School Technology Environment Evaluation Beth Transue

Demographics: Emcee (pseudonym) is a liberal arts college with approximately 3,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and 200 faculty members, and other administrative staff. Most undergraduate students are residential; the undergraduate program is traditional classroombased instruction. The graduate program is online or hybrid with students taking courses online or occasionally commuting to campus. The school is in a rural but developing area. There is a small branch campus which partners with a major university in a large city about two hours away. Emcee is known nationally for their study abroad and service learning programs. Maturity Benchmarks Evaluation: Through completing the maturity benchmarks survey, I determined that Emcee is transitioning from Island to Integrated maturity levels. While technology has certainly been implemented and is important, implementation and integration has been extremely variable across campus. Some academic departments are very technologically savvy, while others remain resistant to technological changes. However, as more academic departments see the benefits of implementing technology on curricular and administrative factors, there is a growing acceptance and demand for technological resources and infrastructure. Administrative Policy: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource=Integrated Planning: Behavioral = Islands, Resource = Islands Budget: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Integrated Administrative: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Intelligent I determined that Emcee is progressing from Islands to Integrated in the area of Administrative maturity. Under the policy section, the campus is integrated in that formal policies are already in place for many areas and these policies have gone through faculty and administrative governance. However, the policies are not always well-communicated on campus aside from the obligatory signed policy documents that nobody actually reads! Planning is still in the Islands phase; while there is a technology committee, others on campus often feel disconnected from the planning process. When new procedures are implemented, such as upgrading teacher stations, there is often pushback from faculty who felt isolated from the decision-making process. This creates lingering distrust of the IT department in the larger planning picture. The Budget is firmly in the Integrated phase, however there remain large budgetary challenges. There are specific line items for IT equipment, services and personnel. Recently the budget parameters across campus were changed, which led to a large capital funding decrease in IT, precisely when this department is expected to roll out major resource and equipment upgrades. This will create challenging situations in the next two years until the parameters change, and capital funding is restored to acceptable levels. Emcee has recurrent problems with long-term budgeting which is not restricted to IT budgets. Administrative systems are available to all faculty, students, and administrative staff. However, availability does not guarantee utilization! Curricular Electronic Information: Behavioral = Intelligent, Resource = Intelligent Assessment: Behavioral = Islands, Resource = Islands Curriculum Integration: Behavioral = Islands to Integrated, Resources = Intelligent Teacher Use: Behavioral = Islands to Integrated, Resource = Islands Student Use: Behavioral = Intelligent, Resource = Integrated

The Curricular section of maturity benchmarks spanned between Islands to Intelligent based on the sub-section. Electronic information was in the Intelligent area; students and staff routinely use online information. There are more than 100 academic databases, 70,000 ebooks and 50,000 journals available for research. Librarians provide training to students and faculty throughout the academic year. Meanwhile, I rated Assessment at Island level because even though final grades are always posted electronically, it is my understanding that many areas still provide initial assessment and grades through traditional means and later duplicate the work through the online assessment. This creates additional work and does not take advantage of technological features throughout the assessment process. Curricular integration varies widely depending on the the academic department. It is impossible to select just one rating to accurately represent the campus. Some departments are cutting-edge in their use of technology integration, while others reject even well-founded uses of technology in the curriculum. This is in the midst of changing and improving, but I still rate this area as progressing from Island to Integrated. For similar reasons, I rated Teacher Use in the same fashion. I did rate Teacher Use/Resources as lower because some faculty still have trouble getting basic resources. For example, some faculty have requested laptops that they can take to class or home, but still have desktops that are over five years old. As expected, Student Use of technology is often ahead of the curve, and they often express frustration when infrastructure cannot meet their demands. Support Stakeholder Involvement: Behavioral = Islands, Resource = Emergent Administrative Support: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Integrated Training: Behavioral = Emergent, Resource = Islands Technical and Infrastructure Support: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Intelligent Unfortunately Support Maturity Benchmark areas ranged from Emergent to Intelligent. I think many on campus would agree that the IT support currently in place in inadequate. While the staff are typically competent and personable, there simply isnt enough of them to meet current or projected needs; this comes down to budgeting priorities. In the Stakeholder Involvement, the aforementioned Technology Committee does include stakeholders from across campus, but others on campus still feel rather disconnected from the entire process. There is growing Administrative Support, including the CIO presence on the Presidents Cabinet; however, as mentioned before, budgetary needs are growing. Despite the continued effort of the limited IT and Faculty Services staff to provide a multitude of training sessions, faculty and staff do not typically take advantage of them; those who do are often the same individuals again and again. Some of this is due to very hectic and full academic loads faculty juggle throughout the academic year, and the fact that the same faculty do not often come to campus for events during breaks when they are not within their employment contract. This makes effective training difficult to deliver; IT is attempting to address some of this by placing training online as appropriate. I determined that Technical and Infrastructure Support/Resources are at an Intelligent level despite challenges because there are full-time personnel to address issues, even if the level of personnel should be increased. Connectivity LAN: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Integrated District Area Networking: N/A, not part of a school district or consortium Internet Access: Behavioral = Integrated to Intelligent, Resource = Intelligent Communication Systems: Behavioral = Intelligent, Resource = Intelligent While there are certainly major issues of technological maturity to be addressed, Emcee has made much progress in assuring that Connectivity is at Integrated and sometimes Intelligent Maturity Benchmark levels. Internet access is broadband, and wireless is available across all indoor and outdoor campus spaces. The major challenges is that internet and wireless access

is slow at times due to overloads; this is often caused by residential undergraduate students streaming for personal reasons. This however affects educational video streaming, and will only worsen as mobile devices and streaming become ubiquitous. Last year the campus upgraded its email system to a much more popular and supported system. This allows easier integration of communication, scheduling, and tasks which help to integrate communication into daily life. The campus must add budget funds and focus on increasing bandwidth to ensure adequate access and connectivity speeds for educational and recreational (for residential students) needs. Innovation New Technologies: Behavioral = Islands, Resource = Integrated Comprehensive Technologies: Behavioral = Integrated, Resource = Integrated Emcee is in the midst of progressing from Islands to Integrated in the areas of Innovation. Pilot projects are taking place across campus to integrate new technologies into the curricula, but they are simple pilot projects at this point. However, as these pilots progress, more faculty are becoming interested in how technology can improve the educational experience for our students. I expect this area to progress to Integrated in time. Conclusion Given the range of levels for technological maturity based on the above benchmarks, I find it difficult to assign a single level to this entire institution. Rather, I feel that Emcee is in a critical time of transition from Islands to Integrated. There are many pilot projects and activities currently in development which will hopefully lead to Integrated and even Intelligent maturity levels in the future. The institution must continue to deal with resistance from certain areas, while supporting those who are technology leaders on campus. This is even more challenging in a college-level institution where tenured faculty are granted independence and respect for their individual curriculum development; faculty must be encouraged, but cannot be coerced into adopting technology. Another area of challenge is budgeting and related IT personnel and resource levels which must all be increased to provide adequate support for the growing technology demands in various academic departments. Needs of course differ greatly across campus as well. For example, the resource needs for Nursing, which include support for advanced simulator equipment differ greatly from a History program which requires technological support in an archeological dig across the world. These differences and challenges must be addressed by an increasingly sophisticated and integrated support system consisting of adequate personnel, equipment, training, and budget.