Discusses the shifting focus regarding information technology in higher education from technology itself toward the people and business processes connected with it. Describes the University of California's efforts toward a new business architecture, and an Educause-sponsored forum on e-business discussing the same themes. Offers discussion of the…

Describes how organizations can become effective, efficient managers of the large maintenance part of their information technology budgets by using service management processes. Discusses the example of the University of Sydney Library's use of the Information Technology Infrastructure Library (ITIL) set of service management practices. (EV)

Asserts that "the devil is in the details" when determining costs and prices for distance delivery of courses, and describes Texas A&M University's process of determining cost and price for distance education courses. (EV)

Describes the two very different support and training models employed by the University of Virginia and the College of William and Mary in successfully confronting information technology challenges. (EV)

Draws on the experience of Northern Michigan University's implementation of a mandatory laptop policy and offers practical guidelines for integration of technology in the classroom. Discusses a model with three components--technology, teamwork, and teaching--that helped faculty migrate to a new, more interactive teaching paradigm. (EV)

Describes how San Diego State University created a collaborative, objective, and quantitative metric, or rubric, to support its decision-making process regarding a Web portal. Discusses how the rubric was used to score different portal software systems during demonstrations and as a checklist and inventory to describe potential options. (EV)

Offers suggestions for online instructors regarding verbal and nonverbal impression management. The recommendations should facilitate computer mediated teacher-student or manager-client interactions and help develop constructive relationships that promote learning and productivity. (EV)

Discusses the use of wireless technology on college campuses. Explores why colleges may want to use the technology, when they should begin to take it seriously, the culture pushing the change, and how schools should approach wireless technology. (EV)

Describes how Clarion and Edinboro universities bundled their university-related telecommunications services with residence hall services and sought a vendor consortia to install and manage those services. In return for long-term contracts granting the right to sell services, the two consortia invested money to install data networks in the…

Uses classroom experience and data from a faculty survey to explore what faculty want from instructional technology. Presents several assertions, such as "faculty want instructional technology driven by pedagogical goals" and "faculty desire Web-based tools designed for a specific pedagogical task as opposed to a Swiss-Army-knife Web tool designed…

Suggests that higher education administrators can learn from the emerging practices of electronic commerce. Adapting a model laid out by Patricia Seybold with Ronni Marshak in "Customers.com," provides administrative guidelines for online education programs that combine sound business practice with information technology to make it easy for…

Discusses negotiating with vendors when purchasing campus information technology. Describes the mechanics of a negotiation (deep discounts, maintenance and support costs, future discounts, warranties and remedies, training and consulting), vendor approaches to negotiating, composition of the negotiating team, and what to do after negotiations end.…

Describes the role of information technology (IT) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, explaining that attention to the unique characteristics of an MIT education and incentives for sustainable change are central to its IT efforts. Discusses various IT initiatives, such as Project Athena, provision on campus, international efforts, and…

Describes the establishment of an online course ownership policy by a faculty committee at Stevens Institute of Technology. Discusses ownership, use, and compensation issues and the concept of unbundling, which recognizes that an instructional object can have different owners depending on how it is being used. Presents the policy recommendations.…

Describes the blurring line between the traditional roles of "systems guys" and "hackers" in the world of computer network professionals, creating a "techie 3.0," or computer professional who has experience and training in technical and non-technical fields and contributes both design expertise and creativity. (EV)