Nowadays, instructional technology has never had more widespread acceptance or stronger national interest. However, while institutions are investing large sums of money on instructional technologies and staff, most of them do not have a senior-level position dedicated exclusively to provide leadership, direction, and accountability for the…

There's no question that in airports, train stations, and student unions alike, digital signage solutions have become efficient and effective ways of communicating important information directly to broad bases of users. The solutions are affordable; they're eco-friendly; and they're growing in popularity every year. Still, particularly in the…

When it comes to building and maintaining a cutting-edge infrastructure on a limited budget, nobody knows more about the pain points, challenges, and workarounds than the IT professionals tasked with overseeing campus IT. In a recent roundtable discussion with "Campus Technology" contributing writer Charlene O'Hanlon, four IT…

Purpose: Educational technologists make significant contributions to the development, organisational embedding and service provision of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environments, which are key enablers for mass access to flexible higher education (HE). Given the increasing centrality of this role, it is advocated that institutions…

As India marches rapidly towards an ambitious agenda of economic and social advancement, one of the greatest challenges it faces is to provide extensive access to quality higher education opportunities. An evident and expanding Open Education Resources movement offers great promise for meeting this challenge through initiatives that make quality…

It's official: Online social networking is mainstream. Once the domain of teenagers and techno-geeks, sites like Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, and Twitter are rapidly gaining popularity with the multi-aged masses. Last year, in fact, Facebook reported its fastest growing demographic was those 25 years and older. There's no question that this new…

In this article, the author offers six best practices for physical and data security convergence. These are: (1) assess the cable plant; (2) choose wisely; (3) be patient; (4) engineer for high availability; (5) test the converged network to make sure it works; and (6) don't forget the humans.

The increasing demand for online courses requires efficient and low cost production. Since the decision to develop online courses is often affected by financial factors, it is becoming increasingly important to determine, upfront, the cost of online course production. Many of the programs and educators interested in developing online courses…

Conventional and hosted applications thrive, but open source ERP (enterprise resource planning) is coming on strong. In many ways, the evolution of the ERP market is littered with ironies. When Oracle began buying up customer relationship management (CRM) and ERP companies, some universities worried that they would be left with fewer choices and…

The changes in the environment of higher education related to globalization, immigration, rising social-economic inequality, the knowledge economy and cultural identity (Benjamin, 2003; Collis, 2003) are requiring institutions to make some basic strategic choices. One of these decisions is the extent to which institutions of higher education will…

The goal of this article is to draw a roadmap for designing an "ideal" virtual world for higher education, pointing decision-makers in a general direction for implementing virtual worlds and noting various barriers along the way. When using a roadmap, one can take many different paths to reach a desired destination. Similarly, institutions can…

This research explores the role of "advancement-enabling" technology in helping institutions meet their development and alumni relations goals. It includes data on how technology is being used, barriers to effective use of technology, and strategies for effective deployment of technology. The report is based on data provided by 357…

Everyone seems to have a different definition for "Web 2.0," but most people agree the phrase describes a second generation of web-based communities and hosted services that aim to facilitate creativity, collaboration, and sharing between users. Technically speaking, these new technologies include blogs, wikis, folksonomies…

There's no silver bullet to information security; universities must continue to keep their antivirus, anti-spyware, firewall, and patch management systems in good working order. These days, the largest target for hackers appears to be university databases. Now, universities are searching for new solutions to safeguard those systems. This article…

Digital lecture capture and broadcast solutions have been around for only about 10 years, but are poised for healthy growth. Frost & Sullivan research analysts estimate that the market (which amounts to $25 million currently) will quadruple by 2013. It's still dominated by a few key players, however: Sonic Foundry holds a hefty 40 percent-plus…