Track Abstracts

Track 1: Emerging Technologies and Trends

What's new? What's next? Our field changes constantly, and the pace of change and the advent of new developments make our work especially challenging. What are the emerging topics and trends? What new technologies deserve attention? What problems can they solve? What effective practices or integration of existing technologies could make a difference at our institutions? Where do real opportunities for innovation lie? Covering a wide range of topics including virtualization, mobile devices and communication, outsourcing, sustainability, emergency communication and security, and even virtual worlds, to name just a few, this track will showcase the development of and experimentation in these and other technologies from across our community. Track and poster sessions will address the potential impacts on student access and engagement, teaching and learning, user training, and support.

Track 2: Enterprise Information Systems and Services

This track addresses a broad range of issues that arise from planning, implementing, supporting, and obtaining resources for enterprise-wide systems and services. Major topics will include (1) administrative solutions: ensuring that we effectively deliver value with our mission-critical systems, in alignment with the institutional mission; (2) business intelligence/decision support: using these technologies to make informed decisions as our institutional data become more complex; (3) enterprise course management systems and tools: assessing their broad diversity, using them in ways beyond instruction, and supporting the growing daily impact on the institution; (4) integration solutions: moving toward enterprise models based on loosely coupled architectures and away from the more tightly integrated solutions of the past; (5) collaboration tools and portals: considering ways these important technologies are used by all who work and learn within our mobile campus community; (6) document management and records retention: addressing these areas, which have become key drivers for business process improvement and regulatory compliance; and (7) open and community source solutions: exploring this movement and learning how the higher education community is advancing it as a realistic alternative to the traditional buy versus build option.

Track 3: Information Resources, Digital Content, and Libraries

With rapidly growing technology and information needs across the university, libraries are being called upon to develop new tools and services, provide single sign-on access to proprietary databases, and shape the future of scholarly research and publishing. Institutions increasingly look to library professionals to provide expertise in areas including metadata, data mining and preservation, search and retrieval, online learning, information literacy, and copyright and intellectual property. Library professionals, information technologists, and faculty are working collaboratively on a broad range of activities that leverage the depth and breadth of traditional library expertise in decidedly untraditional ways. The sessions in this track address reinventing libraries and highlight examples of how librarians, technologists, and faculty are redefining library services and rebuilding the information landscape.

Track 4: Leadership, Management, Planning, and Partnerships

This track explores leadership of the IT organization in light of the need to align technology activities with the business and learning outcomes of the institution. Sessions within this track address how to organize, prioritize, assess, manage, support, and fund information technologies, as well as how to build and maintain collaborations with internal and external partners and how to develop IT staff so they are prepared to meet the strategic needs of the institution. Formal planning and assessment provide a framework to measure the integration of IT within the institutional strategic plan, linking the institution's goals (and funding) to IT projects and outcome measurements, thereby demonstrating how IT adds value to the organization.

Track 5: Research Computing, Advanced Networking, Infrastructure, and Middleware

A strategic imperative of higher education is establishing and maintaining a robust technical infrastructure to support both academic and administrative needs while accommodating rapid change. This infrastructure has become essential to the day-to-day operation of the institution and typically includes core services, web and middleware services, research computing, and advanced networking. Activities can include identity management, virtualization, grid computing, cyberinfrastructure, and process improvement. The academy has also had an interest in "pushing the envelope" on advanced computing and networking as an integral part of most higher education institutional missions. While IT services are not always intended to be a research area per se, they provide the institutional context for successful contemporary research activities.

Track 6: Security, Privacy, and Policy

Threats to campus networks and servers are ongoing. Meanwhile, pressures for higher education institutions to comply with privacy protections and emerging data security regulations are increasing. Organizing and managing an information security function is still relatively new to many campuses. Institutions are challenged to find the necessary resources and funds to support additional staff and technology without unduly constraining the traditionally open nature of our endeavors. By sharing information and ideas, we can collaboratively develop successful strategies for implementing effective educational efforts, policies, and technologies to protect our campuses' sensitive information, comply with legal mandates, and remain true to our culture.

Track 7: Teaching and Learning

Computers are ubiquitous on many campuses, and information technologies from e-mail to virtual worlds are part of teaching and learning in most courses. As faculty and students become more culturally and academically engaged with the digital landscape, we need increasingly complex strategies to enable and support this engagement. How do we scale our technology offerings to meet the growing needs of learning communities? How can information technologies help librarians, IT professionals, academic support services, faculty, and students become better partners in the service of our academic mission? How do we assess the effectiveness of teaching and learning technologies? Sessions in this track will represent a wide range of perspectives and approaches. Panels and poster sessions will cover topics such as game-based learning and training, learner-centered training and support models, digital fluency, learning space design, assessment strategies, and methodologies.

Track 8: User Services

As we work to provide the best computing infrastructure and resources to our campuses, how can we ensure that our constituents are appropriately supported and trained to make the best use of the technology? How can we keep the technology on desks and in classrooms reliable and available for them to use? For many of the students, faculty, and staff we support, these measures define their experience with technology. This track addresses these questions. It includes technical and management issues that pertain to operations of the help desk, computer labs, and smart classrooms, as well as support for faculty, staff, and student computing. Also included are training and supporting the student experience with technology. The posters and presentations cover a broad spectrum of services, scales, and environments with an emphasis on finding the right processes and technologies for each unique institutional need.