Review by: Reichert, Raimond (2004-07-12)

The Educause Current Issues survey seeks to identify those issues that leaders in higher education information technology deem their most critical challenges. This report summarizes the findings of the fifth Current Issues survey. 1638 Educause member representatives were invited to participate, where 571 (35%) responded. The report briefly presents the top-ten current issues; the full data is available to Educause members only.

The top ten issues are: Funding IT; Administrative Systems; Security and Identity Management; Strategic Planning for IT; Faculty Development, Support, and Training; Infrastructure Management for IT; e-learning / Distributed Teaching and Learning; Web-Services / Web-Based Systems; Enterprise-Level Portals; Business Continuity / Disaster Recovery; Governance, Organization, and Leadership for IT. For each issue, the report raises several core questions that IT managers need to address. In the following, this review focuses on those issues that are relevant to e-learning per se.

The number one challenge is funding IT. Budgets overall are shrinking, yet institutions’ dependence on IT is still deepening. The report points out that institutional leaders at the highest level need to be engaged in funding IT as a strategic resource, incorporating the funding in the institutions long-term financial planning.

Security and Identity Management has risen in recent years with regards to resource consumption. One reason may be, again, the increasing reliance on IT. Other reasons may include the problems induced by spam, worms, and viruses during the last year. One core question the report raises is the trade-off institutions plan to attain with regards to security vs. the tradition of open networking. Another core question is whether there is a designated Chief Information Security Officer to provide leadership in security matters. Also, users at all levels need to be aware of security measures and need to learn how to make their own work more secure.

Faculty Development, Support, and Training is challenge number 5, and is of particular importance in the e-learning context where faculty are explicitly expected to use IT in their teaching. A faculty-development model needs to be developed to ensure that all faculty members will benefit, and the question should be addressed how success of a faculty development program can be measured.

E-learning is a challenge that is very much interconnected to the other challenges. It needs to be part of the overall institutional strategy, and the technology needed should be an integrated part of the IT infrastructure. There are many security issues to be considered. Faculty need to be supported and learn to cooperate with instructional designers, programmers, and media specialists. Also, institutions must ensure that students also have the support and training they need to successfully participate in e-learning.

The report presents the top-ten IT issues as identified by Educause members in a concise fashion, and provides thought-provoking core questions an institution must deal with for each issue. It is also interesting to track the report from year to year to identify the IT issues trends in higher education.