If you’ve been working in Higher Ed IT for any period of time, you know that there are many challenges that a team must work through. Why not learn from others’ solutions?
This is what got Educause, a community dedicated to the advancement of Higher Education and Ed-tech, to bring together a panel of industry-leading experts to discuss how to change ten major problems the Higher Ed community faces as a whole. Susan Grajeck, of Educause, facilitated the event and offered additional commentary in her original article.
Those ten problems and their proposed solutions are outlined below:
1. Hiring and retaining staff while making sure they are well versed in the field’s advancements
A wider array of skills is needed to be a competitive candidate for a job. Those seeking employment will want to make sure that they are staying up to date on all the field’s new advancements. Those already in the field, however, may let the advancements pass them by because these new skills may not necessarily be what they work with on a day-to-day basis. However, it all comes down to management. A good work environment where the manager takes effective lead and really opens the door to discuss new advancements, which may be what people need to inspire them to continue honing their skills. Grajeck also offers other tips in order to retain skillful employees. Some include knowing how to push a constantly evolving career that is rooted in helping others, working with HR to develop new paths for advancement, or sitting down with your department and discussing a talent plan, in which you all decide which skills you’d like your team to be versed in and how you plan to go about meeting your plan.
2. Helping the academic side of Higher Ed optimize their use of technology
Technology in the classroom is now considered a standard among many institutions. However, that does not mean that it is being used as effectively as it could be. This is partly because, Grajeck offers, that many universities and colleges overlook just how important it is for them to define how they want to use technology in the classroom or what they’re hoping their end goal will be through the use of technology. Grajeck states: “It is important to view technology as a supporting tool, similar to earlier tools such as blackboard/chalk.” In order to do this, institutional leaders should be taking the time to help faculty understand how technology should accompany their physical lecture and not a replication of it. Furthermore, in order to effectively optimize technology, one or two leaders cannot spearhead the project. It must be a university-wide project. Leaders should be working with faculty to help them refine their roles with other departments, such as the library, IT department, and student affairs office, in order to make sure that online technology’s inclusion in the classroom can be considered a top priority for everyone at the university and to make sure that every department is practicing their due diligence.
3. Create models to fund IT services, innovation, and growth
Due to many institutions having their funding cut, IT advancements are oftentimes not a priority. In order to effectively fund any IT advancements, it is important for IT personnel to work with institutional administrators in order to advocate why funding for IT is so important. IT leaders should be presenting total cost of ownership (TCO) documents and discuss them with the appropriate channels to discuss when funding is necessary. Other ways one can assist growth models for IT funding is to benchmark IT financials via Educause’s Core Data Service, establish an IT governance structure that can allocate the funding, and build the cost of growth into models ahead of time.
4. Improve student outcomes using technology
Improving student outcomes with technology can mean many different things to many different people. Some examples of this could be: developing training courses for students to understand technology better, or removing barriers to usage and accessibility. Using technology to focus on collaborative learning or on improving student outcomes could also mean improving graduation and retention rates. One suggestion to improve student graduation and retention rates is to use data analytics to track a student’s progress. If a student is not turning in work or missing course classes, having that data will allow the instructor to reach out to them earlier to see if they need extra assistance. Additional tips include: clearly defining faculty’s role in how they can use technology to assist in student retention, determine how much data should be shared with advisors or other university personnel, and make sure that the system is accessible to the necessary departments, as asking for permissions may slow down the process of assisting the student.
5. Demonstrate not only how important IT is, but how it can be useful to the business side of Higher Ed
Every university seeks to better itself and continue developing as a great institution. In a competitive market, where many institutions face the harsh reality of declining enrollment, it is all the more important to be a cutting-edge institution. IT can foster a more collaborative learning among students, and faculty members to teach material in a new and exciting way, and it can also allow the nontraditional student taking courses online to experience a classroom setting in a new and exciting way—and these are just some of the ways IT can be used.. Another great way to engage IT in the business side of things is to include them in your marketing campaign—highlight the institution’s commitment to technology, or discuss how technology affects students in and out of the classroom. Additional tips include: developing a plan for how IT can help serve the greater institutional needs, making sure your IT staff and leaders understand how they fit into the greater needs of the university, and having a clear plan for how IT will help business goals.
6. Increase the IT organization’s ability to manage change
With its constant change comes the desire to manage change effectively in order to always have a smoothly run system. The best way to go about managing this change is to make a plan. Grajeck adds, “institutional leaders conflate new initiatives with new systems and fail to fully think through and execute on the business-end components.” The change you impliment cannot just affect one or two areas at a time: It must be methodical and happen concurrently. Make sure that you’re also thinking of the users, as a new system rollout will only be successful for as long as the users can manage and navigate the new system. Additional tips from Grajeck are: creating a role for someone to work the change management, allowing people to always be able to identify a leader, be willing to change methodologies as needed, and review your current IT policies to make sure they work with your new changes.
7. Provide better user support to the new standards of technology, including: cloud, online education, mobile and BYOD
If you are going to manage change effectively, you absolutely have to provide effective support to your users. Sometimes this can be difficult because you’ll be expected to provide support across platforms. Grajeck calls this the “new normal” of Higher Ed IT, as people always want to stay connected on any mobile device. This brings up the question: how can we protect these cloud computing users? Before any institution can go about figuring it out, it is important to first define the parameters in which you’re working. This will bring your institution to create a service level agreement (commonly referred to as an SLA). An SLA will let your IT team know which features are in need of being supportive, among many other things. Additional tips are: make sure your SLA includes ADA accommodations for those that need it, make sure users know which data is okay to submit through mobile and which should only be on a secure network, and invest in knowledge management tools—they may prove more useful than you realize.
8. Develop policies for mobile, cloud, and digital security
Now that we’ve discussed how important an SLA is, it’s time to discuss just how to keep the data transmitted via mobile devices and the cloud secure and safe. As Grajeck offers in the original piece, “because data security requires the cooperation of every person who comes in contact with institutional data, the mere existence of policies is not enough.” You need to make sure that your IT team knows how to communicate the importance of these policies to your users. One way to go about this is to develop a training program to make sure that all of your users are aware and committed to these new security policies. Other tips include: be clear on which tips affect all users and which are specific to a certain portion, and ensure that these policies are enforceable and develop a communications enforcement plan on how to enforce the policies.
9. Develop a new Enterprise IT architecture
Given your university’s commitment to expanding both its security and its policy, its enterprise is also something that should be expanded. One thing to consider is whether or not to centralize or standardize your enterprise. Furthermore, one would want to make sure that the new enterprise has been discussed among different parts of the university. As mentioned above, it is important to involve IT in the business side of the institution, so it’s only fair to make sure that they are kept up to date with what kind of changes are being made. Additional tips include: choose configurable design systems over single-use designs, establish roles to review the new enterprise frequently, and develop and stick to consistent standards.
10. Balance things like openness, security, and agility
As you may have noticed, many of these problems and solutions lead into each other. A true domino effect, if you will. Now that we’ve discussed problems around cloud computing and mobile security and its enterprise, it’s important to discuss how that enterprise will stay open, agile, and secure. It may seem strange: how does something stay secure while also staying open and agile? After all, having something be open and agile usually means that it is flexible and, to some, may seem not very secure. As everyone in Higher Ed IT will tell you, this is not true. The key to doing this effectively is to have effective conversations about how your team can keep a secure enterprise while balancing its openness and agility. Additional tips include: developing a risk profile for being both secure and open, briefing your leaders on the status of your open and agile–but still secure enterprise, and developing a framework so users can understand how agility and openness are being considered while still securely maintaining their data.
While this list is clearly not all-encompassing of all of the problems Higher Ed IT professionals face, it’s large and covers many different aspects of the field, from security to managing change. One great thing about Educause’s panel is that it allows them to reconvene at a later date to do either one of two things: first, come together to discuss the success they’ve had with their original solutions and propose additional fixes, or second, discuss a whole new set of problems that the Higher Ed IT community faces. There is constant communication going on about how to better serve the Higher Ed IT community that work toward creating an even better community.
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