Domain Focus Areas

The presentation will most resonate with staff primarily engaged in the following domain focus areas. You may choose up to two.

Enterprise Information Systems and Services

This domain is most relevant to those who are involved with managing, maintaining, integrating, and supporting the systems upon which the business of the institution runs. This includes enterprise systems solutions: ERP and community source, business process improvement, collaboration tools, portals, data warehousing, business intelligence, decision support, enterprise course management systems, integration solutions, service-oriented architecture (SOA), web services, and/or open- and community-source applications. Overriding themes in the area include making the institution more efficient and effective in how it operates, automating existing manual and labor-intensive processes, doing more with less, partnering with vendors, collaborating across the institution, effectively managing resources, enabling organizational (re)design, and evaluating and guiding changes in technology approaches including cloud sourcing, outsourcing, open source, and other alternative approaches to systems support. This area also includes providing accountability to funding agencies, auditability, compliance monitoring, and the extraction of information key to setting strategic priorities.

Information Security and Privacy Protection

This domain covers a broad range of security and privacy issues. Identity management is the business processes and infrastructure required to support the creation, maintenance, and use of digital identities within the enterprise. Issues regarding privacy of institutional information, the classification of information so that it can be properly protected, and management to ensure its proper protection are part of this domain. This domain includes the implications of government regulations and laws, and how to best comply with them. This includes risk management, or recognizing threats and vulnerabilities. Sessions on organizing and managing the information security function in an open and free academic environment are prevalent in this domain. Security technology and architecture, as well best practices specific to higher education, are an important facet of this domain.

Infrastructure

Infrastructure includes foundational elements such as hardware, software, and networking. It also includes use of infrastructure as it is applied to administrative, academic, and high-requirement research computing. Middleware provides a set of enabling services that allow distributed applications running on one or more machines to interact across a network. The domain will have presentations from both infrastructure (hardware, software, networking, and service) providers as well as innovative consumers. Presentations focusing on novel approaches and solutions, particularly with respect to the rationalization of infrastructure provisioning, are encouraged.

Leadership, Governance, and Management

The dynamic and complex nature of the intersections of leadership, management, and governance will be explored. This domain will address topics such as effective and engaging IT leadership styles and practices, shared governance, strategic planning, visioning, institutional alignment and accountability, partnerships and external collaborations, and professional development and mentoring. Other topics will include sustainable funding models, return on investment, business continuity, and priority setting and process improvements, as well as evaluating sourcing options (outsourcing, insourcing, and cloud computing) and balancing IT operations and innovations.

Libraries, E-Research, and Digital Content

Libraries are dynamic partners and campus leaders in advancing inquiry and learning for their campuses and for the community of world scholars. They are committed to listening and responding innovatively to strengthen their role as the foundation for discovery and learning for their institutions. This domain will address topics of interest to those engaged in areas related to leadership in libraries and information management, information policy, scholarly communications and publishing, open access, digital libraries, library and information systems development, records management, repository management, archives, digital collections development and management, data curation, digital preservation, information literacy, accessibility, licensing, emerging technologies in information management, mobile information access and delivery options, data mining, search capabilities, copyright, and digital rights management.

Support Strategies and Services

This domain will be of interest to those who provide services, support, and processes to enhance the client experience. This includes all aspects of IT service and support such as learning spaces, technology in classrooms, labs, and all services that support the teaching and learning mission in an educational environment. In addition, this domain will include sessions for those interested in client support for services including help desk, desktop support, provisioning, print management, energy management, accessibility, knowledge management, and the like. Those in service management roles that provide support for processes supporting IT services will also be interested in attending sessions in this domain. Helping to improve satisfaction with IT and feeding insights back into the IT provider groups will also be covered in these sessions.

Teaching and Learning

Those who partner with faculty and staff colleagues to support the academic mission, advocate for pedagogically purposeful integration of technology, and leverage these tools to foster active learning will benefit from these sessions. Topics might include: distance learning, hybrid learning, the learning management system, lecture capture, social learning, Web 2.0 tools, mobile learning, faculty development, mobile technologies, product evaluation and recommendations, and curricular advisement and development. Professional roles might include: instructional technologists, librarians, faculty members and instructors, deans and provosts, academic software developers, instructional designers, and/or faculty development coordinators. Students are encouraged to participate and/or present.

Web/Media Development

The creation of web-based and often media-rich applications has created new opportunities and expectations for higher education. Target platform options, development strategies, and audiences are all expanding as our students, faculty, and staff expect ever better access to learning and information resources anytime, anywhere, on any device. Proposals relevant to this domain will resonate with staff primarily engaged in: working with new and evolving software development platforms (HTML5, Flash, AJAX, etc.); meeting the challenge of the expanding range of target hardware (smartphones, tablets, netbooks); creating, processing, and incorporating rich media including audio and visual content; integrating third-party applications via APIs, service-oriented architecture, and portals; signing for the web; ensuring accessibility and universal design; and selecting and administering web content management systems.