Technology Plan
Technology PlanThe Technology Plan objectives change as Kellogg Community College and its Technology Committee identify new issues and opportunities, the environment changes, or objectives are accomplished. The methodology for planning is to identify issues and opportunities from the environment, address each issue or opportunity with objectives, and develop action plans to accomplish each objective. [Summary of methodology]
The Technology Plan objectives are submitted for annual review to President's Council in July. Generally the objectives are then distributed to campus at the beginning of Fall semester.
ISSUE 1 (technology rollout): Technology— in particular, computer technology— has proven to enhance learning and increase the efficiency of many processes.
"Technology has a large role to play in the reinvention of schools, but the implementation of computers, instructional video, and telecommunication links will be meaningless unless they are designed into a curriculum and are chosen to support pedagogical models designed to ensure the maximum learning opportunities for all students. Technology, alone, cannot drive reform. If technology is brought into classrooms without revisiting the curricular and pedagogical issues, it risks being used to implement the educational strategies of the past. We will, in effect, have placed a gas engine in a horse, rather than designed an automobile. ...When technology is purchased to meet specific curricular or pedagogical goals, it will continue to meet these objectives when newer technology comes out. On the other hand, technology purchased just because it is the “latest thing” will lose its value the instant the next new technology hits the streets.1"
Plans, procedures, and budgets need to be in place to maintain the momentum of expanding technology use. The application of technology, including appropriate training, can also improve staff productivity. [Reviewed by the Technology Committee on September 19, 2003]
Objective 1: Focus effort and provide efficiency of scale by establishing technology standards (equipment, software, telecommunications, and database) and processes for implementing the standards. [Action Plan]
Objective 2: Budget annually to upgrade hardware and software to ensure up-to-date technology and establish well-communicated processes for accessing these funds. "Keep the money flowing" is identified by Elliot Levinson and Barbara Grohe2 as a critical role in the management of technology. They elaborated that "Technology has to be thought of on a five-year, rather than the usual one-year budget cycle. ...The spigot has to keep flowing every year to ensure that infrastructure is maintained and updated, and staff receives continuous training." [Action Plan]
Objective 3: Encourage new uses of technology, including making resources available. Establish well-communicated processes for accessing resources.
Objective 4: Incorporate the need for training into the plan for the rollout of new technology and closely couple the training with the new technology rollout.
Objective 5: Establish a procedure to ensure appropriate communication is made to those impacted when changes in technology result in significant changes in operational procedures.
Objective 6: Establish a process by which the impact of a technology acquisition decision by a budget-center can be reviewed for possible impact on other areas of the college.
Objective 7: Faculty and staff computers are upgraded either from computers cascaded from the student lab computers, or from individual department budgets when funds are available. The upgrade process leads to some faculty and staff having computer equipment that does not meet their needs. It can also lead to feelings of inequity. When departments use their budget to purchase computers, issues may arise as to whether a department then controls disposition of computers when the computers are replaced a few years later. The Technology Committee will recommend to President's Council a system that identifies where upgrades are needed, prioritizes the need, and provides institutional resources to fulfill the needs (recognizing the limited resources of the College). This objective was added at the September 19, 2003 Technology Committee meeting.
Objective 8: Address the College's Overall Institutional Goal #2 and corresponding instructional division goals by continuing "...to revise... our delivery systems to meet the needs of all students at all locations. Particular attention will be given to the continued expansion and development of e-learning, the opportunities to improve teaching and learning through blended learning, and expanding markets for programs unique to Kellogg Community College."
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Issue 2 (facilities): Meta-analysis of research on the effectiveness of technology "... indicates that teaching and learning with technology has a small, positive, significant effect on student outcomes when compared to traditional instruction."3 To enhance learning at KCC, the use of technology at KCC will continue to be expanded. According to Willard R. Daggett, President of International Center for Leadership in Education,
...there will be greater variation among American classrooms than ever before. Classrooms that resemble those of the 1950s, designed to facilitate teaching, will be in their twilight years. Others will be driven by the research on learning with an eye to what graduates need to function in our changing world. These classrooms will make extensive use of the Internet, distance learning, computer-simulated applications of knowledge and ongoing relevant assessment on a just-in-time basis. Students will be actively engaged in the learning process, with their teachers as managers. Changing methodology, new technology, and varied staffing patterns will permit schools to make learning mandatory and time the variable.4
KCC has made great progress in designing and equipping of its traditional classrooms as a part of renovation and new construction projects. Great effort has been made to involve affected departments and faculty in the decision-making. The Technology Committee believes it is important to maintain some degree of consistency of technology throughout KCC facilities (which often requires retrofitting older generation classrooms) and to periodically review new learning technologies that have potential for improving learning. [Review by the Technology Committee December 12, 2003]
Objective 1: Improve learning spaces through design of classrooms and the installation of instructional technology. [Action Plan]
Objective 2: Improve the quality of interactive television technology and increase the effective use of each classroom. [Action Plan]
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Issue 3 (training): To enhance learning and productivity at KCC, the use of technology will continue to be expanded. The rapid pace of technology change makes it difficult for many faculty and staff to keep up-to-date with effective use of technology. [Reviewed by the Technology Committee December 10, 2004]
Objective 1: Identify required competencies in specific software and hardware for faculty and staff. [Action Plan]
Objective 2: Identify functions related to technology that require skills beyond the required set of competencies and ensure faculty and staff performing these functions demonstrate or obtain those skills (e.g., to avoid the problem of faculty using computer classroom without necessary skills).
Objective 3: Develop a training improvement plan for faculty and staff as a part of professional development. The broader system that includes the training improvement plan will also include a process for assuring staff and faculty, including adjunct faculty, receive professional development and training in appropriate and effective use of the technology deployed.
Objective 4: Provide opportunities to faculty to explore new learning technologies and encourage innovation in using it to improve learning.
Objective 5: Provide a foundation-level curriculum for staff that ensures they have the technology skills common to most support positions. Though this curriculum would provide training at a foundation level, staff would not be expected to take training they could not use. Supervisors would decide whether specific training was appropriate. [Action Plan]
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ISSUE 4 (technical support): Educational technology is vital to both learning and administrative processes at KCC. Because of the increased emphasis on educational technology at KCC and the success experienced upon its adoption, the use of educational technology has expanded rapidly at KCC. With that expansion comes increasing need for the technical support of students, faculty, and staff. The Higher Learning Commission identifies as a best practice for electronically delivered programs that "The institution provides students with reasonable technical support for each educational technology hardware, software, and delivery system required in a program." (Associated with this best practice are clarifying statements that the organization provide a help desk function realistically available to students during hours when it is likely to be needed, and that help is available for KCC hardware, software, and delivery systems specified by the institution as required for the program.) The use by students, faculty, and staff of asynchronous technology such as web sites, automated registration, e-mail, voice-mail, and course management systems results in the need for support beyond the five days a week, eight hours a day support formerly appropriate. Increase in the off-hour use and the needed amount of technical support will continue to expand. [Reviewed by the Technology Committee at the April 16, 2004 meeting.]
Objective 1: The College accomplished a prior year's objective to establish single-point-of-contact help desk services that met both the expanding needs of KCC technology users and the College's financial realities. Increase efforts to communicate help desk services to its clientele.
Objective 2: Incoming KCC students have a broad range of computer experience, including some students lacking basic computer skills. To ensure graduates have the computer skills they need, computer literacy is an element in the General Education Core Outcome course requirements. This core outcome states:
KCC students graduating with an associate degree will be able to demonstrate writing, reading, listening, computer, verbal, and non-verbal communication skills.
The specific outcome for computer literacy specifies the graduate will “Demonstrate computer literacy in the retrieval, processing, and delivery of information.”
However, the current curriculum targeting that outcome assumes some basic computer skills. Students with basic computer skills below this level need to be provided with resources to acquire the prerequisite skills.
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ISSUE 5 (Internet integration): The Internet will become a primary medium for students and employees to interact with KCC.
"Students required to juggle multiple roles and obligations will demand access to educational options 24/7. Many will arrive with first-order information technology skills and demand options and services that reflect appropriately high levels of technical sophistication.5"
Most KCC processes will eventually need to interact with the Internet. Many of these processes are not closely coupled to each other in the non-Internet environment. In addition to meeting the expectation of the people we serve, making KCC processes Internet accessible has the potential for increasing levels of service and improving efficiencies. Diana Oblinger points out one systemic problem of computerization in higher education:
Although we've come a long way in using IT tools to enhance education, at present we're hampered by our fragmented approach to incorporating them. In almost every institution you can find islands of innovation, but we have yet to integrate the pieces into a seamless enterprise.6
Ed Lightfoot and Weldon Ihrig tie these two issues together when writing about technology system adoption in higher education:
There is a "system" for almost every function. In an attempt to become more user-friendly, these systems have evolved into a Web front-end, or in some cases, a portal. But all too often, the systems, Web sites and portals are not interconnected, presenting the user with a fragmented view of the institution. Data from one system do not automatically transfer to another. Information in one database may need to be manually updated in another. Users must still register multiple times even though they are are already affiliated with the institution. In some respects, the digital environment we have created replicates the offices on campus, but rather than than walking from one place to another, the user must type in a different URL and log on to a different system. It may be faster and more efficient, but such fragmented approaches fall far short of the potential of the technology-- and of the needs of users.7
In the rush by stakeholders to provide or receive information via the Internet, KCC’s Internet presence may lack the seamlessness referred to by Oblinger unless the individual system development are part of an integration plan. [Reviewed by the Technology Committee at the April 16, 2004 meeting.]
Objective 1: Publish an Information Services master plan to ensure an orderly transition and college-wide integration of processes as they become Internet enabled.
Objective 2: Increase efforts to inform faculty of tools available that enable them to utilize the Internet to provide instructional materials to students and increase interactivity between students and course content, and students and the instructor. Specifically, inform and encourage faculty to make use of the technical support, web resources, software, and web access available to them in order to meet instructional objectives.
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1. Thornburg, David, (accessed 2002)."Technology Planning for the Communication Age." The Thornburg Center website.
2. Levinson, E. and Barbara Grohe, (2002). "Managing technology is different." Converge.
3. Waxman, Hersh C., Meng-Fen Lin, and Georgette M. Michko, (2003). "A Meta-Analysis of the Effectiveness of Teaching and Learning With Technology on Student Outcomes." North Central Regional Educational Laboratory (NCREL)
4. Daggett, Willard R., (accessed 2002). "The 21st Century Classroom - Beyond Standards and Testing." International Center for Leadership in Education website.
5. Roueche, John E., Suanne D. Roueche, and Rand A. Johnson, (2002). "At our best: Facing the challenges." Community College Journal.
6. Morrison, J. L. and D. G. Oblinger, (2002). "Information technology and the future of education: an interview with Diana Oblinger." Vision.
7. Lightfood, Ed and Weldon Ihrig, (2002). "The Next Generation Infrastructure." EDUCAUSE Review, November/December 2002.
Last modified: November 15, 2005 by
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