One of Higher Ed’s most unique features is the willingness of IT professionals to share their experience to the benefit of their peers. The only catch is that most of those discussions happen in person at conferences or conventions across the world, which limits accessibility for less travel-savvy tech pros. There is a growing presence of vocal CIOs, Project Managers, and EdTech professionals on social media, but there are far less online forums than their in-person counterparts. We’ve scoured the web, searching for the best Higher Ed IT forums, and found some that will be useful if you have a question about an upcoming project or are stuck on a problem and looking for advice.
Educause Constituent & Discussion Groups
As is usually the case in the Higher Ed IT community, Educause swoops in to save the day once again, this time with their expansive Constituent and Discussion Groups. They provide a forum for IT management, Cloud Computing, Data Warehousing, and many others topics related to specific products or jobs. You’ll need to login to access these discussion groups, where you’ll find many different options for how you can subscribe to specific threads. The overall lack of Higher Ed forums for IT professionals is puzzling, but might be partially explained by how all-encompassing Educause’s forums are. As the old adage goes, “if it isn’t broke, don’t fix it.”
The Higher Ed Data Warehousing Forum
While most discussion groups are focused on broader topics, there are also product-specific Higher Ed IT forums. One of our favorites is HEDW, the Higher Ed Data Warehousing Forum. HEDW offers members a unique opportunity to share their ideas and discuss Data Warehousing solutions. They also host an annual conference and provide access to an archive of hundreds of informative presentations. The forum is free to join, as long as you have access to a .edu email address, making it an easy addition to any Higher Ed IT professional’s toolkit.
Social Media Groups
With the increased number of Higher Ed IT professionals using social media, it has become a hotbed for online discussion; professionals search for job opportunities on LinkedIn, discuss trending topics on Twitter, and stayed connected on Facebook and Google+. With the constant stream of new discussions popping up around the web, it can be difficult to keep track of everything. Thankfully, there are a few useful discussion groups that keep the Higher Ed IT-related conversations all in one place.
LinkedIn groups are a great way to keep tabs on what’s happening in Higher Ed, as well as to talk with other professionals, and search for job opportunities. Educause’s LinkedIn Group has the most widespread appeal, with around 34,000 members. New discussion topics and job listings are posted daily, offering a constant stream of new content that’s specifically fitted for your needs. The Higher Education Management group offers similar benefits, except that it is specifically focused on management professionals in the field. We also have our own LinkedIn group, Higher Ed IT Professionals, which we are planning to expand on soon.
For the more laid-back IT professional, Google+ offers plenty of online groups to help increase engagement in the Higher Ed community. The caveat here is that while many of the topics discussed can be related to university IT departments, most of the Google+ communities have a broader focus on Higher Ed technology as a whole. The largest that we found, with around 43,000 members, focuses on EdTech, which is a broad topic that could appeal to just about anyone involved in education, from K-12 to Higher Ed. The Higher Education & Technology group, on the other hand, is much smaller, but is also more related to the interests of Higher Ed IT professionals.
Non-Higher Ed Tech Forums
Although there aren’t enough forums specifically designed for Higher Ed IT, not every problem you may have is specifically related to education. For your more technical issues, there are a variety of online forums for both hardware and software discussion. Tech Republic’s forum is a great place to reach out if you need a quick solution or want to discuss cutting edge technology. There’s also Tom’s Hardware forum, a place where tech professionals and hobbyists share their expert knowledge on all things electronic.
Higher Ed IT Professionals Meetup
If meeting in person is more your style, but you’d prefer something more frequent than an annual conference, a Meetup group might be what you’re looking for. A quick search for “IT professionals” on Meetup.com returns around 900 groups with a combined 300,000 members meeting together around the world. If you have a group in your area, Meetup can be a very useful tool for networking and collaborating to solve problems. Each group has their own online forum, allowing for added flexibility when you can’t attend an in-person meeting. Like our LinkedIn group, we also have our own Higher Ed IT Professionals Meetup that we will be utilizing in the coming months.
We, at Optimal Partners, are working towards strengthening the Higher Ed IT community by bringing together its members to communicate and collaborate wherever possible. It is important to keep in mind that this is not an exhaustive list, however, as there are bound to be other communities or new forums that have yet to be made as of this writing.
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