Within the next few years, as the ROI of collaboration becomes increasingly known, expect cross-departmental teamwork to be integral to the way all IT projects are handled, says Kamalika Sandell, associate CIO of American University. “There will be fewer boundaries in IT, and that will allow input to happen fluidly throughout the regular course of doing business,” she notes.
Simeon Ananou, CIO of Salisbury University in Maryland, sees a future higher ed model where IT and curriculum are integrated.
“As the classroom increasingly moves outside the four walls, I envision a world where technology professionals may actually become teaching assistants to help faculty easily deliver content,” Ananou says.” As a result, IT will be impacting teaching and learning at a high level.”
And with budgets shrinking, it will become more important for higher ed institutions to live up to the expectations of taxpayers, donors and the community, says Ananou, who is also director at large at ACUTA. As a result of that need, IT will play a bigger role in building and gleaning usable insight out of data warehouses for the purpose of improving student retention and graduation rates.
Data will also help students choose majors more wisely. “And IT will be the glue in all of that,” he says.
