Known primarily for its success as a recommendation engine, Sherpa is actually South Orange County Community College District's "sandbox" of integrated software systems that provides many new tools for student success.
At the American Public University System, creating an online library course guide for every course the university offers (now numbering over 1,800) is just a first step. It's the application of metrics and data analysis for a higher level of quality assurance that will sustain the program into the future.
By combining innovation management with crowdsourcing, Davenport University has found a potent formula for achieving continual improvement and encouraging organizational change.
Southern Illinois University Edwardsville is giving its students hands-on experience managing group projects with the help of a cloud-based collaborative work platform.
A project and portfolio management application specifically for colleges and universities has been updated with new features in reporting and service desk operations, among other modifications.
After more than two years of deliberation, the memberships of two of the highest-profile organizations producing open source software for the higher education marketplace have voted to go ahead with their long-considered merger. Sakai and Jasig will merge and become "Apereo" by early 2013.
The University of Connecticut is among the most recent institutions to go live with the Kuali Financial System. During the Kuali Days conference in Austin this fall, Campus Technology interviewed Charles Eaton, UConn's controller, to get his comments on "the buzz" at this year's show and what it means to be a member of the Kuali community.
Working through the weekend? Haven't taken a vacation for ages? These 6 tips for transparent, streamlined project management can help.
Stanford University has several formal programs and informal networking efforts aimed at connecting innovative students with real-world opportunities, in numerous fields from engineering, to medicine, to economics. Faculty and administrators have a selection of avenues to give an assist to a bright student seeking a chance to become an entrepreneur. Here, CT learns about the support many students have received for their entrepreneurial IT projects.
A company that sells multiple products for managing the IT infrastructure has announced the addition of a project management component to its main service desk offering.
TeamDynamix has released an update to its project and portfolio management software for higher education, TeamDynamixHE. The new version, TeamDynamixHE 8.1, adds
"hundreds" of new features, including the addition of asset management functionality.
In response to rapid technology shifts, IT's role on campus is changing. How CIOs adapt to the new reality will determine whether their organizations remain viable and valuable, or see their relevance slowly diminish.
6 ideas to help vendors and IT leaders forge a more productive relationship.
Mobile implementations bring relevance to the institution for students and other campus constituents. But many colleges and universities over think their mobile strategies, causing needless delays in deriving value from their mobile projects. Tim Flood, a seasoned leader of mobile initiatives including Stanford University's iStanford project, points out some of the unique requirements of mobile implementations, and urges institutions to move more quickly on mobile.
When funding levels are reduced, IT leadership struggles to find ways to continue delivering expected levels of service and support. Joe Traino, CTO at Coconino Community College in Arizona, says that while the current economic environment seems daunting, creative strategies and partnerships will help IT departments run the institution's technology infrastructure more efficiently without reducing services--and may even present opportunities for new resources and services.
Bristol Community College, an urban college in southeastern Massachusetts, has redesigned many of its courses around common learning outcomes. With the help of a Title III grant from the Department of Education, BCC has supported faculty by developing Course Design Toolkits and identifying an array of digital instructional artifacts relevant to course content and supportive of learning outcomes.
IT organizations have reached a point where they must become innovators instead of builders. Here's how to foster an environment of innovation.
Florida State University has chosen a Web-based solution for project and portfolio management in an effort to streamline IT governance, project planning, and project prioritization.
SmartDraw Software has released SmartDraw 2012, with improved organizational tools, visual information hubs, and the ability to assign projects by person.
TeamDynamix has released an update to Task Manager, a free standalone application for higher education project management that was initially released about a year ago.
After leading his team to some rapid successes, our CIO questions the role of the IT group on campus--and develops a road map to the future.
State budget cuts are hammering higher education. CT looks at three public schools that are using proven IT tools to help weather the storm.
In the third installment of a four-part series, Gene, a well-established CIO of a sizable IT organization at a top-100 university, has been working with his team to regain the trust of the campus through Project Rescue, a 30-day turnaround plan focused on demonstrating IT’s value. Project Rescue has two primary objectives: Implement a more transparent planning and governance process, and deliver a series of quick wins around some visible projects with high customer value.
Tapping the talents of a globally based team of programmers promises the alluring image of efficient, around-the-clock application development. But as these students learned, time conflicts, power outages, and over-commitment can get in the way of a good idea.
TeamDynamixHE has released a major upgrade to its project and portfolio management tool, TeamDynamixHE 7.
The Association for Authentic, Experiential, and Evidence-Based Learning will hold its 2011 annual conference July 25-28, co-located with Campus Technology 2011 in Boston. A Call For Proposals for the AAEEBL event is open through Jan. 28.
TeamDynamix has released Task Manager, a free stand-alone application for higher education project management.
Australian National University has adopted a project portfolio management application from alfabet. The university's Information Services organization is implementing planningIT to better align its projects with institutional goals and to manage a portfolio of planned and active projects.
Northern Arizona University in Flagstaff is standardizing its project portfolio management on a Web-based solution.
The University of Kentucky's Research Information Services group, which serves a 300-plus staff of research administrators facilitating $300 million in university grants, has realized dramatic savings by consolidating from five network support software tools to a single system.
Owens Community College with three campuses in the Toledo, OH area has implemented Daptiv's project portfolio management (PPM) application across the institution to streamline its project management process and improve communication about projects. A PPM provides a way to prioritize and track multiple projects and allows multiple users to update project details and view status. Daptiv's product is software as a service, delivered to users through a Web browser.
Auburn University has licensed project portfolio management software from Skire to provide real-time information for capital program management.
When Scott Coffman came on board as associate director of applications and programming for Toledo-based Owens Community College last year, one of his first tasks was to overhaul project management. "The college was using a combination of shareware, Excel spreadsheets, and Microsoft Project to track and manage projects," said Coffman. "It wasn't very effective."
A disciplined approach to risk management can help you prepare for the worst and prevent unexpected problems from derailing your project.
A comprehensive change-management solution from SunView is helping a giant community college district get a handle on its production system.
With so many disruptive forces at work in higher education, colleges and universities are faced with the imperative to change not just technologies and processes, but behaviors and mindsets. In part one of a two-part series, change-management experts share six ways to smooth large-scale transformations on campus.
Despite a glaring need for specialist project managers, universities tend to embark on major IT implementations without their services. CT shares 6 ways to make the best of a less-than-ideal situation.
Today's employers are looking for graduates with polished soft skills -- creative problem solvers who can work well with others, communicate effectively, and adjust quickly to shifts in the business environment. See how one Illinois institution is using Web-based collaboration tools to foster these important skills in business students.
Ivy Tech Community College, Indiana's largest public postsecondary institution serving nearly 200,000 students annually, is deploying Eclipse PPM project portfolio management software from Solution Q.
For the University of Notre Dame, analyzing failed technology projects has led to a more efficient, successful IT operation.
Course development at the country's fastest growing nonprofit online educator is a major endeavor. Here's how SNHU manages the process.
How many times have you heard "Our students are used to Google and Amazon… How could we ever match that here on campus?" Maybe now you can. Through a partnership with Indiana University, rSmart is offering OneCampus, a cloud-based service that gives institutions an easy way to transform older, portal-based systems into updated, cloud-based campus services that rival any online shopping experience.
Alloy Software has released the latest version of its service desk and IT asset management solution for medium and large organizations, Alloy Navigator Enterprise 7.
OneCommunity announced that it will offer, in 2015, the first 100 gigabit, commercially available network services. CT talked with OneCommunity CEO Lev Gonick and Case Western Reserve University CIO Sue Workman, to find out how the work might serve as a model as high speed networking technologies mature.
Cuyahoga Community College, a CT 2008 Innovator award recipient in the field of Business Intelligence, has maintained its innovative edge with a major implementation of a dashboard that measures student success and completion for the institution and is available to departments campus wide.
Ball State University is known for offering its students not only the experience of using the latest technologies, but also the chance to develop them. CT spoke with Ball State University's Senior Software Engineer for Developing Technologies, Kyle Parker.
Joel Dehlin reflects on KualiCo's first 8 months operating as a for-profit company that offers Kuali as a cloud service.
What if your university sent more than 50 million e-mails to its 20,000-plus registered students? How could your students keep up? At Ball State University, developers are piloting Campus Hub, a new service to help students identify and act on the most important messages from their institution.
The application of competency-based education in U.S. higher education is uneven: Some programs are just starting up; others are firmly rooted and flourishing as they serve today's non-traditional students. Will we soon see the kind of innovation in CBE that will ultimately contribute to widespread, mainstream implementations?
Hobsons announced its acquisition of the PAR (Predictive Analytics Reporting) Framework this month, and the PAR team is already in Arlington for the onboarding process. CT spoke with Ellen Wagner, who is now Chief Research Officer for the PAR Framework and VP for Research at Hobsons; and Stephen M. Smith, President of Advising and Admissions Solutions at Hobsons for their views on the acquisition.
Understanding project stakeholders and processes is key to better management of AV installations on campus.
When designing classroom audiovisual systems, it's important to clearly define the project's overall goals, requirements and direction. Here's how.
Getting the right message out can be the difference between success or failure for technology projects on campus. Here's how three universities have fine-tuned their IT communication strategies.
From floor plans and lighting zones to mounting specs and viewing angles, detailed AV design drawings will help keep your classroom audiovisual installation on track.
After only about five years since its inception, a free, open education resource called FLEXspace is already demonstrating its potential to improve both the process of creating campus learning spaces and the science of using them.
Earlier this academic year, Virginia Commonwealth University was faced with a huge logistical challenge — an international, world-class bike race would disrupt local traffic patterns and supply lines. But the university saw the event as an opportunity to offer students a week of mini-courses, using the race environment as a giant learning lab and tapping a range of technologies to support student work.
Communication is key for a successful classroom AV implementation — and that means getting the construction documents, drawings and specifications right.
Once the planning, design, documentation and bidding for an audiovisual installation project is complete, it's finally time for construction — and perhaps more than ever, proper coordination and communication are needed to make it to the finish line.
This past Friday, South Orange County Community College District held a kickoff meeting for its latest development project, SmartSchedule. CT asked technology leadership on campus why the class schedule is an important area for development and how it fits into their larger technology strategy for student services.
The work of the National Center for Higher Education Management Systems, while perhaps not as highly visible as that of some other organizations, is continuing as it has for the past 40-plus years, helping colleges and universities translate data into usable information for decision makers. Here, CT speaks with Sally Johnstone, who recently began her role as the nonprofit organization's new president.
While the conference and the community that developed the original software and pioneered the Kuali movement have been active for more than 12 years, it's been only two years since the advent of Kuali as a new company — now, the software is being developed and offered through a separate, for profit entity. The Kuali Foundation's executive director tells CT how a foundation, a company, and old and new customers thrive and complement each other.
Google has changed the name of its popular service Google Apps for Education to G Suite for Education. With this change comes several new features that have been added to some of the apps included in G Suite. These features use “machine intelligence” to facilitate and add more functionalities to Google Apps.
At the University of Delaware, an ERP system upgrade led to the retirement of their legacy portal. The search was on for a portal replacement. Joy Lynam explains how the university replaced the portal with a search-based solution called OneCampus — ultimately modernizing the experience of finding campus resources for users.
Clemson University has received the largest in-kind grant in the university’s history in the form of software to fuel student innovation at the College of Engineering, Computing and Applied Sciences.
What happens when you mix a high-end technology sandbox loaded with ample, cutting-edge digital media tools and production facilities with some of the world's brightest students and most innovative faculty? Andy Phelps talks about MAGIC at RIT.
While there's no substitute for experience when it comes to AV system design, these tools can help you through the process.
Dropbox today introduced several products and business packages designed for collaboration and teamwork.
The University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign shares lessons learned from installing more than 350 digital signs across campus.
ClearScholar has partnered with Salesforce.org, the philanthropic arm of Salesforce, to help drive mobile connectedness on campus and boost self-advocacy for students.
What can be gained from the immense effort put forth in an LMS migration? It can be far greater than a well-functioning LMS, explains University of Oregon Associate Dean of Libraries and Chief Academic Technology Officer Helen Chu.
CT talks with Indiana University's AVP for Learning Technologies Anastasia Morrone about the impacts consortia can have in higher education.
South Orange County Community College District IT leaders Bob Bramucci and Jim Gaston talk about the long history of decision support technology development at SOCCCD. They explain why guided pathways projects — that use technology tools like Sherpa, MAP, and Smart Schedule — are so important for community colleges now.
Oklahoma State University's first inaugural "Virtual + Augmented Reality Hackathon" hosted January 26-27 by the Mixed Reality Lab in the university's College of Human Sciences gave students and the community a chance to tackle real-world problems using AR and VR tools, while offering researchers a glimpse into the ways teams work with digital media tools.
Agile development has been established as a useful and productive methodology in professional IT circles. Is it important for agile development concepts to be included in college-level computer information systems curricula? CT taps Bentley University for insight.
From system design, installation and support to project management, budgeting and procurement, a technology manager's to-do list is always growing. Here are three ways an independent AV consultant can help.
By nature, an initiative that employs data analytics for student advising is built on the latest technology. But for Syracuse University, technology is always looked upon as a path to a solution; not a driver of change in itself. Find out why understanding campus culture is central to the university's "Orange SUccess" initiative.
Samuel Conn, president and CEO of NJEdge talks about his organization's priority of fostering "excellence in education through the effective use of technology".
Agile methodology builds trust with stakeholders and keeps them involved in setting goals and priorities — but it's not necessarily the right approach for every project. Here are some best practices for agile success.
FLEXspace, the Flexible Learning Environments eXchange, has changed over time, starting out in 2013 as a great place to showcase and exemplify learning spaces, then rapidly growing to include a comprehensive toolset for planning and assessing these spaces, and now connecting a vibrant research community. Here, CT gets an update from FLEXspace.org pioneers Lisa Stephens and Rebecca Frazee.
What can your students do to help improve the campus systems they rely on? At South Orange County Community College District, a student team is credited with the popularity and good fit of that institution's home-grown "SmartSchedule" program. Here, CT gets a brief history of SOCCCD's Student Design Team and its impact on the effectiveness of the software.
How often do you hear comments like "We're just not there yet…" or "This is a technology that is just too slow to adoption…"? CT talks with veteran education technology leader Ellen Wagner, to ask for her perspectives on the adoption of impactful technologies — in particular the factors in our leadership and development communities that have the power to influence change.
Google is introducing a new analytics tool that allows G Suite for Education administrators to get insights into how different Google solutions are being utilized within their organizations.
In the constantly shifting landscape an ongoing pandemic, project management and planning is understandably challenging. Changing your approach to the project timeline can help.
Administrative systems designed to streamline processes and provide the keys to better decision making might end up as "shelfware" if institutions fall prey to some common mistakes in large implementations. Find out how to avoid these pitfalls...
