Higher Education Cios Collab 144045

Industry Research
Publication Date: 15 December 2006 ID Number: G00144045

Higher Education CIOs' Collaborative Role When
Technology Inadvertently Disrupts the
Teaching/Learning Process
Kraft Bell, Michael Zastrocky, Marti Harris, Jan-Martin Lowendahl

How and when will technology standards help higher education institutions more
efficiently create and leverage learning content? Technology in education is the classic
double-edged sword — a force for efficiencies as well as a force for risk. Rather than
ignoring or defending the predictable or unintended consequences of technology, CIOs
in educational institutions should acknowledge these negative impacts. Then, they can
collaborate with key stakeholders to maximize the positive impact of technology on the
faculty-student relationship and learning. Using a more collaborative and proactive
approach to governance, CIOs can make better decisions with respect to the enhanced
use of technology for learning. This would take advantage of an iterative professional
assessment of pedagogy blended with technology. Together, stakeholders should agree
on principles, such as aspects of ideal teaching/learning processes and faculty-student
interrelationships.

Key Findings
• Higher education CIOs manage in an increasingly complex environment with widely
available new technologies driven by consumerization and intense security and
accountability issues.

• The CIO role can be reframed to focus on balancing the optimal cost-efficiency
(incentives), security (regulations) and social cohesion (community openness).

• CIOs and administrators can collaborate with faculty and students to apply technology
standards that will overcome unintended consequences of technology and leverage
learning.

Prediction
• CIOs actively implementing best-practice adoption and prioritization of technology
frameworks in collaboration with faculty and students will avoid cost, liability and unrest.

Recommendations
• Higher education CIOs must collaboratively intervene to channel technology's
unintended consequences, while enabling administration, research and education.

• CIOs as change agents can ensure decisions are strategically and integratively framed
for the necessary trade-offs of efficiency, security and social cohesiveness.

© 2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved. Reproduction and distribution of this publication in any form
without prior written permission is forbidden. The information contained herein has been obtained from sources believed to
be reliable. Gartner disclaims all warranties as to the accuracy, completeness or adequacy of such information. Although
Gartner's research may discuss legal issues related to the information technology business, Gartner does not provide legal
advice or services and its research should not be construed or used as such. Gartner shall have no liability for errors,
omissions or inadequacies in the information contained herein or for interpretations thereof. The opinions expressed herein
are subject to change without notice.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Analysis ............................................................................................................................................. 3
1.0 Overview......................................................................................................................... 3
1.1 CIOs, "Culture Wars" and the Unintended Consequences of Technology ....... 3
1.2 Strategic Planning, Change Management and IT Are Often Disconnected...... 3
1.3 Great Technology Intentions, yet Many Unintended Consequences................ 6
2.0 Key Findings................................................................................................................... 7
2.1 Higher Education CIOs Manage an Increasingly Complex Environment.......... 7
2.2 CIO Scenario View Must Balance Efficiency, Security and Social Cohesion ... 8
2.3 Technology Standards Can Leverage Learning Content ................................ 10
3.0 Recommendations........................................................................................................ 11
Recommended Reading.................................................................................................................. 11

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1. Internet Users by Country .................................................................................................. 5
Figure 2. Digital Cultural War ............................................................................................................ 6
Figure 3. Reframing the CIO's Role: Balancing Trade-Offs for Efficiency, Security and Social
Cohesion............................................................................................................................................ 8

Publication Date: 15 December 2006/ID Number: G00144045 Page 2 of 12
© 2006 Gartner, Inc. and/or its Affiliates. All Rights Reserved.

ANALYSIS

1.0 Overview
CIOs and other higher education administrators must better frame the role of technology to
augment learning. Working with chief academic officers, deans and faculty, higher education
CIOs should provide training for instructional staff on how to use IT to strengthen collaboration,
enhance student engagement and promote student discernment of the validity of electronic
content.

1.1 CIOs, "Culture Wars" and the Unintended Consequences of Technology
Higher education leaders bring conflicting perspectives to their institutions. Strategists seek future
advantage, pragmatists want immediate results, and technologists view technology as the only
answer. These perspectives are further shaped and reinforced by organizational positions,
experiences or associations, such as institutional strategists, change-effort sponsors and IT
professionals. Whether strategizing, problem-solving or making decisions, culture wars can erupt
and lead to unhealthy or counterproductive conflict when interaction unwittingly or dogmatically
reflects overreliance on any one of these perspectives.
CIOs would benefit from parallel processes of strategic planning, change management and IT.
These could balance stakeholder pressures, especially when barriers arise and force disruptive
attempts to realign institutional plans, change efforts and IT projects. However, the "perspective"
culture wars are further exacerbated by the erupting digital cultural wars that result from the
unintended consequences of technology. Among the unintended consequences are:

• Technology interference: Ease of technology access and nonteaching priorities
combining to limit the quantity and quality of faculty interaction with students.

• Task vs. learning focus: Acceptance of a copy-and-paste student mind-set with regard to
completing assignments, without the requisite understanding and learning.

• Lack of discernment: Student familiarity with technology for accessing content without
the judgment required to evaluate its usefulness, reliability and validity.
CIOs are increasingly caught up in the vortex or whirlwind of technology trends. These pit the
"digital natives," who are comfortable with yet dramatically impacted by technology, and the
"digital immigrants," the preceding generations who speak the language of academia yet are not
digitally immersed and do not understand the current digital culture. CIOs have a vital change
agent role in embracing and channeling this energy for change.

1.2 Strategic Planning, Change Management and IT Are Often Disconnected
Today's dynamic environment and accelerated external change exacerbate misalignment. Top
education leaders, institutional change sponsors and higher education CIOs must work together
to bring about realignment. Often disregarded, however, change management is the missing link
between policy and execution, strategic planning and IT. Strategy-aligned and integrative change
management can energize strategic planning. Plans, as well as prioritized, technology-enabled,
institutional and educational processes and cultural changes, can achieve material institutional
results. CIOs thus have vital roles and developmental opportunities as they learn to frame
technology insights, align IT with priority change efforts, collaborate with sponsors, envelop
technology in changes and advocate for change management.


CIOs should not be intimidated by nor attempt to avoid the unintended consequences of
technology that inhibit positive teaching/learning relationships. CIOs must focus on:

• Governance: Frame time-valued, innovative technologies crucial to educational
administrators seeking and setting informed institutional strategies.

• Services: Collaborate on institutional and educational strategies, plans and sponsors'
efforts to align IT with priority institutional change efforts.

• Learning and research technologies: Play an integral role in managing technology
enveloped in changes, while advocating for change management.
CIOs must learn to navigate the maze of higher education drivers:

• Widely available new technologies

• Consumerization driving technology and other choices

• Ongoing safety and security concerns

• Accountability for results unclear

• Regulatory obligations

• A wide range of possible Internet-driven relationships

• An abundance of Internet-driven services to compare and to choose from

• Increasing demand for ROI for governance by funders, students and parents
Higher education CIOs must be prepared to deal with a growing cultural clash as student and
faculty demands push IT organizations to deliver high-quality services and support for personally
owned devices. The opportunity is that this rise of digital natives through consumerism is
reminiscent of the power exhibited by students in the 1960s, which can be positively tapped and
channeled. The current generation of students has grown up with the Internet and a wide variety
of technologies, while most faculty and IT staff have migrated from an academic culture
dominated by paper-based content and knowledge transfer to a digital culture. Students expect:

• Consumerism will drive choices. They anticipate always having an abundance of
choices in technologies and content, and both are expected to change rapidly.

• Wireless technologies will keep them connected at all times and in all places.

• Technologies will be ubiquitous and inexpensive and will remain so in the future.

• Their primary connection will be through personally owned devices, while also having
access and support for institutionally owned devices.

• They will have instant access to a wide variety of content, which is mostly consumed as
bits of information — for instance, educationally contextless, yet socially relevant images
and information. This is related to a "sound bite" approach to learning.
These students are overrepresented on the Internet, recognizing that Internet access varies by
country, as shown in Hans Rosling's research in Figure 1.


Figure 1. Internet Users by Country

Source: Gapminder Foundation (December 2006)

"Digital natives," a term popularized by Marc Prensky, represent the first totally digital generation.
These natives are digitally comfortable, are dramatically impacted both positively and negatively
by technological changes, and love the possibilities, even though they are unaware and
unconcerned with the possible implications. Digital immigrants are members of preceding
generations. John Perry Barlow, in the preface to the paperback edition of Douglas Rushkoff's
"Cyberia" in 1994, wrote, "On the most rudimentary level there is simply terror of feeling like an
immigrant in a place where your children are natives …." These "immigrants" do not speak the
native language, nor do they understand the digital culture. Digital immigrants are very concerned
about implications, yet are ambivalent about the possibilities.
Most higher education CIOs are not responsible for the teaching and learning that take place at
their institutions. However, the CIO continues to find increased time spent in academic committee
discussions regarding the changing technological needs of students and faculty. Awareness of
the nature of the digital native students and how they view and use technology, as well as that of
the digital immigrant teachers, will move discussion more productively. Sharing information about
these differences within the IT organization is a starting point to move toward broader
understanding of the challenges that face the institution in the near future. Descriptions like those
included in the Figure 2 can be used to start that discussion.


Figure 2. Digital Cultural War

Information Digital Immigrants Digital Natives
Preference-- Today’s Teachers Today’s Students
How to: Typical Preferences: Typical Preferences:

Handle Slow and controlled release of information Receiving information quickly from multiple
from limited sources. multimedia sources.

Process Singular processing and single or limited Parallel processing and multitasking.
tasking.
View To provide text before pictures, sounds and Processing pictures, sounds and video before
video. text.
Sequence To provide information linearly, logically and Random access to hyperlinked multimedia
sequentially. information.

Network Students to work independently rather than To interact/network simultaneously with many
network and interact. others.

Time To teach "just-in-case" (it's on the exam). To learn "just in time.“

Gratify Deferred gratification and deferred rewards. Instant gratification and instant rewards.

Lead To teach to the curriculum guide and Learning that is relevant, instantly useful and
standardized tests. fun.

*Adapted from Ian Jukes and Anita Dosaj, The InfoSavvy Group, February 2003
Source: Gartner (December 2006)

Given that most faculty and administrators are digital immigrants, there will likely be
misunderstandings and disagreements about how and when to use various devices and
technologies in the academic setting. CIOs should provide the bridge of understanding in their
vital change agent role. They need to recognize and facilitate the free flow of information and
collaboration that the digital natives expect while channeling this appropriately for security,
privacy, protection, support for regulations and efficiency.

1.3 Great Technology Intentions, yet Many Unintended Consequences
The unintended consequences of technology in higher education disrupt the teaching and
learning process:

• Stifled faculty/student interaction: Ease of access to research and teaching materials
often undermines the valuable interactive relationship between teacher or professor and
students.

• Limited interaction: Overreliance on technology, coupled with nonteaching priorities and
recognition, undermines the quantity and quality of time that faculty members spend
working with students.

• Just getting by: Acceptance of a cut-and-paste student mind-set to complete
assignments, without the requisite learning, undermines the desire and value of
learning.


• Improper use of resources: Familiarity with technology for accessing content without the
requisite judgment undermines the scholarship to evaluate its usefulness, reliability and
validity.
Digital natives bring digital shrewdness and an ability to use technologies to connect quickly and
easily to people and information. However, these same skills have unintended consequences that
can be detrimental to the higher education goal of building bridges to understanding and wisdom.
More research is required to understand how some of these characteristics, such as "instant
gratification," are more a function of maturity than the digital culture. While some higher education
leaders refer to the student abilities to connect seamlessly with many people at virtually the same
time as "multitasking," many believe this is more a reflection of time-division multiplexing, where
the student is doing only one communication at a time in only short bites. This activity is a natural
extension of text messaging, current media practices and learning habits that extend from
growing up in a cut-and-paste world.
While the role of the teacher as facilitator has been touted, the role of the teacher as an agent for
discernment (content expert) has eroded. This appears to be exacerbated when digital
immigrants are uncomfortable or inept when using technology. Many students have grown up in a
culture where completing the task is paramount and understanding is often not valued or
measured. This leaves students unprepared for doing research and learning activities that require
focused attention for long periods of time. While CIOs are not responsible for pedagogy, they
manage infrastructure and technology resources and often training activities that are an integral
part of instruction. Academic training activities supporting the appropriate use of IT should include
a session on how to help students discern the validity, reliability and — ultimately — the
usefulness of information resources and digital content.

2.0 Key Findings
2.1 Higher Education CIOs Manage an Increasingly Complex Environment
The drivers that are pushing complexity for the CIO include the following:

• Widely available new technologies: IT clients expect to be able to connect to the campus
backbone a widening variety of personally or departmentally owned devices with quality
service and support from the IT organization.

• Consumerization driving technology and other choices: Digital natives are used to
having a variety of low-cost technologies available that are used for a short time and
"thrown away."

• Ongoing safety and security concerns: Protecting institutional data and personal
information is an institutional imperative, and CIOs must protect their institution from
being on the news headlines due to a breach.

• Regulatory obligations: While the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
has been around for some time, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act
(HIPAA), the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act, and state and local regulations are proving
difficult to manage and sometimes understand. Similarly, the European Union Data
Privacy Directive 95/46/EC on the protection of individuals relates to the processing of
personal data and the free movement of such data. Therefore, CIOs often find
themselves needing to hire or develop an internal expert to manage these regulations.

• Accountability for results unclear: Accountability continues to creep into the strategic and
tactical planning for CIOs. However, there is a dearth of benchmarking data and other
metrics.


2.2 CIO Scenario View Must Balance Efficiency, Security and Social
Cohesion
The CIO role can be reframed to focus on balancing (making trade-offs) for optimizing cost
efficiency (incentives), security (regulations) and social cohesion (community openness). With
external pressures on the institution and IT, as well as external and internal stakeholders with
conflicting priorities, the tendency is to handle each situation or crisis as it arises. This reframed
CIO perspective is a more strategic, proactive and integrative approach to making trade-offs for
setting direction, making decisions, and planning change and operations (see Figure 3).
Efficiency

• Standardization of the IT infrastructure and processes (open and de facto standards)

• Systems integration of administrative and academic systems
Security

• Access control to institutionally designated information sources

• Privacy protection for personal and institutional data
Social Cohesion, Justice

• Accessibility to valued information and sources

• Collaboration within and across communities for research, teaching and learning

Figure 3. Reframing the CIO's Role: Balancing Trade-Offs for Efficiency, Security and
Social Cohesion

Efficiency
Standardization and Open-Source
Systems Integration

Low-Trust Open
Globalization Doors

Social Cohesion,
Security Justice
Access Control Accessibility
Privacy Protection Collaboration
Flags
Source: Gartner (December 2006)


These factors form three potential scenario options:

• Low-Trust Globalization: A legalistic world where the emphasis is on security and
efficiency, even if at the expense of social cohesion and learning.

• Open Doors: A pragmatic world that emphasizes social cohesion and efficiency, with the
market providing "built-in" solutions to crises of security, trust and learning.

• Flags: A dogmatic world where security and social cohesion or institutional values are
emphasized at the expense of learning and efficiency.
CIOs must develop the three triggers to monitor excesses in efficiency, security or community
concerns and be a change agent to ensure avoidance of the extremes of these environments. For
example:

• Overemphasis on social cohesion, community and openness begins to displace the
university culture with an unmanageable Open Doors environment.

• Intense emphasis on efficiency and security starts to undermine social cohesion,
community and learning, which results in a move toward an intense Low-Trust
Globalization environment.

• Heightened concerns about security and privacy begin to outweigh efficiency,
effectiveness and learning, resulting in a move toward an extreme Flags environment.
Developing the measures of each trigger for excesses in efficiency, security and community
enables the CIO to not only monitor progress, but also make the appropriate trade-offs.
CIOs are accountable to a wide range of internal stakeholders in providing this whole range of
valued connections for students and faculty to effectively carry out their teaching and learning
activities. The pressure for more and better connections requires consideration of significant
changes. Unfortunately, strategic planning, change management and IT architecture are not
always linked. Strategic direction criteria developed in joint strategy-change-architecture sessions
offer a parsimonious way to achieve strategic alignment. These criteria not only align institutional,
school and department strategic plans, but also link and prioritize change efforts, including IT
projects. Without this alignment, stakeholders' interests conflict —doing things over becomes
inevitable, and problems recur. Systems and processes work independently as morale plummets.
Change struggles are inevitable and must be systematically worked through, while utilizing
change management best practices. Failing to handle the disconnects between strategy, change
and IT architecture hinders progress toward institutional results.
Higher education institutions too often treat strategic planning, change management and IT
architecture as separate areas with their own processes. Strategic planning comes from an
institutional strategy and financial planning tradition and is usually part of a strategy or finance
function. Change management reflects education and business administration schools'
organizational behavior or industrial psychology departments, and is typically an outgrowth of the
human resources function. IT and enterprise architecture reflect a technical specialty outside of
education and business — a separate computer science function:

• CIO collaboration: Uses a more collaborate and proactive approach to governance —
optimizes pedagogy and learning decisions.

• Governance: Is designed to blend informed top-down leadership with enriched bottom-
up user input — takes advantage of an iterative assessment of pedagogy blended with
technology augmentation.


• Decision making: Together with stakeholders, agrees on principles — such as aspects
of a valued teaching/learning process and faculty/student interrelationships.

• Design criteria: Enhances learning and minimizes or counteracts these negative
technology and institutional impacts:

• Alignment: Technology is applied to enhance, not interfere with, pedagogy.

• Priorities: Technology and institutional priorities should promote ongoing
faculty/student interaction, learning over task completion and discerning the value of
information.

2.3 Technology Standards Can Leverage Learning Content
How and when will technology standards help higher education institutions to more efficiently
create and leverage learning content? CIOs have an opportunity to acknowledge these negative
impacts of technology in educational institutions. Then, they can collaborate with key
stakeholders to take advantage of the positive impact of technology on the faculty/student
relationship and learning. Rather than ignore or defend predictable or unintended consequences
of technology, CIOs should acknowledge and selectively embrace the new technology brought in
by the digital natives. Using a more collaborative and proactive approach to governance, CIOs
with faculty and other administrators can optimize decisions with respect to pedagogy and
learning.
Governance can be designed to blend informed, top-down leadership with enriched, bottom-up
user input. Gartner has demonstrated this through the three proven higher education frameworks
and tools: the "red thread" linkage, IT as a service and process-view best practices. This would
take advantage of an iterative professional assessment of pedagogy blended with technology
augmentation. Together, these stakeholders should agree on principles, such as aspects of a
valued teaching/learning process and faculty/student interrelationships. Design criteria would be
developed to enhance learning and minimize or counteract these negative technology and
institutional impacts. For instance, technology should be applied to enhance, not interfere with,
pedagogy. Technology and institutional priorities should promote ongoing faculty/student
interaction, learning over task completion and discerning the value of information.
Even given unintended technology and institutional consequences, CIOs must collaborate with
chief academic officers, deans, librarians, faculty and students to enhance faculty/student
interaction, learning and discernment:

• The CIO must also ensure the support of existing mission-critical applications and
services while also serving the role of change agent in order to maintain the balance
between efficiency and security in a community-focused organization. As departments
and business units become increasingly digitally shrewd, new applications and requests
for enhancements to existing systems will also increase:

• The higher education IT organization will find increased user needs and changing
help desk expectations.

• The continued introduction and success of CRM applications in enrollment
management will inspire other business units and departments to pursue similar
CRM projects. Institutions without an enterprise CRM strategy will experience higher
total cost of ownership due to multiple licenses and integration.


• Business intelligence will grow in importance to higher education leaders as they
become familiar with the capabilities of these types of applications to help plan and
make decisions for their business unit or department.

• The need for federated digital repositories will grow in importance as increasing
volumes of digital content must be made available through multiple applications and
access points. The need for federated IDs will also increase as the need for access
to both internal and external repositories continues to grow.

• Community management will include managing beyond the institution and the
institutionally owned devices and applications. The important role of community
management includes anticipating the future of the community and the technological
changes to support future developments.

3.0 Recommendations
• CIOs' Vital Change Agent Role: Higher education CIOs must embrace the positive value
of technology, while collaboratively intervening to channel the unintended
consequences. The goal is to encourage positive relationships between digital
immigrant teachers/professors and digital native students to expedite crucial aspects of
the teaching/learning process.

• Governance: CIOs work as change agents to ensure that decisions are strategically and
integratively framed for the necessary trade-offs for efficiency, security and social
cohesiveness.

• Efficiency: CIOs prepare their institutions to be standardized, wherever possible, to
achieve the flexibility necessary to manage rapid and unpredictable change.

• Security: CIOs ensure accurate and reliable assessments of rapidly evolving technical,
security and education standards to achieve high institutional and personal data
protection.

• Social cohesion: CIOs develop IT infrastructures and processes that enable institutions
to maneuver the learning community's ever-changing technology needs.

RECOMMENDED READING

"Deliver Enterprise Change Using a Strategic and Integrative Approach With Proven Tools"
"In Turbulent Times, Strategy-Aligned Change Can Lead to Education Institution Growth and
Development"
"Vital Role for Education CIOs: Interconnect IT With Strategy and Institutional Change"
"Achieving Higher Education Institutionally Aligned, Sustained and Cost-Effective IT Decisions via
'Red Thread' Linkage Tools"
"The Benefits of Defining IT as Services in Higher Education: A Tool for Transparency, Trust and
Commitment"
"The Benefits of a Process View in Higher Education: A Tool for Transparency, Trust and
Commitment"
Hans Rosling research (see tools.google.com/gapminder and www.gapminder.org and
ted.streamguys.net/ted_rosling_h_2006.zip )


REGIONAL HEADQUARTERS

Corporate Headquarters
56 Top Gallant Road
Stamford, CT 06902-7700
U.S.A.
+1 203 964 0096

European Headquarters
Tamesis
The Glanty
Egham
Surrey, TW20 9AW
UNITED KINGDOM
+44 1784 431611

Asia/Pacific Headquarters
Gartner Australasia Pty. Ltd.
Level 9, 141 Walker Street
North Sydney
New South Wales 2060
AUSTRALIA
+61 2 9459 4600

Japan Headquarters
Gartner Japan Ltd.
Aobadai Hills, 6F
7-7, Aobadai, 4-chome
Meguro-ku, Tokyo 153-0042
JAPAN
+81 3 3481 3670

Latin America Headquarters
Gartner do Brazil
Av. das Nações Unidas, 12551
9° andar—World Trade Center
04578-903—São Paulo SP
BRAZIL
+55 11 3443 1509


Higher Education Cios Collab 144045

Recommandé

Recommandé

Contenu connexe

En vedette

En vedette (15)

Plus de educamosonline

Plus de educamosonline (10)

Dernier

Dernier (20)

Higher Education Cios Collab 144045