Where Is IT in Higher Education Headed?

Thursday, September 13, at 12 noon, U.S. Eastern time

Michael Zastrocky, vice president for academic strategies at Gartner Inc., was an author of the "Hype Cycle" report. An analyst at Gartner for 11 years, he specializes in higher education, including distributed learning and e-learning, administrative-computing issues, academic computing on campuses, networking and telecommunications, and strategic planning. Before joining Gartner, he served as vice president of Cause, the international association for managing and using information resources in higher education. He was also vice president of the Kaludis Consulting Group and has served as a professor, assistant dean, and chief information officer at various institutions.

A transcript of the chat follows.

Dan Carnevale (Moderator):
    Welcome to today's Brown Bag. I'd like to thank Michael Zastrocky for taking time to answer our questions. Now, let's polish up the crystal ball and see what the future of IT holds.

Michael Zastrocky:
    Welcome to the Chronicle of Higher Education Brown Bag “Live Discussion”. I am honored to be part of this series and look forward to the day’s discussion. While the topic for today is “Where is IT in Higher Education Headed” and the Gartner Hype Cycle for Higher Education is referenced, please feel free to ask any questions about IT issues and needs for Higher Ed. Thank you for participating in today’s discussion.

Question from Don Hutchinson IDL Systems:
    The early use of computers provided highly personalized interactivity. This was lost in the headlong rush to place courses on the web.

When do you see that computers will again focus on the individual and deliver course material personalized to the learning needs of each individual?

Michael Zastrocky:
    Don, if we look at what is good teaching, we have almost a thousand years of "university" experience. Good teachers are those who focus on the needs of the individual and work to build bridges of wisdom and understanding with the individual. In a face-to-face classroom, that is true and in the on-line education "classroom" that is still true. While you indicated that all on-in education is not personalized, in my experience while that is most common there are programs and instructors in the on-line environment who do focus on the learning needs of the individual. That is true in the traditional classroom as well. Far too many instructors/professors focus on content and not on the needs of the student. However, good instruction and instructors work to help each individual get to understanding. The virtual classroom is still evolving and I believe that good programs and instructors will and do shine.

Question from Stephen Grieco, Carnegie Learning, Inc.:
    What is the market segment break-down of campus management and/or registration and class management platforms in use today, and where are the trends heading in the next 3 years? Are there any emerging standards in this space for ISV course developers to be aware of, so they can integrate once, instead of with each proprietary platform? Suggestions?

Michael Zastrocky:
    While we don't do market research in our higher ed research team, we have been doing annual surveys on e-learning and administrative applications and work with institutions around the world at these issues. I assume from your question you are talking about both student information systems and also course management systems. Course management systems like Blackboard, Desire2Learn, Angel, Sakai, Moodle and others have been around for some time and the standards IMS and Scorm, the reality is that course management systems, portals, and student information systems must work together and while the standards help and are important, partnerships between the various vendors or open source communities with the primary components are the most important piece of the puzzle today.

Institutions expect their providers to work together and have bridges built between those pieces and those relationships are important to institutions as they make their decisions. In the next 3-5 years, we believe that the linkages will get stronger and institutions who have grown to rely upon course management systems will look expect course management, content management, collaboration tools, portal technologies and student systems to be tightly aligned.

Question from Steve Carey, Bloom Partners (consultants, Australia):
    If you were a betting man would you back the campus bookstore - or the library?

Michael Zastrocky:
    Both. It isn't an either one or the other.

Question from David Stone, Southern Polytechnic State U.:
    What are the implications for IT in higher education as a result of the mass consumerization of information technology and the growth of ubiquitous internet access for consumers?

Michael Zastrocky:
    The implications are already being felt by CIOs and IT leaders who have to be ready to support any and all technologies that students, faculty and staff must bring to campus. We have for several years said that this need will continue to grow and provide many headaches for IT leaders. Today it may be the iPhone, tomorrow it is whatever else is hot and students want to use to connect to the campus backbone. I think IT leaders in higher ed must keep up with consumer trends and consumer tradeshows at least for the foreseeable future.

Question from Judy, university library:
    How do you see the use of technology in libraries compared with the use in the rest of campus?

Michael Zastrocky:
    In my visits with campuses around the world, I see a disturbing trend that library traffic is going down. However, that trend is not universal. There are libraries I have visited where traffic is up. However, these libraries are responding to changing faculty and student needs and provide both active places for learning and interaction as well as quiet places for personal and group study. In these settings there is great collaboration and planning between IT and the Library. However, there are some campuses where the "IT center" is functioning more like a library than the library on campus and where there is little collaboration.

Question from Charlene Douglas, Desire2Learn:
    Michael, seeing the list that Gartner identifies as technologies integral to the transformation of Higher Education...I agree but have a concern about moving such an archaic system as higher education in this direction. How do you move institutions who for such a long time relied on their reputations alone to make such drastic technology changes...in particular, the faculty? And, where will the funding for these new innovations come from?

Michael Zastrocky:
    Some will not make drastic changes in spite of or because of IT changes. Their reputation and their mission is unique and well-endowed. However, higher ed institutions have been around a long time as you point out and while faculty may be slow to change, that is not always bad. Good teaching is not dependent upon IT. Good teachers are good teachers with or without good IT and bad teachers with the greatest IT available are still bad teachers! Funding for all innovation comes from showing value and purpose and support of the institutional mission.

Question from Tom Grissom, Eastern Illinois University:
    What role do you see for personal devices as learning tools? What are the challenges?

Michael Zastrocky:
    The challenges stem from an inability to control the devices and their proliferation. Students and faculty buy what they want and expect to use these personal devices in the learning environment. While the personal devices will continue to evolve and change, the challenges for the college or university is to keep up and build an infrastructure that supports these personal devices.

Question from Tim DuPont:
    There have been multiple articles in the CHE concerning the elimination of laptops in the classroom. Do you see any general trend in the U.S. to do this?

Michael Zastrocky:
    Not a trend, but some instructors are challenging their use in the classroom. Two years ago CHE and Gartner sponsored a higher education leadership forum for CEOs, CAOs and CIOs in higher ed. Students on a panel talked about laptop usage in classrooms where the instructor was reading from posted class notes or PowerPoint slides. Most laptops would be found doing email or playing solitaire. However, in classrooms where the instructor was actively engaging students, the laptops were more often closed. The instructor is still the key to successful learning in both the virtual and the traditional classroom. IT is great a delivering content but building bridges to wisdom and understanding is a human experience.

Question from Shahron Williams van Rooij, George Mason University:
    Intellectual Property laws strike fear into the hearts of library-digitization advocates. Are there any indications that IP laws will become less of a barrier to the construction of global digital libraries?

Michael Zastrocky:
    I apologize but my connection was dropped and it took a few minutes to reconnect. I guess this is the world we still face! Concerning IP laws, we need to remember that it took us some time and court cases to get the fair use policies that evolved in the 60s and 70s dealing with paper copying. The issues in the digital world we live in are much more complex and it is going to take time and more court cases I am afraid before we find some reasonable ground.

Question from David Stone, Southern Polytechnic State University:
    There are a number of open source course management products available today. What impact do these systems have on the commercial market for companies such as blackboard and other vendors? Is there a trend for campuses and corporations to move to these open source solutions?

Michael Zastrocky:
    The OS applications have had significant impact. One is that they provide some very real competition for a market that has in the last 8-10 years seen consolidations and vendors dropping out or moving to the corporate e-learning space. The other value is that the OS projects bring key leaders and innovators in higher ed together and the specifications are having an impact on the vendor applications as well. The issue many institutions are concerned about (and which keep some of the current vendors a little smug) is the issue of growth and sustainability. We may well find that OS course management systems will go the way of Linux and Red Hat...

Question from Charlene Douglas, Desire2Learn:
    Building on your response to Stephen Grieco, where do you see ERPs in this? For instance, the Wisconsin Federation of Independent Colleges and Universities (20+ campuses) just went with Jenzabar for everything on their campus (SIS,financials, HR, LMS, portal, etc) and are doing this at a very affordable price. Do you see systems such as Oracle (PeopleSoft), Datatel, SunGard going more into this area of providing everything for an institution? Do you see this as a good thing or a bad thing for higher education?

Michael Zastrocky:
    As budgets continue to remain tight and demand for IT support and services grow, we will find that institutions must make some hard choices on how they spend what they spend. ERP or administrative apps are extremely important but no institution can gather much value from saying they do payroll better than another institution. Shared services and collaborative efforts like the Wisconsin project will likely be more common and Datatel, SunGard and Oracle have similar projects in place. We think these opportunities for shared services will grow in the future.

Question from Britton Powers, Columbus Technical College:
    Technology allows colleges to leverage existing resources to serve a more broad population (i.e. distance learning, remote transmission). At the same time, technological innovations are sometimes costly, both in terms of purchases and staff training and development. In your opinion, in the future will technology make higher education more expensive for students, less expensive, or not much effect on cost.

Michael Zastrocky:
    There is no question that the cost of technologies to support the college and university has grown in the past 40 years. However, the cost is very difficult to assess because it has moved from highly centralized support and systems to a very decentralized model. Academic and administrative departments spend money on IT and most of the administrative staff and academic staff including instructional staff use technologies and their jobs depend on the use of these technologies. Students as we indicated bring their own technologies with them. The question is not so much of more expensive or less expensive as it is about what is necessary to provide a quality learning environment and who will have to pay for it. There are no silver bullets but we the growth in the use of Information Technologies has been feuded by Moore's Law and the consumerization of IT. We will somehow find that continuing in the foreseeable future as performance/cost ratios continue to improve.

Dan Carnevale (Moderator):
    That's all the time we have today. Sorry we couldn't get to everyone's question. Thanks again to Michael Zastrocky for giving us such great answers. Be sure to tune in for next week's Brown Bag when David H. King, managing partner and president of Alexander Hass Martin & Partners, discusses the rising number of megagifts -- $100-million donations -- and how universities can get 'em.

Michael Zastrocky:
    Thank you all for attending the Brown Bag Discussion today. I hope you have found this time useful.