Best computing practices 2003: got pressing technology issues? Tune in as these IT admins reveal their own challenges--and some very smart solutions.

Technology is now so ingrained in the world of higher ed, it's often taken for granted--until there's a problem. What's more, institutional IT departments not only have to make campus technology integration seamless and transparent, they've got to do it at a price. How do IT folk stay on top of these (sometimes seemingly insurmountable) challenges? University Business recently spoke with four IT admins from markedly different institutions (see box), to uncover their "best practice" approaches to truly daunting technology issues.

More and more schools are recognizing the value of adopting across-the-campus technology standards. What are some of the benefits you've realized from this approach?

Coffey: The Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute is a 24/7 research institution, and managing IT for people who work from 6 a.m. to 4 a.m. presents a big challenge for us. Our IT path has been to standardize our desktop computers because it reduces maintenance and compatibility problems. When someone comes on board with us or has a research project to do, it's very quick and easy for us to build a system and deploy it on the desktop so he or she can come in and hit the ground running. We're also moving to standardize all of our undergraduate students as well as the administrative staff with the same machine, across the board. That way, it's very easy to keep them up and running.

Ferguson: At Quinnipiac, we think of technology in strategic terms. We're a tuition-driven school and we're very focused on marketing initiatives. Technology fits right into that. But having somewhat limited resources meant we had to figure out how to leverage what we have. One way we've done that is to require all incoming freshman to have a laptop when they arrive. We partnered with Dell to provide them, preconfigured to our specifications. When Quinnipiac President John Lahey authorized this program, one of his requirements was to have the deans commit to integrating the technology into the curriculum. He didn't want the technology to be window dressing; there had to be substance. When we were asked about technology, we had to be able to point to how the students were going to use those laptops they had purchased. The condition was that every student had to use the computer in at feast one class each semester. In practice, students actually use it in three to four classes each semester.

Link: At OSU Newark and Central Ohio Technical College, one of the big issues working with two campuses was the "Noah's Ark" approach--we had two of everything that you could imagine all around the campus, so we really started looking at standardization. Our faculty was purchasing computers for many different areas, and they were "Best Buy" kinds of packages, or were purchased from online outfits. There was no standard way of doing things, and that was a big, expensive problem. We brought in a number of vendors to explore ways to standardize computing. Eventually, we chose Dell to help us get there.

Clark: Cy-Fair opened just this fall, so we could get everything new and start with standardization as a key strategy. We have about 1,600 desktops and 400 wireless laptops, so our faculty has no excuse for not using technology on campus. One of the issues we are still dealing with is establishing policies and procedures for technology use. That's a bit different from what the others are dealing with, but it's a challenge nonetheless. As far as our campus goes, we have six buildings and are totally collaborative. That is, we have no math department or no English department, but they all collaborate and share classrooms and offices. Communication is probably our biggest problem right now.

How did working with a single vendor change things?

Clark: The immediate benefit was the strength of having your faculty, students, and staff feel more comfortable working on a single platform. It's what they are familiar with.

Link: One thing was leveraging the volume we were buying from one vendor to get better pricing. But an even more substantial benefit was in the cost, often hidden, of the support aspect. It was easier to have a technical staff that could concentrate on one or two models of the same brand of computer and deliver a higher quality of service, rather than try to keep up with eight or 10 different models. That was a huge win for us, and an early indication of savings. Over the first 18 months, when we still hadn't standardized the entire campus, our hardware support calls went down 22 percent, which I attribute to standardizing the technology. We also have a three-year refresh program agreement on the equipment. That means we don't have to upgrade the memory or hard drive to keep up with changes in applications. That was a lot of the work we did in the past. Now we don't really have to upgrade anything anymore. From a time perspective, it has allowed us to be so much more proactive and deliver a better quality of service. The faculty and administration also view our department more positively than they had previously.

Ferguson: When you're moving technology into the curriculum, you have to recognize that there is a wide range of technical skills, as well as aptitudes and inclinations among faculty. We tell them, "We don't want you to engage in technology per se, we want you to focus on the pedagogy of what goes on in the classroom." That's where the standardization comes in. When a student comes to class with a laptop, it has to work, and the faculty has to be able to depend on students having working machines. They can't tell a student she can't do her work because there's no machine. So we have loaner machines available at our help desk that will work seamlessly in any of our computing environments. The other side of the coin is having standards in software. We have a basic software image that goes on each machine, and everyone knows the complement of software that is available to students.

What about more sophisticated or specialized software that may not be part of that basic package?

Ferguson: We're currently talking about perhaps providing a Citrix (www.citrix.com) solution to deliver specialized or less broadly used software to students on campus or off. But without the standards, we couldn't have gotten faculty to go along with this, and we would not have a model that we could reasonably afford to support.

Coffey: We develop software under many platforms that we deliver to many research institutions throughout the world. It's nice to know that--with industry standards Like the Linux OS that we deploy on most of our systems--if someone tries to install an application on his machine, he can do it. We don't have to worry about which compiler or which specific operating system he is using.

You're using Linux as your primary operating system? What's the reason for that?

Coffey: The development environment is ideal for the researchers who work here. We also run some Windows systems, but Windows doesn't provide quite as much flexibility of pushing the pipeline around as Linux does. Linux allows you to get into the kernel and work with the code. The researchers are trained and tried in the Unix world, so they like that environment.

What about senior level buy-in? How important has it been to get the support from the Leadership, to make these changes?

Ferguson: Although our president probably wouldn't think of himself in a technologically sophisticated way, he does think of technology in a strategic way. He's prepared to make significant investments or even tradeoffs in the budget to support technology implementation, on the condition that we use standards to accomplish it. He recognized that there are significant costs for us if we don't apply standards.

Link: I think that's a great point. Support for technology at the top is important to the standardization effort. Sometimes there can be friction from the faculty perspective, but our president has been good at helping them understand the cost benefits behind adopting standards. There's more support for the IT area moving forward with implementing a standard solution, when you can show the cost benefit of it, and the return on investment is realized quickly.

You mentioned friction from faculty. What was behind that?

Link: The friction stemmed from the fact that we chose a vendor that might not have been their choice because they wanted to go with a different vendor. I think that was more out of personal preference--and the fact that they've always believed they should be able to buy whatever they want. That culture was allowed for a number of years. As new faculty came in it wasn't a problem. But for the older group that basically had free reign, it was difficult to be told they had to use a particular brand or model. Of course, if they had a specific need that couldn't be met with this brand, we would talk with them about it. We've gotten over that hurdle, but I know they're struggling with that same issue at our main campus, as they also approach standardization.

Coffey: The idea of breaking the culture is key here at the SCI Institute. For the longest time, the professors, grad students, and staff members were spec-ing their own machines. They were going their own way in the sense that they were keen on optimizing every part of the software and the research that we do. As we standardized, we had to build a comfort level with the professors and grad students. We got them to realize that the time they spent debugging hardware they bought from 30 vendors could be better spent doing research.

Does standardization include a basic component configuration for the laptop and desktop computers?

Link: Yes, we give our faculty a choice of either a laptop or desktop. Most of them have really taken to the laptops because they can go anywhere in any of our multimedia rooms and do a presentation. They have wireless access inside and outside the campus. We have a standard configuration on the administrative side as well They don't have much input on it, but they don't really care; they just want to do their work. We also have a few specialty areas--like our technology enhanced learning center--that house higher-end workstations that can handle digital editing and so on.

How has wireless computing changed the student and faculty computing initiative at your institutions?

Ferguson: We've had wireless for the last three years, but it's only been this year that it has had a real impact on curriculum. The reason for that is our freshman writing course. Our School of Business rooms are configured with power and wired connections at every seat. When we teach writing, though, we do it in seminar rooms, and wireless allows us real flexibility in configuring the rooms in terms of the style of teaching that takes place, and that's important. I think that if the School of Business had that option five years ago, they would also be more flexible about the configuration of their rooms.

Link: I agree that wireless gives you the flexibility and mobility that you need. Our nursing students and our diagnostic medical stenography program use wireless laptops a great deal. But, we have a space crunch problem in those programs, so we are forced to move them around a lot. We have five 24-unit laptop carts placed in various buildings, and we can easily move them from room to room. And because we have wireless throughout the campus, we have the flexibility to move those classes around. It's not a replacement for wired, but it is certainly a complement to that. It also seems to be a preferred way to hook up, except for a few programs like engineering and digital media design, which use large graphic files.

Clark: The wireless carts that we are using really help faculty broaden their perspective on using technology in instruction. In the past, they felt that if they were in the computer lab, they had to be using the software to justify being there. But they've come to realize that they may need a computer lab for just one day rather than the whole semester, so the flexibility of having the wireless carts really opens those options for the instructors.

Are there any drawbacks to the wireless computing system?

Ferguson: It turned out that power was a bigger issue than wireless. Battery life is a big deal, especially if you are integrating technology more broadly into the curriculum. It's not just a one-hour class where the student has to use that laptop; he may have three classes back-to-back. The solution in these rooms was to put more power around the perimeter of the room, so that at least 60 percent of the students would have access to power if necessary. We also have wireless in some of our wired classrooms, to act as a backup. That's something we learned from our School of Business. A wired data port can get damaged rather easily, and that's a problem if you have 30 students in a classroom and they are all expected to perform simultaneously. If one or two data ports are down, they can't. We use wireless as a backup network mechanism in those environments so that the network is always available to everyone in the classrooms.

Security is an issue that affects everyone today, from protecting against a hacker, to stopping the spread of a malicious virus. How do you address these threats?

Ferguson: There is no doubt that security is a big issue for us, and about a year ago, we created an Information Security Officer position. It is enormously useful for us to have someone who is totally focused on security issues. One of the main problems for us is what people bring to our environment. With our mission of requiring all incoming students to have laptops, we were quite concerned with protecting our networks and systems from viruses. To our surprise, we had few problems with the freshmen; the problem turned out to be our returning students. With the freshmen, we have sort of a controlled environment because the laptops are all configured the same way, fresh out of the box. But, we realized we had no procedure for bringing students back onto the campus. We never thought of that as being an issue, but we realized there are certain vulnerabilities when someone leaves the environment and then returns. Frankly, we don't have that fully resolved yet, although we are working to develop procedures and policies for reintroducing people to our environment where we stilt have some control of security concerns.

Link: With the introduction of wireless, security was a major concern with the students or anyone walking on campus. We've implemented a VPN (virtual private network) solution that will allow you to get onto our network only if you have an account and password, so we haven't had many problems with that. We've had more problems keeping up with viruses. Most of the viruses come through the pipeline from the main Ohio State University campus, and we have to update the virus protections on all the computers. We recently began an automated program to check for and install updates. That has made a dramatic difference. But, I don't have anyone I can dedicate to security as much as I'd Like. It seems to get pushed off on whoever is free at the moment, which is a problem in itself.

Roundtable Participants

RICHARD COFFEY, IT Director, Scientific Computing and Imaging Institute, a large research institution on the University of Utah campus.

SCOTT CLARK, CIO and Dean of Technology, Cy-Fair Community College (TX). Newly opened in fall 2003, it is one of five community colleges in a district that serves about 45,000 students.

RICH FERGUSON, CIO, Quinnipiac University (CT). Quinnipiac is a teaching institution of 5,000 undergraduate and 2,000 graduate professional students.

TIM LINK, CIO, The Ohio State University Newark and Central Ohio Technical College. The IT services oversee both institutions.