Technology In Business Schools Roundtable Annual Meeting
Last week, the Smeal College of Business hosted the Technology In Business Schools Roundtable Annual Meeting. Cole Camplese and I both delivered presentations late on Thursday morning, following a kickoff of sorts by the Dean of the college, Jim Thomas. In his presentation, he asked that the audience (comprised almost exclusively by Director's of IT from about 50 college's of business across the country) imagine for a moment that they were dean's of their colleges and were having a conversation with their CIOs/Director's of IT. He delivered the information in top ten style - here are his paraphrased points:
10. Define what you mean by online learning.
9. Think of IT as a key to collaboration, communication, community building etc. 8. Preach, emplore, lecture, demand - alignment.
7. Get your CIO involved in the strategy of the school, CIO should be sitting on the executive committees so he/she is part of strategy development.
6. How does this new shiny thing increase our rankings?
5. Ask your cio what the IT strategy is - if it's about technology, it's a waste of time.
4. Don't pretend that you know the difference between a bit and a byte.
3. Understand that it's ok to ask for a second opinion (trust but verify) when you need to - and that you and your CIO should do it together.
2. Make sure IT isn't just reactive to new faculty and student demands.
1. Sit down and talk with your CIO about all of the devices students are carrying around.
That's not word for word or anything, but I hope it captures the essence of each point. A few other ITS people were there - if you see something that isn't quite on the mark...holla. It's a good list to ponder.
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I took solid notes during the Dean's session, but do not have them with me. This looks about right and I have to say I liked the approach. In the world I live in, number 10 rings so true. Too many administrators throw around the term eLearning w/o really defining in any terms what they mean. If you look at our landscape at PSU, nearly every course can be classified as such. With ANGEL utilization at an amazing level, nearly all of our resident courses share heavy online components.
When I was working with Jim at IST we worked very hard together to establish what we meant by online learning. Turns out we were talking about hybrid approaches to RI -- face to face stuff with a big dose online resources and conversations. I'm not sure the guests in the room realize that Jim was talking from experience. The other points were delivered effectively as well, but number 10 made me smile.
It was also a blast just being a part of that opportunity -- it was unique for me to be speaking to crowd like that. I have to say that the people in my session were more interested in the pedagogical issues related to the technology than the technology. That made me happy. We talked about it on ETS Talk 27 -- yes, that was a shameless plug ;-)
Jim Thomas's list of 10 is a very good start for many current PSU conversations. The first point (define online learning) would be very helpful across Penn State. Many of these discussions do not have clearly defined terms, and so it soon turns out that we're calling the same thing by different terms or using the same term for very different things. Clarity helps!