I attended EDUCAUSE's Southwest Regional Conference (SWRC) February 24 - 26, 2009 in San Antonio. I think I heard that there were 330 registered. I like this regional conferences over EDUCAUSE annual because it is far smaller and seems more focused on sharing ideas and experiences with IT projects that appeal to me. This regional used to be called EduTEX and developed for higher ed schools in Texas. Over the years it attempted to gain greater participation from throughout the southwest. In practice, participation is drawn from many states - this year's regional had representation from 25 states, although I'd say the greatest number come from Texas.
This year's conference theme was Balancing Acts: Making IT Work for Everyone, and examined "solutions and strategies for meeting the broad range of technology needs that define the higher education experience. The increasing importance of demonstrating IT's value and the ubiquitous nature of technology as a resource require IT professionals to juggle many different perspectives." I also presented about the UA's YouTube channel. What follows is a look at some of the presentations that I attended. Presenters are asked to submit their Powerpoints to the Educause website. I've linked to the few that are currently available in my entry. You should check there for others of interest over the coming week. And, if you have any questions I might help answer, feel free to ask.
The main conference opened with "Balancing Acts: Making IT Work for Everyone." Alan Levine, Vice President, NMC Community & CTO, The New Media Consortium (NMC), and Susan M. Zvacek, Director, Instructional Dev & Support, University of Kansas, role-played three scenarios designed to open discussion on the sorts of everyday challenges people in IT face. They developed scripts that they hoped would entertain us and open the way for sharing ideas. Act I "Us vs. the IT Guys" opened the how to balance the security and centralization needs that IT staff see as crucial with others on campus who want what the want and want it now. Act II "My ___ Doesn't Get it" involved an administrator who didn't appreciate or support breaking out of the traditional classroom and into a learning environment that recognized that it is students who are driving this change, not technology. Act III "It's All IT isn't It?" was a typical us versus them theme. The speakers placed their scripts online and hope to continue the discussion at bit.ly/whereisthebalance. If you visit this second site, you can complete a short survey and contribute your own stories. (Educause Connect podcast added 030409)
"Lessons Learned from Using Web 2.0: Instructor and Student Reflections" was led by an instructor from University of Houston-Clear Lake and a grad student. The idea was to report an experience of integrating Web 2.0 solutions with 5 grad students at UHCL who were doing a practicum with students in an elementary school. Unfortunately, the logistical requirements to assure easy access to the resources were no in place. In addition, Hurricane Ike disrupted school and life. I found most of the presentation an explanation of why it didn't happen and assume the proposal was accepted while the project was in development. Powerpoint
Because our Web Development team is exploring using Movable Type's Universal design templates for student e-portfolios, I attended "The Collaborative Design, Development, and Implementation of a Fully Integrated E-Portfolio System into Moodle." This presentation reported on how Abilene Christian University's Distance Learning group and Embanet http://www.embanet.com/ developed an e-portfolio component that integrated with ACU Distance Learning's Moodle implementation. Embanet is "an integrated, full service provider of online program design and development, marketing and enrollment and technology support services for postsecondary educational institutions." The module is not in use at this time throughout ACU because the rest of the campus is using Blackboard. A Google search turned up a news release indicating a greater relationship between ACUDL and Embanet: "..., Toronto, Canada-based Embanet, a global leader in online education, will launch and manage all of the new programs on an ongoing basis, and will also manage ACU's entire line-up of existing online programs." There is a test site that we can log in to following the conference to see what instructor access looks like and another for student access. Student login username: demo password: demo; Teacher login username: teacher password: teacher. Follow this link. In response to a question about ACUDL/Embanet releasing the code/module to the Moodle community, the speaker said it is their intention but it is not yet ready for that.
The closing session on Tuesday was a "lightning round" of 8 five-minute presentations showing innovative projects and programs at our peer institution. Speakers were up against the clock - literally - as a timer displayed on the screen showing the minutes and seconds. After this session was the reception and the lightning round speakers stood by tables available for follow-up with the rest of us. I thought this worked very well. It as late in the day and having these five-minute reports I thought worked nicely. This is an idea you might file away if you are on a conference's planning group in the future. Presenters who I particularly liked included:
• Librarians at Texas State University, San Marcos, are "embedded" in selected courses as a way to "increase communications with students after library instruction sessions have been conducted." Texas State has implemented Sakai (they named it TRACS) and there is a nav button that displays for those classes. I spoke to the two librarians who presented and they told me that the Claremont Colleges first reported doing this with its SAKAI installation. Powerpoint
• One of the interesting presentations, and definitely the most amusing, was given by David Sedman, Director of Technology, Meadows School of the Arts, Southern Methodist University. Sedman told us that his boss had written an article "Teaching Naked: Why Removing Technology from Your Classroom Will Improve Student Learning," and instructed Sedman to remove the different equipment in teaching stations. It left what he said is dubbed the "diaper changing station," pretty much an empty space where instructors bring laptops and connect to the network. So, this presented "a case study of technology removal from the classroom." Go figure!
• This one is not going to make you jump up and say, "Wow!" but it is very good project and worth notice. Baylor University "implemented a workflow and document management application to centralize and streamline the data entry and approval of all departmental requests for additional funding and personnel actions, including hiring/replacing employees as well as requests for construction, equipment, and services." The presenter clearly had a lot more to tell us than his allotted five minutes but he did a good job giving an overview of the project management involved to make it succeed.
Wednesday morning Colleen Lin, from Dallas County Community College District Campus, and I presented "Putting the "U" in YouTube: Recruiting, Promoting, and Outreach with a YouTube Channel" http://connect.educause.edu/Library/Abstract/PuttingtheUinYouTubeRecru/48231. Colleen and I had never met F2F until lunch on Tuesday. DCCDC, like our own Pima Community College, is a multi-campus facility. Colleen's job is District Web Site Content Developer. She is also the person pushing Web 2.0 technologies and manages DCCDC's YouTube channel. When I was putting my conference proposal together, I was looking for another institution to present with. DCCDC was one of the first I thought of because of its strong online programs and use of video for many years. DCCDC's channel brings the videos it uses as TV ads to YouTube. As Colleen told the attendees at our presentation, a video viewed 750 times on YouTube is a video the College did not have to pay to show. A great example of leverage your investment.
"From Blackboard to Sakai: The Who, What, Where, and Why" told Texas State's three year story on migrating from Blackboard to Sakai. As you probably know, Sakai is an open-source courseware management platform. Duffy Gilman has been involved in the project for at least a couple years and I believe it remains on the table at the UA as a possible future option. Check with Duffy or Mark Felix for more information on that. BTW, they passed out a 13 page printout of their Powerpoint presentation and you're welcome to make a copy. It's quite detailed in describing the entire three-year process, their lessons, and recommendations. If we were to move to Sakai or Moodle as cost savings over D2L, Texas State would be an excellent contact for us.
"Computer Threats, Security, ID Theft, and Their Countermeasures" was presented by Doug Williams, Associate VP of Information Technology, Dallas Baptist University. Williams gave a full overview of the many types of security risks that exist to our networks and our computers. He demonstrated how easy it is for hackers to access our computers and networks, and he even mentioned hacking with a Pringles can. He showed us how hackers can attach a small device to a USB port on a computer and capture its data off the hard drive. I think he mentioned attended a 5-day eCouncil security session that I think was the one that Sean also attended a couple summers ago.
Lunch was structured about tables with specific themes. The one I sat at was "Innovation (or Lack Thereof) Keeps Me Up at Night!" and I blogged on that Thursday morning. Others were: Aligning IT Strategy with University Mission, Attracting and Retaining (IT) Talent, CAS Integration, Cloud Computing--Keeping it Real!, Creative Technology in Troubled Times, How Do You Lead When You Aren't in a Leadership Position?, ID Management, Implementing Large-Scale Services Across Departments or Institutions, Innovation (or Lack Thereof) Keeps Me Up at Night!, Institutional Websites and CMS: What's Happening at Your Institution?, IT Communications, IT Issues in Community Colleges, Social Networking, The IT Project Management Office, and Women in IT.
"Building Digital Discourse: Telling Stories at the University," discussed Tulane's Digital Communications Project, an initiative to develop digital storytelling techniques in the university curriculum. What they've worked on is the idea of students using the storytelling process in courses. The speaker explained that they found that established digital storytelling techniques did not quite fit with academic discourse. The project seems to be past the initial pilot stage and moving into practice. They have been addressing issues such as scalability (there are 15 Macs in the English department's lab that will have to support 100 students); adaptability (finding other courses/programs such as art history that have a similar "personal narrative" component; delivery (looking where they can host the videos - secured location on campus, YouTube, etc.). They also found that digitial discourse requires solid faculty participation and structuring projects so they correlate to the instructor's pedagogy.
"Meeting the Top Challenges in Teaching and Learning with Technology" was a discussion session where we were divided into two groups to discuss one of the five "big issues" that have identified. The group I was in had the issue related to learning environments: "Creating learning environments that promote active learning, critical thinking, collaborative learning, and knowledge creation." We had a recorder, came up with 10 bullets and reported as a group at the end of the our group discussions. I think "learning environments" is like teaching online, it means different things to different people and it needed to be defined before our recorder was handed her marker. You can visit The EDUCAUSE Top Teaching and Learning Challenges 2009 and you can join the discussion on Ning.
Thursday morning started off with "A Pilot Study of Second Life for Instructional Use at UT Austin," in which Hyung Huh from UT-Austin reported on three years of Second Life. UT-Austin uses a triad approach of technology, assessment, and pedagogy. They have a questionnaire prospective participants must complete and they endeavored to provide pilot participants with support that included technical administration, research and evaluation, and instructional design consultation. They have done some assessment in collecting student feedback about what they liked and disliked, what worked and didn't work; same for faculty participants.
Staff from the University of Texas Health Sciences Center at San Antonio presented "Digital Distribution on a Dime: Three Strategies for Creation and Implementation." This presentation reviewed how they were capturing audio and video for dental school and med school classes. The speakers extolled the virtues of podcasting these lectures and had me and other supporters in the audience. One of the speakers is doing high def, which we're not doing in LTC. What made this presentation enjoyable was that they brought a 2nd year med student who spoke about how valuable having the videos available.
The conference concluded with a session on Green IT. "What's Your Carbon Footprint? Sustainability and Green IT Initiatives That Make a Difference" was led by Ann Kovalchick, Deputy CIO at Tulane University and included Elizabeth Davey, Director of the Office of Environmental Affairs, Tulane University; Edward Kelty, Vice President/CIO Information Services, Rio Salado College; and Pattie Orr, VP for IT and Dean of University Libraries, Baylor University. The attendees were given clickers and responded to a series of questions shown on the screen. I know President Shelton created Campus Sustainability on campus and there's lots of info in this site. Take a look. The program at the SWRC was directed to Green IT and I'd like to find out what UITS is doing. Anyone know? The speakers agreed that one very useful step for IT to take is server virtualization. The encouraged us to read over the USDA's The Green Information Technology Strategic Plan. (podcast of session added 030409)
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