STATS
The Syllabus2005 Executive Summit Survey report reveals what’s on the minds
of decision makers in higher education.
IT DIRECTORS and other top-level executives in higher education met this past
July at the Syllabus2005 Executive Summit (www.campus-technology.com/executivesummit)
to focus on common issues and solutions. In order to provide context and a framework
for a full day of productive discussions, Campus Technology contracted Eduventures
analysts (www.eduventures.com)
to perform a study of strategic IT concerns, using a survey instrument and expert
interviews informed by an extensive scan of relevant research findings. Four
broad areas emerged:
- Aligning IT with Institutional Goals
- Information Security as a Strategic Issue for Institutions
- Students as Customers: Online Student Services
- Digital Learning Technologies and Instructional Impacts
The survey instrument asked respondents to rate, using a five-point scale in
descending order, the relative importance of seven strategic themes predominant
in the literature.
All seven themes received scores above 4.0, placing them all in the “somewhat
important” to “extremely important” range. While only the most critical themes
were introduced for rating in this portion of the survey and uniformly high
scores were not a surprise, the relative ranking of themes factored into the
development of a discussion framework, based on the four major areas listed
above.
Another section of the survey asked respondents to rate each of 22 IT discussion
topics on a five-point, descending scale of their interest in discussing each
topic with peers. The first 10 top-rated topics are included in the chart, above
right.
| RANKING OF STRATEGIC IT THEMES |
| Theme | Avg. Rating |
| Linking IT to the foremost mission-critical objectives of the institution (e.g., enrollment growth, improving teaching and learning practices) | 4.73 |
| Securing institutional data | 4.69 |
| Supporting students as institutional “customers” (e.g., supporting online student services) | 4.47 |
| Connecting institutional stakeholders with better decision-support data | 4.40 |
| Driving and supporting faculty usage of IT | 4.37 |
| Enabling anytime, anywhere learning | 4.16 |
| Doing more with less in the IT function | 4.15 |
While the “strategic themes” responses shown below assign a relatively lower
rating to instructional technologies, the chart above demonstrates that the
application of technology to learning is of great interest as a topic of discussion.
Emerging education technologies, digital content, and eLearning are all included
among the top five topics that IT executives are keen to discuss.
The Flood
Gates Open
From the first expert interview conducted in the study phase, to the final
exchanges at the end of the Executive Summit meeting, recorded commentary and
diverse views of participants abound. Samples follow:
Lev Gonick, VP for IT Services and CIO, Case Western Reserve University
(OH): “We are going to see a handful of IT directors really help shape their
institutions, versus continuing to be incrementally involved in reacting to
changes.”
Mark Bruhn, chief IT security and policy officer and acting sssociate VP of
Telecommunications, Indiana University: “It used to be a very
unpopular position to take on university campuses, but more and more IT people
are taking control—if not of the devices, than of the network connections to
and from those devices.”
Mary Jo Gorney-Moreno, associate VP for Academic Technology, San Jose
State University (CA): “The ultimate goal of our strategic plan is
student success…. Our core mission is not to have the latest and greatest technology;
it is to educate students.”
We’ll be sharing interviews, comments, and summaries with our readers and Web
site visitors in the coming months. Join the ongoing discussion!
| RANKING OF STRATEGIC IT DISCUSSION TOPICS |
| Theme | Avg. Rating |
| Emergent education technologies (e.g., simulations, ePortfolios) | 4.47 |
| Digital content usage, support, and infrastructure | 4.32 |
| Emergent technologies for students (e.g., file-sharing/PSP, podcasting) | 4.31 |
| Information security | 4.29 |
| eLearning | 4.18 |
| Online student services | 4.18 |
| Content management systems/learning management systems | 4.16 |
| Faculty development practices in IT | 4.08 |
| Research technologies (e.g., high-performance computing, collaboration tools, advanced networking) | 4.02 |
| Bringing the IT point of view to the attention of senior administrators | 4.00 |
