Volume 6, January 3, 2000

"New data from the 1999 Campus Computing Survey confirm that the real technology challenges in education (and elsewhere) involve people, not products. (p. 76) "According to the survey, the single most important IT issue confronting U.S. colleges and universities over the next two or three years is assisting faculty efforts to integrate information technology into instruction." (p. 76) "Providing adequate user support ranks second again this year." (p. 76) "Placing third was financing the replacement of aging hardware and software." (p. 76) "There is a growing awareness that the major technology challenges involve human factors—assisting students and faculty to make effective use of new technologies." (p. 77) "What’s ahead for most faculty and most students is some kind of hybrid learning experience in which technology supplements, not supplants, both the content and the discourse that have been part of the traditional experience of going to college." (p. 77) "The widely accepted user support guidelines promoted by the Gartner Group, an IT industry research organization, generally recommend one IT support person for every 50-75 users. In contrast, the user support ratio at U.S. colleges and universities runs anywhere from 150 student users to a single IT support person at private research universities, to an 800:1 ratio at community colleges. (p. 77) "Schools and colleges find it increasingly difficult to recruit and retain IT staff, in part because educational institutions often pay 20 to 33 percent (or more!) below the going rate for IT people in business and industry." (p. 77) "If schools and colleges expect teachers and faculty to use technology as an instructional resource, then schools and colleges must create a technology infrastructure that will support these efforts." (p. 77)