When Instructional Technology and Information Technology Overlap
When I was the Manager of Instructional Technology at NJIT, I asked my staff to emphasize the "instructional" prt of our name. We were IT, but not the information technology folks who had very different concerns. My department was housed under an umbrella with media services. Before I arrived, instructional technology was the smallest group and the campus community often saw all of us as one big tech group. I wanted the emphasis to be on how to instruct using technology rather than how to jam technology into instruction. We joked so often about having solutions to problems that didn't exist that the IT people were sometimes the first to say it before introducing a new technology to us.
Of course, we were not anti-tech or anti-IT at all. We led the emerging technology group and sought out new instructional technologies all the time. I was introduced to EDUCAUSE in 2001 and I admit that at first I saw it as a very information technology organization without enough concern for instruction for my purposes. They still are closer to that IT side, but over the years I have seen the two IT groups - information and instructional - move closer to the center of that Venn diagram.
Every year, EDUCAUSE puts out a top issues report and I always viewed it as one way to think about what we might address in the new academic year come September.
Here are their Top Ten IT Issues for 2013:
Leveraging the wireless and device explosion on campus
Improving student outcomes through an approach that leverages technology
Developing an institution-wide cloud strategy to help the institution select the right sourcing and solution strategies
Developing a staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility
Facilitating a better understanding of information security and finding appropriate balance between infrastructure openness and security
Funding information technology strategically
Determining the role of online learning and developing a sustainable strategy for that role
Supporting the trends toward IT consumerization and bring-your-own device
Transforming the institution's business with information technology
Using analytics to support critical institutional outcomes
You can read more about each in the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review or online, but I was actually more interested to see a section on "New Strategic Priorities." Noting that "The boundaries between academia and the rest of the world have never been more porous," they chose four priorities in particular.
1) Contain and reduce costs. The bleak economic outlook and reduced funding sources are making it imperative to reduce or at the very least contain the growth of costs. Efficiencies are sought, and business best practices are often viewed as the best path to achieving efficiencies.
This first one interests me (from the instructional side of the house) the least, although I know it may be the number one concern on a campus.
But I am interested in the three other priorities, all of which would be on my list of things we need to be addressing in the new academic year.
2) Achieve demonstrable improvements in student outcomes. The practice of measuring, improving, and reporting student outcomes is moving from highly desirable to imperative. The window of opportunity for colleges and universities to shape how they define, measure, and improve student outcomes—rather than react to external requirements—is shrinking.
3) Keep pace with innovations in e-learning, and use e-learning as a competitive advantage.3 Whether driven by the explosive interest in open educational resources (OERs), most notably Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or by explorations in using technology to develop and implement new academic credentialing models like badging and competencies, presidents, chancellors, and provosts are eager to use technology to help inform and transform postsecondary education.
4) Meet students' and faculty members' expectations of contemporary consumer technologies and communications. Students and faculty not only expect that they will be able to use their smartphones, tablets, and consumer-based apps in their academic work but also expect that their institutions' services will work as elegantly and effectively as commercial services.
The article offers that higher education institutions have been building systems for years that gather, process, and report institutional data, but that is is usually siloed into finance, human resources, facilities, research activities, and student performance. Even with all these siloes, the university itself probably is another larger silo (towring, and made of ivory?) that doesn't connect with other universities data, systems, processes, or services.
And that is a shame, because so many of our strategic priorities have become the same that we need the instructional side and the information side to work together, and to work with other institutions.
Of course, we were not anti-tech or anti-IT at all. We led the emerging technology group and sought out new instructional technologies all the time. I was introduced to EDUCAUSE in 2001 and I admit that at first I saw it as a very information technology organization without enough concern for instruction for my purposes. They still are closer to that IT side, but over the years I have seen the two IT groups - information and instructional - move closer to the center of that Venn diagram.
Every year, EDUCAUSE puts out a top issues report and I always viewed it as one way to think about what we might address in the new academic year come September.
Here are their Top Ten IT Issues for 2013:
Leveraging the wireless and device explosion on campus
Improving student outcomes through an approach that leverages technology
Developing an institution-wide cloud strategy to help the institution select the right sourcing and solution strategies
Developing a staffing and organizational model to accommodate the changing IT environment and facilitate openness and agility
Facilitating a better understanding of information security and finding appropriate balance between infrastructure openness and security
Funding information technology strategically
Determining the role of online learning and developing a sustainable strategy for that role
Supporting the trends toward IT consumerization and bring-your-own device
Transforming the institution's business with information technology
Using analytics to support critical institutional outcomes
You can read more about each in the latest issue of EDUCAUSE Review or online, but I was actually more interested to see a section on "New Strategic Priorities." Noting that "The boundaries between academia and the rest of the world have never been more porous," they chose four priorities in particular.
1) Contain and reduce costs. The bleak economic outlook and reduced funding sources are making it imperative to reduce or at the very least contain the growth of costs. Efficiencies are sought, and business best practices are often viewed as the best path to achieving efficiencies.
This first one interests me (from the instructional side of the house) the least, although I know it may be the number one concern on a campus.
But I am interested in the three other priorities, all of which would be on my list of things we need to be addressing in the new academic year.
2) Achieve demonstrable improvements in student outcomes. The practice of measuring, improving, and reporting student outcomes is moving from highly desirable to imperative. The window of opportunity for colleges and universities to shape how they define, measure, and improve student outcomes—rather than react to external requirements—is shrinking.
3) Keep pace with innovations in e-learning, and use e-learning as a competitive advantage.3 Whether driven by the explosive interest in open educational resources (OERs), most notably Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), or by explorations in using technology to develop and implement new academic credentialing models like badging and competencies, presidents, chancellors, and provosts are eager to use technology to help inform and transform postsecondary education.
4) Meet students' and faculty members' expectations of contemporary consumer technologies and communications. Students and faculty not only expect that they will be able to use their smartphones, tablets, and consumer-based apps in their academic work but also expect that their institutions' services will work as elegantly and effectively as commercial services.
The article offers that higher education institutions have been building systems for years that gather, process, and report institutional data, but that is is usually siloed into finance, human resources, facilities, research activities, and student performance. Even with all these siloes, the university itself probably is another larger silo (towring, and made of ivory?) that doesn't connect with other universities data, systems, processes, or services.
And that is a shame, because so many of our strategic priorities have become the same that we need the instructional side and the information side to work together, and to work with other institutions.
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