Monday, September 26, 2005
Petes Web Musing September 26 2005 - Part II
Pete’s Web Musing: September 2005
The future of the research university and information technology
Episode II, “The Values”
Last time, I talked about the “revolution” in Information Technologies that is changing the nature of the research university. I suggested it was critical for us as IT-intensive organizations to “step up” to prepare our campuses effectively for these changes. Finally, as I concluded, I mentioned the notion of President Vest of MIT that there is a core set of values that is “essential for the well being of American universities,” and I suggested that these values are ones that we in the IT community need to embrace.
So what are these values?
I’ll comment on them in an IT-centric way, not to imply these were President Vest's examples, though I believe the spirit is similar. (Vest’s talk is now available online as a podcast!)
First is diversity, the notion that a strong IT organization (taken expansively to include its campus partners and stakeholders) must integrate many differing objectives, approaches, and ways of serving its communities. Such diversity requires different kinds of people with different styles, strengths, interests, and even personalities.
Note that it is not merely nice or fair to emphasize diversity; it is essential to our success. In IT we understand this implicitly, though we may not think about it this way. Diverse routes, redundant connections, multiple software strategies including open source, and so on, are all there because we recognize not only that strategies and systems can fail, but that innovation on a campus with diverse faculty and students critically depends on having a variety of competing approaches—one size does not fit all. Similarly, a diversity of ideas (which then generate creative technical solutions) depends on a diversity of people who feel empowered to share, to listen, and to create together.
Second is the notion of interweaving, weaving together many different kinds of activities or experiences or, in our terminology, creating partnerships with communities of complementary strengths or providing coordinated services to our communities that reflect their many different needs and interests.
Recently, I attended a talk on learning technologies that emphasized the importance of students being able to collaborate inside and outside the classroom among themselves and with the faculty. I was struck by the fact that so many of the capabilities in use or needed were the same as those for research collaborations. More than that, I am convinced that by weaving together technologies for learning/teaching and research collaborations in a coherent way, rather than viewing them as distinct, we can bridge the experiential gap between classroom work and research (or other professional collaborations) in new and exciting ways. This does not of course mean that teaching and research are the same, but rather that since we value having faculty and students with strengths in both areas, we ought to consider how our programs and services can be “interwoven” to make it natural to inhabit both worlds at the same time. From a practical point of view, things like digital repositories and archives, portals and integrated learning and research tools are growing in importance; national partnerships like Sakai and National Lambda Rail are essential.
Third and finally, our organizations need to be open, because, as Vest states, openness “drives excellence.”
There need to be many minds, some fresh, some tried and true, some oriented towards bread-and-butter excellence and others towards gravity-defying innovations. More than that, we need to encourage those minds to generate a variety of ideas and approaches. To be sure, being open does not mean only relishing new approaches over old, or change over tradition, but it must mean that we are always thinking about ways to reinvent ourselves as our customers’ needs change. And change they will. Finally, openness means sharing ideas constantly, among ourselves and our national peers, of course; most importantly, it means engaging our campus community in a dialog on their needs and how we might meet them even within limited resources. Like diversity, openness can only work when smart people are empowered to share issues, approaches, concerns, and solutions.
For me, when we bring these concepts together—interweaving diverse communities with diverse strengths in an open, vibrant environment— I think we have the key ingredients for strong partnerships. To put it differently, we can only be successful together, where each of us brings her or his substantial competence and insight to bear on important challenges to create sustainable solutions that are innovative, flexible, and measurably excellent.
In Vest’s words, “the meta-university—the electronically-enabled global collaboration of teachers and researchers—will rapidly advance and improve higher education everywhere.” The meta-university can not thrive without these values at its core, nor can a truly effective IT meta-organization, consisting of individuals from departmental, college, and central levels all driving in partnership towards excellence.
What role do we want to play here at Illinois? In CITES? Are we ready to live these values?
The future of the research university and information technology
Episode II, “The Values”
Last time, I talked about the “revolution” in Information Technologies that is changing the nature of the research university. I suggested it was critical for us as IT-intensive organizations to “step up” to prepare our campuses effectively for these changes. Finally, as I concluded, I mentioned the notion of President Vest of MIT that there is a core set of values that is “essential for the well being of American universities,” and I suggested that these values are ones that we in the IT community need to embrace.
So what are these values?
I’ll comment on them in an IT-centric way, not to imply these were President Vest's examples, though I believe the spirit is similar. (Vest’s talk is now available online as a podcast!)
First is diversity, the notion that a strong IT organization (taken expansively to include its campus partners and stakeholders) must integrate many differing objectives, approaches, and ways of serving its communities. Such diversity requires different kinds of people with different styles, strengths, interests, and even personalities.
Note that it is not merely nice or fair to emphasize diversity; it is essential to our success. In IT we understand this implicitly, though we may not think about it this way. Diverse routes, redundant connections, multiple software strategies including open source, and so on, are all there because we recognize not only that strategies and systems can fail, but that innovation on a campus with diverse faculty and students critically depends on having a variety of competing approaches—one size does not fit all. Similarly, a diversity of ideas (which then generate creative technical solutions) depends on a diversity of people who feel empowered to share, to listen, and to create together.
Second is the notion of interweaving, weaving together many different kinds of activities or experiences or, in our terminology, creating partnerships with communities of complementary strengths or providing coordinated services to our communities that reflect their many different needs and interests.
Recently, I attended a talk on learning technologies that emphasized the importance of students being able to collaborate inside and outside the classroom among themselves and with the faculty. I was struck by the fact that so many of the capabilities in use or needed were the same as those for research collaborations. More than that, I am convinced that by weaving together technologies for learning/teaching and research collaborations in a coherent way, rather than viewing them as distinct, we can bridge the experiential gap between classroom work and research (or other professional collaborations) in new and exciting ways. This does not of course mean that teaching and research are the same, but rather that since we value having faculty and students with strengths in both areas, we ought to consider how our programs and services can be “interwoven” to make it natural to inhabit both worlds at the same time. From a practical point of view, things like digital repositories and archives, portals and integrated learning and research tools are growing in importance; national partnerships like Sakai and National Lambda Rail are essential.
Third and finally, our organizations need to be open, because, as Vest states, openness “drives excellence.”
There need to be many minds, some fresh, some tried and true, some oriented towards bread-and-butter excellence and others towards gravity-defying innovations. More than that, we need to encourage those minds to generate a variety of ideas and approaches. To be sure, being open does not mean only relishing new approaches over old, or change over tradition, but it must mean that we are always thinking about ways to reinvent ourselves as our customers’ needs change. And change they will. Finally, openness means sharing ideas constantly, among ourselves and our national peers, of course; most importantly, it means engaging our campus community in a dialog on their needs and how we might meet them even within limited resources. Like diversity, openness can only work when smart people are empowered to share issues, approaches, concerns, and solutions.
For me, when we bring these concepts together—interweaving diverse communities with diverse strengths in an open, vibrant environment— I think we have the key ingredients for strong partnerships. To put it differently, we can only be successful together, where each of us brings her or his substantial competence and insight to bear on important challenges to create sustainable solutions that are innovative, flexible, and measurably excellent.
In Vest’s words, “the meta-university—the electronically-enabled global collaboration of teachers and researchers—will rapidly advance and improve higher education everywhere.” The meta-university can not thrive without these values at its core, nor can a truly effective IT meta-organization, consisting of individuals from departmental, college, and central levels all driving in partnership towards excellence.
What role do we want to play here at Illinois? In CITES? Are we ready to live these values?
# posted by Pete Siegel @ 8:58 AM 
