University Business - October 2011 - (Page 24)

viewpoint ourselves. I’ve often wondered if each makes similar efforts in engaging IT staff in the process of CDS data collection. Happily, a redesign allows greater flexibility, so that multiple individuals may be assigned rights with varying degrees of responsibility to enter or review data. If ever there was an opportunity primed to draw others into the process and to help staff understand the value of the data, this is it. Undergirding our assessment efforts over the past few years has been a concerted effort to deepen our understanding of the role the IT organization plays in helping a liberal arts college achieve its mission as an institution of higher learning. IT must provide highly reliable infrastructure and effective support services, enabling the majority, including students, to be productive and successful. Benchmarking enables us to have confidence in this regard before extending resources toward areas of innovation important to our institution. A Look InSIDe The conundrum is that it’s much more difficult to know how well IT is working in the nooks and crannies of the institution than it is to capture a big picture snapshot. Internal benchmarking requires a different type of data collection and analysis and is likely to be much more time consuming than external benchmarking. How lucky for those who discover the gem of the Merged Information Services organizations (MISo) Survey. We’ve used MISo to measure satisfaction with IT and library resources across constituencies—faculty, staff, and students—and to delve deeper using local questions on special topics. MISo is amazingly flexible. As a result of two survey cycles, we’ve made much more confident decisions or established new strategies for wireless, mobile computing, and classroom technology 24 | October 2011 implementations. We’ve adjusted training and other service points to improve impact. Sometimes we’ve used MISo data to defend critical capital decisions. Perhaps most importantly, in the midst of the 24x7 grind, peppered with typical complaints and common frustrations that technology tends to generate, there is great comfort in knowing that overall computing services are rated exceptionally high by all of our constituencies. As an IT leader, sometimes you just need to know that much. Our Institutional Research office colleagues provide a credentialed safety net, a place to check in before pronouncing what we think we know. We’ve learned a lot about assessment over the past decade, mostly by doing a lot of programmatic and project-level evaluations, setting annual goals and objectives, and conducting staff evaluations. However, we’ve also learned that one of our most important partners is the Institutional Research office. our IR colleagues provide a credentialed safety net, a place to check in before pronouncing what we think we know about what the data suggests or before we publish results too broadly. As we often say in IT, just a little bit of knowledge can be a dangerous thing and I’d bet the IR folks Resources EDUCAUSE Core Data Service, www.educause.edu/coredata HEDS, www.e-heds.org HERI/CIRP, www.heri.ucla.edu MISO, www.misosurvey.org say the same thing. Developing a strong working relationship with institutional research is a good first step in any assessment plan. our director of IR made this collaboration easy for IT, extending an invaluable invitation to link up with broader institutional efforts. She asked hypothetically, “What if we asked incoming students about their experiences with technology? And then what if we asked outgoing seniors about their experiences with technology? What might we learn?” By tying a few questions specific to IT consistently into our standard survey cycle, we’ve learned a lot—about students and about our organization. Leveraging HeRI/CIRP surveys for first-year students and HeDS for seniors, and also MISo as described above, we’ve become much more informed about our students’ technology experiences and are able to better anticipate the technologies students will bring with them or require from us to succeed at St. Lawrence. For example, based on CIRP data, we could see both the laptop and Macintosh trends building early and fast, yet had plenty of time to train IT staff, eventually also adjusting semester startup programming and support services appropriately. We’ve also learned what matters to students in selecting St. Lawrence and thereafter in their undergraduate career with regard to technology. All of this is critically important for strategic purposes as an organization dedicated to serving the institutional mission. With proper resources and internal buy-in, any IT department can do a solid job of assessing its effectiveness and also learn new ways of providing critical services to a campus learning community. There are amazing resources at your disposal, a mere click or two away, for this work. But first, buy your IR director a cup of coffee, because there’s no better place to start this conversation. universitybusiness.com http://www.educause.edu/coredata http://www.e-heds.org http://www.heri.ucla.edu http://www.misosurvey.org http://www.universitybusiness.com

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of University Business - October 2011

University Business - October 2011
Contents
Editor's Note
College Index
Ad Index
Behind the News
Sense of Place
Viewpoint
Human Resources
Cloud Email
Tuition Setting
Campus CFO
Independent Outlook
End Note

University Business - October 2011