How To Help With a University ICT Strategy?

An anonymous reader writes "I have been asked to contribute to my university's revised ICT (Information and Communication Technology) strategy and I am curious what fellow Slashdot members consider to be the main advice in this context. What are the major mistakes that organizations like universities make? Given the complexity of the different participants in a university, how does one have a coherent strategy that fulfills the needs of such a wide audience? How does one promote open source in a managerial culture? How does one deal with the curse of the virtual learning environment?"

Comments

Idealism blows when the rubber meets the road

[opec]

I am almost finished with my undergrad at a large public university. I worked in several of the branch libraries during my years here, including a full-time stint this summer. The computers in our library allow anyone to use one application: IE7. We have no time limit on computer usage or have any web filtering. The problems that arise from misuse of these computers from non-university community members are astounding. In just one branch library here this year alone, several incidents have been reported of non-university people masturbating to Internet porn. All incidents were reported to staff by young female co-eds, who were visibly traumatized by the experience. These kinds of folks have also brought along other problems for us to deal with: drug use and selling, theft of personal property, theft of library materials (including computer peripherals), etc etc.

With incidents like these in mind, don't let idealism confound your tech policies. Think of the people who are going to interact with the public that are using university technology. It is maddening to have your hands tied by some lofty IT person's idealistic vision of free data access for all when you're trying to deal with serious breaches of public safety.

Re:Idealism blows when the rubber meets the road

[Anonymous Coward]

Why do you feel the need to point out that these were young, female co-eds? Does that make it worse somehow?

Yes, it called chivalry it may be mostly dead but not entirely. Among the heterosexual male population the desire to protect and shelter females is ingrained into the genetic code.

Because I'm a man, am I supposed to be LESS traumatized?

I damn well hope so. Fairy.

Drug use and selling? Theft of property? you're sure these were the SAME people that were masturbating?

It is certainly possible that these are to different groups and there are public mastrubators who are not selling drugs and druggies who are not publicly masturbating but I think the point is I don't want either in my library or on my network.

Let me guess, you vote Republican. Fucking scumbag. I wouldn't let your ilk in my library.

I missed it when the DNC endorsed public mastrubators or when the ACLU came out to declare this First Amendment free expression. I'm more worried about being the next one to use the terminal. It gives new meaning to sticky keys.

Google

[sys.stdout.write]

Just outsource all the work to Google and sneak out for a round of golf!

Use Moodle instead of Blackboard or Desire2Learn

[Sparky9292]

When it comes to VLS (Virtual Learning Systems) please don't give into the Blackboard marketing machine. Moodle is free and equivalent in just about everyway. It drives me nuts to see colleges and universities paying for crap like Desire2Learn and Blackboard when many of them are cutting back student services and laying off people these days. What's even worse is that both Blackboard and D2L have significant bugs and really bad customer support.

Our university (around 38,000 students) pays Blackboard $600,000 a year (yes there are five zeros after that six). Please try convince your PHBs to give Moodle a look. The community is massive and helpful. You can find hundreds of great pluggins as well.

Re:Use Moodle instead of Blackboard or Desire2Lear

[Morbid Curiosity]

I'm at a university that had WebCT, which then morphed into Blackboard and has just recently been replaced with Moodle. Having using those systems, both as a student and in teaching roles, I have to say that Moodle is just plain better. It's cheaper (TCO), more versatile and more usable. And much less prone to inducing rage :-)

Of course, that doesn't mean that it's invulnerable to screw-ups. If you lock it down from on high with One True Way of Using The System, then you're probably not going to suit the needs of different academic departments and their different kinds of students (CompSci versus English majors, for example). On the other hand, too little structure can lead to ongoing support problems in security, maintenance and training/helpdesk services. The trick is to find a balance that works across your institution.