Collaboration, Virtual Community, and Documents Contributed by ECAR

This ECAR research bulletin discusses the role cyberinfrastructure will play as higher education evolves. Changes in the job markets, in higher education research and teaching, and in emerging academic disciplines are having a direct impact on, and will be directly impacted by, information technologies. As high-level national councils acknowledge, higher education has an enormous stake in these crucial and sweeping changes.

Citation for this work: Dede, Chris. “Cyberinfrastructure and the Evolution of Higher Education” (Research Bulletin, Issue 18). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

 This ECAR research bulletin introduces the Amherst H. Wilder Foundation research on successful collaborative practices in the context of higher education. It details 20 collaborative success factors and maps them to relevant examples gleaned from research on IT collaboration conducted by ECAR.

Citation for this work: Pirani, Judith A., and Toby D. Sitko. “Happy Families, Good Fences, and Winning IT Collaborations” (Research Bulletin, Issue 15). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This ECAR roadmap synthesizes the important issues and recommended actions drawn from the 2008 study, Higher Education IT and Cyberinfrastructure: Integrating Technologies for Scholarship , by Mark C. Sheehan. The ECAR research study explores higher education’s involvement in five areas of research-related information technologies: high-performance computing resources, cyberinfrastructure applications and tools, data storage and management resources, advanced network infrastructure resources, and resources for collaboration within virtual communities. The report, which is based on results of a quantitative survey of 369 U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities and consultation with cyberinfrastructure experts and 12 university executives and technical staff members, discusses who uses, who provides, and who funds cyberinfrastructure resources as well as how important each technology is and will be to research and teaching.

This 2008 ECAR research study explores higher education’s involvement in five areas of research-related information technologies: high-performance computing resources, cyberinfrastructure applications and tools, data storage and management resources, advanced network infrastructure resources, and resources for collaboration within virtual communities. The report, which is based on results of a quantitative survey of 369 U.S. and Canadian colleges and universities and consultation with cyberinfrastructure experts and 12 university executives and technical staff members, discusses who uses, who provides, and who funds cyberinfrastructure resources as well as how important each technology is and will be to research and teaching.

Citation for this work: Sheehan, Mark C. Higher Education IT and Cyberinfrastructure: Integrating Technologies for Scholarship (Research Study, Volume 3). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin explores how to develop, deploy, and extend cyberinfrastructure assets within higher education—both within and across institutions. As research becomes increasingly computational, data-intensive, and interdisciplinary, innovative approaches for functional cyberinfrastructure models become ever more important. This bulletin describes a model that was developed at one institution and then deployed across institutions, with the goal of addressing issues as diverse as the need for simulation systems rather than wet labs, insufficient computational research support to help an institution compete for top-notch faculty, and astronomical spikes in power and cooling demands.

Citation for this work: Alvarez, Rosio. “Developing and Extending a Cyberinfrastructure Model” (Research Bulletin, Issue 5). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This November 2007 survey is a critical component of the EDUCAUSE Center on Applied Research (ECAR) study of cyberinfrastructure in higher education. It seeks to understand the perspectives of information technology leaders and others currently working in universities and colleges. This study updates and expands our communities' understanding of how leading-edge information technology resources for research, scholarship, creative activity, and teaching and learning are utilized, provided, supported, and funded. This study is being conducted through the collaboration of many parties including the Council of Australian University Directors of Information Technology (CAUDIT), the European University Information Systems organization (EUNIS), the EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research (ECAR), and the EDUCAUSE Net@EDU Campus Cyberinfrastructure (CCI) working group.

Citation for this work: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. "Cyberinfrastructure Resources and Practices: Survey Questionnaire" (Survey Instrument). Boulder, CO: ECAR, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Philip J. Goldstein, IT Collaboration: Multi-Institutional Partnerships to Develop, Manage, and Operate IT Resources. Researchers undertook this case study to understand the benefits of multi-institutional development of a ubiquitously needed IT service. By leveraging emerging technology, procurement opportunities, and internal resources, the University of California Office of the President and University of California, San Diego were able to develop a complex disaster recovery solution involving the joint hosting and comprehensive mirroring of each location’s mainframe and non-mainframe computing environments.

This case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Philip J. Goldstein, IT Collaboration: Multi-Institutional Partnerships to Develop, Manage, and Operate IT Resources. Researchers undertook this case study to understand the methods and practices used to manage ongoing collaborative activity and how the Kuali group partners plan for the sustainability of their collaboration. The case study highlights the collaborative nature of the Kuali Project to meet its goal of building a suite of administrative software, rather than the project’s history, structure, or operations.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. When Yochai Benkler's book, The Wealth of Networks: How Social Production Transforms Markets and Freedom, came out, Stanford Law Professor Larry Lessig said, "This is -- by far -- the most important and powerful book written in the fields that matter most to me in the last ten years. If there is one book you read this year, it should be this." This work examines the ways in which information technology permits extensive forms of collaboration that may have transformative consequences for economy and society. Benkler's presentation outlines the characteristics of the networked information economy and the roles of collaboration and commons-based production of information, knowledge, and culture, and it suggests avenues to apply these broad trends to education and education-related policy.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR/HP Summer Symposium for Higher Education IT Executives, June 11-13, 2007, Boulder, Colorado. In 2006, ECAR distributed three surveys: the first was designed simply to ascertain whether the responding institution collaborated in significant ways; the second asked responding collaborators to describe their experiences, views, outcomes, concerns, and readiness with and for collaborations; and the third asked self-identified non-collaborators in IT to describe the barriers to collaboration they face, the cultural assumptions and beliefs of their institutions, and their views about the possible future for IT collaboration at their institutions. The survey responses offer a rich snapshot of how and when colleges and universities collaborate, the nature of the collaborations themselves, and a sense of the effectiveness of IT collaborations in higher education.