Top Strategic Tech And IT Issues Facing Your Higher Education IT Clients
By Christine Kern, contributing writer
In this infographic, Educause highlights the top 10 strategic tech and IT issues currently facing education campuses. Based on the most recent annual studies of the “Top 10 Strategic Technologies” and “Top 10 IT Issues” for higher education, the infographic brings together critical information that provides insight into these issues. The report provides a look at planned investments and innovations for 2015. While the IT report is designed to help institutions recalibrate their IT-related activities and drive strategic planning for the future, it can also provide information and direction for IT solutions providers serving education clients.
The key takeaway from this year’s reports is, not surprisingly, that higher education is facing a widening technology adoption gap.
The infographic divides the top 10 IT issues into three categories.In the first category, “Inflection Point,” things that cause fundamental shifts in business strategy, Educause lists evolving staffing models, including recruitment, retention, and training; increasing IT’s capacity for change; developing enterprise IT architecture; and balancing information security and openness.
In the second category, “Bridging the Gap Between Technical and Business,” are optimizing technology in teaching and learning; funding IT strategically; improving student outcomes; and demonstrating IT’s business value.
And in the final category, “The New Normal,” Educause places higher education’s need to provide user support in mobile, online education, cloud, and BYOD (bring your own device) environments, and developing mobile, cloud, and digital security policies.
In addition, campuses are facing choices when it comes to the top strategic technologies. The top 10 list for 2015 follows:
- Business intelligence/reporting dashboards
- Mobile app development (HTML5, responsive design, etc.)
- Mobile apps for enterprise applications
- Administrative/business performance analytics
- 802.11ac wireless networking standard
- Enterprise identity and access management solutions
- Incorporation of mobile devices in teaching and learning,
- Mobile data protection
- Unified communications and collaboration.
- Mobile apps for teaching and learning.
And among the up-and-coming technologies most commonly tracked by institutions are adaptive learning, e-textbooks, mobile data protection, course-level analytics, the Internet of Things, open ed resources, next-generation LMS (learning management systems), private cloud computing, IT risk management automation, and hybrid cloud computing.