Presented at SAC Conferences

Many library/IT mergers have been successful and achieved true converge. Others have moved along slowly or faltered. In this session, we will examine the challenges of leadership in such mergers and present strategies for success. The session will include case studies and allow ample time for discussion about the topic.

Are you ready to use an online virtual world tool for your work, research, and online or campus classes? Come join the fun as we explore Second Life, offer tips on getting started, and show examples of course and research strategies from this virtual world. This session is suitable for participants who are new or have moderate experience with work in Second Life.

It has become clear that scholarly practice and scholarly communication across a wide range of disciplines are being transfigured by a series of developments in IT and networked information. While this has been widely discussed at the national and international levels in the context of large-scale advanced scientific projects, the challenges at the level of individual universities and colleges may prove more complex and more difficult. This presentation will focus on these challenges, as well as the development of truly institution-wide strategies that can support and advance the promises of e-research.

Students are arriving on campus with a set of expectations and behaviors that differ from those of previous generations, including the faculty, who are faced with engaging them in the process of learning. Students' experience with new kinds of games and media has shaped their view of what learning is and how it occurs. This conversation will explore the changing way that young people approach playing, learning, and working and will examine how the concept of play can build bridges between traditional and emerging student populations.

What technologies will follow the success of course management systems? This presentation will discuss the roles of virtual worlds and mobile devices in faculty-student interaction and learning. Learn how free, online virtual world tools such as Second Life let students and instructors meet and collaborate to work on projects and exchange information. Today's students use cell phones and iPods to stay connected. Learn how educators can take advantage of this always connected life style to enhance learning. Examples will be provided of initiatives under way to incorporate Second Life and mobile learning into the curriculum, both here and around the globe.

Colleges and universities possess an exceptional volume and variety of personal information. Our stewardship of such information has been inconsistent and inadequate, and we often implement new technologies and systems without considering systemic privacy and security implications. Although many publicly reported security breaches occur on campuses, we have been slow to provide training in privacy and security issues, rarely audit for compliance, and lag far behind industry and government in appointing privacy and security officers. This session will address the information policy challenges facing colleges and universities, today and in the future, and will offer practical steps for overcoming them.

This session will begin with an overview of information literacy based on research conducted for the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative, discuss an examination of information literacy preparation for higher education via the K–12 setting, and close with a presentation on the iSkills Assessment (the former ICT Literacy Assessment) tool.

Outsourcing Student Collaboration Services Arizona State University and Northwestern University have successfully outsourced their student collaboration services. Ball State University has implemented Windows Live Suite and also maintains its on-campus Exchange service as the “official” method for e-mail communication. This session will share these institutions’ experiences of evaluating the available options and making decisions within their respective institutions.

Web 2.0 and other emerging technologies invite exploration, innovation, and building with “small pieces loosely joined.” Yet those opportunities can disrupt traditional academic processes that undervalue amateur participation, discourage faculty from venturing outside their realm of primary expertise, and look to “enterprise solutions” for administrative convenience. Can the academy include “half-baked ideas” in its core mission and processes? This session will address these issues from the perspectives of an insider (teacher, scholar, and administrator) and an IT professional outside the academy. Brief introductory remarks will be followed by robust discussion.

This session will review service oriented architecture from a number of perspectives We will define SOA, discuss its value to higher education, and present use cases on how it can enhance our scholarly and enterprise systems. Challenges in organizing for and implementing SOA will be highlighted including a discussion of using SOA in enterprise open source development as well as distributed environments.

What do our students need to know, and for what purposes? How can they best learn it? This talk will address some of the philosophical and practical issues academic administrators are presently confronting in the United States, including the shape of liberal education, the role of research, how we assess outcomes, and the balance between authority and freedom in both the description and delivery of knowledge.