Maryland's Public System of Higher Education

The transformative potential of information technology provides significant opportunities in nearly every area of higher education. Increasingly, institutions of higher education are availing themselves of these opportunities to enhance learning and teaching, expand access, and improve customer services.

Higher education, as other service industries, is shifting from a centralized to a decentralized, customer-centric service model. In this model, personalized services are available to consumers at any time, from any place, with much less need for "intermediated assistance" from employees. In essence, the need for the "middleman" who has traditionally served as the gatekeeper to certain services is disappearing. In this model, face-to-face interactions emphasize higher-value activities for the provider and the client - students, alumni, faculty, staff, administrators, state representatives, industries, the general public, and others.

In response to this emerging reality, USM institutions have the potential to differentiate their educational environments through the infusion of technology, creating a competitive advantage in being perceived as technology leaders among higher education institutions.

When the USM held its annual information technology retreat in June 2000, USM technology leaders identified seven key IT challenges and priorities that are strategic to their institutional missions:

IT Staffing - hiring, retaining, and retraining optimal numbers of information technology staff.

Network Infrastructure - upgrading and maintaining pervasive campus networks and an inter-institutional wide-area network providing high-speed connections for emerging electronic services.

Customer Services Systems - migrating 1970's legacy technology administrative systems to an integrated suite of customer services and course-management information systems, enabling the delivery of cross-functional, customer-focused information, web-integrated interfaces, common reporting tools, e-business services, personalized services, and self-service flexibility.

Workstation and Server Renewal Programs - adopting models for the sustainable renewal of computer technology in student public-access laboratories, and faculty and staff work places.

Learning and Teaching Using Technology - providing faculty the flexibility to customize learning environments to meet the needs of diverse student groups. The critical enabling services include the tools and support within each USM institution to facilitate the development of online courses for the web. Additionally, a technology supportive learning environment requires sufficient numbers of "smart classrooms."

Electronic Services Architecture - deploying authentication and directory services, security mechanisms, a public key infrastructure and other core "middleware" to support electronic services in a networked world.

User Support and Training - developing responsive technology support organizations, including help centers and collaborative models, to help users understand and use technology.

EDUCAUSE, an academic-technology consortium whose members include 1,700 academic institutions and 150 corporations interested in campus computing, released a survey this year of critical IT issues facing campuses. The survey identifies similar challenges in the deployment and management of information technology on campuses. Ten key themes emerged:

Funding IT "to renew and replace PCs, administrative systems, network infrastructures, and institutional support systems and to provide competitive IT salaries, training, and additional staff to support new services."

Faculty Development, Support, and Training in recognition of the fact that "technology-enhanced teaching and learning is rapidly reaching a critical mass. "

Distance Education as "just-in-time lifelong learning and the growing desire to be educated anyplace and anytime are driving demand."

E-learning Environments that are fundamentally changing the teaching and learning process, " supporting new pedagogical approaches and creating new forms of learning communities."

Enterprise Administrative Systems "to support changing ways of doing campus business."

IT Staffing and Human Resources to meet the increasing demand for IT services.

IT Strategic Planning as "the huge costs associated with IT investments argue strongly for good institutional planning," which could be in the form of "an iterative series of short-term plans that address strategic institutional issues."

Online Student Services "to meet the expectations of current or prospective students, who increasingly look to the Internet as the place to conduct business. Such online student services must be an integral part of a broader campus e-business strategy that integrates enterprise transaction systems, customized transaction systems, course management systems, portal technology, and customer relationship management."

Advanced Networking Challenges stemming from new initiatives in local and wide-area networking. "Internet2 applications will require end-to-end network connectivity, which will lead to major upgrades in campus networks. Voice, video, and data are merging into a common digital infrastructure, and connectivity will increase between wired and wireless networking."

Support Services Demands as "across the country, campus IT centers are challenged to find ways to provide new services, enhance existing services, and extend the availability of those services."

The USM, like other higher education institutions, needs to quickly take steps to address the issues identified in the EDUCAUSE survey. Looking ahead, the USM institutions' emergence as technology leaders, and therefore, their ability to support the State's eMaryland vision, will depend on making immediate and sustainable investments in IT infrastructure and services.

Using data from a national survey of information technology in higher education in 1999, selected IT indicators were analyzed for USM institutions relative to their peers.* While most USM institutions, although not leaders in IT, are competitive, some institutions are behind in critical areas.

For example, the proportion of classes using computer-based classrooms and electronic mail is lower at some USM comprehensive institutions as compared with peers (see chart 1).

*A summary of all comparative data for USM institutions is available from the USM Office.

What is your best estimate of the proportion of classes that use the following information technology resources?

Notes: The peer group was selected from respondents to the survey. Public Master 1 represents the average for all respondents to the survey for that Carnegie classification.

Critically also, some USM comprehensive institutions do not offer the online student services available at peer institutions (see charts 2 and 3).

What academic and institutional resources and services are currently available on your campus WWW site?

Notes: The peer group was selected from respondents to the survey. Public Master 1 represents the average for all respondents to the survey for that Carnegie classification.

Additionally, in the areas of student ownership (charts 4 and 5), student access to public workstations (charts 6 and 7), and user support (charts 8 and 9), some USM institutions have better, and some, lower metrics relative to their peers.

What is your best estimate of the proportion of individuals in your campus community who have or own desktop or notebook computers?

Notes: The peer group was selected from respondents to the survey. Public Master 1 and Public Research University 1 represent the average for all respondents to the survey for those Carnegie classifications.

Do students have the access they need to computing resources?

Notes: The peer group was selected from respondents to the survey. Public Master 1 and Public Research University 1 represent the average for all respondents to the survey for those Carnegie classifications.

Number of headcount students per technical support person (computed metric).

Notes: The peer group was selected from respondents to the survey. Public Master 1 and Public Research University 1 represent the average for all respondents to the survey for those Carnegie classifications.

These key IT issues, peer metrics, emerging market trends and technologies, along with the State Executive Branch Agency expectations of 50% to 80% online services by 2004, increase the need for special one-time investments in bolstering IT infrastructures and services at the USM institutions.