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101 BEST PRACTICES >> Administrative IT

11/24/2006

73 :: LURING STUDENTS BACK TO CLASS

At Colorado Mountain College, administrators are exploring ways to mine the information in the school’s student information system (SIS) to turn one-time students into repeat customers. The school is luring back continuing education students by informing them about course offerings related to their interests.

“There are a lot of lifelong learner students who take one or two art courses for personal interest throughout the year,” notes Bill Sommers, dean of enrollment services. “Through [Datatel’s] Query Builder and Communications Management, we are informing those students of all art courses that will be offered in the upcoming semester. This is a great retention tactic to keep students enrolled each semester.” More info here.

74 :: THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT

For years, the Ohio Northern University network was plagued with bandwidth problems caused by students downloading and illegally sharing digital movies and music files. Network performance tanked, and security problems escalated. In an effort to stop the bleeding, last year George Gulbis (associate VP and director of IT) and a small committee set out to find a thirdparty vendor that could be trusted to manage functions and the task of managing digital entertainment for the school. The team found their solution in Ruckus Network, a service offering 1.5 million licensed tracks of music, thousands of movies, regional and community features, and a whole lot more.

Before the ink on the contract had dried, ONU students were legally downloading movies and music files through a password-protected portal. The portal allows students to personalize homepages with movies and music that interest them. At most schools, this service would cost up to $20 per student per semester. At ONU, however, school officials agreed to roll the cost into the annual student fees. Since the service went live in spring ’06, ONU students have downloaded more than 1 million songs, and bandwidth performance has improved dramatically. More info here.

75 :: DON’T LET DR DRIVE IT

According to Louisiana State University CIO Brian Voss, the possibility of natural disaster shouldn’t move an IT chief to take his eye off the IT ball in favor of disaster recovery. Earlier in 2006, Voss and his peers were completing LSU’s Flagship IT Strategic Plan, and only two of its 10 recommendations address these survivalist issues. “There are eight other recommendations,” Voss points out. “They include building a solid foundation of IT infrastructure, making significant strides in increasing the accessibility of the campus community to that infrastructure, developing a robust and multi-tiered support enterprise, paying attention to our fiscal planning, developing plentiful resources for research, providing abundant resources to enable faculty teaching and student learning, supporting the use of IT in the student living environment, and developing our own advisory and communication structures to keep everything moving forward in a sound and collaborative way. All these things are going to be fighting for resources with the first two, so I’m very concerned that we are headed into an age in which CIOs deal only with survival and are not able to focus on the other broad elements inherent in our portfolios.” More info here.

76 :: GIVE THEM SELF-HELP TOOLS

Sometimes, the simplest things make all the difference. Every fall, The University of Akron (OH) support team handles more than 3,000 wireless setups as the new freshman class streams in. But according to Matt Bumgard, a member of the university’s technical support team, there may be another way. To cut down on the number of cases that require handson help, UA’s tech support team has created knowledgebase resources on the campus intranet and flash demos of how to handle the installations and configurations—all in an effort to help students connect themselves. If all else fails, there is also a network card available in the student bookstore for $35 that is guaranteed to be compatible with the campus wireless network. More info here.

77 :: PERSONALIZE THE PORTAL

La Salle University’s (PA) portal

Prospective students who venture onto La Salle University’s (PA) portal are invited to “Ask Dr. Jones.” But this Dr. Jones is not a fictional dispenser of canned advice, nor a pseudonym for a back room staffed by admissions counselors. Dr. Nancy Jones is a real faculty member at La Salle; in fact, she chairs the Integrated Science, Business, and Technology program. Jones spends her evenings responding to student e-mails —one by one. Sometimes she refers technical questions to other individuals who are experts in areas like housing, financial aid, or specific academic disciplines. But, often as not, she follows through and e-mails answers directly to the students— part of La Salle’s effort to make its online recruiting initiative personal, not just personalized. “The key is personalization in a way that teens feel is personal, not the way we feel is personal,” says Steve Kappler at Stamats, a higher ed marketing firm. His advice: “Don’t fall in love with the technology when personalization is what they want.” More info here.

78 :: WATCH THE DRYER

Columbia University's real-time
web-based service - LaundryView.

As of last spring, laundry life at Columbia University (NY) has changed dramatically. With a real-time web-based service called LaundryView (from “intelligent” laundry systems vendor Mac-Gray.), students can log on to the the LaundryView website from a link off the student information system (SIS) portal, to see which machines are free—even before they head to the laundry room. Students can use their campus debit cards to pay for the wash, can monitor a load’s progress from the same web page, and can even program the service to e-mail them when their load is done. According to Dave Roberts, director of information services for the school’s Department of Housing and Dining, student demand for a more efficient way to monitor the progress of dormitory laundry machines sparked the implementation. “On top of the fact that the service makes laundry easier to do, there’s a certain wow factor for students that makes it even better.” More info here.

79 :: 'OPEN SOURCE' YOUR PORTAL

LYNN UNIVERSITY's Christian
Boniforti takes the portal 'open.'

Open source has changed everything about student computing at Lynn University (FL). In past 9 years, when students wanted to utilize mission-critical systems, they had to log in to separate systems to access basic functions (e-mail, course registration, financial aid). They couldn’t toggle from one app to another, but had to log out of one and log in to the next. Fed up with the disparate portal sites, CIO Christian Boniforti set out to centralize all student-oriented systems within a unique portal, and establish a single sign-on feature enabling students to access everything they needed. He opted for uPortal, an open source application built and designed centrally by JA-SIG (a federation of higher ed institutions interested in open source.) but maintained locally by Lynn’s IT department. Taking advantage of the customizable uPortal app, Lynn technologists created a new school intranet site, MyLynn, combining all student functions within one easy-to-access portal. Boniforti estimates that by utilizing open source, the university probably saved up to one-half of what it would have spent on vendor technology, and the system is so flexible, he says, his teams have been able to add functions and features every couple of weeks, always introducing something new. More info here.