Paula’s E-Musings

The Chronicle of Higher Education’s latest episode of Tech Therapy, which spotlights technology and legal issues, was well-timed for me. Last Thursday and Friday I had the pleasure of hosting the attorney that SUNY Administration has assigned to SUNY Cortland. We are fortunate that two of his three areas of specialization are privacy and information sharing of electronic records such as FERPA and HIPAA, and issues related to the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).  His third area of expertise involves legalities related to University Police, including First Amendment rights of students and employees.

We spent some time reflecting — and chuckling about –how IT so often takes the lead on developing policies about the sharing and protecting of institutional records, even though IT is rarely, if ever, the creator or custodian. Similarly, it is typically the IT group that shepherds through policies on security and the use of e-mail, the Web and other communications tools. Why? Because these records and communications tools, along with so many learning modes, are electronic and the need to protect institutional data has become paramount. 

In reality the focus of the policies should not be on the format, but nevertheless in this digital era that is usually the case. At Cortland, I typically coordinate the development of such policies, of course relying on the resources and expertise all of the appropriate offices such as the Registrar, Student Accounts, and Student Affairs, etc. Most recently I have been organizing efforts to develop a comprehensive College FERPA policy that protects student privacy, yet allows the campus to share information as necessary to conduct the business of the institution and adhere to Federal law requirements.

During the two days our Legal Counsel was on campus we met with a number of different campus groups including the President’s Cabinet, which ultimately approves most of the important campus policies. We spent a lot of our time discussing FERPA and the implications for the many offices who are custodians of records. We talked about illegal file sharing and proceedures for handling DMCA complaints. We also talked about HEA reauthorization, and what instituions will need to do be be in compliance.

Getting back to the Tech Therapy Webcast, it was the first of two Webcasts to examine how legal issues impact IT and vice-versa. In these days of eLearning and creation of online intellectual property, and with so  many records and communications in electronic format, IT’s integral part in the educational enterprise has many legal implications. In addition to regulars Scott Carlson and Warren Arbogast, three attorneys participated in a lively conversation about legal issues that are impacting all of us.  Tune in for a thought-provoking discussion on a timely topic.

Everyone seems to be tweeting on Twitter. Last month Talk of the Nation devoted a segment to Twitter, explaining its purpose and inviting listeners to tweet with them. EDUCAUSE describes Twitter as “part blog, part social networking site, and part IM tool.” The EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative has a Twitter primer in its  “7 Things You Should Know” series.

Twitter was created in March 2006 with the purpose of answering the question “What are you doing?” “Followers”  track and communicate with those they follow. Twitter is unique in limiting each tweet (aka post) to 140 characters so “conversations” are typically frequent and short.  I follow and am followed by about a dozen folks, both friends and colleagues. I have to admit that my tweets are pretty prosaic as are most of my followers’ tweets, if they tweet at all. There are some exceptions  — mostly the faculty I follow who use Twitter with students and colleagues. As more formal groups, such as Talk of the Nation, use Twitter as a venue to engage listeners/readers in conversations I expect the general level of discourse will be elevated.

I participate in several social networking sites, and I mostly post and read posts about the ordinary. The network I find most engaging is Goodreads where participants share reviews of books they’ve read. I’ve got a couple dozen Goodread friends; I look forward to their updates and I enjoy posting my own reviews.

Social Networking is becoming prevalent and there are more sites than ever before — both general and interest-specific. There are so many new opportunities to connect with others, share interests, and participate in online communities. Their role in higher education remains to be seen, so stay connected. Meanwhile, I’m off to tweet about this latest blog posting.

This is the fourth week of the fall semester and to say it’s been hectic is an understatement. The new campus portal myRedDragon with its single sign-on capability coupled with the new format for student netid’s has created a flurry of activity at the Technology Help Center. Information Resources has debuted its new Webpage with TechInfo to dynamically provide information about where to find support. It is still in a development stage but seems to be used with some regularity. Site visitors aren’t always sure what to do with the tag clouds but they are catching on quickly and the echat feature seems to be getting some activity.

The challenge as always is getting the word out to campus about the many services and resources that we offer. Faculty and students alike are interested in Web 2.0 technologies and the interest in their use is growing, as evidenced by the size of those tag clouds on the Tech Info blog. Many of IR’s instructional services are located in Memorial Library and next week they are hosting an Information Fair to showcase instructional technologies for faculty and students. The IR annual Information and Technology Planning Document has been updated and is a good barometer for progress and priorities.

It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged. Where has the summer gone?

The end of the academic year always goes by quickly, and there are many deadlines to meet. Budget finalization, staff evaluations, and annual reports are all very necessary, yet time consuming. Read the 2007-08 Information Resources Annual Report to learn about this year’s highlights.

In mid-July I co-presented at the 2008 NACUBO Annual Meeting. Together with my colleagues in the Facilities and the Business Offices, we delivered a paper “Green is Not For Money: Innovative Efforts Towards Campus Sustainability.” I talked specifically about the energy savings we realize from our enterprise Blade Server environment, our use of energy saving features in desktops across campus, and our use of Crestron control systems to manage energy savings in the classrooms.

Our biggest campus-wide project this summer is the implementation of a campus portal. Using Sungard’s Luminis platform, we have integrated our Blackboard eLearning system with our enterprise student information system, Banner. Students and faculty will now have single sign-on and will have only one password to remember. The power of Luminis is the unified and personalized access to a full complement of information and services. It’s been a real team effort between Administrative Computing Services and the departments who deliver their services online through BannerWeb. In keeping with Cortland’s tradition, we’ve named the new Portal myRedDragon.

Not everything is about information and technology. I recently participated in the Collection Exchange, part of this summer’s Collexbibition in the SUNY Cortland Dowd Fine Art Gallery. Coordinated by Syracuse artist Joanna Spitzner, I was able to exchange a piece of art from my collection for a copy of a work in the Gallery Collection. So I brought in a print of a mid 1700’s Flemish engraving and exchanged it for a copy of an etching “Conte des Milles et Une Nuits” by Jules Pascin, one of my favorite expressionist artists. It’s an innovative gallery program for sure and I was glad to have to the opportunity to be involved.

As CIOs we are first and foremost administrators, and most of our time is spent planning, coordinating, negotiating, budgeting, etc.  Sometimes we are so focused on solving problems and putting out fires that we lose sight of the core of what we’re all about: enriching the education experience.  I was able to reaffirm that purpose earlier this week.

I was invited to attend the last class of the semester where students (Adolescence Education majors) in an English Language Arts Class presented their final projects. The instructor had participated in our Institute on Teaching Strategies last summer, and redesigned her class to be truly collaborative using Web 2.0 technologies.

The class developed a wiki and blog, and their final assignment was designed for students to research a contemporary societal issue and communicate through the electronic media and social networking applications. The instructor, who herself was just learning about new media and their applications in education, took a risk. The success of her class would partially depend on robust and reliable systems and strong technical support. The class required collaboration of many kinds: among students, between faculty and students, and also among the class (both instructor and students), librarians, and technologists.

For me, that is where the proverbial rubber hit the road, and where the distinctions between information itself and technology were forever blurred. Research, writing, and technology skills became parts of a greater whole. The advantages of our blended library/IT organization were never so apparent: the librarians and the technology trainer worked together and they engaged the support of our distributed computing and enterprise technologists, who made systems work and provided centralized storage for the data-intensive final projects.

The instructor will be giving a presentation about her experience in developing and teaching this class at the upcoming SUNY Conference on Instructional Technologies (CIT). You can check out the student projects at the following links:

Liberation in the Classroom

Free Tibet  

Find Your Musical Identity

America’s Sacred Oil 

Child Abuse:  A Call to Action

Are You at Risk?

Speaking for Those Who Can’t Speak for Themselves  

Anti-Semitism in Cortland  

South Otselic Town Website  

America’s Self-Image  

One Shot to Save a Life  

ELA and Technology: A Modern Approach to ELA Learning�

Spring is coming to Central New York. In our yards green grass has replaced dirty snow, green spikes are starting to emerge in our gardens, and there is the slightest hint of green buds on the trees. I noticed how spring-like green our surroundings are becoming as I drove to Albany last week to attend a Green IT Conference sponsored by the NYS Forum IT Greening Committee and the New York State Energy and Development Authority (NYSERDA). The New York Governor’s 15-15 initiative — to reduce energy by 15 percent by 2015 — is one of the most aggressive in the country. And as a member of the American Colleges and University Presidents Climate Commitment SUNY Cortland has also agreed to reduce its carbon dioxide emissions by 20 percent by 2014.

Last week’s Green IT Conference dealt with issues of global warming and the role of IT in finding solutions to reducing the carbon footprint. Plenary session speakers were from the New York State Department of Environmental Conservation and the Gartner Group. Information Technology has a responsibility to reduce its own energy consumption through energy savings both at the enterprise and distributed levels and through responsible recycling of electronics. IT can provide systems for monitoring energy and systematically managing power campus-wide and offer leadership as campuses invest in and adopt new energy saving technologies. Reduce, reuse, and recycle was the mantra.

I found out about many on-line resources devoted to Green IT. Some of the more useful include:

The Green Grid — a global consortium dedicated to advancing energy efficiency in data centers and business computing ecosystems.

Simply Green: A Few Steps in the Right DirectionToward Integrating Sustainability into Public Sector IT — a Paper fromthe Center for Digital Government features best Green IT practices in state and local government

The Federal Electronics Challenges promotes initiatives to encourage the purchase of greener electronic projects, the reduction of energy during their use, and the management of obsolete electronics in an environmentally safe way.

Energy Cost Calculators — these Energy Cost Calculators at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Web site estimate the energy cost savings from buying more efficient products.

A Guide to Greener Electronics — a ranking by Greenpeace of electronics manufacturers based on their global policies and practices on eliminating harmful chemicals and on taking responsibility for their products once they are discarded by consumers.

It’s been a busy couple of months but I’ve finally had a chance to read this year’s Horizon Report, jointly produced by the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative and the New Media Consortium. The annual Horizon Report identifies and describes emerging technologies that are certain to have a major impact on higher education.

The Report provides descriptions and in-depth discussions of “key emerging technologies” that this year include grassroots video, collaboration webs, mobile broadband, data mashups, collective intelligence, and social operating systems.

Each year the Horizon Report identifies critical challenges that we will be facing in the next five years. This year’s report includes: significant shifts in scholarship, research, creative expression and learning which have created a need for innovation and leadership at all levels of the academy; the growing expectation to deliver services, content and media to mobile and personal devices; the renewed emphasis on collaborative learning which is pushing the educational community to develop new forms of interactive and assessment; and the need to provide formal instruction in information, visual, and technological literacy, as well as in how to create meaningful content with today’s web-enabled tools.

The significant trends discussed in this year’s Report are, in order of perceived priority:

• The growing use of Web 2.0 and social networking;
• the evolving way we work, collaborate and communicate as boundaries become more fluid and globalization increases;
• the increasing access to and portability of content as smaller, more powerful devices are introduced;
• the widening gap between students’ and faculty’s perception of technology.

In its fifth year of publication, this year’s Report identifies metatrends, or conceptual threads, that have been recurring themes each year. Three notable megatrends are collective sharing and generation of knowledge; connecting people through the network; and moving the computer into three dimensions. You can learn more about these and other metatrends and participate in an online discussion at the Horizon Project Wiki site.

The Report has full descriptions and examples of each of these technologies, challenges, and trends, and their impact on the educational environment. At SUNY Cortland we use The Horizon Report to frame discussions among technologists, librarians, and faculty and to provide a context for our strategic planning. I encourage everyone to read the Report in its entirety.

Here in Central New York where outside temperatures are hovering around zero  and inside they vary from building to building, we often dress in layers. In the technology world we often think about layers: the layers in the TCP/IP and OSI models and  the overlay of various applications.  Recently we’ve been discussing the layers of software components during the process of integrating our e-Learning system (Blackboard’s WebCT) with our Student Information System (Sungard’s Banner), as part of our implemention of a campus portal (Sungard’s Luminis Platform IV).

We in Information Resources also think of our IT services in terms of layers. First we rely on the underpinning layer: the technologists who support the servers and the operating systems on which the software applications run. Those folks are part of our Administrative Computing group, responsible for enterprise systems. Next we have the software applications specialists, who install and maintain the software and are responsible for upgrades. Those technologists belong to the Academic Computing group, responsible for distributed computing. The final layer is the front-end team. The technologists in Academic Computing answer questions at the Technology Help Center. In Memorial Library the technology trainer, the instructional designer, production specialists and librarians spend their days working with faculty, staff and students. Of course staff throughout Information Resources offer direct assistance to our customers, whether or not that service is officially in their performance programs. Our success is measured not only by the work we do, but more importantly by how well our campus is able to use technology in teaching, learning and administrative work.

Lately there has been a lot of discussion about Library/IT collaboration. Just yesterday I participated in a Webcast on this topic. Eugene Spencer, previous CIO and current consultant to higher education and library groups, responded to questions and comments about merged organizations, the role of the CIO, and change management, among other issues. The transcript of the entire Webcast is available online.

The question of different cultures arises whenever the topic of blended organizations is discussed. Of course there are the distinct library and IT cultures, but there are also the administrative/enterprise and the academic cultures within IT to be considered, to say nothing of the media services culture, which is a hybrid of sorts. In actuality, there are probably more similarities than differences among the various cultures. In order to successfully meet the needs of the campus, a new culture with common values needs to exist. Everyone involved must be committed to working collaboratively, and must recognize the importance of new technologies to benefit students and faculty by enhancing the learning experience.

In Cortland’s blended organization, we recognize the unique characteristics of the four departments that comprise Information Resources. At the same time we work to create synergies among the departments. To this end, many of our IT initiatives such as Second Life and iTunesU are managed by cross-departmental teams, with each team member bringing distinct strengths and skills. We often include teaching faculty on our teams, since we need to understand their needs and specific teaching objectives. We recognize and respect organizational boundaries, but as we work together to be creative with emerging technologies, those boundaries have become less important.

YouTube and iTunesU are not the only Websites where you can find lectures and presentations. Earlier this month I wrote about Big Think, a site about ideas and intellectual discourse that features interviews with scholars from many disciplines and provides opportunities for readers to participate in discussions. An interesting post on today’s Wired Campus has references  to a number of Websites that feature lectures and presentations. Among them are The Research Channel, a non-profit consortium of colleges and universities that broadcasts video in a several formats; Princeton University’s UChannel; and University of Maryland’s DoFlick. Here at SUNY Cortland we have made lectures and other learning materials available on our own Website, as well as on iTunesU, Second Life, and YouTube. With free access to these resources through libraries, and as more universities are willing to share their intellectual capital, learning is truly becoming more democratized.