Into the Future: What is IT?

• Have a common help desk (24/7), district wide where people can call in and ask questions. For special questions, redirect the student.
• Possibly a tension between faculty freedom to develop the way they want and in-sourcing.
• Shared student services.
• How do you change the culture? How do you move from independent centers to more sharing of resources? Changing the culture to a learning culture rather than admin vs. instruction.
• Student financial aid is changing; will require new hardware and software and moving the applications to the Internet. Need to train staff to use the software.
• Access, especially for those who donŐt have access to computers. Possibility to use neighborhood Internet cafes.
• Cost increases and numbers increase;
• Utilization of space; use model of the way physics is handled at South Mountain in JD Mildrew's classroom
• Move from credit based to competency based model. What do you do to measure outcomes?
• Artifacts/sacred cows. Also talked about procurement, help desk, student services. Processes and Policies
• Standardization vs. "academic freedom"? (part of the infrastructure- "For electricity, we do not get to choose whether we want 110 or 220 volts"). Production vs Experimental modes for innovation.
• Collaboration vs Competition (FTSE funding)- Collaborate to reshape market to compete more effectively. UNC developed re-usable student portal, colleges could customize appearance of front end, about 70% of code was re-usable.
• Who "gets it" at the System level? University of North Carolina, University of California, Georgia system. But look at effective progress between smaller institutions (e.g Boston's Colleges of the Fenway)
• FTSE driven problems are everywhere. Cultural issue.
• Lack of matrix management in higher education
• Learning Objects- MERLOT, Canada's Portal for Online Objects in Learning (POOL), NSF Digital Library project

• Value of data-driven decision making in the organization; but must be more than data-driven decision making; must be a more balanced approach
• Value of CRM-type application
• How do you get people to use content collections rather than making their own? "Buy what you can; share what you must." Copyright issues? Do not underestimate the wealth of content in public domain. Re-usable Learning Objects, peer reviewed?
• Data driven decision are critical to us, but we donŐt always use the data we collect.
• We donŐt really know why our students are leaving. There is an interest in an e-portfolio type of approach (also have students buy into that approach)
• Need to start integrating systems so the systems talk to each other.
• How human resources are the most important part of IT (and this came from a faculty member ;-).
• Need for a library or management system of all these digital components. Need to collect and share them. It exists! See the Maricopa Learning eXchange.

• Portal & customization is useful; how do you add value through the portal?
• Just-in-time chat ability from the Web
• Bringing value to customers is important to consider
• Data driven decisions: must be cautious when looking at data. Sometimes data doesnŐt have the conclusion.
• There is not a single truth (reacting to "single version of the truth")
• Data does not happen by "magic" Data is only valuable if it is accurate and complete
• Adding components requires planning and support. Need to remember to plan for the people and the replacement

Ideas to explore- What will you take back and try?

• E-portfolios
• Provide students with persistent storage space; assumes that the students will come back.
• Computer replacement plans (see Glendale Desktop Project, College Technology Committee)