Stakeholder Meetings
Teaching and Learning
November 3, 2008
10:00-11:30
Introductions and Opening Remarks
The purpose of the meeting and session objectives were reviewed. There will be five
sessions, with groups of individuals representing Teaching and Learning, Research and
Scholarship, Administration, Information Systems, and Students.
Transcripts of all five sessions will be distributed to all participants.
Early in the New Year a draft of the IT (Information Technology) strategic plan will be
distributed. It is hoped that it will reflect the input received at these sessions.
Everyone is encouraged to read the recently released External Review of UBC’s Central
Information Technology Unit. The first six recommendations of the report focus on the
role of UBC’s CIO (Chief Information Officer), IT governance, and IT funding model.
The issue of UBC’s IT funding model is being addressed. There is a working group
charged with determining: what infrastructure services UBC requires, the cost of scaling
services to provide what is required, the cost of sustainment, and key performance
indicators.
Review of Guiding Principles
For a strategic plan to succeed, it is necessary for everyone in the organization to know
what the plan is, and how what they do contributes. The principles express the values for
all members of the IT department to share: cooperation, sharing, helping each other, and
leveraging efforts through collaboration.
We would very much appreciate feedback on the principles. Is there anything missing?
Is there anything that shouldn’t be there?
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Transparency is also an important principle, which may fall under Accountability.
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Agility – the ability to move when action is required – is also important.
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Is there any way to group or package the principles, giving people something
more condensed to work with? Perhaps by grouping key elements? These are hard
to operationalize – there are too many.
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UBC IT: There is a boundary between ideas and action. We must, when doing
something, see if we can apply one or more of the principles to see if we’re doing
the right thing. E.g.: Am I being accountable, collaborative etc.? Note that the old
funding model mitigated against openness. Anything that gets people talking
about these ideas is a good thing.
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We also need to know what the knowledge and data behind the principles are.
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It doesn’t give perspective on who drives the decisions: the customer? the
community? IT? There should be a concrete indication of who are the drivers. It
should be the customer.
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UBC IT: There has got to be a stakeholder driver through a mutual feedback loop.
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UBC IT: Does the Alignment section reflect these sentiments?
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Yes, but it should be more explicit.
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UBC IT: We want to shift from being providers of IT to being enablers of IT.
General Discussion
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People need guidance on IT. We can’t afford for them to rush out and just get the
flavour of the month. Rather, we want to make decisions based on sound,
evidence-based principles. For example, some students would like to go
completely on-line, but we have to consider that there are different learning styles.
We need data to drive the decisions.
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IT could assist with modeling the assessment of pedagogical practice – with the
WebCT (web-based classroom training) service, for example.
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We need to gather evidence of what is the best thing to do. And cost contributes
to this.
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What is needed is not just basic tracking data, but information on educational
outcomes. This involves faculty being very explicit about what they’re doing.
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There is lots of pressure to upload lectures as podcasts. Is there any evidence that
this is the right thing to do?
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Note how many of the services we have are balkanized, silos: portals, HR (human
resources), etc. We have siloized information systems, and siloized people. The
SIS (student information system) does not talk to the HR system, for example. We
need to provision people not departments. For example, everyone should get –
and know they can get – x gigabytes of storage.
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UBC IT: The big systems are not driven around people, they are driven around
big departments – acting as businesses. Kuali Student (next generation student
service system) is very people focused. Where things are (hardware etc) is not
important. Two things should be remembered:
1. We should focus on people.
2. The cloud is a reality and we’re not taking advantage of it.
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It is difficult for people to focus on a resource that is institutional, not
departmental.
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There is a need for a personal learning space for every student, faculty, and staff
member. But who is going to provision it? HR can now put in courses –
competing with the Faculty Service Centre. If these systems aren’t talking to each
other, how is a person to relate to them?
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UBC IT: We do have a strategy:
o Expose everything as a service
o People gain access through identity
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A person at UBC doesn’t have their own space where they can link to everything
– as an individual. This is what is needed.
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As a small faculty, we need to be given the ability to get to our students and our
people.
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UBC IT: Suppose there was an environment, where you could go to say: “This
should be a service on this campus.” They could say “This is who should provide
it.”
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Two things are needed now: space and identity. These must be rock solid and
known to be reliable for everyone. This cuts right across departments. Also, we
need to be assured of ongoing support, and a way to maintain our understanding
of the services. If Vista is a project that has an end to it, we’re up a creek.
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Taking a different spin, what is needed is campus leadership in IT. There is no
effective place to go to discuss how to continue moving forward.
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Not a dictatorship
Partnerships across campus
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There is a need to be able to bring something forward – and know it’s going to be
funded. Also, who has made the decision, and who is accountable. This has to do
with governance.
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UBC IT: What hasn’t been there is the process of aligning academic goals with
the budget process. When we say “this is a priority”, we should know how to link
it to the budget.
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Centralized leadership could help with this. Right now there is no mechanism for
people to play ball. Consider Degree Audit. Was it brought in in a way that
communicated with the community? Probably not. There is no forum, no vehicle
to do analysis.
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A question about funding: Are students charged an IT fee?
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UBC IT: No, we’re one of the few institutions that doesn’t do this.
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It is defensible.
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Introducing technology disrupts business models. Consider the book “Disrupting
Class”. If we’re looking to centralized IT to bring order to the chaos, note that it
may be disrupted anyway. We must allow for some element of disruption.
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A new thing is 100% potential – often with a small community. Speaking of
funding, we would like to have a way to fund small projects which could then be
assessed. Then we could see if their success could be transferred to other
disciplines. Podcasting, for example.
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UBC IT: We need to build the capability into governance to sunset things.
Sometimes we can’t find funds for innovation, because we’re supporting 25
legacy services.
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It comes down to assessment. We need to change the culture to have assessment
and support withdrawal.
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Consider the approach to approving new drugs: they may be cheaper, they may
achieve better outcomes, or they may make people happier (more suitable to the
patient’s comfort and convenience).
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We have the Teaching and Learning Fund, but we need a mechanism for
evaluation and deciding whether to go on with an initiative. Classroom support
across campus is fractured and decoupled from IT. It is a huge expense and needs
consistency.
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UBC IT: There is a need for leadership, and we need supporters in the community
to promote this.
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Leadership is part of the executive responsibility. While the executive make the
decisions, governance must include an understanding of the stakeholders’
information. There should be alignment, where IT is involved in executive
decision making. There should also be governance, with stakeholder participation
and understanding on a continuing basis. There should be a place for stakeholders
to go to participate, and to get information.
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Does UBC see a difference with regard to the ability of the CIO to make
decisions, and are they willing to do something about it?
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UBC IT: The UBC executive is proceeding cautiously. There are ongoing
(monthly) meetings with the executive. The discussions are very open. The
executive and the deans agree that something has to be done about the funding
model, and this is their initial focus. At the same time they have validated certain
within-the-department measures, such as proceeding with ITIL (Information
Technology Infrastructure Library methodology). There is funding model
working group expected to report in January.
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UBC IT: The current business model for IT was designed for the university to not
have central IT leadership. This is a big change.
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UBC IT: There are three things suggested in an email message from a faculty:
1. A centralized storage facility – for databases
2. Mechanisms for disaster recovery and business continuity
3. Software site licences – for the “ubc.ca” domain
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All these are on our lists too.
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UBC IT: There is also an indication of a need for more forums for discussion. A
new example is the Identity Management Steering committee and the associated
Identity Management Advisory Committee. More of these are needed. Would it
be better to have a lot of issue-based groups, or a single broader-based group?
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Issue-based groups are preferable. With them we can get technical specialists
interacting more – people who wouldn’t get involved with a broad-based group.
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We need the have the ability to look at information, much of which is being lost.
Why are listservs (electronic mailing list software) not centrally archived, when
they contain so much useful information?
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We must try to have a way of bringing together information from issue-based
interactions. How can there be a sharing amongst people across the campus? Not
everything needs to be handled by central IT.
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UBC IT: We need to have a way to put a value on “common good” contributions,
to relieve people of the sense that “I’m not paid to do this” when collaborating
and assisting other departments.