Techfoot

One of the notes that I found in my dogpile was a folded index card from the now-defunct Seminars in Academic Computing. I participated in a discussion with a group of colleagues on the topic of What Do Faculty Expect From Higher Ed. IT? The discussion was described in the program:

Traditionally faculty have needed technical support for the ways in which they use computers in teaching and research. Innovative faculty may also have required support in instructional design or general teaching and learning technologies. Are these expectations changing? Are IT staff becoming more siloed or more symbiotic? Can faculty and IT leaders truly collaborate on transformative projects, or do faculty expect a service bureau only?

When I came back from SAC, I wrote some notes about the session:

Participating in the discussion make me re-examine my current framework for understanding those questions. It also made me realize that my perspective has changed dramatically in recent years. While I’m still fascinated personally by the potential new computing and communications technologies hold for enhanced learning, I’m less optimistic about the ability of IT staff to be the leaders in capitalizing on that potential–no matter how hard we work at it. As someone commented, institutional transformation really isn’t an IT function–though we can help other leaders with the process if they want our help.

Transformation isn’t a high priority for most faulty, since their plates are overflowing with teaching, research, reading, writing, parenting–you name it. These faculty members value an IT organization that is:

• Transparent: They want to be able to find all the services available to them without having to rely on special favors or insider knowledge of the IT organization.
• Efficient: They want to get their questions answered or their issues resolved as quickly as possible–even at night or on the weekend.
• Empathetic: They want IT staff to demonstrate through words and actions that they understand the unique demands of faculty life and that we’re doing what we can to help alleviate those pressures rather than adding to them.
• Responsive: They want IT members who returns phone calls and email and who communicate clearly–even when we don’t know the exact answer. Caveat: They do expect us to know the answers more often than not.

The vast majority of our faculty are perfectly happy with what at SAC we called service bureau model–as long as we are really good at being transparent, efficient, empathetic and responsive.

Some times the stars align–as they seem to have recently for the dream team at the University of Mary Washington, and I think those of us in the academic IT business have to be tuned in and ready to pounce on those magical moments. For the most part, though, our institutions will be best served if we stick to the knitting and focus on doing the best job on the mundane, non-transformative services that keep the place running.

Speaking of Scott Nelson…..

I was on a task force studying digital imaging with Scott and he often talked about the value of of a “digital dogpile” as a collection of high quality images that could be freely accessible to members of the community who needed them to enhance communications. The reference generally made me a bit uncomfortable–sort of like, “darn, I need a scraper; I stepped in the digital dogpile.”

Actually, the term has a (somewhat) more refined etymology–most commonly used in the old Usenet days days:

When many people post unfriendly responses in short order to a single posting, they are sometimes said to “dogpile” or “dogpile on” the person to whom they’re responding. For example, when a religious missionary posts a simplistic appeal to alt.atheism, he can expect to be dogpiled. It has been suggested that this derives from U.S, football slang for a tackle involving three or more people.

(dogpile. (n.d.). Jargon File 4.2.0. Retrieved September 20, 2008, from Dictionary.com website: http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/dogpile)

My own personal dogpile is the unsorted collection of index cards, magazine articles, photocopies, books and other artifacts that have seemed important enough to me to save, but not important enough to actually do anything with. A recurring fantasy of mine is that I actually make my way through that basket of stuff and figure out why it is that I put it in the pile in the first place.

Dogpile is also the name of an aternative search engine that attempt to aggregate information from multiple search sources to create a single view of the results. While I still use Google most of the time, I give dogpile a shot every once in a while. They explain the origin of the name this way:

Oh, and the name Dogpile?

Well, that’s a funny story. You see, we love Rugby. It’s traditional in Rugby for players to come together and pile on one another. This is exactly what Dogpile metasearch does-it brings together the best results from the Internet’s top search engines, including Google, Yahoo! Search, Live Search, Ask.com, About, MIVA, LookSmart, and more.

Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/soggydan/
Creative Commons Attribution License

Back when I was in journalism school–writing my stories for Daily Texan on a IBM Selectric–everyone was expected to develop a “beat“. Your beat might be the night court and police station, the athletic complex, the theaters, or some other part of the institution that you knew better anyone else in the newsroom. Your goal as a beat reporter was to build up a base of knowledge and a web of contacts that allowed you to uncover news that others might miss. (For a while there actually was a Pulitzer prize for “Beat Journalism”.)

Faculty bloggers don’t have formal beats the way that news reporters do, but we do have areas of the college that we have inside and specialized knowledge about. Some of those are formal and tied to our jobs–I think a lot about emerging technology, classroom design, project management and learning theory because my understanding of those topics shape the decisions that I have to make every day.

My “beat” also includes lots of contacts in lots of places that aren’t tied directly to the job. I spend about six hours a week on the Arc Trainer at the Rec Center, some quality time on path or in the halls chatting with other social scientists and a little time most days at the Daily Grind. Those non-work related contacts provide some of the most interesting insights into life at William and Mary, like this one overheard at the Daily Grind.

Student A: One thing I want to be sure to do while I’m here is to take a class from Scott Nelson.

Student B: He’s great. When I grow up, I want to be like Scott Nelson.

Student C: That’s nothing. When I die, I want to come back as Scott Nelson.

Learning from Scott Nelson, priceless--Scott, his book and the Boss.