Top Ten IT Issues in 2009 (from EDUCAUSE Review)

Article Summary and Reaction Post for Discussion Forum
Diane Main
June 19, 2010

Agee, A.S., & Yang, C. (2009). Top-ten it issues, 2009. EDUCAUSE Review, 44(4), Retrieved from http://www.educause.edu/EDUCAUSE+Review/EDUCAUSEReviewMagazineVolume44/T...

The current economic climate has impacted every area of technology in higher education organizations, including most of the items found in the 2009 “top ten” issues:

1. Funding IT
2. Administrative/ERP Information Systems
3. Security
4. Infrastructure/Cyberinfrastructure
5. Teaching and Learning with Technology
6. Identity/Access Management
7. Governance, Organization, and Leadership
8. Disaster Recovery / Business Continuity
9. Agility, Adaptability, and Responsiveness
10. Learning Management Systems

Remarkably, in an effort to address these funds-related issues, solutions are being sought in the free and inexpensive alternatives already out there and being used by the masses: virtualization, cloud/grid computing, online collaboration, web-enabled educational experiences (including social networking and multi-user virtual environments like Second Life), mobile devices such as smart phones, and partnerships with external organizations that can provide services higher education might currently lack. In seeking to make education more cost-effective, other issues come into play, such as security and how best to use resources available for teaching and learning.

Recent years have also seen a number of issues in current events whose impact has trickled down into the concerns of technology in higher education. Disasters of all kinds and huge changes in how businesses and governments do things, often in response to human-caused disasters such as white-collar crime here at home and ethnic warfare abroad, now dictate that systems within higher education must be flexible and adaptable under such pressures from without. Institutions of higher learning can’t afford to be naïve and pretend there aren’t a plethora of problems to be faced in the “real world.” Not only must the content of their coursework match the expectations of the outside, but the methods of delivery need to keep pace as well.

Rounding out the top ten, therefore, we see a discussion of Learning Management Systems. No longer functioning solely as course content management systems, these programs need to function as entire suites of tools that can be customized not just by instructors but also by their students. These systems need to be able to roll with changes on the horizon with regard to student-centered learning that does not look the same for all learners.

The article concludes with an overview of ten years’ worth of survey results by EDUCAUSE, including a summary of trends and changes in these areas over the past decade. The issue of funding IT has always figured largely in these survey results as being a major factor in decisions made in higher education technology, and it does not appear to be going away any time soon.