Project planning and prioritization.

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I participated in a session on strategic planning and IT projects/prioritizations, which highlighted the way larger and more formal institutions are going about wrestling with prioritizing IT needs with limited budgets/resources.  There were more stories of steering committees, management committees, budget groups and formal chains of group decision making than you can even believe or want to be a part of.  The benefit that I see that Evergreen has for it is a lack of structure which would (does) enable us to create models that work outside of administrative boundaries and are for the most part voluntary.

Another grain of wisdom in this discussion is that, aside from core infra-structural needs, projects are filtered through constituent groups and prioritized by these groups.  IT does not make prioritization, it only helps constituent groups understand the scope of the request (e.g.,that project will probably take 150 development hours).  That way 2 things happen.  1, IT is not the one defining what gets done first, this should be an institutional desision.  2, Constituent groups and/or college senior staff have ownership and an understanding of IT priorities and initiatives and forces more engagement with these decisions which can have a great affect on the institution.  As an ancillary benefit, they or their staff might be less likely to go outside of the process (we’ll just buy something outside of IT) because they need to be as accountable for the process as they expect their colleagues to be accountable. We should be thinking now how we want to make sure this process is a functional one when/if resources pick up and/or we loose key individuals that will make us wish we had a decent prioritization process in place.

Building a community around IT

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One session this morning centered around a group of reps from different institutions that  were relaying their experiences in providing a core IT support environment in higher ed.  There were definitely some common themes that were pervasive, most of which revolved around strategies for building a community.  Things that might be useful to bring home to the mother ship (AKA Evergreen) would be proactive outreach to constituencies that might have concerns, questions or issues around IT but we are not hearing from them because nobody’s asking them questions directly.
Client Services things to consider as important in rebuilding trust and accountability.  Look for the problems, seek out the festering sores.  Do not work with blinders on that reinforces the misconception that if i don’t hear any rumbling then  everyone must be happy.  Also, that commonly over-spouted concept – Transparency – communicate all the things we are doing at any given time.  Be proactive about meeting with groups to let them know what the priorities are.  We need to move away from a climate of “fear of reprisal”, this does nothing to further trust and functionality.

A personal librarian in your Moodle Site?

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This is what they did at Marywood University.  They added a role of reference librarian to a few Moodle courses and then had one of the reference librarians subscribe to a research forum where they were able to answer questions and provide resources to students on the fly.  Since they were a part of the Moodle course they could see all the course information and follow the syllabus so as to know what the students were doing when.  One of the findings of the study though was that the project was extremely time intensive for the librarian and might be difficult to scale to more than just a few academic programs.  Might be worth trying a pilot of our own, especially since it gives the librarians the ability to interact with students in Moodle which many of them are becoming increasingly dependant on for program interaction.

Is copyright law relevant to education and science?

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Just got out of an facinating presentation by Lawrence Lessig called; It Is About Time: Getting Our Values Around Copyright Right.  The presentation was a critical look at copyright law and how obsolete it has become in the era of digital media.  He questioned our complacency regarding accepting copyright rules and standards that not only do not apply to our current information access, but are creating a culture of “pirates” which will invetably be culturally destructive.  The pathway we are on is one of a public library model (books for free) to a bookstore model (you must pay for ALL resources) that does not do (culturally) what copyright law was designed to do.  Cultural preservation by providing a multitude of incentives for individuals to create and share those creations.

Here’s the video, his talk starts around minute 26 (scan ahead).  Enjoy!

Creating Innovative Learning Spaces

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Day 2 of educuase – Just went to a presentation by folks at GWU CITL who created what they considered to be an innovative learning space..  which wasn’t geared towards technology but had alot of technology imbedded in it.  They used a student academic program to redesign a technology learning space.  They conducted surveys of faculty, held focus groups, studied learning space desingn, furniture, AV, and other technology.  Seems like the focus was on a flexible space for small collaborative groups and the ability to record sessions in the room.  I think many of the concepts that were introduced here could be leveraged towards any of our spaces for a view of a new computer lab paradigm and technology teaching space.   Questions and ideas include;

What technology should be in the space? What is the tech focus?

  • Modular, moveable furniture for total flexibiliy.  Don’t be hardwired, mobile computing should be the dictum.
  • More whiteboards all around.
  • Double screens and/or tripod mount LCD’s (for mobility)
  • Technology should not be too visible – unobtrusive.
  • LCD’s are movable to different parts of the rooms.
  • All the furniture are on wheels (half round tables on wheels that can be configured a whole number of ways

Could this be something that we do in the GC1?

Allow the room to be used for reservation only collaborative needs – laptops with virtual desktops avaiable (but not just sitting out, needs to be coordinated)

Interesting ideas!

Google Earth Farm to Table Project

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A really interesting food mapping project conducted by a group of Enviromental Studies students at Middlebury College.  The students built a series of Google Earth KML files that illustrated the spatial movement of ingredients that comprise a standard meal at Middlebury.  I’d love to see this expanded to a college (like Evergreen) that could trace not only food but equipment, materials, everyday consumables to the world market.  Match that to embodied energy and you have a much more definite idea of the real global footprint.

Rolling out Moodle Evaluation Scheduler

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By the end of week 3 we are planning on rolling out a new module for Moodle called Personal Appointment, which should be a really cool moodle add-on that will make it much easier for faculty and students to schedule meetings, evaluation conferences and the like. We have to do some translation (the module was written in Spanish) but then look for an announcement that it’s been tested and moved to the live Moodle site.