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Business of IT >> More Than Money
6/27/2005
Student and curriculum benefits. At Georgia Southern, the experience of the software redevelopment project with NCR has returned “real-world experience” to the students. Says Bradford: “The students who have worked on this have developed very rapidly in the process. Our students, like those at all modern universities, work on team projects. But working on a really big commercial project isn’t exactly the same dynamic as a three-week assignment. If you have a whole team working on a huge coding project like this, then you have to agree on things like documentation standards, variable naming standards, etc. There is a lot of software engineering stuff to be handled, and that requires good communication skills. It also gives the students practical experience in recognizing and dealing with interpersonal team tensions.” Past benefits to the individual students, however, there are very real curriculum benefits.
“The NCR project has helped us see an aspect of the educational experience we hadn’t given a lot of thought to,” says Bradford. “It started a dialog within the college about exactly what it is we need to be teaching our students.” Although GSU students were very up-to-date technically, says Bradford, the university found it needed to focus more on professional independence. “This age group, 18 to 22, functions well in a structured classroom environment,” he explains, “but what we want is for people to take responsibility for doing things. There’s a character aspect to professionalism, as well as a skills aspect, and we’re beginning to focus more on what we need to do to develop that character.”
AT GEORGIA SOUTHERN University
IT outsourcing is 'mainstreamed'
benefiting students and clients.
Planning the Route
So, let’s say you’re thinking seriously about developing your own “campused” outsourcing business. You have students, faculty, IT infrastructure, staff that could be utilized, and support from the administration. But before you set off down the road toward new revenue and useful experience, there are a few things that can make the journey smoother…
The two Cs. “Start with careful coordination and communication,” says Bielec. The Drexel CIO cautions, “At the presidential level, they know what’s going on, but as you go down in the organization to the staff, faculty, and students, it’s not often clear what the objectives and benefits are. Effective communication on all levels is a large part of being successful.” Planning and documentation are also key prerequisites, he says.
At Dakota State, for instance, the ASP program had been running for some time, but the expansion into serving other schools outside of the area bumped up the stakes, Webster explains. “You’ve got to have clear lines of authority, with everything laid out and defined so that everybody knows who can say yes, and who can say no; who is responsible; how things get done. All the things that businesses deal with all the time—that’s the framework you need in place, up front. You can sign off on a project in good faith, but if you get 36 months down the road and there’s no paper trail, no letters of agreement, you’ll be the one left holding the bag.”
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