Thursday, February 15, 2007
Educause Management Institute: Changing Face of IT
Finally, I've dug out from the email and important! tasks. I hope to get a few of these posts up in the next couple of days.
This general session covered the changing face of IT, how things are changing so quickly in technology. We all had to make some suggestions about things we thought would change in the next five years. Security and legal issues were among the top choices everyone mentioned. We also talked about more mobility, more online courses, increased demand from students for technology solutions, and the rise of virtual worlds such as Second Life. The session also discussed ways we can keep up with change and pointed us to resources that can help.
One of the challenges I find in my position is dealing with the disconnect between the pace of change in IT versus the pace of change in Higher Ed. Just think about the technologies you were talking about two or three years ago. Either you're not talking about them anymore or they're so different from what they were as to be unrecognizable. And yet, it can take 2-3 years for something to get adopted in some institutions. Example: When I started four years ago, we were talking about portals. We reviewed a bunch of different options and in the end decided not to go with one. Portals went out of fashion for a couple of years, but seem to be making a comeback. Sometimes if you wait, it works out okay. Sometimes not.
In looking at the article on the Current Issues Report Survey 2006, I was especially interested in the chart on page 18 that breaks issues down by school size. In the overall results, for example, my area of expertise, faculty development and support, didn't make the list. In the small school breakdown, however, it's number 3. Elearning isn't on a small school's list, but it's on every other school's list. It was also interesting to note that although Faculty Development was listed as one of the most important issues to address and achieve success, it's at the bottom of the list in terms of amount of time CIO's are spending and near the bottom for general resources expended. That says to me that it's an area that needs more resources.
I think one of the difficulties as an IT person is keeping up with two distinctly different areas. First, we have to keep up with the technology. No matter what area of IT you're in, you need to know what's changing, what new hardware is out, what new protocols there are, what software is being developed, what devices people are buying. Since I never know what aspect of IT might be applied to teaching and learning, I try to keep up with a lot. I might need to understand more about wireless protocols, for example, if we move to a wireless classroom model. Or I might need to understand network and bandwidth issues to better facilitate streaming media production and consumption. Second, most of us should keep up with the higher education industry. I think everyone should know how the tenure process works (especially important for faculty support folks) and should know about different work models for faculty that are cropping up. You should understand the structure of your institution (who makes decisions about what). A third area I try to keep up with is educational research. Since I want to help faculty apply technology in pedagogically appropriate ways, I feel it's important to know what the research shows about how students learn.
The hardest part about all of this, of course, is finding the time to keep up. I try to set aside some time every week, but some weeks it's difficult to squeeze in even an hour or two to read and think. I've always felt it's important to keep up, but it somehow seems to fall to the bottom of the list.
Technorati Tags: educausem071, it, education
This general session covered the changing face of IT, how things are changing so quickly in technology. We all had to make some suggestions about things we thought would change in the next five years. Security and legal issues were among the top choices everyone mentioned. We also talked about more mobility, more online courses, increased demand from students for technology solutions, and the rise of virtual worlds such as Second Life. The session also discussed ways we can keep up with change and pointed us to resources that can help.
One of the challenges I find in my position is dealing with the disconnect between the pace of change in IT versus the pace of change in Higher Ed. Just think about the technologies you were talking about two or three years ago. Either you're not talking about them anymore or they're so different from what they were as to be unrecognizable. And yet, it can take 2-3 years for something to get adopted in some institutions. Example: When I started four years ago, we were talking about portals. We reviewed a bunch of different options and in the end decided not to go with one. Portals went out of fashion for a couple of years, but seem to be making a comeback. Sometimes if you wait, it works out okay. Sometimes not.
In looking at the article on the Current Issues Report Survey 2006, I was especially interested in the chart on page 18 that breaks issues down by school size. In the overall results, for example, my area of expertise, faculty development and support, didn't make the list. In the small school breakdown, however, it's number 3. Elearning isn't on a small school's list, but it's on every other school's list. It was also interesting to note that although Faculty Development was listed as one of the most important issues to address and achieve success, it's at the bottom of the list in terms of amount of time CIO's are spending and near the bottom for general resources expended. That says to me that it's an area that needs more resources.
I think one of the difficulties as an IT person is keeping up with two distinctly different areas. First, we have to keep up with the technology. No matter what area of IT you're in, you need to know what's changing, what new hardware is out, what new protocols there are, what software is being developed, what devices people are buying. Since I never know what aspect of IT might be applied to teaching and learning, I try to keep up with a lot. I might need to understand more about wireless protocols, for example, if we move to a wireless classroom model. Or I might need to understand network and bandwidth issues to better facilitate streaming media production and consumption. Second, most of us should keep up with the higher education industry. I think everyone should know how the tenure process works (especially important for faculty support folks) and should know about different work models for faculty that are cropping up. You should understand the structure of your institution (who makes decisions about what). A third area I try to keep up with is educational research. Since I want to help faculty apply technology in pedagogically appropriate ways, I feel it's important to know what the research shows about how students learn.
The hardest part about all of this, of course, is finding the time to keep up. I try to set aside some time every week, but some weeks it's difficult to squeeze in even an hour or two to read and think. I've always felt it's important to keep up, but it somehow seems to fall to the bottom of the list.
Technorati Tags: educausem071, it, education
