CT at the Show
Educause 2005—"Transforming the Academy"
Transformations in Higher Education
The participation age
If "the network is the computer," and everyone is connected to
the network, you have optimal conditions for the "participation age"
in which communities interact in increasingly meaningful and productive ways.
Right, Sun Microsystems CEO
Scott McNealy's keynote at this year's Educause conference explored participation-age
opportunities and challenges for the education community. Notable among the
ideas McNealy was eager to share with attendees: his plans to foster a Global
Education and Learning Community (GELC). McNealy envisions this community
as a free and open, self-paced, Web-based community for students to get access
to the best curriculum on the planet.†Having embarked on a decades-long
effort, GELC has started with K-12-related work and will eventually expand
to include all educational levels.
Leadership: It's alchemy.
This year's Educause award for Excellence in Leadership went to Ron Bleed
(left), vice chancellor for Information Technologies at Maricopa Community
Colleges (AZ) and CT editorial advisory brand member. After
his featured session, "Rewind to Fast Forward," CT asked
Bleed what's most important for IT leadership to focus on, going forward.
"I think the challenge for us in IT will be to bring together all kinds
of forces. I've used the analogy of alchemy," he said. "We need
to look at just what the end product is--what that gold is. But I really do
believe that it will include more visual images, more flexibility in course
scheduling, and better design of spaces." Other leadership awards went
to Annie Stunden, CIO, the University of Wisconsin-Madison,
for Leadership in the Profession; and to Clifford Lynch, executive director
of the Coalition for Networked
Information (CNI), for Leadership in Public Policy and Practice.
Data deluge.
In his featured session, "The Data Deluge Hits Campus," CNI's Clifford
Lynch (left) explored the impact of eScholarship and the institutional challenges
presented by the resulting tidal wave of digital data. Things to consider:
long-term preservation and short-term survivability issues, data management
for the eSciences, appropriate curation and dissemination of all sorts of
data sets in various scholarly disciplines, collaboration among institutions
and federated repositories, and more. It really is a deluge.
Strolling the exhibits.
Attendees browsed a large hall for interesting exhibits from hardware and
software vendors, consultants and integrators, and publishers and many found
our own Campus Technology booth.
CIC's—"Transformation of the College Library" Workshops
Advancing information literacy.
In a series of workshops designed for its membership, the Council
of Independent Colleges (CIC) is tackling issues related to the changing
nature of the library in the digital age. During one of this year's workshops
held in Chicago this past fall, CIC President Rich Eckman (top photo, left,
with speaker Rick Detweiler, right), explained to CT:"Over the
past decade, as the major research libraries were quick to take advantage
of new technological innovations, many of the smaller institutions were left
by the sidelines. And so, our effort through these workshops is to help the
smaller institutions catch up with some very important developments that affect
libraries, technology, and the role of faculty at all institutions."
How can you prepare your campus for these changes? Detweiler, president of
the Great Lakes Colleges Association, offered an "Introduction to Effecting
Change on Campus."
A plan for your campus.
Susan Perry, senior advisor to the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and director of Programs for the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR), presented "Key Considerations in Advancing an Information Literacy Program," a session to help teams begin to formulate specific plans for programs on their own campuses.
Sharing strategies.
An important element of the workshops is the team interactions that occur
during intensive planning sessions. As part of the planning process, cross-institutional
teams are paired to compare and fine-tune the strategies they will take back
to their campuses. Left, a team from Eureka College (IL)
presents its plan to a team from Ohio Valley College (WV).
The workshops, which have been held for nearly three years in various cities
across the country, will continue with workshops in Nashville and Boston this
spring. For more information, see www.cic.org/conferences_events/
index.asp