CSU Academic Technology Planning Project

Expanding Academic Technology in the CSU:

Getting Started

I. Executive Summary

Why Now?

The campus and system leadership of the California State University intends to move the institution to the cutting edge of supporting quality teaching and learning with technology. The significant and planned investment in technology that is guided by the Integrated Technology Strategy is largely in place and has become a state-of-the-art technical and administrative support foundation. The plan for how technology applied to the academic mission can leverage this foundation is now in place as well. The time has come to implement this “academic technology plan” to fulfill our commitment to students and faculty by providing them a tangible CSU advantage. The importance of moving forward now is heightened by the impact of the current budget, our commitment to student access and success and the growing expectation and capacity of students to use technology to enhance all aspects of their college experience. It is clear that future enrollment pressure cannot be accommodated without the assistance of technology.

How Did We Get To This Point?

After a year of planning initiated by the Executive Council in June of 2002 a set of outcomes, principles and initiatives were developed by a planning committee based on interactions with all 23 campuses and a review of best practices in other leading institutions. This draft document was discussed thoroughly at the June 2003 Executive Council retreat where the eight initiative areas were endorsed and further clarification of implementation approach was requested. This implementation framework is now ready and specific feasibility study reviews and detailed implementation planning can begin.

What Exactly Are We Planning To Do?

Eight initiatives have been identified that best meet the guiding principles and selection criteria as well as the four overarching objectives to:

maintain and improve CSU’s high quality education,
meet the access requirements of Californians eligible for admission.
achieve high student satisfaction for both education and student services, and
provide mechanisms for the redesign of faculty workload.

Four of the eight initiatives are being recommended for immediate implementation while the remaining four may begin somewhat later. Two of the initiatives are campus-focused with system support and will address immediate needs in addition to providing early benefits. These are:

Supporting Student Excellence and Success in the CSU
Technology-enhanced Teaching and Learning and Foundation Skills Support

Two other initiatives are system-focused with campus support and should also commence immediately as they form a support environment and acquisition structure for the other six. These are:

The Academic Technology Shared-Services Environment
The CSU Digital Marketplace

The other four initiatives are:

Supporting Shared Development of Digital Learning Materials
CSU Support for Research and Application of Effective Practices in Academic Technology
Professional Development for Faculty, Staff, and Administrators Involved in Academic Technology
System Support for Academic Technology Development Teams

What’s Next?

Each initiative will begin with the formation of a Management Team and the development of a Feasibility Study Review and detailed Implementation Plan. An Academic Technology Coordinating Committee, incorporating the membership of the Provosts’ Technology Steering Committee will oversee the implementation process and report regularly to the Academic Council and the Executive Council through the Technology Steering Committee. The Management Teams and the campuses will also identify any policy, practice, or institutional culture issues that may impact the progress of their initiative. Clearly, the alignment of faculty reward structures with the expansion of technology use will also need to be addressed.

Each initiative was chosen from many competitors of great merit because it would make a significant difference in the quality of what the CSU has to offer its students and faculty. A small number was chosen to ensure that tangible benefits could be achieved in reasonable amounts of time without spreading scarce resources too thinly. These initiatives are all do-able and build upon the significant technology and human resources that stand ready to begin. The planning is ready to give way to the doing.

II. Introduction and Background

Bringing the California State University to the cutting edge in using academic technology to support quality teaching and learning has been the focus of a major initiative undertaken by the California State University in the academic year 2002-03. The goal of this effort is to use the CSU’s prior investment in the technology infrastructure as the basis for a significant expansion of academic technology to improve teaching and learning, help provide increased and more effective access for students, and upgrade services to students as well as faculty and staff.

The seeds for this systemwide effort to promote the use of academic technology were first sown in the 1990s. In 1995, the CSU launched its Information Technology Strategy (ITS), which was designed to provide the campuses with a state-of-the-art technology environment to support personal productivity, excellence in learning and teaching, the quality of the student experience, and administrative productivity and quality. Excellence in learning and teaching was addressed through several ITS initiatives such as the Multimedia Repository, the Electronic Core Collection, and Distributed Learning and Teaching. Student Friendly Services (the improvements to the CSUMentor program) was the major focus area of the Quality of the Student Experience goal. However, over the past several years, the ITS has concentrated on technology infrastructure to address key prerequisites in support of teaching and learning such as developing and connecting all campuses to a broadband network, installing baseline hardware and software, and providing IT support and training for faculty, staff, and student users.

In the spring of 2001, noting the imminent completion of the specific infrastructure projects, the Academic Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) made a series of recommendations to Executive Vice Chancellor David Spence to use this infrastructure in a significant expansion of academic technology. This proposal addressed faculty professional development and training, the establishment of instructional development support teams, released time for faculty to convert and redevelop courses and curricula, and continued improvements to the infrastructure, in particular classroom renovation and instructional development support facilities (see Appendix A). These proposals were presented and discussed at a spring 2002 systemwide conference held in San José and attended by campus academic technology teams.

At the same time, Chancellor Charles B. Reed and the campus presidents, acting through the Technology Steering Committee and the Executive Council, began to focus on the applications and uses of these infrastructure investments in ways that respond to the latest and best research on student learning to support and improve teaching and learning, student and administrative services, and personal effectiveness. Discussions within the Executive Council resulted in a decision to begin a planning process to apply technology to four overarching goals.

Overarching Goals of the CSU Academic Technology Program

1. Maintain and improve the high quality of education provided by the CSU;

2. Meet the access requirements of California residents eligible for admission to the CSU;

3. Provide high levels of student satisfaction with both the education they receive and the student services that support instruction; and

4. Provide a mechanism by which the faculty of the CSU, both individually and collectively, can redesign their workload.

To oversee this effort, the Executive Council authorized the appointment of the Academic Technology Planning Committee (ATPC), a group that included faculty, a student, provosts, a vice president for student affairs, chief information officers, a faculty development director, and a director of libraries. The ATPC was charged with developing a plan for the expansion of academic technology that addresses the overarching project goals and that can be implemented by campuses with system support. A project team from the CSU Chancellor’s Office provided support for the ATPC, as did an independent consulting group, Collegis.

In order to identify specific projects to meet academic technology goals, the ATPC pursued three interdependent routes to gather information and to generate ideas. First, the team conducted a series of focus groups on CSU campuses to identify teaching-and-learning and student-services issues that could be addressed with technology. Second, a survey was conducted to identify CSU campus academic technology projects currently underway. Finally, the entire ATPC participated in a series of planning exercises to articulate common goals and build consensus among members. From these activities, the ATPC generated a collection of initiatives and projects that coalesced into the plan described in its final report, Expanding Academic Technology in the CSU, June 2003.

III. Why is the CSU Doing This?

If the overarching goals of the CSU Academic Technology Program and their resonance with the traditional mission of the CSU were not compelling enough, events playing out in the state of California concurrent with the development of this implementation plan add a new set of imperatives. For one of the rare times in the history of the California State University, the California Legislature has prescribed an enrollment cap for the 2004-05 budget year. In the midst of Tidal Wave II, this will prevent the CSU from admitting some 10,000 to 15,000 new students who under normal circumstances would have been accommodated. If past experience is a guide, the vast majority of these students will enroll in community colleges and will attempt to transfer to the CSU two or three years later. Thus the CSU can expect greatly expanded enrollment pressure during the last one-third of this decade.

At that time, even if the state revenue situation and the CSU budget have returned to normal, many of our campuses will be unable to accommodate this enrollment bulge using traditional methods. An expansion of the use of academic technology is one of the few options available to forestall a serious crisis in meeting the needs of these prospective students.

IV. Where Are We in the Process?

The CSU is currently entering the second phase of a four-phase process to expand the use of academic technology. These four phases are:

Report of the Academic Technology Planning Committee (completed June 2003)
System implementation planning
Initiative implementation planning
Project implementation management
Project operation and assessment

The implementation planning phase is expected to end with the approval, by the Executive Council, of a broad implementation plan at its meeting in late August, 2003.

V. Project Focus

The report of the Academic Technology Planning Committee (ATPC) proposed eight broad initiatives for the expansion of academic technology in the CSU. The initiative numbers and titles are summarized below in Table 1.

Table 1: Proposed Initiatives

Initiative Number	Initiative Title
1	Supporting Student Excellence and Success in the CSU
2	Technology-enhanced Teaching and Learning and Associated Support Services for Foundation Skills
3	Supporting Shared Development of Digital Learning Materials
4	CSU Support for Research and Application of Effective Practices in Academic Technology
5	Professional Development for Faculty, Staff, and Administrators Involved in Academic Technology
6	System Support for Academic Technology Development Teams
7	The Academic Technology Shared-Services Environment
8	The CSU Digital Marketplace

The implementation of each of the proposed initiatives will involve a combination of effort at both the campus level and at the system level. Indeed, the set of initiatives can be roughly divided into two categories for implementation planning, first, those initiatives that are largely campus-focused with system support, and second, those initiatives that are largely system-focused with campus support[1].

Initiatives Largely Campus-focused

Table 2 identifies the initiatives that will be largely implemented on the individual campuses.

Table 2: Campus-focused with System Support

Initiative Number	Initiative Title
1	Supporting Student Excellence and Success in the CSU
2	Technology-enhanced Teaching and Learning and Associated Support Services for Foundation Skills
3	Supporting Shared Development of Digital Learning Materials
5	Professional Development for Faculty, Staff, and Administrators Involved in Academic Technology
6	System Support for Academic Technology Development Teams

Most campuses have already made considerable progress in developing materials and services appropriate for these initiatives. Several campuses have developed degree-audit systems, on-line new student orientation programs, and on-line help services to support initiative 1. Many mixed-mode and on-line courses have been developed that will support initiatives 2 and 3. Most campuses have had academic technology professional development programs for faculty and staff in place for many years and most campuses provide some degree of staff support to faculty in developing technology-based courses and materials (initiatives 5 and 6).

However, the intent of these new initiatives is to provide system-level support to expand existing campus efforts by coordinating multi-campus, discipline-based projects to identify existing and develop new educational and development materials that can be shared with confidence within regions or across the system (initiatives 2, 3, and 5). The focus on common identification, development, and sharing can have a meaningful effect upon redesigning faculty workload.

The academic technology development teams envisioned in initiative 6 will exist on individual campuses. However, the system can support these campus efforts by developing guidelines for the composition of these teams including position descriptions for the range of skills required.

Initiatives Largely System-focused

Table 3 identifies the initiatives that are primarily system-focused.

Table 3: System-focused with Campus Support

Initiative Number	Initiative Title
1	Supporting Student Excellence and Success in the CSU
4	CSU Support for Research and Application of Effective Practices in Academic Technology
7	The Academic Technology Shared-Services Environment
8	The CSU Digital Marketplace

The initiatives in this category all require a high degree of coordination at the system-level. That is not to say that these initiatives must all be managed at the Chancellor’s Office; they could be implemented using a lead-campus approach. However, they tend to involve activities that must reasonably be standardized according to common formats or use common procedures or software (initiatives 1 and 7). They also include activities that should not be inefficiently reinvented or duplicated on each individual campus (initiatives 4 and 8).

Management of Initiatives

The distinction between campus-focused initiatives and system-focused initiatives has implications for the initiative implementation process. Management of the campus-focused initiatives will more likely occur through active individual campus leadership and organization. System support of campus-focused initiatives will be implemented through coordinating groups that will take a more passive role, responding to the needs and requests of campus leadership.

Management of system-focused initiatives will be more centralized, located either at the Chancellor’s Office or a lead campus. Sound organization for implementation of these initiatives will likely delegate lead responsibility to appropriate staff members working with advisory committees composed of relevant campus liaison personnel. These campus liaison personnel will have the responsibility for providing campus input for systemwide implementation decisions and for providing communication back to their campus constituencies about the initiative.

VI. Initiative Implementation Narratives

Initiative 1: Supporting Student Excellence and Success in the CSU

Project Focus: Mixed ‑ System-focused with System Support and Campus-focused with System Support

Initiative Description

This initiative intends to improve the means by which students interact with the university. It will combine several of the ideas generated by campus groups into an overall focus on facilitating the accessible and seamless use of the technologies in ways that contribute to a student's success throughout his or her university experience. This initiative will result in a complete range of services for prospective students, admission applicants, newly admitted students, currently enrolled students, and alumni. To the greatest extent possible, the projects in this initiative will be integrated into the Student Administration module of the Common Management System project.

Expected Campus Outcomes

1. Prospective students will have easy access to campus information regarding academic programs offered, admissions requirements, and steps to take to become eligible for admissions.

2. Applicants for admission will be able to apply on-line, trigger the submission of official transcripts and test scores, and receive much faster notifications of eligibility and admission.

3. Newly admitted transfer students will have precise information before they enroll as to which of their transfer credits have been accepted and how those credits will apply to their educational objective.

4. All newly admitted students will have on-line access to campus orientation materials to supplement the in-person orientation programs currently being offered on campus.

5. Enrolled students will have access to degree audit services that inform them of the progress made and requirements remaining for the completion of their educational objectives.

6. Academic advisors will have on-line access to student degree audit information so as to efficiently and effectively advise students in the completion of their educational objectives.

7. Enrolled students will have easy on-line access to campus information and to academic, student, and administrative support services.

8. Enrolled students will have anywhere, anytime on-line access to appropriate academic help services.

9. Enrolled students will have the ability to create electronic portfolios of their academic and creative work for use in their future academic or career lives.

Expected System Outcomes

1. Students will be able to proceed toward their educational objectives with as few institutional impediments as possible.

2. Student retention and graduation rates will improve.

3. Students will be able to complete their educational objectives with fewer unnecessary units in shorter periods of time thus providing greater access opportunities for new students.

4. Student satisfaction with their educational experience will increase.

Assessment of Outcomes

Many of these outcomes lend themselves to periodic assessment including retention and graduation rates, which should increase; total units completed at graduation, which should decline; time to degree for graduates, which should decline; and student satisfaction surveys, which should show improvements.

Proposed Projects

Admission Application Submission and Processing (System-focused with Campus Support)

This project already exists in the form of CSU Mentor. Mentor provides information to all levels of prospective applicants about CSU campuses, academic programs, admission requirements, and financial aid opportunities. It currently allows students to apply for admission and financial aid on-line. Since acceptance to many CSU admission categories is objective (e.g., first-time freshmen are admitted on a combination of high school grade point average and SAT or ACT score) this project should eventually implement automated application processing and admission notification.

Transfer Student Pre-admissions Advising and Course Articulation Audits (System-focused with Campus Support)

This project also currently exists as Project ASSIST. ASSIST is California’s official statewide repository of transfer information, offering easy access to a single database. ASSIST can help students determine if and how they will receive credit for courses completed. It should be expanded and supported to provide advising and course articulation audits for all inter-segmental and intra-segmental transfer possibilities within the state.

On-line Academic Advising Support and Degree Audit Services (Campus-focused with System Support)

As students progress through the university, these on-line services should be able to provide access to grades and transcripts. The same technical infrastructure used to create these on-line services for students would provide similar support services to faculty and administrators with responsibilities for advising students about program concentrations, course selection, and career choices. Degree audit capabilities will allow students and faculty advisors to quickly determine where a student is in his or her degree path and what remaining requirements need to be completed for graduation. Although the degree information will be campus-focused, these capabilities will largely be implemented through the Student Administration module of the PeopleSoft software used in CMS.

On-line New Student Orientation (Campus-focused with System Support)

One aspect of this project will address the special challenges of new and transfer students. An on-line orientation module will be developed. It will include the tools deemed necessary to ease the transition to higher education. These could range from providing maps and service guides, to electronic links to feeder high schools and community colleges, to helpful information for parents and families. The system can support this project by creating a template or framework of campus-specific orientation materials that could be provided.

On-line Access to Campus Information and Services (Campus-focused with System Support)

Once students are registered in the CSU, a campus-based on-line system will provide access to information and services. The on-line system will recognize the roles that an individual plays in the institution and will differentiate access to systems, programs, and information accordingly, as well as tailor the views based on the individual’s needs and role. The system should interface with the campus learning management system. Once again, the CSU system can support this project by developing a taxonomy of services that ideally should be included in a campus-based system.

On-line Help Services (Campus-focused with System Support)

In the 21^st century world of 24-hour, 7-day access to the Internet and on-line resources, help in using those resources must also be available 24 by 7. An important aspect of the Student Success initiative is creation of a 24 by 7 help-desk function. The goal of this service is to augment local campus help desk support by providing support on appropriate topics to students on campus and remotely on a 24 by 7 basis.

This aspect of the Student Success initiative would address the resources/staffing, “services/business model,” processes, infrastructure, and costs associated with providing high quality services to callers seeking assistance to be effective learners and to efficiently participate in their campus activities and processes on-line. This service would be coordinated and integrated with local campus support functions. While the scope of this project focuses on student support, the infrastructure created to support students should be integrated so that it can be used to support faculty and staff as well.

The project will enhance existing or traditional help-desk services because it will augment the services concept to:

· add a capability to address the “first tier” questions such as network access, software/hardware problems, and typical “forgot my password” issues that often overwhelm local help desks. The project will explore requirements to deliver capabilities, explicitly prescribed and pre-determined by faculty input, that assist students by logging and, where possible, acting on requests about faculty intent concerning course or syllabus requirements, the posting or delivering of assignments, or satisfying test or assignment requirements,

· support via web-posted Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs), supplemental documentation, or knowledge base, to provide a means for students to resolve on their own a substantial number of typical or recurring questions,

· create an effective, multi-tiered, regionalized, or systemwide delivery strategy for implementation, and

· design the means and processes to track context-based “troubles” using knowledge management tools and make this information available to support professionals and end users.

On-line Student Portfolio Services (Campus-focused with System Support)

Online tools for accessing and managing an electronic portfolio of the work the student accomplishes during his/her studies is also an important goal. This can be a marketing tool for the student as he or she seeks employment and/or admission to graduate school. A portfolio template could be created as a system effort to support this project. The systemwide evaluation and adoption of portfolio software should be explored.

Proposed Implementation Strategy

Management Structure for Implementation

Because the projects described in this initiative include both campus-focus and system-focus, a dual management structure will be necessary. A systemwide implementation group including appropriate technical and functional specialists should be created to manage the system-focused projects and to coordinate system-support for the campus-focused projects. In turn, each campus should establish a parallel implementation group to manage the campus-focused projects.

Constituent Group Involvement in Implementation Planning

Since this initiative deals with student success, the needs and desires of students must be foremost in the evolution of projects. Therefore, students must be actively involved in the system and campus implementation groups. Much of the implementation responsibility for these projects will be assigned to academic and student affairs administrators and their staffs. These key individuals must be involved in implementation planning as well. Since faculty have a key role in setting admissions requirements for impacted and graduate programs, and in advising students, their views need to be fully represented.

Priorities, Timelines, and Milestones

By virtue of the investments, system and campus, that have already been made, the projects focused around CSU Mentor, ASSIST, and the PeopleSoft degree audit module should receive the highest priority. These projects address areas of great need and, in most cases, have already demonstrated value. Campuses awaiting conversion to the PeopleSoft Student Administration software should continue to improve their existing degree audit capabilities. Campuses should set their priorities based upon the degree to which they are already engaged in one or more of these projects. Given the current state budget situation and the slim opportunities to provide new money for these projects, this initiative is likely to require several years for completion.

Anticipated Project Costs

These are projects that can carry hefty price tags for both development and operation. It is likely that this initiative if fully implemented could cost the CSU several million dollars per year. The CSU has made these investments in the past on system infrastructure. The full return on those past investments cannot be realized unless the CSU is willing and able to complete this initiative.

Current Resources Available

The Chancellor’s Office currently spends several hundred thousand dollars per year supporting CSU Mentor and ASSIST. The campuses also spend a comparable amount in supporting their projects related to student success. Where funds are currently earmarked for these projects, these commitments should be continued and expanded when possible. In addition, ways should be found to leverage current expenditures by sharing programs across campuses.