Themes from Campus Focus Groups
Spring 2002

In support of the IT Strategic Planning process, staff from the Office of the Associate Vice Chancellor for Academic and Campus technology held several focus groups during March 2002. They included:

• Faculty from the Arts and Sciences Council
• Staff Council and ITS Tier 2 departmental liaisons
• Members of the Instructional Computing Working Group (which manages the student technology fee)
• IT Providers from ITS and departments
• Libraries faculty and staff
• Student representatives from the Legislative Council
  

The following summarizes the themes that emerged from these focus groups.

1. Make communicating to the campus a priority of both ITS and the CIO's Office. Communicate IT direction, initiatives, and funding decisions.

a. Improve communication between ITS and the CIO's Office and campus constituents (faculty, departmental support providers, staff, and students) by PROACTIVE (not reactive) communication.
b. Seek campus input (especially faculty) regarding IT direction and pending IT initiatives (i.e. form a strong faculty committee to advise the CIO and ITS on technology issues).
c. Inform the campus about what changes are coming (in advance) and why. User education campaigns are needed. Policies and changes need to be timed well (e.g., problematic with email policy coming in the middle of a semester). Also educate and inform campus constituents about IT funding decisions.
d. Develop an IT/ITS primer and/or orientation for faculty and staff.
e. Increase lines of communication at operational/technical level between ITS and the CIO's office and departments (i.e. form a "technical/operational" IT Council). Currently, information about decisions and policy don't make it beyond IT Council's membership.

2. Develop an appropriate balance between centralized management of IT and departmental flexibility/autonomy.

a. ITS needs to define a clearer set of services and standards (perhaps tiered - mandatory, optional, tailored) and communicate these to the campus. Establish "non-negotiable" services and standards. This would definitely include networking (which is perceived as the best service offered by ITS) but could also include software licensing and antivirus protection.
b. Clarify what ITS services are "optional." Provide these services to the smaller departments.
c. Assess faculty computer program and communicate/educate the faculty regarding the computer allowance rationale.

3. Evaluate, refine, and improve the IT support model.

a. Assess and make changes to distributed academic technology coordinators program to better serve the faculty (e.g., locate them in labs where faculty can drop in). Faculty want less of someone to help them with instructional design and more of a webmaster (which the DATC's aren't supposed to be). DATCs aren't allowed to do what faculty wants. The campus needs an intermediate layer.
b. 5-HELP and 5-COMM aren't seamless. It is more difficult to access the core experts in the 4-Tier support program.
c. Help documentation needs to be kept up-to-date.
d. "Ambassadors" or some other process needs to be in place to make up for gaps created by a department not participating in the Tier 2 program.
e. After-hours tech support is needed - especially with video conferencing.
f. Continue to "push" IT training opportunities for faculty and staff (continue to publicize SmartForce).

4. Create seamless, integrated, online services

a. Adopt portal technology for the home page to allow personalization, and inclusion of webmail, WebCT, and PLUS. Have integrated student services, calendaring, auto population of calendar using events subscription and Buff Bulletin information.
b. The directory should include homepage, student employment and activities information (e.g., office phone number, titles, etc.). Should be able to search white pages by title, residence hall, address.
c. WebCT should be integrated into/with PLUS. Also, there should be more coordination with professors about resources available to them, such as WebCT, listserve, ability to create course webpage etc.

5. Develop a closer synergy with the Libraries and ITS

a. Develop trust by cultivating better working relationships on an operational level rather than a dean/director level.
b. A seamlessness in Libraries/ITS services is needed, from labs to remote access to databases, to authentication for interlibrary loan services.

6. Pay-for-printing should be a high priority

a. Pay-for-printing in residence halls isn't quite there. Although something needs to be done about wasteful printing, charging from the first page isn't it. Students suggested a quota of free pages, with charges beginning after that point.
b. Pay-for-printing is a high priority for the Libraries. This effort should move forward as quickly as possible. The ability to charge for printing is becoming increasingly important with the shift from paper copies of journals and periodicals to electronic versions, which shifts the need from copying to printing as a means of reproduction.

7. Clarify the role of the IT Council and the CIO Office

a. IT Council's role is unclear, membership unknown, and elitism is perceived.
b. A lack of communication exists about policies/decisions from IT Council to constituents.
c. The role of the CIO Office is unclear. This office should be providing consistent, strong, decisive, visible effective leadership and direction; should be "filling the gap" between central administration and departments.
d. It is perceived that there is a commitment to the academic side (i.e., to ATLAS), but not to the administrative side.