Dean’s Council: Hot Topics in Technology

1. Dean’s Council: Hot Topics in Technology Brian Green Laura Neidert Michael Stumpf Kent State University

2. Introduction “As technological advances are introduced into the academy, as campuses are more and more attracted by the promise and potential of technology for enhancing access and learning; faculty, staff and administrators need to understand what technology can and what it cannot do” (Gilbert & Green, 1995, p.4).

3. Outline Today we will be discussing 5 technological issues concerning our University. • Blogging • Institutional Spam • Going Wireless • Data Protection • Departmental Websites

4. Blogging What and Why are Blogs Important? A blog is an online personal diary, a collection of private thoughts. You can write about whatever you want for the entire world to read and for the most part, there are no rules! Entries are in a reverse chronological order so visitors see the most up to date information first. Visitors can do more than just read your blog, they can comment on it for everybody to see, or send you a personal email. Blogs are free, user friendly, and low tech making them very appealing to the college population. Professors can use them as open discussion boards, outside experts can become involved with class discussions, and it is documentation of thought, growth, and knowledge (Blogmania).

5. Blogging Cont. Benefits of Blogging: • Blogging can increase collaboration between students and professors. • It is also serve as a low cost method of having experts interact with students without having to bring the expert to the campus. • Blogs are also a tool for college and university presidents to connect with their students. Examples include: William G. Durden of Dickinson College, R. Albert Mohler Jr. president of Southern Baptist Theological Seminary, and Richard F. Celeste, president of Colorado College. • As society embraces user-produced content, we can prepare students to embrace this change as well as use blogging responsibly. • Communicating via blog is becoming more accepted in many disciplines. • Blogs are also a place where academia can connect with the public. • Can provide a forum for diverse ideas, therefore teaching students how to cope with competing views from their own.

6. Blogging Cont. Problems with Blogging: • Who decides what acceptable content is? How is content approved before posting? • Using the anonymity of blogs to attack the institution or specific leaders within the institution. • For example, if the institution decides to create blogs for the admissions website, how are student bloggers chosen? Will they be compensated? How do you impose any restrictions on their content? How will comments be moderated? • In working with students, we must also consider their personal blogging. Like other forms of social networking, blogs are easily searchable on the Internet, and can damage students’ reputations if they disparage employers, faculty, or their institution.

7. Blogging Cont. Examples of problems with blogging: • Specifically, blogs have added to administrative controversy at Galludet University and New York College of Technology at Alfred. Bloggers fanned the dissent about the selection of Jane K. Fernandes’ and kept notes on the student protests, providing a gathering places for like minded students and alumni (Read 3). Fernandes’ appointment was later rescinded after massive student protests which closed the university and resulted in the arrest of several students. • At NYCTA, an anonymous blogger called Brewster Pennybaker took former president Uma G. Gupta to task, harshly critiquing her management style, calling her abysmal and incompetent, and suggested that she suffered from borderline personality disorder (Read 1). Gupta later resigned largely due to the controversy the blog created, and the identity of the blogger, who was a college employee, was never discovered. • “I think blogging is a basic form of ‘Rip, Mix, and Learn’ (RML). Just like I’m doing now, I’m ripping an idea from Alan and others, mixing it up with my own experience and reality, and writing about it as a way to clarify and learn. And really, it is the writing part that forces me to organize these thoughts and give some form to them. It’s when the learning coalesces…” (From Will Richardson, Weblogg-Ed).

8. Institutional Spam Case Study Definition: the policy under which mass communication from the institution to student or groups of students is permitted/not permitted and which is the proposed approval process for submitted requests. • Examples: academic notifications, campus event notifications, campus closures, athletic event notifications, forwards of listserv e-mails that students have already received. • Question to consider, and why is this important? When do students give their consent to receive this e-mail? Is it when they matriculate as students? Do they have an opportunity to opt out of receiving specific communications?Increased institutional size can lead to a depersonalization of faculty and staff from the student population. A proactive approach of transmitting information could help close the gap.

9. Institutional Spam Benefits • Official institutional spam provides a method for the institution to communicate the same information to all students equally. • The communication aspect of blanket messages to all students can also create profitable opportunities through text messaging services such as Mobile Campus. • Institutional Spam is also attractive because it takes the message to your target population in a method that is low cost.

10. Institutional Spam Problems • Deciding what is important enough to send, and who makes that decision. Institutional Spam must be vitally relevant to ensure that it gets read by the recipient. • Administrators assume that students read every e-mail that is sent out, which can result in missed connections and lost information as students depend less on e-mail. • Consider the broader view. Many email accounts have a limited amount of space and can fill up quickly with spam, denying critical messages from faculty and administration.

11. Going Wireless Why did we choose this topic? • If technology is the Navy leading us into the 21st century its flagship would have to be wireless capability. The demand for an unwired campus is not a perk anymore, it is an expectation. One only has to look at institutions trumpeting their rank in Intel’s “Most Unwired Campuses” Survey. 29% of college campus use wireless across the entire campus and 64% have a strategic wireless plan, according to the 2005 Campus Computing project survey. • If we are to stay competitive we must accommodate a population that not only utilizes technology but has never really been without it. Having an unwired campus can change the way professors deliver lectures, students access information, and administrators collaborate. • We believe a reasonable observer would not dispute if your institution should embrace this trend but how.

12. Going Wireless What is it? • Definition: “The term wireless is normally used to refer to any type of electrical or electronic operation which is accomplished without the use of a "hard wired" connection.” • Wireless networks are also called WiFi or 802.11 networking. WiFi is a radio signal, hence 802.11, that carries data on it. The 1’s and 0’s of binary code are decoded by a computer so users can access the internet. • Wifi transmits at 2.4 GHz

13. Going Wireless Benefits of Wireless • The cost of using wireless is declining. • WiFi has global standards so no student will be disenfranchised because of the make of their computer. • Having an unwired campus is an important selling point, especially with the millennial generation. • Students can access academic material on their own terms and on their own time, such as in the coffee shop. • By doing so, they can prepare for class in the most effective methods for them.

14. Going Wireless Problems of Wireless • Information may not be secure even if properly encrypted. • Students uses lap top computers might be less likely to pay attention in class as they are doing everything from accessing Myspace, checking email, to shopping Ebay. • Disabling wireless access can be difficult and costly, not to mention unpopular. • In one case, Lakehead University in Canada banned wireless networking because of fears that the electromagnetic field could pose a health risk, such as cancer. This has not been a prominent problem but the possibility does exist. One professor compared 300 students in a lecture class using wireless to be analogous to sitting in a low power microwave oven.

15. Data Protection Why did we choose this topic? • Several institutions, most notably Ohio University, have been in the news recently as a result of major hacking attacks and loss of sensitive personal data. • Many institutions are struggling with data protection, defined as managing, securing, and allowing appropriate access to the personally identifiable data of students, faculty, staff, prospective students, and donors. • Almost 60 percent of college IT officials dealt with at least one data security incident in 2006 (Read 2). • Ohio University had 5 separate systems hacked into, which they were unaware of for 13 months in some cases. These incidents exposed the personal information of almost 200,000 people. • Institutions must secure access to data, create protocols for managing data, reduce dependence on Social Security numbers as identifying data, unify IT security across campus and fund technology security to a sufficient level.

16. Data Protection Benefits Of Proactively Managing IT Security: • Reduces costs in the long term: Ohio University spent $4 million to make emergency repairs to their IT systems and network, and requested an additional $5.5 to $8 million to fund the blueprint for greater IT security (Sams 1). Both costs are in addition to the current budget for IT at the university. • Compliance with state and federal laws: Several states already have laws in place that require disclosure to affected people when universities lose or otherwise expose personal data. California has such a law in place, and Senator Diane Feinstein has sponsored a similar bill in the U.S. Senate. Currently, that bill is in committee (Feinstein 1). • Limits an institution’s exposure to liability.

17. Data Protection Problems and Issues Associated with Reactive IT Security Management: • Can be sued by affected people: Two alumni have filed a class-action lawsuit against Ohio University for damages as a result of the data theft (Wasley 4). Litigation is expensive and damaging to a university’s reputation. • High monetary costs involved in notifying affected people as well as creating web and phone based support; high intangible costs in terms of lost productivity in other areas of IT and potential lost future donations from alumni and the community, and at Ohio University, new staff members had to be hired and trained to replace those that were fired. • Exposure to identity theft: Ohio University has received notification that 33 alumni may have had their identities stolen, although none of the incidents has been linked directly to the data loss at the university. By various estimates, 33 million people in the U.S. have been victims of identity theft. Students may be at more of a risk, as they are just beginning to establish their credit history.

18. Departmental Websites Why did we choose this topic: Since institutions began using the internet to reach students, different departments have operated their own websites, which have grown in size, depth and complexity over the past ten years. It seems that a lot of people take these sites for granted. Administrators misuse them or are not using them to their full potential. Websites can be used as a positive supplemental tool for gathering information about a department and staying abreast of deadlines. Benefits: • Mass communication, it’s an easy way to reach a majority of the student population with a limited staff and budget. • Online resources reduce the amount of paper handouts an office needs to give students, and how many handouts students need to keep track of. • Forms can be put online for easier distribution and collection.

19. Departmental Websites Problems and Issues with Departmental Websites: Departmental websites have, in some cases, become ineffective, poorly used, and a hindrance to the learning process. • Over-reliance on website: These sites should be a supplement to the office, not take the place of staff. Too many times the first response we hear to a students question by an administrator is “Did you look on the website?” We are here to help them, not send them away. • Lack of personal communication. We want our students to be able to communicate yet we teach them to go online instead of talking to a real person. • No master plan for content: Every time somebody finds something they think is important they put it on their website. These sites can grow so large they are hard to navigate and confusing to students. • Outdated information. Maintaining a website can be time consuming. If you put an event or schedule of events on your site, make sure you are keeping it updated. How embarrassing when a student wants to get involved with a program that no longer exists, but it’s still on the website. • Broken or bad links. If you link to another page outside the University website, periodically check those links to make sure they are still active and accurate. • Websites with too many visual distractions.

20. Departmental Websites How to improve your department’s website: • Minimize scrolling, especially horizontally. • Less is more. Don’t lose touch with your students by letting your website outshine you! • Don’t overwhelm users by shoveling all of your handouts and resources online. It’s not meant to be an archive! • Visual consistency between pages. Ask your IT department if your institution has a Content Management System. • Assign a staff member to regularly visit the site and ensure that content is up to date and relevant. • Speed, Speed, Speed: Don’t overload your site with videos or slideshows that take a long time to load.

21. In Conclusion Our perspective is that we should discuss how to embrace technology, not whether or not to do so. The millennial generation is accustomed to technology being readily available and while some of us consider email new, millennial consider email to be an old form of communication. We must plan strategically in order to satisfy our student population, stay at the cutting edge, and budget wisely to keep pace with new technologies.

22. References Blogmania!, (n.d.), Innovative learning and teaching. Retrieved February 15, 2007, from the Ohio Learning Network Web site: http://www.oln.org/ILT/blogmania.php Farell, H., (2005, October 5). The blogosphere as a carnival of ideas. The Chronicle of Higher Education. v. 57, no 7, p. B14 Feinstein, D. (January 2007). A bill to require federal agencies, and persons engaged in interstate commerce, in possession of data containing sensitive personally identifiable information, to disclose any breach of such information. U.S. Senate Bill 239, retrieved February 14, 2007 from http://thomas.loc.gov. Gilbert, S. W., Green, K. C. (1995). Information technology: A road to the future?. Retrieved February 15, 2007, from National Education Association Web site: http://www2.nea.org/he/aje/infotech/pdf Hupprich, L., Bumatay, M. (2003, February) Global Internet Population Grows An Average Of 4 Percent Year-Over-Year. Retrieved February 15, 2007, from NielsenNetRatings.com http://nielsennetratings.com/ Read, B. (2006, September 15). Attack of the blog: When disenchanted faculty members take to the web, presidents should worry. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp A35. Read, B. (2007, January 5). UCLA warns 800,000 that a hacker may have obtained personal information. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp A31. Richardson, W. (2005, October 3) Rip, mix, and learn. Retrieved February 18, 2007 from Webblogg-ed website: http://www.weblogg-ed.com/2004/10/03 Sams, W. (2006, July 25). Blueprint for building a world-class IT function at Ohio University. Retrieved February 14 2007 from www.ohio.edu/outlook/05-06/July/611-056a.cfm. Schemo, D. J., (2006, November). Erasing divide, college leaders take to blogging. Retrieved February 16, 2007, from The New York Times Web site: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/22/education/22blogs.html?ex=1171774800&en=e746ad88d707b00c&ei=5070 Wasley, P. (2006, September 29). ‘More holes than a pound of Swiss cheese’: Computer-protection problems at Ohio U. spark complaints from alumni—and firings. The Chronicle of Higher Education, pp A39. Young, J. R. (2006, June 30). Human trails in cyberspace: Social scientists create maps of online interactions. The Chronicle of Higher Education, v. 52, no. 43, p. A18