The
combined student and employee population at Cedarville University, Cedarville,
OH, is about 4,000. Yet, on any given day, more than 9,000 devices may be
accessing the Internet through Cedarville’s system. That ratio illustrates why
grappling with the rapid proliferation of web-enabled devices on campus is the
new No. 1 concern on Educause’s recently released Top-Ten IT Issues report for2013.
“Now
that faculty, staff, and students all have these portable devices, they expect
to use them. Before, IT organizations had to address network coverage, but the
pure density of devices on campus and their bandwidth requirements cause new
challenges,” noted the report.
Issue
No. 2 involves taking advantage of technology to help bolster students’
outcomes, an issue clearly influenced by recent pressure from legislators and
others to focus on what students learn and ensure they’re getting value for
their tuition dollars. A related issue calls for ascertaining a strategy to
support online education.
Other
issues new to Educause’s annual list include structuring IT staffing to meet
new challenges and balancing the need to secure systems and information with
the need for user access.
Five
of the issues on the 2013 list are carryovers from 2012: creating strategies
for institutional cloud computing, strategic funding for IT projects,
supporting bring-your-own-device and other trends, using technology to take
campus business initiatives to the next level, and tapping into data analytics
to guide institutional outcomes.