December 2002
Volume 18
Number 9
Newsbriefs
In There For the Long Haul
Pros and Cons of Applying to College Electronically
Edutech Responds
Quotes
All Those Systems
The typical college or university has a half-dozen systems that span the entire institution. These are: ERP, e-mail, library, one-card, course management, and scheduling. Five years ago, the set was only the first three of these. More are on the way. Portal systems are catching on quickly. Departmental systems with a campus-wide clientele are coming into place also: parking permits and tickets, health services, and the bookstore via e-commerce. We are just starting to wake up to a growing problem with these applications: they are all resolutely independent systems.
Most troubling is what we have come to call the ERP (enterprise resource planning) system. This is a misnomer born of the vendors’ overreach in marketing. In reality, these are the principal transaction systems for campuses. They have proven notoriously difficult to exploit as tools to understand past performance or to forecast future trends and options. Institutions have had to build data warehouses to make past data available for study. Resource planning is at best a marginal feature in these applications packages. Most colleges and universities extract data into spreadsheets when they work on forecasts and planning models.
Senior administrators at many institutions still think the ERP – and the sizeable investment sunk into it – was most of what was needed to support administrative work. But now much of the activity and cost around the ERP is dedicated to creating data feeds in and out and to implementing "bolt-on" products (e.g., portal and web interfaces, document image management, and non-print delivery of reports). On the IT staff side, the original concentration on applications support and database management has been extended to include developing and maintaining feeds to and from other applications, creation of data structures (warehouse, datamart, or normalized tables), and coordinating with new campus-wide and departmental information systems and applications.
The newcomers
At one time, library and e-mail applications only asked annual loads
of "people" information from the ERP. The more recent arrivals
– course management and one-card, in particular – want a more
ambitious, two-way flow of data. And even library systems now also have
modules to exchange financial data for bursar activities.
Course management systems take roster feeds from the ERP and return grades. They also have the potential to cooperate with library systems on functions such as electronic reserve materials. The CMS is in fact rapidly growing as a server-management chore and as a producer and consumer of substantial data storage space.
The full extent to which the CMS will need to be more tightly connected is not yet clear. They offer to serve as portals for a wide range of institutional data and services. The CMS vendors are also forging relationships with content providers, a trend that is bound to intersect with the already extensive involvement of the library in resource licensing. Where and how digital content created on campus will be stored and tended is not yet clear. It is currently divided among the CMS, the library, departmental servers, and individual computers.
In short, the CMS is quickly growing to become the hub of a data universe that will soon exceed that of the ERP. How it will interrelate with administrative, library, and scheduling systems is still largely yet to be determined.
One-card systems often began as dining-hall access controls. They are now well on their way to becoming the universal point-of-transaction application for door-entry, vending, library, and primary ID. One-card is undergoing two kinds of evolution: becoming the common form of authentication for different kinds of transactions and a primary vehicle for e-business. Considerable work still lies ahead for these systems, some of which have key components based on DOS-era program code.
But the bigger challenge for IT shops will come when these cards gain on-board processors and memory. At that point they will become potent information systems capable of real-time transactions with the institution’s other applications systems.
Scheduling packages have presented their own unique difficulties of integration with other campus systems. Often when one of these application products has been selected and implemented, the institution discovers two unpleasant surprises: that those who control campus meeting spaces see a central scheduling application as a threat to their autonomy (even if they retain approval authority for their rooms) and that competing applications are in place or in the process of being acquired.
A/V departments find general schedulers deficient in their ability to assign equipment. Alumni and development offices are more interested in software to organize events off-campus. Museums have their own special need for traveling exhibits. The operators of each of these alternate event and schedule applications typically expect to be accommodated by the central calendaring system and, of course, to get data feeds from the other schedulers.
The next generation
At some point in the future, surely years and millions of dollars from
now, campus systems will actually "work together." (See the
article by Lightfoot and Ihrig in the November/December issue of EDUCAUSE
Review.) Most likely, existing and new applications systems will be
integrated through advances in middleware – one of the most interesting
and promising fields of development in IT today. But the cost and
complexity of bringing the disparate applications into even the appearance
of harmony and cooperation will remain beyond the grasp of all but the
most technologically advanced and ambitious institutions – essentially a
few in the Research I group – for the foreseeable future.
Prototype projects currently under way suggest that new technology to facilitate exchanges among existing applications programs are the likely means to the desired integration. Re-writing or replacing legacy systems does not appear to be anyone’s idea of a solution. Instead, the new focus is on software technology to interpenetrate systems or to create a new space in which inputs and outputs are available to be shared.
But for now
The reality for current planning horizons is that we will continue to
live with the paradigm of mostly autonomous systems. Data will continue to
be imported and exported. More of those moves will be automated; the
building and tending of those feeds will grow as a percentage of IT staff
time.
Vendors will probably accelerate their efforts to provide more interfaces between their systems and those that surround them in campus environments. Already, ERP vendors offer gateways to the leading CMS systems, the online student admissions services, and the Immigration and Naturalization Service’s SEVIS system – to cite but three examples. How far and how willingly they will go to meet customers’ needs to make systems work together will be interesting to watch. Until now, the core business logic for software producers has been to offer more and more functionality inside their applications. Whether that logic will change in favor of building interfaces to "foreign" systems is not at all clear.
One of the great enthusiasms of the current era in IT is the portal. The concept is noteworthy for taking the user-centric view learned through experience with the web and applying it to application systems. The aim of the portal is to shorten the path a user needs to follow in order to use available information systems. But single sign-on and customized aggregation of information from various sources will probably turn out to be an expensive stop-gap while the middleware to more strongly integrate applications gets developed.
Minds to change
The current campus information systems landscape is the way we made
it. The map of minimally-connected information sources and processes
reflects the reality of how work is organized on campus and how
information flows, or doesn’t flow.
We already know from experience with ERP installations and upgrades that every campus has uncounted and unsuspected numbers of information controllers. We also know that they have much to say, if sometimes only through passive resistance, in the success of information systems.
Individuals from the highest levels of the institution well down through the ranks tend to own the processes they administer. Many of them are in for a rude shock once the realization of end-user driven system architecture takes shape. Integrated applications will challenge the divisions of administrative responsibility more than anything we have seen in campus IT thus far. TW
Newsbriefs
CHANGING THE SURVEY PROCESS
Web-based surveys are having a profound influence on the survey
process. Unlike other types of surveys, web page design skills and
computer programming expertise play a significant role in the design of
web-based surveys and survey respondents face new and different challenges
in completing them. This paper examines the different types of web-based
surveys, their advantages and challenges, their design, and the issues of
validity, error, and non-response. The author also discusses the
importance of auxiliary languages (graphic, symbolic and numeric
languages), and concludes with the unique aspects of web-based surveys.
See http://firstmonday.org/issues/issue7_12/gunn/.
BEYOND THE BOARDROOM
Once the province of corporate America, electronic whiteboards are
popping up on campuses nationwide – to the delight of faculty and
vendors alike. Picture this: a chemistry class where the professor fills
an entire blackboard with a complex equation while students frantically
scribble in their notebooks before the instructor must erase the
calculation. Now think about an equation that lives forever – in a
digital file – thanks to the "save" application built into an
electronic whiteboard. Visualize a professor printing out the written work
or saving it to a server, and later posting the equation on a class
website. Such scenarios are now cropping up at colleges and universities
nationwide. And while the whiteboards – once thought of as a tool for
only corporate America – are not as prevalent on campus as projection
technology, they are finding their place in higher education. The question
right now is: to what degree? The use of the technology is so new to
higher education that no definitive statistics are currently available.
What observers do note, however, is that the electronic boards are being
used on campuses in a variety of ways.
Jean Marie Angelo, "Beyond the Boardroom." University Business, December 2002.
INTERNET FILTERING
According to a new study by the Henry J. Kaiser Foundation,
antipornography filters are preventing teenagers from accessing useful
health-related sites. The study evaluated the effectiveness of Internet
software filtering settings and determined that less is more. While most
institutions use a more restrictive setting, a less restrictive setting
enables access to harmless or useful sites while offering similar
protection against pornography. In the contentious climate over censorship
versus the right to privacy on the Internet, the study, to be published by
the Journal of the American Medical Association, is perceived as
neutral.
Edupage, December 11, 2002, www.educause.edu/pub/edupage/edupage.html.
CIO Leadership Series
In There For the Long Haul
Around the country, at colleges and universities of all kinds and sizes, are some CIOs who have been in place quite successfully for ten or more years. What are the secrets of their long runs?
Long-term occupancy of the top IT position is no doubt highly appreciated by those institutions with that good fortune, but we almost never talk about the phenomenon. The long-serving CIOs don’t call attention to themselves on this point. Their employers are also very discreet. In all likelihood, nobody really wants to openly acknowledge what seems to be a relatively rare and lucky situation.
While respecting the virtual taboo on singling out individuals with long tenure, it is possible to extract a list of shared characteristics from observation of these CIOs. Some are key points in the CIO job description; others run counter to the common wisdom about leadership.
Calm and steady
Yearning for adventure is not part of how most campuses approach IT.
Outside of the nation’s technical elite, few institutions treat IT as a
core or strategic activity, and even fewer would say that they are looking
for a riskier path to follow. Stability, steadiness, and calm are the
generally unspoken watch-words in the IT outlook at most places.
The long-serving CIO knows how to exemplify those values and, even more importantly, help instill them in campus leaders in difficult times – keeping one’s head while all those around are losing theirs. The special importance of this trait for the CIO is that IT still has the reputation of being an uncontrollable sector, costly and unpredictable. And, of course, many administrators and faculty feel intimidated and defensive when IT topics heat up. Knowing how to help others keep calm seems to be a key CIO skill.
Steadiness is also a by-product of integrity. Obvious though it may be, there is simply no substitute for being regarded as a person whose trustworthiness is beyond question, and whose reassurances are consistent with the facts.
Careful communicators
Successful CIOs are not necessarily great communicators. Over a long
period of time, the number of occasions where special powers of persuasion
are required in the job is probably small. In fact, being seen as being
too much a promoter can have drawbacks for a CIO, given the reluctant
relationship most institutions have with IT.
Having a good sense of when to be quiet can be just as important. IT might be able to play a role in solving more institutional problems than others would think, but picking the best opportunities, and letting the others go by has a special wisdom, too. Over-promising happens to be another of the common perceptions the world has of IT and CIOs.
Careful communication, though, is highly valuable. Backing words with performance is essential. So also is the ability to prevent misconceptions and ambiguities that are then subject to varying interpretations after unhappy facts. Nobody likes feeling misled; knowing how to be restrained and clear in communication is a good way to minimize discord.
Finally, the most important word in a CIO’s vocabulary has to be "no." Agreeing to too many initiatives, to say nothing of those that are actually bad ideas, leads to chaos – and short job tenure. Having the courage to say no, and the ability to withstand pressure to give in might be in itself the best kept secret of long CIO careers.
A degree of distance
Being too clubby, too eager to be close to those with the greatest
influence can be a trap. Longtime CIOs do not stand out as members of the
core leadership on campus. Instead, they avoid being viewed as aligned
with other senior administrative personalities and roles.
Being equidistant from the constantly competing client groups, and their leaders, gives the CIO some protection from the inevitable ups and downs of institutional initiatives – and crises, for that matter. For IT, the real battle has been to figure out what its contribution to the academic mission can be. Retaining a distance and being selective about enthusiasms to follow is a survival skill.
Not getting excessively identified with projects and personalities also has basically defensive benefit too. When things go wrong, it is important to be viewed as a leader who can change direction, adapt to new circumstances, and help the institution find a new path. A CIO who is too enmeshed with the debacle is less able to break free of the failure and lead on to better things.
Smooth transitions
For better or worse, transitions are better if they are smooth.
Colleges and universities are inherently conservative, liking a sense of
continuity and skeptical about change in the abstract.
Changes in the IT scene tend to be disruptive and rapid. The need to equip everyone on campus with a computer came on quickly and at a very uncomfortable cost. More recently, the need to constantly increase Internet bandwidth – and to manage it actively and in some cases restrictively – arrived as an ungraceful transition on many campuses. Replacements of ERP systems seem unavoidably painful transitions; very few colleges or universities can say they managed that passage painlessly.
The better transitions are soon forgotten. Looking back at those that have gone well quickly shows that superior planning, dogged attention to detail, and solid communications made them possible. The CIO’s personal involvement seems the best assurance of the conditions for smooth projects in IT. Even the best teams and internal leadership are hard-pressed to keep a project on target and at the same time manage relationships with the affected communities on campus.
Masters of budgeting
The key to maintaining conditions for IT success is superior
budgeting. The long haul in IT depends on an adequate threshold of funding
– a requirement that has been notoriously difficult to achieve. Projects
get most of the attention in institutional planning and budgeting in IT,
but having adequate staff count and quality, an appropriate equipment
base, and a robust infrastructure of network and servers is what makes
solid IT possible. If the fundamentals are not enabled by successful
budgeting, the whole IT scene on campus is perpetually unstable.
Successful budgeting has meant frequent, large increases. The ability to win these necessities has played a big role in sorting the long-term CIOs from the rest. And while the support of senior administrators is undoubtedly critical in IT planning and budget-making, the most successful CIOs have been able to drive the process. Good allies are necessary but will come and go as their own priorities vary.
Strong senior IT staff
There is no more distinctive hallmark of a long-serving CIO than the
strength of the senior IT staff that this person has assembled and
developed. Information technology has become so specialized that no
individual is able to keep current and competent across all aspects of
what is needed on campus. To a large extent, the CIO has to count on key
staff members to build the areas of expertise that have to be brought into
play.
Senior IT staff, in turn, need to be good builders of dynamic organizations, able to learn and evolve quickly and to survive turnover in personnel. The ability to find and sustain strong staff is without exception a characteristic of CIOs who have built and headed durable organizations.
Campus focus
Longtime CIOs are not necessarily active in EDUCAUSE or other national
forums, but they are almost all well networked with peers. However, their
clear, primary allegiance is to the home institution. There is simply no
substitute for a deep and consistent understanding of the needs of the
campus; no involvement in the wider scope of professional activity can
compensate for being well-grounded and highly attentive at home.
Vision
Dreamers and visionaries don’t have long life lines. What matters
more is the ability to see things as they are and to make reasonable
forecasts and choices. Where others see a thicket, the outstanding CIO is
able to see a path. Ultimately, what is most valuable about
"vision" in leadership is the ability to spot problems and
solutions sufficiently in advance so that others can see and assess them,
and so join in acting on them.
Length of service is not a good thing in itself, but IT in the academic setting has thrived where a long view has guided it. TW
Pros and Cons of Applying
to College Electronically
by Mark Clayton, Christian Science Monitor
You’re running late, trying to make the deadline for applying to college. No problem. Just apply online. Fill out the form on the computer, press the button, and bingo. Sounds simple, and it’s an option at 9 out of 10 colleges and universities, according to a national survey conducted last year.
Yet despite widespread availability, online applications are shunned by a surprising number of tech-savvy students. Many choose instead to fill out a paper application, dab it with Wite-Out to blot mistakes, and send it by mail – or courier, if they’re late.
When it comes to applying to college online, ease of execution is often trumped by fears of the application getting lost in the electronic ether and never reaching the school. Students also worry about the privacy of their personal information. Or even that schools will not take electronic applications seriously.
Among high school students planning to attend four-year colleges, the percentage who applied to college online dipped to 34 percent this spring, from 38 percent two years ago, according to a not-yet-published survey. That drop was within the survey’s margin of error, so the results are "essentially flat – no change" after years of steady increases, says Richard Hesel, author of the study and a principal with Art & Science Group, a higher-education marketing and consulting firm in Baltimore.
He’s not quite certain what accounts for the lack of growth. "Personal engagement in the process seems to be more important to students since 9/11," Mr. Hesel says. Even with campus webcams and virtual tours, the campus visit is still the biggest determining factor in terms of where people apply. It’s been increasing in importance as technologies become more prevalent.
Another explanation, Hesel says, could be that "there’s a certain percentage of students who just don’t like filling out forms on a computer. To them, filling out a paper form has a certain appeal, perhaps, because it seems more personal."
Colleges can save time
After some initial foot-dragging, colleges have generally embraced the
online application. Downloading students’ information directly into
databases promises to speed up the process and allow more accuracy than
trying to read student handwriting and typing the information into a
computer. It could cut costs and increase the amount of time available to
review each application.
While he’s hopeful about the potential of online applications, Michael Griffin, associate dean of admissions at the University of Denver, says the technology takes time to master. This is the second year his school has offered online applications, but the data still have to be painstakingly transferred into another database – there isn’t any direct downloading yet.
About 53 percent of his school’s early-action candidates this fall applied online, Mr. Griffins says. "Certainly kids today are used to the technology, but when they hit the send button, they still question: Did [the school] actually get it?" he says. "Another thing we’ve found is that high school guidance counselors sometimes discourage applying online. Some aren’t comfortable with the technology. But others feel they’re losing some control if Billy or Suzy can apply online and they never know about it."
Still misconceptions
Harriet Brand, a spokeswoman for Princeton Review, says students hold
many misconceptions about applying online, including a mistaken belief that
colleges still prefer hard copies over the electronic version.
Enough students are at ease, though, that the Princeton Review has seen robust growth in this area. The number of online applications submitted via its website rose to 387,000 last year from 29,000 in 1999.
Still, some technology radicals have softened. In June 2000, the Chronicle
of Higher Education reported West Virginia Wesleyan College in
Buckhannon would soon accept only online applications. But a spokesman says
that although the school prefers the electronic versions, it still receives,
and welcomes, paper applications.
The full version of this article originally appeared in the December 3, 2002 online edition of
The Christian Science Monitor. It is reprinted here, with permission of the CSM, and edited for length.Edutech Responds
Q. What is the secret to making effective use of student workers? We hire a fair number of them every year but never feel that we are getting as much benefit from their work as we would like to see.
A. Most students who work in IT jobs have two main motivations: they want to learn about IT (perhaps to add to their future job prospects, or maybe just because they are interested), and they want to feel they are members of the IT "team." But on most campuses what do you see student workers doing? They are answering phones, making the long trek to distant corners of the campus on whatever service call a "real" staff member was not available to make, or they are doing homework while "baby-sitting" a student lab. These are all relatively marginal, low-value tasks. Those students know that. So does the IT organization. And so do the users. They are more effective and better-motivated if regularly asked to learn new skills in the course of their normal duties. And, they respond above all to quality time from front-line technical staff. Student workers fare better when they work in pairs or small groups. Where students are used effectively you see them working together, not in isolation. You also see them constantly coming and going from the offices of the professional staff, working side-by-side with them on some things, and watching and listening as the really interesting problems get solved.
Q. How much of a penalty in support costs are we paying for supporting both Windows and Macintosh computers?
A. Let’s call it 20%, if you have a lot of both types. That is a made-up statistic, but here is some thinking to back it up. You probably have some staff who are specialists on one or the other platform. If you had only Macs or only Windows, you would very likely have less duplication in staffing. You would also be more efficient if you were not negotiating and buying from different companies. But some trends are helping to reduce the "penalty." Both Windows and Mac operating systems take care of themselves much better than either of them did in the (five or ten years ago) past. The move to network-centered computing (web, JAVA, TCP/IP-based services) helps by locating many new capabilities outside the realm of operating systems. The worst of the penalty was related to client software, which hit the Macs hard in ERP applications.
Quotes
"The number of systems we cope with is a reflection of the tremendous depth and breadth of our institutions.... Higher education needs a next-generation infrastructure that will allow our institutions to be user-centered, to establish and maintain life-long relationships with individuals, and to provide personalized, secure, seamless connections with all constituents."
Ed Lightfoot and Weldon Ihrig
"The Next-Generation Infrastructure"
EDUCAUSE Review
November/December 2002
"When teaching in a classroom in which the students have laptops that are networked, it’s important to keep in mind that you actually have two classrooms in one. With the laptop covers down, you have an ordinary lecture room; whereas with the laptops up, you have a computer laboratory. Such a scenario allows the instructor to move seamlessly between these two environments and exploit the strengths of each where and when appropriate."
Lawrence E. Levine
"Laptop Classrooms Present New Teaching Challenges."
T.H.E. Journal
December 2002
The Edutech Report is a monthly publication of Edutech International
The EDUTECH REPORT is published each month by Edutech International, 120 Mountain Avenue, Bloomfield, CT, 06002-1634; (860) 242-3356. President and Publisher: Linda H. Fleit. Managing Editor: Thomas Warger. Copyright © 2002, Edutech International. All rights reserved. This publication, or any part thereof, may not be e-mailed, duplicated, reprinted, or republished without the written permission of the publisher. Facsimile reproduction, including photocopying, is forbidden. ISSN #0883-1327. One year subscription, $97. EDUTECH International also provides consulting services, exclusively to higher education.