at Northwestern Library as a case study to examine a very successful partnership in technology application and space planning between two high-profile campus entities.