Track Descriptions

Each proposal will be evaluated in one of the tracks listed below.

Cultivating the Learning Landscape

Today's digital native students, along with those attending colleges and universities later in life, not only anticipates but also expects deployment of cutting-edge technology during their academic experience. Innovative faculty and learning technologists welcome this challenge as an opportunity to increase student engagement. At the same time, the emergence of Web 2.0 tools, along with other technological advances, meld to populate and cultivate rich resources that can enrich the learning experience as well. How can we best establish faculty/student/library/IT partnerships to support the constantly changing learning landscape? What are the determining factors for success? What best practices are emerging for the coming decade?

We invite interactive presentations on innovative solutions that enhance student engagement and learning within a culture of assessment

Key topics include:

• Student, faculty, and staff development and support
• Learning space design: virtual, formal, and informal
• Digital immigrants in today's digital learning environment
• Learning through gaming and simulation
• Mobile technologies: meeting learners where they hang out
• Assessment: measuring technology's impact on learning
• Helping faculty transition to a blended learning environment
• Students' use of technology
• The library's changing role and library/IT partnerships
• E-portfolios and beyond
• Turning social computing tools into learning tools (podcasts, blogs, wikis, and more)
• Imaging, digitizing, and creating institutional repositories

Leading from Where You Are

At a time when we face the challenge of new technology and student demands, we also experience the urgent need to strengthen technology leadership. Every individual who supports technology on a campus, from the front line to the executive suite, from the lecture hall to the virtual classroom, has an opportunity to provide leadership -- we can all lead from where we are. Issues such as institutional mission, decision making, policy, and professional development are concerns of staff at all levels within the technology organization, as well as administrators, faculty, and library professionals. What tools do we each need to lead from where we are?

We encourage proposals that provide innovative and practical responses at all levels to these shared leadership challenges.

Key topics include:

• Strategic planning: aligning IT services with institutional direction
• Using data to make decisions at all levels
• Change management
• Managing up, down, and out
• Organizational, governance, and policy issues from CIO to support staff
• Leading through resource management, communication, and setting expectations: budgets, people, and infrastructure
• Leading through project management
• Organizational and outcome assessment models
• Collaboration and partnership strategies within and across institutions
• Stakeholders and consensus building
• Mentoring next-generation IT leaders
• Professional development and career planning

Making IT Work: The Confluence of Technology, People, and Expectations

Next-generation IT is the complex combination of technologies, leadership, management, security, laws, and policy -- all set in the context of the increasing expectations of leaders, learners, faculty, accreditors, lawmakers, and other stakeholders. This track addresses the glue that holds it all together. No one-size-fits-all solution exists because the problem we are looking to solve is multidimensional, further complicated by people with different missions, goals, and expectations.

This track invites presentation proposals that span boundaries and provide specific solutions to real problems. Presentations should be engaging and clearly define the problem or need, the solution, and whether it was successful. There should be clear takeaways for the audience.

Key topics include:

• Identity management in constantly shifting communities
• Balancing security and access: CALEA
• Network evolution: higher bandwidth, novel applications, new challenges
• Enterprise systems, student records, and academic experiences
• Project management: scope creep and client expectations
• IT communication: connecting with peers, faculty, administration, and students
• Business continuity, 24 x 7 availability, and disaster recovery
• Reporting for everyone: senior management to staff in the trenches
• Portals: buy or build your own?
• Open source solutions
• Web services and content management
• Service oriented architecture

Corporate and Campus Solutions

Corporate and Campus Solutions track presentations will be accepted via the "Corporate Participation" link. Please note that these are presentations by a corporation coupled with a client campus on technology challenges and solutions. A fee of $1,400 for members and $1,575 for non-members will be required to present. Sign up via the "Contract to Participate" on the Corporate Participation page.

• Guidelines
• Submission Form