MrL8Nite goes back to school
"I don't mind change, I just don't want to be there when it happens." --Adrian Monk
Managing the Technological Environment
Course Description (3 units) From the Syllabus:
This course is designed to provide students with real world experience in managing a complex technological environment within higher education, specifically, at Pepperdine University.
The course will be organized into three distinct phases:
a) assessment of the current conditions at Pepperdine University;
b) strategizing and organizing possible programs and actions that will advance technology services; and
c) producing a 90-day plan of action and Board of Regents presentation to that end.
Students will be provided the opportunity to:
a) learn and assess the complexities of managing a technologically rich environment within higher education;
b) learn about the need to balance the technical with the end user experience;
c) consider the difficulty of balancing resources and political constraints with the need to innovate; and
d) be immersed in the six domains of technology within higher education (network and communications, data center and systems, enterprise information systems, program management and information security, end user support, and technology and learning).
Professor: Dr. Tim Chester (Pepperdine CIO)
Executive Summary Example
For the first 5 weeks of this course we interviewed Dr. Chester's staff and wrote a 2-page Executive Summary report that would be used for the hypothetical briefing of the President and a Regent. The angle of this assignment was the assumption that Dr. Chester had left his role as the CIO of Pepperdine and that I was now the new CIO, thus briefing my bosses on my progress and challenges of approaching this new role.
Below is my Week 5 report (that scored 20/20) as an example of these weekly reports...
From: C. J. Trayser, VP/CIO
Date: 21 June 2008
Re: Assessment of User Support and Learning Technology at Pepperdine
A conversation this week with Terry Brown(1) and Jim Smith(1), both Directors in the Client Services division, provided me with an understanding of the challenges of Instructional and Institutional Support at Pepperdine. I found that their forward-thinking and collaborative approach for working with the faculty endorses Terry's assertion that "...technology, when harnessed appropriately, can be used well in the classroom". Also, having our staff looking at new technologies and trying to envision them into our university's classrooms, dorms and support environment is consistent with a recent statement from Gartner. In the report, it was stressed that companies "...must embrace...technologies as additional opportunities to innovate." It is by collaborating, researching and envisioning that we can make smart investment choices for Pepperdine – ensuring the proper balance between fiscal responsibility and the adoption and promotion of technology throughout the university.
There is a concerted effort to improve the technology support model at Pepperdine. Terry emphasized that improving the self-help model is a key step in improving a rather weak reputation (based on the 2007 & 2008 surveys of technology services) that we have for timely user support. The strategy is to centralize and improve the disjointed self-help methods in use currently, so we can provide a reliable, accurate resource for users. This approach should reduce the "simple" help-desk calls, allowing staff to attend to the more difficult and challenging issues.
The issue of academic use of technology in the classroom is not without its supporters and detractors. Jim pointed out that while some schools, such as GSEP, push the envelope by adopting technology in classroom instructional methods (most rooms with PC projectors, producing pod-casts, use of wikis, etc.), other schools still employ the "sage on the stage" model of education. Jim is actively working with the school liaisons to both learn what the early-adopter programs want to try and also encourage the other schools that have yet to fully adopt technology in the classroom to determine what is effective and useful for their programs. Reliance on our research of other universities and even corporate education programs aids in identifying appropriate solutions. For example, some professors are looking at the use of "clickers" (student feedback devices similar to a TV remote control), to fully-wired classrooms with electronic whiteboards, to Hi-Def recording capabilities for publishing pod-casts to I-Tunes U. As the scores in the 2007 & 2008 surveys don't indicate a problem with classroom technology, we can take a deliberate and measured approach.
Best practices in both these areas are a primary goal of mine. Our reliance on resources such as Educause, listservs, Gartner, insight from the schools, and our own independent research are key to making smart decisions. As paraphrased from The New CIO (Broadbent & Kitzis, 2005), "We must take a real leadership role--coaching and coaxing our colleagues about potential use of technologies while unlocking the benefits trapped inside of our current methods and practices."
(1) Not their real names
Below is my Week 5 report (that scored 20/20) as an example of these weekly reports...
From: C. J. Trayser, VP/CIO
Date: 21 June 2008
Re: Assessment of User Support and Learning Technology at Pepperdine
A conversation this week with Terry Brown(1) and Jim Smith(1), both Directors in the Client Services division, provided me with an understanding of the challenges of Instructional and Institutional Support at Pepperdine. I found that their forward-thinking and collaborative approach for working with the faculty endorses Terry's assertion that "...technology, when harnessed appropriately, can be used well in the classroom". Also, having our staff looking at new technologies and trying to envision them into our university's classrooms, dorms and support environment is consistent with a recent statement from Gartner. In the report, it was stressed that companies "...must embrace...technologies as additional opportunities to innovate." It is by collaborating, researching and envisioning that we can make smart investment choices for Pepperdine – ensuring the proper balance between fiscal responsibility and the adoption and promotion of technology throughout the university.
There is a concerted effort to improve the technology support model at Pepperdine. Terry emphasized that improving the self-help model is a key step in improving a rather weak reputation (based on the 2007 & 2008 surveys of technology services) that we have for timely user support. The strategy is to centralize and improve the disjointed self-help methods in use currently, so we can provide a reliable, accurate resource for users. This approach should reduce the "simple" help-desk calls, allowing staff to attend to the more difficult and challenging issues.
The issue of academic use of technology in the classroom is not without its supporters and detractors. Jim pointed out that while some schools, such as GSEP, push the envelope by adopting technology in classroom instructional methods (most rooms with PC projectors, producing pod-casts, use of wikis, etc.), other schools still employ the "sage on the stage" model of education. Jim is actively working with the school liaisons to both learn what the early-adopter programs want to try and also encourage the other schools that have yet to fully adopt technology in the classroom to determine what is effective and useful for their programs. Reliance on our research of other universities and even corporate education programs aids in identifying appropriate solutions. For example, some professors are looking at the use of "clickers" (student feedback devices similar to a TV remote control), to fully-wired classrooms with electronic whiteboards, to Hi-Def recording capabilities for publishing pod-casts to I-Tunes U. As the scores in the 2007 & 2008 surveys don't indicate a problem with classroom technology, we can take a deliberate and measured approach.
Best practices in both these areas are a primary goal of mine. Our reliance on resources such as Educause, listservs, Gartner, insight from the schools, and our own independent research are key to making smart decisions. As paraphrased from The New CIO (Broadbent & Kitzis, 2005), "We must take a real leadership role--coaching and coaxing our colleagues about potential use of technologies while unlocking the benefits trapped inside of our current methods and practices."
(1) Not their real names