darcusblog

So my last post was outlining some frustrations I’ve been having with my university’s IT infrastructure and decision-making. But an obvious next question might be, what do I see as an alternative, and what do we need to get there? In no particular order, here’s what I’m thinking:

1. Open standards support can no longer be an optional “nice to have” checklist item among a long list of other items. It has to be a central requirement. Right now, relevant web-related standards include CSS, HTML, XMPP, CalDav, IMAP, Atom, and so forth. Support for these standards means it’s easier to integrate different applications, and to evolve them to meet new needs. This evolution-friendliness includes making it easier to move to other solutions.
2. In particular for important institution-wide web applications, open source needs to be the norm, and proprietary software, with all its monetary and innovation costs, the exception.
3. If as an institution we believe in new models of learning that integrate teaching and research, and which put students and inquiry-based learning at the center of what we do, then our technology decisions should reflect that. To wit, while I have no definite technology ideas in mind, I do in general think:
   1. We really need to get away from the straight-jackets presented by dated and course-centered solutions like Blackboard. These present severe limitations on what we can do in the classroom (and beyond).
   2. As an alternative, I am really intrigued by student-centered social networking software like Elgg. I’m also encouraged that open source LMSs like Sakai are working on integrating similar kinds of functionality (see, for example, the whitepaper for Sakai 3 [pdf]).
   3. This learner-centered social-networking model probably ought not be limited to undergraduate education, but rather leave room for a more comprehensive online community that really reflects the connections across fields of learning and scholarship, as well as breaks down the barriers between undergraduate and graduate teaching and faculty research.
   4. A university-wide website redesign and CMS has to be built for all of this from the beginning; not added as an after-thought. In short, our web presence needs to be built on a foundation that is as dynamic and flexible as is learning and research in the 21st century. Old-school CMSes are not.

Tags: university IT

This entry was posted on Monday, March 9th, 2009 at 1:37 pm and is filed under Research, Teaching, Technology. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.