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IT Leadership in Higher Education: Moving from Supporting Infrastructure to Supporting Innovation

Dwayne Harapnuik — April 6, 2011 — Leave a comment

The literature dealing with the position of the Chief Information Officer (CIO) in Higher Education is filled with surveys of what characteristics the CIO must have, what priorities a CIO should hold and to whom the CIO should report. Throughout most of this literature a consistent theme emerges—we seem know what the CIO should be doing, who they should report to, and even what the CIO should look like in the future, yet we repeatedly see that the CIO are often incapable of fulfilling the goals and roles prescribed.

Wayne Brown, VP Technology at Excelsior College and the originator of the Chief Information Officer Effectiveness in Higher Education report series lists the following responsibilities for a CIO:

Business Partner – Organizational strategic planning and revising business processes

Classic IT Support Provider – Foundations of IT support and responsive department

Contract Oversight – Relationships with IT vendors, contract negotiation, and contract supervision

Informaticist and IT Strategist – Ensure security and accuracy of institutional data and alignment of IT department with the institution

Integrator – Integration of all internal and external systems

IT Educator – Evangelist for computer use and understanding; educator of employees on how IT innovations bring value to the organization (2009)

Brown points out that Classic IT Support and Contract Oversight are the two roles in which CIO’s report success while the Business Partner and IT Educator roles are viewed as least important and the area where CIOs rate themselves as least effective. Keeping the systems running, while procuring more technology seem to be the two things that CIOs are able to consistently do well. Business partner and an IT educator and innovator are not. The predominance of literature suggests that the type of focus required to provide the five nines of reliability and provide safe and secure environments are diametrically opposed to the focus that innovation in education require.

As a result of this large body of research, there are repeated demands that higher education not “attempt to use models or paradigms for higher education CIOs that do not fit (e.g. the business model)(Lineman, 2007).” There are recommendations ranging from splitting the this top IT position in two and establishing the position of Chief Technology Officer (CTO) to be responsible for maintaining the IT infrastructure while the CIO is responsible for the innovation and leadership. Other recommendations include having the CIO report to the Chief Academic Officer (Provost) or splitting the report between the academic and financial sides of the academic house. Other literature suggests the position of a Senior Academic Technology Officer.

In the article Run IT as a business: why that’s a train wreck waiting to happen, Bob Lewis fleshes out the warning and provides a very specific list of what the CIO and their IT shop should and should not do. The list includes:

… provide alternatives to internal customers, chargebacks, SLAs, and all the other baggage associated with the “standard model.”

… that IT must be integrated into the heart of the enterprise, and everyone in IT must collaborate as a peer with those in the business who need what they do.

Nobody in IT should ever say, “You’re my customer and my job is to make sure you’re satisfied,” or ask, “What do you want me to do?”

Instead, they should say, “My job is to help you and the company succeed,” followed by “Show me how you do things now,” and “Let’s figure out a better way of getting this done. (2010)”

Perhaps Debra Allison offers the most succinct summary of what the CIO position must evolve to in The Future CIO: Critical Skills and Competencies ECAR bulletin:

The position is evolving from a focus on technology leadership to a focus on institutional innovation. With these changes, the CIO cannot afford simply to respond to requests but must also proactively work to capture opportunities that drive the institutions success (Allison, 2010).

With the requisites for institutional innovation being so different then what is required for building and maintaining that IT infrastructure, is it fair to expect one individual provide such diverse leadership. If you go back in the IT Leadership or governance literature for the past 20 years you will find that many of these warning and challenges have been repeatedly voiced.

References

Allison, D., H. “The Future CIO: Critical Skills and Competencies” (Research Bulletin 15, 2010), Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Brown, W. “A Study of CIO Roles and Effectiveness in Higher Education” Campus Technology Viewpoint, 2009, available from: http://campustechnology.com/articles/2009/05/13/a-study-of-cio-roles-and-effectiveness-in-higher-education.aspx.

Lewis, B. “Run IT as a business: why that’s a train wreck waiting to happen” InfoWorld, 2010, available from: http://www.infoworld.com/d/adventures-in-it/run-it-business-why-thats-train-wreck-waiting-happen-477?page=0,0&source=footer.

Lineman, J., P. “The Corporate CIO Model and the Higher Education CIO”. EDUCAUSE Quarterly. Volume 30, Number 1, 2007 available from: http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Quarterly/EDUCAUSEQuarterlyMagazineVolum/TheCorporateCIOModelandtheHigh/157433.

Staples, M. “Making Room for Yes: It Starts at the Top” (Research Bulletin 17, 2010). Boulder, CO: EDUCAUSE Center for Applied Research, 2010, available from http://www.educause.edu/ecar.

Albright, Michael J., Nworie, John. “Rethinking Academic Technology Leadership in an Era of Change” Educause Quarterly. Volume 31, Number 4, 2008 available from: http://net.educause.edu/ir/library/pdf/EQM0814.pdf

In Innovation, IT Change, CIO, leadership

You Learn What You Live

Dwayne Harapnuik — April 5, 2011 — Leave a comment

This past weekend I had the opportunity to watch my 13 & 14 year old sons tackle and solve a real world problem that most of their peers, and I would speculate most adults, would not have even attempted. The rear door latch on our Chevy Astro Van broke and rather than take the van into the garage I asked my boys to fix it. I need to qualify, neither of my boys have any training in mechanics, nor do I, and none of us has ever had to resolve a problem like this before. I also need to explain that both of my boys have always been home schooled and have grown up in an environment where learning is stressed as part of what makes us human. I have always argued that whether one believes we are evolved or created there is no denying that we are learning beings–that is one of the most amazing aspects of the human condition. As a classic constructivist I hold the position that learning is an active process in which learners construct new ideas or concepts based upon their current/past knowledge–learning is all about making meaningful connections. The world around us often provides the best learning environment–if we choose to use it as a learning environment.

So–asking my boys to fix the van on a Saturday morning was nothing that surprised them nor was it something that overwhelmed them. They simply jumped into the back of the van and started assessing the situation and came up with a plan of attack. In less than 45 minutes they had removed the door panels and frames, unlatched and opened the doors, and identified and removed the broken part. The most challenging part of the whole repair was the trip to the auto-wrecker and the search for the replacement part which required scouring through over 25 wrecked vans–apparently this is a common problem with Chevy vans. The removal of the replacement part took only a few minutes which was good because we had less than 5 minutes before the wrecking yard closed.

It was amazing watching my sons install the replacement latch and reassemble the interior panels and frames of the two rear doors–they looked like seasoned professionals and had a confidence that you don’t generally see in teens. Other than helping them with inserting the latch rod into the pressure fitting on the latch pin (my hands are considerably stronger than my boys) they did all the work. This Saturday morning was in no way extraordinary and other than telling my boys I was proud of how well they worked together and complemented them on how quickly they resolved the problem nothing special was done because this is just the way that the Harapnuik household works and what the Harapnuik brothers are expected to do.

This experience and many more that have preceded it remind me of a fundamental question that we in academia need to address. Shouldn’t experiential or active learning and real world projects be used for all instruction? I have been pondering this question for many years and this past Saturday’s events remind me of an an article and a conversation I had with my youngest son when he was 10 that should call us to action.

In The Read Write Web Blog post Can New Media Be Taught in Schools? Marshall Kirkpatrick argues that you cannot genuinely teach New Media in school but rather have to immerse students in the new media tools and systems through experiential learning and projects. New media has to be experienced to be learned and ultimately understood. Kirkpatrick sarcastically asks:

Tests on Twitter, wiki-style study groups, students quizzed on yesterday’s most popular YouTube videos and the biggest hits on Del.icio.us/Popular – is this what the future of education is going to look like?

Common sense would dictate that this just doesn’t seem reasonable, yet so much of our educational system is based on recipe and regurgitation. So many in academia hold critical and analytical thinking as the “gold standard” but so much of what we do doesn’t go much beyond the repetition of information. Should we be encouraging our learners to learn how to learn? Shouldn’t they be given the opportunity to solve real world problems?

With this context in mind, a conversation with my younger son several years ago will reveal just how far away from this ideal our education system is. While riding up the chairlift on a downhill mountain biking trip I was discussing potential areas of special interest that my boys would like to explore in the upcoming fall. Since we are very active downhill mountain bikers we need to constantly repair and maintain our bikes. My younger son (at this time 10 years old) is a natural mechanic and simply enjoys maintaining and repairing his bike and after recently replacing his entire drive-train (derailleur, shifter, cables etc.) by himself, I realized that he may be ready to move into some formal mechanical training and suggested that we take a bike mechanic course together. My goals were twofold. First, I wanted use one of his natural interests and use bike mechanics as an avenue to explore the fascinating aspects of science like physics, chemistry and engineering. I also wanted another opportunity to expose my son to the traditional learning system or courses, classes, tests and the like. Even though we home school I have regularly put my boys into our traditional system for a variety of classes to insure that they are able and prepared to take instruction from others and are able to deal with how the rest of the world is taught. We have also have our boys take the year end HLAT or similar exams to insure that they are comfortable with the whole testing process.

Unfortunately, as my boys get older and move into higher grades getting them to agree to this process and justifying the reason for doing so is getting harder and harder. My younger son’s response to a formal bike mechanic course was:

Dad do we have to—why can’t we just learn by working on the bikes. Taking a course takes so much time and you really don’t get to do very much and you just don’t learn anything and…. Why can’t I just take my whole bike apart and put it back together–this is what we have done so far and I know a lot….

In an attempt to justify a formal course I explained that in a well designed course the content will be well laid out and course would follow a good text book or similar course material in a logical fashion. I also tried to justify that we could/would have access to an expert who could help us work through problems that we may not be able to resolve ourselves. My son responded in saying

I’ve worked on bikes long enough to know that there isn’t anything that we couldn’t figure out on our own–it may just take us a while. We could look things up on the Internet and find the answer if we got stuck-that’s what we did when we were figuring out how to fix and solder our guitar….

My next attempt at trying to justify a formal course included the typical “you get out of a course what you put into it” and I also tried to include the justification that he needed to get more experience in our traditional learning system.

At this point my older boy piped in on the conversation and affirmed the notion that courses just take too much time. He complained that it normally took 10-15 minutes for the teacher to get everyone settled down to the point where they started to do some work and then 10 minutes later they moved to a new location or different subject and had to go through the whole setting down process once again. These are courses like creative writing, physical education, science workshops and field trips and other opportunities where most kids are motivated to be engaged–I shudder to think of what my son’s would think of learning math, language arts, or social in a traditional setting. The following questions from my older son have motivated me to action:

Why do they waste so much of our time? Will it get any better when we get to University? Why can’t you fix it?

I have been pondering this conversation and the resulting questions for the past several years and I agree with my sons. Why can’t we fix it? We need to move from the passive educational environment of main lecture points, rubrics, individual competition and standardized testing to an active educational environment of interactive presentations, critical and analytical thinking, collaboration and meaningful projects. We need to create an environment where creativity, innovation and exploration flourish. For the most part that was not the environment I was subjected to in my 12 years if primary and secondary and 13 years of post secondary education. I did tough it out and made the most of all my courses but it really didn’t have to be that way and for the generations to come it needs to improve.

We can do better. We all know how valuable it is to learn by doing, by experiencing life and by real world projects. We just need to work this into our formal system. The research on constructivism, active learning, experiential learning and many other approaches and theories confirm that our educational system can be radically improved if we make the effort. Our kids, young adults and all our learners for that matter deserve this effort. We all need to work together to “fix it”.

In Learning 2.0, Meaningful Connections experiential, hands on, Learning

Twitter Updates for 2011-04-05

Dwayne Harapnuik — April 5, 2011 — Leave a comment

Classic thinking outside the box – What would you do? http://t.co/agNLiIE via @48daysteam #

In Twitter

Mobility, Leadership and IT 2.0

Dwayne Harapnuik — April 4, 2011 — Leave a comment

As we consider how to take mobility to the next level at ACU, I am looking at what we will need to do and have also been considering what may be holding us back. As a result, I have been reviewing some of my older, Diigo links, blog posts and an assortment of books I have previously read dealing with leadership in IT. The following article was originally posted in 2008 which is a long time in terms of the mobility and the Internet but the message that it holds is still relevant today.

In the article IT 2.0: How Changing Technology is Having Big Impacts on Business, the ReadWriteWeb stated:

This next big shift is on the horizon, but you can see it coming. Today, there still may be plenty of businesses employing “classic geeks” in their IT Department, but that’s about to change…

…Instead, tomorrow’s computer “geek” will be a true member of the business team as opposed to the mysterious man behind the curtain who you only notice when something goes wrong. So what does the “new geek” need to know to run tomorrow’s IT Department? An entirely new skill set, as it turns out.

As we grow closer to ubiquity and transparency in our IT infrastructures the need to keep the fans humming and lights flashing may be relegated to the “classic geek”. In contrast the innovative use of IT resources as a competitive advantage within an organization will require a much more digitally and socially savvy individual. This individual will need to understand and grasp the broader perspective of a connected world that includes the following emerging trends:

Enteprise 2.0 – Collaboration among employees and teams using tools such as SharePoint, Wikis, blogs, and RSS
Cloud services – A lot of servers will move from the corporate data center to the cloud, hosted by Microsoft, Google, and Amazon
The mobile workforce – Mobile office work will spread across the organization, and will no longer be confined just to business travelers
Self-provisioning user base – The next generation of users will be digital savvy and will often select their own hardware and software

We need to ask if this new brand of IT leader will, or even can, come out of IT (the ReadWriteWeb author suggests they will be “rare”). Or do we even want him or her to come out of IT? We look to IT to provide reliability and stability, so innovation and creativity are generally not what IT are good at. We want the fans to hum, the lights to flash, and the network packets to flow to the point that we can forget that IT are even there. Perhaps the new IT leaders will come from outside IT and bring with them a much broader understanding of the organization and be able to blend the reliability and stability of IT with the innovation and creativity required to do business in the connected and collaborative world that we are quickly moving to. Perhaps IT 2.0 will bring about an even greater change in IT leadership than what we may initially expect.

In IT Innovation, IT, leadership

Leadership, Innovation & Change

Dwayne Harapnuik — April 4, 2011 — 2 Comments

Over the past few months I have been teaching two online courses that deal with change and innovation and as I re-read all the course material and work with my students in these course I am continually reminded that change and innovation within an organization is dependent upon leadership. More specifically, I am reminded that leadership or the lack of effective leadership can severely limit innovation. In his book A Failure of Nerve: Leadership in the Age of the Quick Fix, Edwin Friedman argues that leadership has such a significant impact that:

When creative, imaginative, and self-starting members of any organization are being sabotaged rather than being supported, the poorly differentiated person “at the top” does not have to be in direct contact with the person being undercut. In fact, neither even has to know that the other exists.

Most of us at one point have worked in such an environment, and as I encourage my students to consider Friedman’s writing in the graduate course EDUC 651: Leading Continuous Improvement of Digital Learning I am also convicted that I do not want to be the type of leader in this course who gets in the way of the creative, imaginative, and self-starting learners.

Friedman draws parallels between families and organizations and points to the similarities in the roles of leaders in both places. He argues that leadership in ones family will have a direct correlation to ones leadership in a broader setting so I am further convicted into considering how well I am leading my family.

The exciting part of taking students through ideas like Friedman’s is that I get to reconsider how well I am functioning as a differentiated learner and over the next several weeks I will be reflecting on these thoughts in my blog.

In Learning, Learning 2.0 Change, Innovation, leadership