Modernizing a Larkin University Education - Essay Example

Larkin IT/IS Report First Last Dr. TeacherFirst TeacherLast Number 29 April 2008 Larkin IT/IS Report Introduction Recently formed Larkin University is pursuing a plan to implement an IT and IS strategy in order to modernise its infrastructure and education delivery. This report analyses the strategy being followed in light of the university’s current set up and goals for the future. It further suggests ways to implement this strategy placing special importance to integrating IT infrastructure deployment with the IT strategy, training requirements, and the student laptop initiative program. Some recommendations on how to research declining student attendance is also included. Strategic Aims Larkin university faces the dual challenge of integrating itself into a university from a diverse group of colleges and at the same time deploying a technology blueprint to launch itself as a modern competitive educational institution. While traditional thinking may argue that technology deployment is a secondary tool-oriented task, modern approaches to information technology suggest that a sound IT strategy is not only a key enabler for the institutional plan but also an integrated part of it. As a result, “correct technologies” can “enable the required IS and corporate strategies to be achieved” (Clarke, 2001, p. 107). A failure in an organisation’s IT and IS strategy can translate into a failure for the organisation itself. A strategy for IT is closely aligned and integrated with the institutions overall strategy for growth and competitive advantage. Organisations typically have a slow response time to change, particularly so in the case of wide scale technology shifts. Larkin University has the unique ongoing challenge of combining existing collages into a university. This challenge could be turned into an advantage by using the new IT infrastructure as the vehicle of change. Laptops for staff, lecturers and students are just the end user side of the sea change in IT infrastructure and IS strategy taking place at the university. A productivity environment with standardised IT/IS platform and common email would free the users from issues of compatibility and delays in support of disparate systems. An institution-wide Internet availability would allow the university’s intranet to be accessed from anywhere. This higher productivity environment would enable the staff and lecturers to concentrate on their core functions. Standardised administrative applications such as scheduling, registration, fee, etc. can be deployed across the campus with minimum integration issues. Lecturers and students would interact and have access to their courses from anywhere through the myCourse system. Achieving Strategic Aims: Deployment Perspective A team deploying an IT infrastructure that supports the strategic goals of an organisation would need more involvement than managing the nuts and bolts of deploying a system in isolation. With campus wide “management of a portfolio of IT resources and capabilities”, they would need to have a parallel “group IT strategy, control and monitoring” processes in place (Earl, 1996, p. 257). This would require a well trained and equipped central university technology department to give guidance to each facility and department. From pure deployment perspective, the IT team would need to define the IT infrastructure usage policies while taking the university management into confidence. Some of these are discussed below. Purchasing decisions and policies are a key aspect of IT infrastructure development. This includes areas such as vendor selection, pricing, support requirements, upgrade plans etc. A major investment in technology requires a careful selection of suppliers to provide support to the university in the long term. The vendor’s experience, credentials and minimum capability requirements must be defined in the purchase policy. The vendor must have enough successful experience to supply and support at least 1000 PC’s in a distributed environment. Larkin University has several locations and the vendor must be able to support the PC systems at each location. Bulk price levels would need to be negotiated. If a forecast of future purchases can be made, a better long term price could be negotiated as well. Larkin University would also have to do a cost/benefit analysis of choosing a vendor purely on price or on capability and experience. An appropriate balance would have to be made. Policy on upgrade options is critical as the lifecycle of PC technology is limited. As stated, the university is operating in an increasingly competitive environment. To remain competitive, the IT team would have to match the continuing strategic requirements of the university with the appropriate technology platform to support it. A plan with appropriate milestones to revisit the upgrade options is essential. Configuration management which includes reasonable within-the-box upgrade possibilities would help the university in the long term. Security policy and infrastructure for the network and intranet would have to be carefully built (Limoncelli, 2005, p. 148). As the network would be open to the Internet, many viruses, Trojans and worms may attack the network from outside. Investment in firewalls and anti-virus software is essential. Internal security policy would govern whether or how diskettes, USB drives and CD’s would be allowed on the workstations. Finally, a decision on outsourcing of deployment and training will need to be taken. Training The university comprises of campuses which were separate colleges in the past. Each comes with their own culture and usage patterns of technology. Even though each facility used Windows based systems, their configurations and versions were different. Internet was not used everywhere and email clients, Lotus and Outlook, were both in use. The new technology outlay programme is the first effort to bring all the faculties and units of the university on a single platform. Training is needed to ensure that each group of users adopt the new versions of the IT/IS platform and all come up to the same level. Additionally, each user group would need to be made aware of the campus wide policies established by the core technology group at the university. These policies would include security, internet usage, backups etc. Training relates directly to productivity and affects the total cost of ownership of the new platform. A well trained staff would reduce the HR costs of operating the system in the long term (Burkholder & Edwards, 2004, p. 294). Laptop Initiative The university is embarking on a plan to offer laptops to 3000 first year students for the first time. The offer is optional and the student can decline to take the laptop from the university. Student choice presents the first problem relating to delivery of the correct number of laptops at the right time. Larkin University would have to carefully develop a procedure to ensure that as students enrol in the university, their requirements are recorded and back to back orders for laptops are placed with vendors in time. It is critical to work backwards from the semester start date to determine when the ordering takes place and when to place deadlines on students to decide on purchase of laptop through the university. There are two associated issues to cater for. Firstly, the lead times that the vendor will take to deliver the machines must be taken into account. Contracts would have to be made intelligently with the vendors to ensure compliance with time requirements. The second complication arises on how and where to store the laptops that arrive for the university students. Since Larkin University is implementing the programme for the first time, enough space and resources must be allocated to maintain the incoming inventory of equipment (Frazelle, 2001, p. 127). The option of on-demand or “just in time” delivery of laptops may be explored where the vendor supplies the laptops when needed and they go straight to the students rather than needing storage space at the university. On going support for the student laptops will necessitate an appropriate number of support desks. The support staff would have to be trained separately for first line of support for laptops and also maintain a replacement policy. This may require a number of replacement laptops available at all times and also brings in the issue of insurance coverage if the laptop has to be replaced. Insurance can also be offered for stolen laptops (Johnstone, 2003, p. 236). Another form of ongoing support is beyond the IS/IT platform of the laptop itself. A critical component of support required is for the “second layer” which is the “content” through which elearning takes place (Preston, 2004, p. 44). If this is not managed the entire laptop initiative can come to a standstill. Decline of Attendance “Ad hoc feedback” from the students had indicated that that they felt little need for attending classes when they could use the newly implemented myCourse system. Universities have successfully implemented distance learning and “flexible” learning using systems similar to myCourse (Sian & Lyn, 1997, page 149). Adjustments in class sizes and balance between online and class room instruction has also been made on the basis of their experience. To get a definitive assessment of the causes of declining attendance, Larkin University management can gain insight from available literature and research conducted by other universities and organisations. The intranet will allow searching in research databases and online books. This facility is already available to students of Larkin University. The Internet will allow searching on sites such as Google, AltaVista, Yahoo and other search engines. Simple searches on key words such as “multi modal education attendance” give hundreds of results. For example, one of the results on AltaVista (AltaVista) returned on the first page is a published research by the Education Policy Institute on student statistics enrolled in IT programmes (Dobson, 2002-2005). It is imperative that good resources are picked up from the results. For example, Wikipedia is not considered reliable as it is user maintained. Known names, organisations and universities could be picked up for reading. There are no set rules for searching for reliable information on the Internet and expertise can only be built through experience. A rule of thumb that can be used is to look at urls that end in .org or .edu or .ac.uk. Additionally, a professionally constructed survey would also help in pin pointing the exact reasons for lack of attendance which may be beyond simply the usage of myCourse system. Conclusion It is observed that IT infrastructure deployment without keeping in mind the strategic goals of the university can become counter-productive. All deployment steps must be taken with policy formation which is aligned with the university’s long term plan. Various policy alternatives in areas of vendor selection, pricing, support, maintenance and training are discussed. It is also concluded that training is essential not only in the transition phase but continued throughout the cycle of technology use. Possible pitfalls in initiating a laptop program for first year students are identified and solutions are presented. Finally, suggestions are given on effectively using the university’s local intranet and external Internet access for research. References Altavista. AltaVista Search: multi modal education university attendance [online]. Available:http://www.altavista.com/web/results? itag=ody&q=multi+modal+education+university+attendance&kgs=1&kls=0 [Accessed 25 April, 2008] Burkholder, N.C. and Edwards, P.J., 2004. On Staffing: Advice and Perspectives from HR Leaders. New Jersey: John Wiley and Sons Clarke, S., 2001. Information Systems Strategic Management: An Integrated Approach. London: Routledge. Dobson, I., 2002-2005. The IT Education Bubble: An analysis of university student statistics [online] . Monash University: Centre for Population & Urban Research and Educational Policy Institute. Available: http://www.educationalpolicy.org/pdf/ DeansOfSci-IT-2_9-07.pdf [accessed 25 April, 2008] Earl, M.J., 1996. Information Management: The Organisation Dimension. Oxford Institute of Information Management. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Frazelle, E., 2001. Supply Chain Strategy: The Logistics of Supply Chain Management. McGraw-Hill Professional. Johnstone, B., 2003. Never Mind the Laptops: Kids, Computers, and the Transformation of Learning. Lincoln: iUniverse Inc. Limoncelli, T.A., 2005. Time Management for System Administrators. Sebastopol: OReilly Preston, D.S., 2004. Contemporary Issues In Education. New York: Rodopi Sian, R.H. and Lyn, M.P., 1997. Flexible Learning in Action: Case Studies in Higher Education. London: Routledge Read More