Paula’s E-Musings

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�

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.

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.

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.

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.

Despite the fact that more than 90 percent of our students bring their own computers to campus, labs throughout campus are busier than ever.  Their use has not only increased but so have their numbers.  At SUNY Cortland the number of teaching labs has grown 42 percent in the past five years alone, from 28 (15 Windows and 13 Macintosh) to 37 (20 Windows and 17 Macintosh). In addition the number of smaller, special use labs has grown by 50 percent, from 22 to 33.  

A recent Educause Review article addresses the myth that because so many students bring their own computers to campus student labs are no longer needed. In fact at our campus the evolving curriculum incorporates more discipline-specific technologies and requires students to use sophisticated — and expensive — software applications. Since 2000 we have built eight new high-end media labs to support specific technology-intensive majors in Sports Management, New Communications Media, New Media, GIS and Professional Writing.  We have allocated separate funds to maintain these labs, which must be updated more frequently to reflect the ever-changing technologies.

Even though most of our students own computers, they are social beings and enjoy congregating in our late night labs — often IMing each other across the room. That’s not much different from my own college days when we dragged our heavy books from our dorm rooms to the library to engage in social interactions while we studied (or didn’t).

Today’s students are more likely to engage in group projects where they produce and present multimedia which they’ve developed collaboratively. What better place to assemble than in one of the labs that we’ve designed for flexibility and creativity? As the use of technology has become more sophisticated so have our labs. The need for labs is not likely to diminish; it will likely grow and continue to evolve.

As we continually evaluate our services we are always looking for ways to measure how students use instructional technologies and how our services impact the educational experience. ECAR (EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research) has just released a comprehensive Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology that includes a literature review and information gathered in surveys and focus groups. This is the fourth annual study and there are some interesting longitudinal data about student use of technology and emerging trends. The report validates what we already seem to know —  the increased use of the Internet, and especially social networking sites. Although the Millennials use many forms of technology in social and interpersonal situations, there is still ambivalence about its instructional application, and students report that they still enjoy some traditional classroom interactions. 

There’s lots of information in the ECAR report which is a good barometer of student use of technology. As always I find the EDUCAUSE Resource Library an excellent respository of information and this study is no exception.