Paula’s E-Musings

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.

The September/October 2007 issue of EDUCAUSE Review was all about how the faculty use emerging and collaborative technologies, and how to provide systems and services to support their efforts. Last week our Information Resources group and The Faculty Development Center co-hosted a retreat for faculty, technologists, and librarians. The faculty attendees ran the gamut from early adapters of technology to those who had recently begun creating online collaborative teaching environments. And many of the discussion topics reflected the “It’s All About the Faculty” themed issue of EDUCAUSE Review as noted above. Faculty talked about a variety of e-learning experiences. Several have begun using wikis and blogs. We learned how others have their students create podcasts and other digital media. We even got to see SUNY Cortland’s island on Second Life and hear how faculty are using this virtual world to engage students.

Some examples of what is going on in the classroom here at SUNY Cortland:

• An historian using wikis to help the students get a sense of how history is recorded;
• A psychologist giving in-class quizzes using clicker technology;
• Students in professional writing classes collaborating on Second Life with students in Japan, Korea, France and Canada;
• Students in a New Media course composing music, then sending it to another group in the class who create a video from the music score;
• Biology faculty collecting field data through cell phones and PDAs and having that data instantly available on the server;
• An art historian who has moved from analog slides to exclusive use of images through the ARTstor database.

There was a lot of energy and excitement throughout the day. Although it was a typical cold Cortland winter day, participants ventured outside to have a geographer lead them on a geocaching adventure to locate eight sites in the downtown area.

In the afternoon a panel of faculty and technologists relected on their experiences in using and supporting technology in the classrooms. The faculty readily admitted that their success in the classroom depended on the technology working flawlessly; labs are expected to always be in working order. Technologists emphasized that ongoing communication about faculty needs is critical, and the technologists should be consulted as soon as faculty begin to consider any new technology. As more faculty than ever are using Web 2.0 applications and other emerging technologies, we must continue to expand our infrastructure. Our resources are being stretched as we learn about new applications while continuing to support more traditional technologies.

We’re in a dynamic environment and a culture of change. We’re embracing the 2.0 world with new technologies as best we can, working closely amongst ourselves and staying in touch with our faculty. The partnerships are growing and together we’re creating a vibrant community of discovery and learning.

The current Chronicle of Higher Education Tech Therapy podcast is all about Change, a phenomenon that we deal with constantly.  Warren Arbogast asserts that people must first feel pain in their status quo situations in order to be willing to change. That’s somewhat ironic, since change itself seems to be painful to so many. Change means having to give up comfortable ways of doing things and to begin new learning processes.

In the IT and library worlds change is constant and it is everywhere. First the Internet, then the Web, then Web 2.0, each requiring us to review our services and how we provide them and to revisit our organizations and their structures.  Change is an evolutionary process, influenced in large part by the the new information and communications technologies that are reshaping our lives at home and in the workplace.

A common adage states that if you don’t know where you’re going, any road will take you there. Before considering strategies for change and developing processes, we must understand what needs to change and why. In order for change to be effective we must carefully analyze our current situations and thoroughly understand what we do and how we do it. We need to review everything – our policies, services, organization, staffing patterns, facilities, and our technologies and how we use them. As a metaphor for this process, the Chronicle podcast uses the activity of clearing out old vines. We must first separate the vines and understand how they are growing before carefully pruning them so they can sustain a healthy growth.

 As we continue to face rapidly changing and often unpredictable environments, we must constantly assess and modify our operations. Our future successes depend on how well we manage and anticipate change at all levels of our organizations.

A recent Chronicle of Higher Education article discussed combined Library/IT organizations, with a focus on Xavier University in Cincinnati, Ohio and the story of Xavier’s experiences bringing the Library and IT departments under one CIO. As it happens I was the library director at Xavier University in the 1980’s and early 1990’s, when the Library and Computing Center, as they were called at that time, reported to different Vice Presidents. Having been at Xavier myself, I was particularly interested in the story of their merger, with its trials, tribulations, and successes.

Such merged organizations have been around for awhile. When I came to SUNY Cortland almost fifteen years ago to establish and lead this type of combined administrative unit, there were other such models in higher education, each with its unique structure and personality. In the late 1990’s SUNY Cortland participated in a research study on the topic which was conducted by Tara Lynn Fulton, then a graduate student at Pennsylvania State University. Her 2001 Ph.D. dissertation, “Integrating Academic Libraries and Computer Centers: A Phenomenological Study of Leader Sensemaking about Organizational Restructuring,” examined the experiences of seven CIOs who had created Information Services units that included libraries and IT departments.

The Chronicle article refers to “at least three dozen colleges” having merged their library and technology departments. The Campus Computing Project, which supports a continuing study of the role of information and technology in higher education, indicates that 11.3% of the 555 colleges and universities responding to their survey have a library that reports to a CIO position. The majority of libraries reporting to a CIO are in private four-year colleges (15.6%), followed by community colleges (13.3%) and public four-year colleges (10.2%). Although several high-profile research universities such as Columbia and Indiana University have merged organizations, only 2.7% of public and 5.9% of private research universities have libraries reporting to a CIO.  

Whatever the organizational structure and whatever it’s called, in order to be successful, IT and Library staff must work well together, providing seamless service to the campus. The focus must be to know what kind of services and resources our students and faculty need and to make them readily and easily available.

Today’s Wired Campus reaffirms the popularity of YouTube and other video sharing sites. According to findings 47 percent of Internet users view videos on YouTube, up from 33 percent the previous year.  The entire Pew Report, which includes some interesting demographics, is available on the Web. An earlier Pew Survey indicates that news, comedy, and educational programming top the list of what people are watching on video sites.

In the past couple of days the media have been buzzing about YouTube and its use in the academy. The Wired Campus  recent post is about how many campuses are using YouTube for a variety of purposes, including marketing, course casting and other presentations. According to a recent Chronicle of Higher Education  article, several colleges and universities have signed agreements with YouTube to set up official channels. At SUNY Cortland we have posted technology training videos on YouTube to make them more accessible to our own students and to reach out to a wider audience.

Both the New York Times and The Chonicle of Higher Education have featured articles about Big Think, a website about ideas and intellectual discourse that hopes to be a “YouTube for ideas.” Big Think features interviews with scholars from many disciplines and provides opportunities for users to participate in discussions. According to the NYT article Big Think was developed by Peter Hopkins, a former student of Harvard Ex-President Larry Summers, and his partner Victoria Brown. Dr. Summers and others provided seed money to develop the website.

Colleges and Universities, including SUNY Cortland, have been posting videos on iTunesU for several years now, and YouTube is another venue to reach today’s students who frequent social networking sites to socialize and learn. The impact of this electronic medium on higher education remains to be seen.

Happy new year to all. Earlier today a colleague sent me a link to a survey conducted by Eduventures to determine technolologies used by full-time college students aged 18 to 24 years. Results indicate that 79 percent of students own laptops, 49 percent of students own desktops, and 30 percent own both. Not surprisingly 97 percent of those surveyed own cell phones and 73 percent own media players.

These statistics most certainly have implications for higher education and the resources and services that we provide. Students expect wireless access across campus. As more faculty are podcasting lectures and uploading presentations we can be assured that most students have their own mp3 players. (Nevertheless our Memorial Library continues to loan out mp3 players and peripherals such as microphones.) As cell phones that are ubiquitous are becoming more sophisticated it’s not surprising that the most recent Horizon Report cited the cell phone as an emerging instructional technology to watch.

The 2008 Horizon Report will be issued in the next month or so. I wonder what technologies will be highlighted this year and what we can expect to see our students using in 2008.  No doubt there will be more mobile technologies emerging that will continue to challenge us to create new applications for learning.