Technology Staff

Sunday, June 24, 2001

Facilitator: Dennis James

Recorder: Bob Barber

Return on Investment (ROI) (Continued from morning):

1. What does return mean? It’s an operating expense not a capital investment anymore.
2. Is the question less economically technical than a way of asking – what are we getting here?
3. Is a decreased dropout rate a worthwhile return?
4. Is changing how a teacher teaches a return?
5. Deflect Board criticism by bringing faculty and students to Board meetings to demonstrate.
6. What measures should we use to indicate the return?

· Results have to be seen at the course level: outcomes, pacing, dropout rate changes, peer-to-peer interaction.

· Justification in non-computer courses like English?

7. What is the ROI on buildings? Not often asked…
8. ROI struggles could be the basis for a coalition between IT, faculty, maybe counseling, to identify the many positive qualitative outcomes (returns).
9. More than educational outcomes are at stake.

· I. T. is the basis of operating the institution.

· Perception of being up-to-date is of high importance to community expectations.

· Expectation of access, service are of high importance to current generation. I. T. is like the dial tone. It’s expected to always be there and always work and be mostly invisible. Boards need to realize what customer research in higher education would show, just as they believe in customer research in their own businesses.

10. Technology and modularization, flexibility, just-in-time are not separable.
11. The changing mentality of the student body. We don’t have to keep books; it’s all on the Internet. We can expect Internet course pages to be permanent, not to come down at the end of the term. Has major implications for the ROI debate.
12. What is the Return on Not Investing ??? (Opportunity Cost) – How to show the reasons for, by turning the question around. If you pulled it out, what would happen?
13. Did the technology help the students achieve the goal? (Better question than, was learning better). Was the technology sufficient?

Technology Staff

Monday, June 25, 2001

Facilitator: Dennis James

Recorder: Bob Barber

Staying in touch between seminars. Database/Spreadsheet of hardware and software used, for mutual assistance, trouble shooting network. Set up a listserv with archive.

Purpose: to continue the dialogue among a focused group of people, not huge and amorphous.

The Value

• Exchange information on deployment of hardware and software.
• Discuss application of technology to the learning process?
• Provide forum for discussion of partnership between IT and learning/faculty.
• Continuous improvement model – keep up discussion even when there is no crisis.
• A web space at the same time would allow posting of items that don’t need to clutter up the listserv with articles, long postings. Archives.

Computer literacy (again)

• Students need basic competency in computers when they start college.
• Many young have it. Older students less. Again, assessment at the entrance level.
• Can you not only use applications but also apply them to real world problems.

Potential listserv topics

• Literacy issues
• Partnership IT Staff/Academic
• Return on investment
• On issues like this, what works and what doesn’t.

Partnership

• the issue of expectations needs discussion.
• distribute the ITLT’s agreement as an example (Dennis)
• Service Level Agreements (similar)