Documents Contributed by ECAR

This research bulletin explores the advanced networking issues and investments that colleges and universities that aspire to support their faculty and students in leading edge research and education activities must face in the near future. It is drawn from the work of the Advanced Networking Services Work Group at the University of California, which was charged with evaluating the current state of UC’s networking infrastructure, identifying best practices in global networking activities, and making recommendations to position UC for competitive advantage. The author served as chair of the Work Group. 

Citation for this work: McCredie, Jack. “Advanced Network Services: Current Issues in Higher Education” (Research Bulletin, Issue 9). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This ECAR case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Mark C. Sheehan, Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education, which examines the state of higher education help desk organizations, services, tools, resources, and management practices and how these and assorted other measures are related to desirable help desk outcomes. ECAR undertook this case study of New York University to demonstrate how the framework of IT service management practices and functions known as the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL) can strengthen service management practices in a complex higher education institution.

Citation for this work: Pirani, Judith A., Mark C. Sheehan, and Bob Albrecht. “ITIL at New York University: A Framework for Excellence” (Case Study 1). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin details the procedures and processes undertaken by the University of Minnesota to ensure that all employees, from student workers and custodial staff through senior research faculty and administrators, received training about keeping private data secure tailored to their roles and responsibilities. It illustrates how the implementation of the training resulted in improvements in incident reporting and response procedures, awareness of institutional private data and expectations for securing them, and many aspects of data security.

Citation for this work: Janssen, Ross T., and Greg C. Sales. “Regulatory Compliance Training: Public Jobs, Private Data” (Research Bulletin, Issue 8). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin examines what the literature refers to as “new learners” or “critically engaged learners.” It explores the responsibilities our institutions have to create opportunities for these learners to actively engage in creative discovery, problem definition, and appropriate use of information technologies. It is based on a literature review and accompanying conceptualizations that begin to answer important questions about institutional development for a technologically sophisticated age.

Citation for this work : Moore, Anne H., Shelli B. Fowler, Brent K. Jesiek, John F. Moore, and C. Edward Watson. “Learners 2.0? IT and 21st-Century Learners in Higher Education” (Research Bulletin, Issue 7). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Capacity planning or capacity management isn't just for networks anymore. In fact, while enterprise wide area networks (WANs) were once only optimized for transaction processing, it is now harder to find an enterprise WAN that hasn't been optimized in multiple ways to carry voice and video, Internet, and some mission-critical application that replaced a mainframe transaction system. With all of the new and interesting traffic types floating around in the WAN, it's a wonder anyone can keep things straight. Even Internet backbones, which should be application agnostic, are throttling certain applications to protect their own infrastructures. WAN capacity planning must evolve from an effort that network architects undertook alone into an effort that involves coordination among multiple infrastructure groups inside IT.

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This April 2008 survey is a critical component of the EDUCAUSE Center on Applied Research (ECAR) study of information security officers in higher education. It seeks to understand the important characteristics and career paths of those engaged in day-to-day IT security management in colleges and universities.

How To Cite This Work: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research. "IT Security Officer Survey" (Survey Instrument). Boulder, CO: ECAR, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin presents a methodology, used successfully at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS) in Australia, for managing and assessing risks related to information technology systems and resources. It describes the institutional commitment, background, organizational structure, methodology, implementation, and outcomes of an institutionally inclusive risk assessment that yielded valuable results that can be applied in other colleges and universities.

Citation for this work : Waters, Ian. “Managing IT Risk in Higher Education: A Methodology” (Research Bulletin, Issue 6). 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 research bulletin explores the methodology used by the Georgia State University Information Systems and Technology division to manage large, cross-divisional IT projects and track all IT staff time. The bulletin shares the data collection methodology and Georgia State's findings and describes a time-recording model for IT projects that can be applied at other colleges and universities.

Citation for this work: Alberts, Randall, and Karen D. Oates. “Measuring IT Staff Time at Georgia State University” (Research Bulletin, Issue 4). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This case study complements the 2007 ECAR study by Mark C. Sheehan, Service on the Front Line: The IT Help Desk in Higher Education, which examines the state of higher education help desk organizations, services, tools, resources, and management practices and how these and assorted other measures are related to desirable help desk outcomes. ECAR undertook this case study of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill to demonstrate how the central IT help desk can become an integrating support organization in the context of a large, decentralized university.

Citation for this work: Spicer, Donald Z., and Judith A. Pirani. "University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Integrating IT Support Institution-Wide" (Case Study 9). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

This research bulletin examines the wiki philosophy and how it fits within the Web 2.0 context. While wikis offer a number of benefits for supporting knowledge creation in collaborative groups, the literature suggests a strong need to establish conventions to enable long-term success. Based on an extensive literature review, the results of a research project into blog and wiki use in Australian libraries, and evaluations of the wiki installation of the RUBRIC Project sponsored by the Australian Commonwealth Department of Education, Science, and Training, the bulletin also examines how wiki technology can enable the online collaborative process.

Citation for this work: Watson, Kate, and Chelsea Harper. "Supporting Knowledge Creation: Using Wikis for Group Collaboration" (Research Bulletin, Issue 3). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2008, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Higher education IT organizations have become increasingly aware of the need for governance processes that sit above day-to-day management and address strategic alignment and the political realities of satisfying IT's many constituencies. But how should -and do- higher education institutions govern IT? This presentation uses the results of an ECAR study of IT governance to frame an interactive session on how to mix good structural governance practices with practical politics.

How to Cite This Work: Yanosky, Ronald, and John W. McCredie. "IT Governance: Solid Structures and Practical Politics." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Within the past year, SaaS-based office solutions from Adobe, Cisco, Google, Microsoft, Salesforce.com, and Yahoo! became available or will soon be available. In this session, Burton Group Senior Analyst Guy Creese describes this rapidly evolving market and talks through the pros and cons of SaaS solutions. How to Cite This Work: Creese, Guy. "Should We Work in the Cloud? The Pros and Cons of Software as a Service." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. This talk reviews scholarship on social networking sites, focusing on the use of Facebook among undergraduate students. Nicole Ellison discusses findings from a recent study examining user practices and the social capital implications of Facebook use, demonstrating evidence of positive outcomes from some kinds of use. Educational applications of related technologies, such as blogging, is briefly discussed.

How to Cite This Work: Ellison, Nicole. "Facebook Use on Campus: A Social Capital Perspective on Social Network Sites." Presentation at the ECAR Symposium, Boca Raton, FL, December 5-7, 2007, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Presentation at the Sixth Annual ECAR Symposium, December 5-7, 2007, in Boca Raton, Florida. Successful online communities must be able to attract and retain a core of active participants. In this presentation, Robert Kraut will describe how the relationship between communities and new members develops. Because the relationship is especially fragile during newcomers' initial interactions, the success of these interactions is likely to determine whether the relationship survives. Kraut's analysis of over 200,000 messages from almost 25,000 newcomers to 99 Usenet groups shows that newcomers are much more likely to continue participating if their initial posts received replies, especially socially positive ones. Longitudinal studies and three field experiments show that introductions referencing commitment to the group increase the likelihood of getting a reply, while introductions emphasizing connections to the topic of discussion do not. This research both increases our understanding of a new social phenomenon and informs intervention that can improve the integration of newcomers into online communities.