Moving from Technology Confusion to Community

Citation

Gray, P. (2001), "Moving from Technology Confusion to Community", Library Hi Tech News, Vol. 18 No. 1. https://doi.org/10.1108/lhtn.2001.23918aac.011

Moving from Technology Confusion to Community

Paul Gray

Moving from Technology Confusion to Community

Although this four-hour session cost $195 to attend, it was sold out in advance. Speakers included Steven Gilbert, Executive Director of TLTGroup; Phillip Long, Senior Strategist, Academic Computing Practice, MIT; Paul Fisher, Associate Director of the TLTC, Seton Hall University; and Paul Younghouse, Faculty Consultant, TLTC, Seton Hall University. The history of the Teaching/Learning Technology Group (TLTGroup) was reviewed beginning with the development of the Teaching/Learning Technology Roundtables (TLTR). The purpose of the roundtable was explained as promoting communication among various groups of the institution in building technology infrastructure and integrating technology in teaching and learning. More recently the TLTGroup promoted the Teaching/Learning Technology Center (TLTC) and most recently the Virtual Teaching/Learning Technology Center ((V)TLTC) to help an institution move through steps of integrating technology in teaching and learning.

Technology integration at an institution was reported as a progression from confusion to communication to cooperation to collaboration and finally to community. Throughout the session, the importance of the library was emphasized both for its physical space to be shared with either the TLTC or (V)TLTC and also for its shared resources and services.

The STAR, CIRCLE, CUBE, and CLOUD were used to illustrate concepts discussed. The six-sided STAR illustrated how the TLT can be used to institutionalize technology change in teaching and learning. The sides represented Visions Worth Working Toward (VWWT), new thinking, selective guidance, Web, collaboration, and unique resources. The CIRCLE was sliced as a pie into three sections explaining the VWWT containing the three elements ­ values, goals, and processes. A triangle on one face of the CUBE represented hierarchical structures (i.e. budget), a circle on another face represented collaboration, and dots on a third face represented independent programs or parts. The need to change structures and processes was illustrated by changing the cube into a CLOUD, "thinking outside the cube". In the cloud, all three structures (hierarchy, collaboration, and independence) were intertwined in interconnectedness.

Seton Hall University was showcased as an example of establishing a TLTC. The TLTC brought integration and use of technology to the faculty and students. Time for learning and integrating technology was minimized by the creation of faculty fellowships and summer institutes in which faculty learned and applied technology integration. This activity was recognized as having value in the portfolio used for promotion and tenure. The difficulty faculty had in how to integrate technology was resolved partly by providing six professional instructional designers who understood faculty. The center also brought order out of confusion by providing "one stop shopping" which previously had been attempted through several help desks and departments reporting to different administrations. Some of the programs and services of the Center at Seton Hall included reference desk, mentoring center or base camp, resource room, play work space, training center, ITV room/studio, TLTR forum, overload clinic, and faculty fellowships as a path leading to promotion and tenure. The net increase in funding needed for the center came from several million dollars of quasi-endowment, the re-engineering of administrative computing which eliminated staff positions, and the addition of a $1,300 technology fee for students.

Interesting quotes:

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  It was reported that faculty today needed at least 35 per cent more time for keeping up with the accelerating literature of their discipline, contributing to institutional planning, and learning to deal with new teaching and learning options provided by technology and changing pedagogy (Steve Gilbert).

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  In order to accomplish a vision worth working toward, processes and structures must change more quickly while institutional values must change more slowly (Steve Gilbert).

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  Experience has shown that instead of the predicted very large student to teacher ratio for online classes, the successful classes were from 15-20 to 1.

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  It was reported that the gap continues to widen between rising expectations of faculty/students and the ability of the infrastructure to handle the needed technical support.

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  Faculty and staff development as supported by life-long learning (a phrase no longer precipitous or an option) was reported to have been taken very seriously in order for faculty and staff to keep up and perform effectively.

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  Technology has not made financial gains for the institution, although it has in some cases had a direct correlation to enrollment gains.

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  Moore's Law (theory that the number of transistors integrated on a single silicon chip doubled every 18 months) was reported not to have been applicable to human learning, for the process of learning was reported to have been dramatically slower.

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  Dealing with technology showed a progression from confusion to communication to cooperation to collaboration to community, facilitated by the TLTR, TLTC, or (V)TLTC.

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  Ideal support staff to faculty ratio was usually about two times what you currently have. (Steve Gilbert)

Because TLTRs, TLTCs, and (V)TLTCs comprise individuals from across the institution, tips on how to lead collaborating groups were given:

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  Establish the value of the collaboration by each member's supervisor including participation as part of the evaluation process for promotions.

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  Establish simple ground rules for meeting protocols including:

  1. 1.

     When commenting on a previous statement, focus only on content (do not allow the focus to be on a person),

  2. 2.

     Get people to pause between statements, and

  3. 3.

     Allow members to talk only once before all the other members have a chance to speak.

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  "Incentivize" the separate groups represented (using subordination does not work as well).

Presenters were responsive to questions and discussion. An added value of having a TLT Roundtable, center, or virtual center was the comfort given to the budget decision maker knowing that the recommendation came from a diverse group.

Slides used in the presentation as well as other literature, discussion, and information may be found at http://www.aahesgit.org. Information on Seton Hall's TLTC may be found at http://tltc.shu.edu/

"What are the costs of not developing a portal?"

As with the session reviewed above, this four-hour session cost $195 to attend but was sold out in advance. Speakers included Keiko Pitter, Chief Technology Officer, Whitman College and Mark C. Sheehan, Executive Director for Information Services and Chief Information Officer, Montana State University, Boseman. An overview of developing portal technology and its use in higher education was provided. The importance for developing a portal was as much in answer to the question, "What are the costs of NOT developing a portal?" as answering the question, "Why develop a portal?" Features of current portal vendors were reviewed including CyberLearning Lab's Angel, Blackboard, Campus Cruiser, Campus Pipeline, Jenzabar, Mascot Net, Peoplesoft, and zUniversity.

Questions posed to help an institution determine whether or not to develop a portal included:

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  How important was it for your institution to build a long-term relationship with constituents?

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  How important was it to aggregate content from different sources?

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  Could efficiency and productivity be gained by increasing online services?

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  Could institutional goals be achieved, such as improved retention and outreach by exercising e-business?

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  Could mission-critical activities be provided online for teaching, learning, research, communication, and collaboration?

Presenters structured the development of a portal around the following terms: participation, purposes, planning, patience, and phases. Time was needed for an institutional community to understand portals; that takes patience. It was recommended to keep the old system running in parallel with the new system to allow time for users to learn the new system.

An institution could create a simple portal by developing static pages, links to the static set of pages, e-mail, and basic authentication with user name/password. More difficult portals included customization through recognition of user groups, interactive features, chat, read only access to institutional data, and links to other systems. Most difficult portals included read/write access to existing administrative systems, integration with Web courseware products, sophisticated interactive communications, and higher order personalization with name. It was suggested that the difficulty of the proposed portal would be directly proportional to the extent to which an institution decides to outsource the portal development.

The more important it was to integrate the portal with the administrative system, the more an integrated suite of products or a portal vendor that would develop and maintain the interfaces should be considered. In-house development of system integration had to be modified every time a vendor's system was patched or updated. Important questions included who retained brand control, how stable was the vendor and the product, or, if developed in-house, how long term was the development staff, and was the code maintainable?

Technical issues were also discussed. Lightweight directory access protocol (LDAP) was promoted for its flexible architecture, speed, interoperability, and attributes. Public-key infrastructure (PKI), various encryption technologies, digital certificates, and certificate authorities were introduced. Georgetown was showcased as having the best of all three worlds with LDAP, Kerberos, and PKI. Kerberos uses secret-key cryptography in network authentication protocol.

The HTML pages of the PowerPoint presentations of both Keiko Pitter and Mark C. Sheehan are available for a time at http://wcts.whitman.edu/portals/

Paul Gray is Dean of Academic Computer Services and University Librarian, Azusa Pacific University, Azusa, California. pgray@apu.edu