EDUCAUSE Day 2

EDUCAUSE Day 2

Identity Management
Goal is easy and secure exchange among “known” individuals and secure access to restricted resources they know can be trusted without onerous access processes
Ideally there would be a single digital credential that positively identifies the person, positively identifies certifying authority, is presentable only by that person, is tamperproof, is accepted by all systems.
Positive identification could be picture (what we usually use now), fingerprints, DNA, but we may have role-based attributes too. Identity attributes could include birthday, address, group membership, city of birth, etc. Need to be able to answer these questions: is the person positively identified?; is their digital credential valid?; are they currently affiliated?; are authorization attributes valid?
Credential Assessment Framework Suite (see http://www.cio.gov/eauthentication/) -- defines levels of assurance. If you use only username/password, you can only get to level 2, need pki (cryptographic tokens) for level 3 and cryptographic hard tokens (smart card, usb token, etc.) for level 4.
InCommon (“most of us will probably be members eventually!) – makes it easier to trust guests.
Most universities have multiple “sources of authority”: HR, Student system, faculty, others?), and there may be multiple roles for any one person, so you need a reconciliation process. They break up into authentication (UID/password, PKID on token) and then authorization by particular service.

Lesson from Holbrook session (dynamic stability—great thing to try for?): tie your class projects back to your university so that you are building connections for alumni (e.g., photosynthesis module as demonstrated by football team, Krebs cycle by marching band, Jane the dinosaur as cheerleader) Can’t hurt?

IT Leadership Development discussion:

What does a CIO do? List generated by group: Communicates; sets policy; plays politics; builds consensus; provides vision; sets priorities; strategic planning; coordinates; professional development
To get there, you need to transition from tactical to strategic, be aware of broader perspective. People felt you need: skills, mentoring helps; academic degrees? (maybe not, recent ECAR survey says need for PhD declining); to know academic priorities (should read Chronicle – or InsideHigherEd—to see where university is going and how IT is viewed, can help), you need opportunities to show you’ve got leadership potential (CIOs in room felt that would be a good discussion to have with them); professional affiliations;
Ask CIO: what does a day in your life look like?; what keeps you up at night?

Most tech jobs are deep, but not broad—but you need to broaden yourself. Many times CIOs are coming from outside, even vendors, since many feel you should run IT more like a business.
One issues: distributed computing (how do you corral those cats?; how do you control faculty-run servers?). Take those issues forward and try to show you have everyone’s interest in mind. Define responsibilities of each group. Get ahead of power curve: give a brief presentation to trustees/president on upcoming issue (e.g., wireless) to help them understand and present your group as experts early. Use the “Ed Sullivan” approach: keep yourself in the background, but promote those using your help to accomplish things (faculty)—you’ll be in the picture!
Best practice: CIO moving to new position asks what key meetings and conferences people attend. Asks to go with them (many have IT-related tracks and you may even be able to present)—builds knowledge of what they need, what they hear. Can also ask them for what they think are short and long term issues and then post back to the group—some good ideas.
Advice: stop whining! (well, do your whining to someone in peer group that you can trust, but don’t do it at the “big table”.)
Upcoming EDUCAUSE conference (Chicago/May) on nextgen CIOs

Online Video Collections
Why?: users expect it, media streaming technologies are robust; media collections still are physical with short checkouts, copyright has been barrier.
They bought license with Films from Humanities and Sciences with “budget dust” (accumulation at end of year that will be swept up). Built implementation task force: library, media resources, classroom technology, center for instructional technology, IT, computing support.
Recommendations: campus infrastructure adequate, MPEG-4 format (compromise size/quality with MPEG-2), streaming options (bandwidth of 300 or 500k), download options for faculty (if license allows); quicktime player standard (dramatically reduces trouble calls); user access/authentication from in-house built database (opensource: mdid.org); small pilot project first, links in library catalog and searchable as a database too.
Goal: 1400 by Summer 06 (700 now—about 1.5 terabytes). Getting use (~200 hits in 9/05); rare complaints (good, because they are hard to troubleshoot); quality seems decent (better if “born digital”; they don’t watch each one, so may not know, but pilot showed worked OK)
Process: DVD received from vendor, “cataloged” into excel (for database and library formats), sent to CIT for encoding. Ripped by Handbrake (free w/ Mac OS)—very time consuming. Encoded using “Sorensen’s squeeze”—not free. 3 machines (Dual2.3Ghz G5) dedicated to rip task—processors/hard drive space most important criteria for purchase.
They upload files and send out catalog spreadsheets to db and catalog. Streaming server: apple x w/ x RAID, Dual 1.8 ghz, 1.1 TB storage in RAIDS, expandable to 4.6 w/ modules.
Issues: security (now IP, looking for VPN for off campus); format (flash may provide additional features, but will lock in vendor which is not desirable to them.) Impact on network? They don’t know
Copyright and licensing issues: he says TEACH covers only students in class, videos are “performed” so limited, rather than “displayed” which has no limit. Whole videos not “reasonable and limited portions” (what about clips??)
They custom negotiate licenses—try to get longest license (3-5 years are common), program files encoded to tech standards, security standards that fit infrastructure, ideally should permit justifiable fair use activities by end users.
Compromises: download option needs to be negotiated. They very carefully give workshops that demonstrate fair use—individuals may go farther. In general, larger distributors have more limited licenses, you can try to negotiate leeway.
See: http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org
http://www.centerforsocialmedia.org/rock/backgrounddocs/printable_rightsreport.pdf

EDUCAUSE Day 1

Neely:
Basic information (commercial?) about Sun which I didn’t know—including a good thing to think about when you are planning to acquire something: what is the barrier to exit? Will you be stuck?
He attributed quote, but I didn’t get to whom: Open source is like a free puppy: now what do you do with it?
Good distinction between “the science of teaching and the art of teaching”—one is easier to do with technology?

Leveraging Guest Accounts:
https://weblogin.umich.edu -- they teach students to always look for url if they are being asked to log in
After implementing portal, they realized they needed guest accounts (more for outsiders who were collaborators than walkins). Looked at user account continuum, from unaffiliated to applicants/visiting scholars to alumni to faculty/staff to students
Considered shibboleth—but many agreements with schools not participating.
Decided that Michigan would take the burden of their setup, and they created “Friend”. Using only your e-mail address, you can self create an account, decentralized authorization, easy to support. Basically you are authorized by other systems, but at least you’re there, ready to go.
They clear out data every term, 56000 guest accts as of October 2005, 62% from a .com e-mail address. You get an e-mail message back with token and url, then you go there and use token to set password. Someone needs to authorize you if you are to get much in the way of services.
v.2 is xml: application writers can initiate account creation, e.g., send invitation, allows end-to-end account creation. Occasional trouble with SPAM, potential for phishing less because return reply goes nowhere. New version released yesterday! (CoSIGN)

James Hilton: Says I own copyright to my notes about this.
Two framings of future: dawn or perfect storm
Disruptive forces operating on higher ed:
- technology and unbundling: in any industry, IT tends to disrupt, e.g., banks, mass media, publishing (interesting: we use internet to find out, kids use it to publish). Unbundled content, but recording industry still thinks about albums…. Unbundling in higher ed: rip, mix and burn, but at least revising and resubmitting not a problem! Challenges: digital divide (not so much economic as between faculty and students); which students are we losing (is curriculum perceived as irrelevant?); models of authorship; archiving interactive scholarship. Unbundles cost and price: recording industry wishes all songs weren’t $.99, but that they could charge more for popular ones (interesting, since usually volume drives price down!) We are a very bundled institution: for example we count on big classes so that we can also run small seminars.
- “Producer push” to “demand pull”—moving from mass marketing to search, from lecture to exploration
- Arrival of ubiquitous access: google print. Asked alumni at Michigan what they remembered: football, residence halls, library, usually one professor: two of these are in danger of no longer being necessary to higher ed. But knowledge is what you do with information: you need to explore, interact, much more complicated than just access. But we have profited from fact that we were gateways to access—and that’s gone!
- Emergence of pure property view of ideas: most people don’t understand basic ideas of copyright, not about protecting authors and property, but to promote learning (nice quote from Jefferson—need to look up). “Fair use guidelines are garbage” – they were attempting to set a floor, treated by many as ceiling. You pay a royalty each time you buy a blank video or audio tape. Many questions about who owns student projects and data.

Hope/opportunities?
- digital repositories
- creative commons
- mass digitization projects
- cost curves and managing to abundance
- open source

LIBIT discussion:
Need to sign up for listserv at www.educause.edu/groups/libit
Issues and questions: info/learning commons
- We need one, but what is it?
- Is it done to bring people back to the library?
- Maybe it’s to facilitate seamless work done from concept to final production
- What’s the impact of wireless on this?
-- Software pulls them in (otherwise they’d have to buy?)
- Need other equipment besides computers: editing, etc.
- do you just collocate, or do you change administration?
- How do skills (of IT and library staff) need to change?
-- IT needs customer service, librarians need multimedia/tech skills
- Maybe an MOU, who contributes what and when?
- Middlebury (administratively merged): IT student workers are busy, library students aren’t and there are salary issues
- What’s a fair way to prioritize computers for those doing homework? (maybe get help from student government?)
- Everyone has laptops, but they don’t always bring them (62% have3, 17% bring according to one) Circulate them?
What’s essential to have?
- Scanning
- Staff: content and technology
- Documentation (well, only if short, just in time)
- Group study/other individualized spaces
- Power
- Ergonomic furniture
- Lighting
- Printing/output devices/plotters
- Media viewing/editing
- Can faculty use it? Interesting debate: they’re just taking up computers and they have them!; neither group is comfortable in the other’s space. But what about model of library ref desk: both are comfortable being served there.
- Faculty office hours in cybercafé (might work somehow if we had attractive space?)

More discussion/ideas:
- Add link to Ask a Librarian to IT help page (and then hold to same service metrics as IT is for getting back to people?)
- Perception sometimes is “Librarians don’t do software”: what’s wrong with this!!
- Librarians are expensive. You staff IT help with students and then escalate to professionals, couldn’t this work better?
- Faculty fight back: Are you trying to turn library into student union?
- Have a “technology free” floor
- Other topics: look into videoserver (product name?), does advancement (those who “catalog” pictures, know about ArtSTOR?
- Should librarians get involved in organizing, indexing, standardizing information no matter what type: invoices? Admissions data? Why not—why purchase inefficient software, reinvent wheel, deny that expertise?

Leadership Forum notes: day 2

Leadership Forum 10/18/05

Foundations and funding panel:
Mellon has a specific focus on what they fund—they look for proposals that benefit their focus area, benefit multiple institutions, are realistic, cost effective, not round 1, intellectual property rights available, sustainable, assessable.
NSF looks for intellectual merit, broader societal impacts, outcomes must be evidence based.
Sloan Foundation: in IT arena strong in asynchronous learning, enables anyone, anytime to learn, can be online, “blended” etc.

Student panels:
What do students need from IT: wireless, programs they need to do their work, virus protection, safe access, convenience;
high speed internet, wireless, virus protection, software, “professors and instructors should be fluent in technology”;
wireless, 24 hour help desk, virus protection, computer labs with software, ratemyprofessor.com-type service, face book, e-community software
What one thing? Wireless, text messaging (local businesses could advertise, need to get message when class is canceled, would love to connect with professors that way), interactivity (don’t just throw your powerpoint up and read it or you will guarantee that things that are tempting—missing class and just reading slides ourselves, solitaire—will win over attention in class), communities, lecture notes on podcast.
Boomers: “speak with a digital accent”
These students, when asked what responsibility they should take to prevent illegal downloads, talked unanimously about what the university should do to stop them, not what responsibility they should take.

Jenzabar solution talk by Park University: developed executive summary graph (soon available daily on president’s blackberry) of # students of all types, (e.g., online, on campus, extended ed, etc.) corrected to reflect time of semester that shows last year (this time), projected this year, and current (either green if >= 95% or yellow if 80-95% or red if <= 80%) very cool, simple snapshot at high level!!!—great idea for a snapshot of admissions!

CIO/CEO: what they should know about me
CIO: it is easier for leaders to have managers below them than to try to manage leaders, but that is what is preferable
You need a vision, strategy: should see IT as an investment, not a cost even though most ROI occurs outside of IT
Governance model should be clear (not as important what it is, but should know it)
Committees can’t own responsibility or accountability
“everybody is an IT expert”
what people see is the tip of the iceberg: you can change entire institutions easier than changing some IT software.
“Academics aren’t gods, they just believe they are”
Want a partnership, understanding that contractual agreements tie up much of our budget
Need to invest in staff development!

CEO: technocrats are part of modernity.
Need a true expert in technology, but a multidimensional person with a big picture perspective who can tell me how it ought to be
“deans are mice studying to be rats”

CIO:
I need good reporting relationship (30 minutes alone every 2 months)
I should sit on cabinet, so IT perspective is gained early
CEO should chair campus-wide policy committee
Take the point position on tough issues
Believe that IT can transform teaching and learning
Be willing to tackle IT governance issues
Use a modest amount of technology (but don’t be a closet CIO!)
Help IT raise funds in the external community
Sense of humor!

CEO: what 10 presidents said:
Be mission driven, be a “pragmatic revolutionary”, (quote stated that libraries need courageous people to change, librarians can be very adept at rallying faculty (especially senior) to resist progress), build simple, reliable, cost effective infrastructure, remember you aren’t special! (cf 1993 Educause Review article Detweiler)

What you need to know about security:
Have notes in book, so too lazy to write graphs down, but interesting ideas:
· “Regulatory distraction”—compliance with regulations is necessary, but possibly not sufficient, for information security
· you should spend 4-10% of IT budget on security
· you need: host based intrusion protection; 802.1x; quarantine/containment, personal intrusion protection and URL blocking; gateway spam/antivirus protection; vulnerability management; web services security; strong enough authentication with identity management; SSL/TLS; business continuity plan; anti-tamper devices
· You don’t need: personal digital certificates; quantum anything; passive intrusion detection; biometrics (outside of hand held); tempest shielding/paint; 500 p. security policy; security awareness posters (might work in higher ed); default passwords.

Leadership Forum notes

Highlights from 10/17/05 Higher Education Leadership Forum

Opening Panel:
Kirschner: “Our smartest 18 year olds will not continue to march off to a 4 year college experience”; “2 years in darkened lecture halls: that was distance learning!”

Detweiler: “library is the appendix of the campus—and it has appendicitis”; liberal arts and technology are means to an end: students should learn to discern sense from amid nonsense.

Currie (?) Pre-professional education narrows the scope, we need more interdisciplinarity, fewer silos, and we need to change the rewards system (tenure?) to encourage this.
Have we lost the notion of education as a public good (citizens/democracy) and substituted the private good (I want a job!)?
Don’t shut down wireless in classrooms—just become more engaging so that they will want to stay with you

Twigg: we don’t necessarily need more technology, just more active learning and that requires course redesign
Stoll: anything that gets between inspiring professor and motivated students is bad, lots of money is spent on technology that could better be spent on other things (e.g., science lab stuff). Why do they always pick on mathematics and science to teach via technology? You need more than just problem-solving skills, you need to see the joy, get an intuitive feel that allows you to use it.

Render: higher education emphasizes creating knowledge for others rather than for use in our own institutions. You need to get your enabling technologies in place first, then you can try to align technology with institutional strategical thinking to meet goals (e.g., access, success, equity, diversity – networking and communications; institutional effectiveness – enterprise resource systems; lifelong learning – learning management systems; internationalization – analytics, knowledge management. Map the behaviors of the successful student (depersonalize data first): how many times do they log on, go to library, etc. to learn.

Gregorian: students learn to frame the questions in the context of their disciplines (too narrow!)—then they have no common vocabulary so no true communication can exist; what is valued (knowledge or technical skills) is what is taught by higher ed; public does not understand science, but they do understand technology: result, we are too focused on applications vs. the theory of pure science; “connectivity does not guarantee communication” (Thoreau); “you need something to say before you can communicate”; you can manipulate in a democracy: I can flood you with so much information that you can’t process it all (opposite of closing off information, but same result?); “knowledge does not understand artificial barriers—only universities do”; eventually (now?) only Ivy League schools will value education, others will train—this will set up another kind of divide; if you’re afraid to lose your funding by making a decision (alumni get mad?) then you have lost your leadership

Neal/Keller/Marcum:
We are looking at disruptive technology (The Innovator’s Dilemma)—should be user driven, iterative. Chaotic conditions exist, will continue to grow. Library patrons want personalization, usability. Opportunities exist: we must focus on standards, public policy advocacy. The issue is not whether libraries will survive, but the relevance and impact of them in the future.
Issue is access to information. Section 108 study group will reexamine exceptions; faculty are producing new materials, multimedia, collaborative: how does this work for the tenure system? (not well!); there will be libraries in the future: multiple and collaborative.
Change isn’t new in libraries, but challenges are intracampus (can you afford?, integrate vast arrays of materials; present a representative sample of works and services) and user (teach and enhance reader/user self sufficiency and information heuristic for lifelong learning; provide high touch services when and where needed.)


Zastrocky: Over ½ of our workforce will be over 40 by 2010; average growth of labor force under 55 2000-2025 = .3%
Need to brainstorm creative ways to recruit young faculty/staff by understanding generational characteristics
Need to look for opportunities to transfer knowledge/experience (if you’ve been mentored, you have an obligation to mentor others, but boomers don’t make this a priority)
Need to restructure HR policies and practices where necessary and explore ways to retain key people past retirement (may need to make it more fun!)

GenX: don’t want to work too hard, travel, work just for money. We keep people working way to hard—they’ll quit! We want sprinters speed and marathoner’s endurance and we start new races before the old ones are done—burn out.

There is a decline in foreign born students and they leave for home even if they are educated here. The hard sciences take a lot of work: they don’t want to do it!

Over 50 in IT—got broad experience, exciting to do new things (generalists), 35-50 are specialists (they can’t succeed you as a leader unless they get assignments that break them out of their silos); under 35 are again getting to implement broadly (work all over campus to put up web sites, etc.) are versatilists and will be possibly more ready for leadership.