ASCUE NEWSLETTER FALL 1997

Association of Small Computer Users in Education
October 1997

Highlights in this Newsletter

• President's Letter
• Support Roundtable
• ASCUE '98 Preview
• Management Roundtable
• Curriculum Roundtable
• Where are they now?
• 10 Years ago in ASCUE
• ASCUE Board Members
  

President's Letter

Are you interested in academic or administrative computing issues in higher education? If so, read on! If not, please pass this newsletter on to someone at your college who is! What is ASCUE? ASCUE is the Association of Small Computer Users in Education. This does NOT mean that you have to be under 5'4" to join the organization! What it DOES mean is that we are a diversified group of professionals who use technology in higher education. We are faculty, academic and administrative staff of small institutions who are all dealing with the same technology issues. Have you networked your college yet? Are you on the Internet? (Do I hear a FINALLY!! out there?) Do you want to transform your curriculum to teach via the Web? Are you trying to support hundreds, thousands of users from students to faculty to staff to people in the local community? And all with a staff of THREE? I don't mean to make a joke out of these issues, but it's a fact, ASCUE members face these issues daily.

So where can you find answers to your dilemmas? At our annual ASCUE Conference! Every June we gather in Myrtle Beach, re-energize, and find other colleagues who have already been through our current situation. We share, learn, and rejuvenate. The ASCUE conference offers both half-day and full-day pre-conference workshops on a variety of topics. The conference itself is entirely presented by our membership. It's real people sharing real life situations, after encountering real problems and forming real solutions. Our conference chair for ASCUE 98, Bill Wilson, has an article in this newsletter about the upcoming conference, so please check it out!

Between conferences you can subscribe to our listserv, ASCUE-L. To subscribe, send a message to listserv@gettysburg.edu, and in the body of the message type SUBSCRIBE ASCUE-L yourname. That's it! You don't have to wait until June to discuss problems and solutions with your peers at other small institutions. Join in the discussion on the ASCUE-L list now!

In addition, feel free to e-mail any member of our Board at any time with comments, questions, and suggestions. ASCUE is an organization that is driven by its membership. We encourage you to join us. Learn from your colleagues, and share your experiences!

ASCUE WEB SITE

To view the papers for the last two conferences and also this newsletter in electronic form, go to: http://www.saintmarys.edu/~psmith/ascuehd.html

Roundtable - Increasing Institutional Support

Increasing institutional support for computing services on campus can be the result of a plan or a problem. The "problem" motivation too often occurs when the campus administration perceives that the academic or administrative computing services offered on campus are less than they should be. When that occurs, new funds and staff are sometimes directed towards computing services components with surprising rapidity to correct the perceived problem. However, these funds are too often accompanied by specific demands for change in services and demands to "shape up." Since that type of negative problem motivation can prove quite harmful to career paths of computing services personnel, the better way is to have a plan to increase institutional support and, therefore, stay out of institutional hot water in the first place.

Institutional support is defined to include staffing, operational budget, and institutional confidence in the computing services component. A good plan seeks to increase all three.

Components of a plan can be many, but they should include an attitude of customer service and a willingness to showcase results. For example:

1. Create specific and creative ways to keep in touch with your customers and to learn more about their needs. One way is to increase the number and frequency of user group meetings to create an atmosphere of two-way dialog between computing services staff and other campus employees. This is an excellent investment of your staff time that leads to multiple benefits.
2. Mount an effective publicity effort. Remember: An over supply of modesty can result in an undersupply of institutional support.
3. Carefully create specific strategies to offer the administration frequent opportunities to realize the worth and value of investing scarce budget and staff support in computing services.
4. When increased institutional support does occur, make special efforts to show institutional gains resulting from that increase. Show the positive results and thereby create more opportunity for growth.
5. Stress how the the services offered help the institution to achieve its general mission and annual goals.
6. Be a salesperson. Remember, get the good word out to get the good money in.

ASCUE '98 Preview

The Call for Papers for ASCUE's 31st Annual Summer Conference will be coming to you shortly. For those of you who need to get an early start on planning, here is some preliminary information about the conference. ASCUE '98 will run from June 7-11; the theme will be "Harnessing the Net: Creating the Campus Intranet." We will expand on this theme in the Call for Papers.

The cost for the Preconference Workshops will again be $80. The registration fee for the conference will be $140 for the first member from a college, $120 for additional members, and $165 for a corporation. Room rates will be $75, $87, and $113 per night for a Studio, 1 bedroom, and 2 bedroom, respectively. Two bedroom tower units will be $167 and three bedroom tower units will be $185 per night.

At its Fall meeting, the ASCUE Board examined the evaluation forms from the last conference very carefully and took them into account when planning next year's conference. One theme that emerged was a desire for a greater variety of presentations. This is something that you, our members, have direct control over. Please start thinking now of a paper topic you can present in June. We will all benefit.

If you have any questions or require additional information about the conference, please feel free to contact Bill Wilson, 1998 chair. My number is (717) 337-6933, fax is (717) 337-6666, and email address is wilson@gettysburg.edu.

Managing in Times of Rapid Change

1. Setting Standards

   Standardization of supported equipment and services enables us to be more effective support providers. Focusing on a reasonable set of things to which we can commit, rather than attempting to "do it all," allows us more time to devote to doing what we do do well. In determining these standards, however, we must listen clearly to our customers and keep their goals in mind. Any standards of hardware or software that we establish should include appropriate tools that enable them to easily do their jobs, be that teaching, research or administration. Once set and clearly advertized, standards help us to prioritize customers and projects and help plan for future directions.

2. Finding Funding for Departmental Growth

   Shortage of computing support staff is a universal problem in most colleges. We are a service industry and providing service requires that we have personnel to do it, yet justifying and finding funding for adding positions can be a difficult obstacle to overcome. To justify hiring additional staff, many de- partments first undergo self-assessments and structurally reorganize personnel assignments to better match the needs for offered services. After that is done, some colleges reported developing a campus-wide committee to investigate needs and recommend staff additions to the administration. A few established service level agreement standards which limited what they were committed to do and waited for the administration to notice missing services before asking for additional staff. One college established a precedent which stipulated the addition of new staff with every new major project or computing system added. Clearly there is no single answer to the question of how to convince the administration that we need more staff to provide excellent technology support. Meanwhile, however, appropriately deploying the assignments of existing staff is essential. Departments must periodically and routinely assess customer needs, both current and future, and constantly adjust organization so that our services are dynamic and evolve with those needs.

3. Finding and Keeping Qualified Staff

   Once we obtain funding to hire additional staff, finding and keeping qualified support staff is an important factor in maintaining quality support. Still, competition for technology professionals from commercial employers often makes it difficult for colleges to hire and retain qualified staff. Subsequently, many institutions are beginning to outsource certain tasks rather than hire full-time employees. It seems, sometimes, that contracting with outside agencies to provide services such as hardware repair or network administration is more cost-effective over time than constantly hiring and training employees who leave for higher-paying jobs after we train them. Certain positions in computing services departments, though, are not so easily filled by external consultants, in particular, positions whose functions are driven by the technological culture of the campus (e.g., help desks, faculty instructional technology support, customer training and education). These positions focus more on the "people" side of computing services and less on physical hardware repair. These services require full-time staff with long-term knowledge of the culture of the campus to best serve it. To retain staff in these positions, incentives are imperative. Education is a rich environment in which to work, often providing opportunities that commercial industry cannot (e.g., tuition remission, travel, training and technical education, research opportunities, and flexibility in personal growth). Also, and ironically, the very dynamic complexion of our profession which challenges and frustrates us everyday offers the excitement and opportunities which many people seek in a career. These built-in incentives alone can go far in keeping our staff happy and onboard. Another key to staff longevities is for management to listen to employees and respect their ideas. Managers must foster a clear sense of mission and purpose for employees to follow and continually seek avenues for employee growth which also meet the goals of the departments.

Integrating Information Technology into the Curriculum

The conversation at the multimedia and teaching roundtable began with a quick discussion of software that people were currently using. Most were using PowerPoint and commented on its ease of use and ability to be moved efficiently to html/web pages. However, many agreed after seeing Compel that its animation looked superior. One can mount Compel on top of PowerPoint and use it to include hot links and buttoning. One person commented that Astound can do everything Compel can do and make publishing to the Web easier.

The topic then moved into who was using multimedia and how. It was quickly surmised that most had begun simply by transferring notes into a slide show program. However, after a year or so, the lectures had lost their "newness." Folks began to move away from presentation packages and put notes on the Web for students to download. Several people pointed out the importance of teaching students how to do presentations using multimedia to ensure quality work. One school offers a first year seminar which centers around different topics which interest the faculty member teaching the seminar. The course is project-based and culminates in a multi- media presentation. This school found that students tend to like authoring packages better than presentation packages. Other schools have a communication course in each discipline to prepare students to make multimedia presentations.

There were suggestions from faculty members in different disciplines as to what needed to be added to multimedia presentations to ensure they increased student learning. Some examples were:

• Physics used animation to illustrate how light travels. This application needed the power of an authoring package (Astound).
• Freshman seminar students created Web pages.
• Students used the Web to do real-time research culminating in PowerPoint presentations.
• Multimedia can address learning differences of students (visual, auditory, textual, tactile).
• Incorporate special projects using multimedia software in any class. Beware of software that is too difficult to use or too parochial.
• Give exams by having student download the exam from the net, put initials in it and take the exam on line.
• Use interactive multimedia scenarios where students in groups do creative problem solving.

Once the need for multimedia was established the discussion turned to facilities. Some schools had invested in the "smart" classroom with a projector suspended from the ceiling and a podium in the front holding a Windows/Macintosh computer, a laser disk player, VCR, and possibly a touch screen panel. The primary difficulty with these classrooms was the problem of scheduling , especially courses which needed the classroom infrequently during the semester. A lower cost and more flexible solution is a cart with a computer and a 24-31" monitor or a device to project monitor images on a wall screen.

The resounding theme throughout the discussion was that all teaching methods must culminate in students becoming active learners. Teachers must learn to continually adapt because software that is effective now will be obsolete six months from now. It is important to become a manager rather than a purveyor of knowledge and let students actively learn a package just in time to use it. Students often drive the learning either by providing their own learning structure and asking us to get out of the way or by working in cooperative groups doing guided discovery learning. Several participants emphasized that active learning is not the same as collaborative learning and some students dislike the latter but are very willing to engage in the former.

Where Are They Now?

Nine years ago, the newsletter editor, Wally Roth, started a series of profiles of those who were active ASCUE members but had been unable to keep up their participation. He wrote about Jack McElroy, who retired from Oklahoma Christian College, the site of the 1976 annual conference. I am not sure why this series was discontinued, but I would like to resurrect it beginning in the Spring newsletter. This will help us remember the many contributions of those who have gone before us and inspire us by the ir service to the computing profession. If you know any "old-timers," please send your news about them to me at Saint Mary's College, Notre Dame, IN 46556.

Ten Years Ago in ASCUE!

Ten years ago, we were preparing for the 1988 annual conference. It was to be at Ocean Creek in Myrtle Beach for the second year in a row. Before this, the annual conference had moved to a different site every year. It is hard to believe, now that ASCUE has become synonymous with Myrtle Beach, that the annual conference moved from campus to hot campus every summer. In 1988, people were talking about how wonderful the accommodations at Ocean Creek were and what a deal the two-bedroom Lodge units were, where two colleagues could share a unit and each have their own room and bathroom.

ASCUE did not as yet publish a proceedings for the annual conference (this started in 1990), so the fall newsletter would contain copies of the "best" papers (often the papers that the newsletter editor could get hold of). I would like to share with you the titles of some of the papers from ten years ago so you can see how far we have come and yet how little some things have changed.

• "Implementation of a Microcomputer Net- work Laboratory"
• "Library Automation for Higher Education"
• "Integrating IBM PCs in a DEC Environment"
• "A New Organizational Approach in Dealing With the Delivery of Academic and Administrative Computer Services at a College or University"
• "WATFOR-77 ... the Next Generation"
• "Desktop Publishing (and Apple Computers)" by a Creative Computing representative.
• "What are the Advantages of Modula-2?"
• "Student Workers in Academic Computing"
• "The Power of Integrated Information"