Recent library resources from EDUCAUSE CONNECT.

• Community Dialogue: Best Practices, Emerging Trends, and Views of the Future - Sponsored by S1 IT Solutions

Our closing session will bring together four panelists, each focusing on one of the four track topics. They will summarize key takeaways from the sessions presented throughout the conference and what these mean for our profession and the community. They will bring out what is emerging and what has become best or commonly accepted practice. What is occurring at the edges is central to our institutions. Join us to actively engage with the panelists for this closing dialogue.


• Delivering Online Course Reserves in All Formats: A Story of Successful Collaboration

Brown University has developed an open-source course reserves management system that allows faculty to submit, track, and edit requests for all formats. The system is integrated with MyCourses (Blackboard), incorporates copyright checks, and uses the library's context-sensitive linking application to channel requests to library-licensed, full-text resources.


• How to Increase Student Engagement While Reducing IT Costs with New Collaboration Platforms

The University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Zimbra will discuss how next-generation collaboration tools are reshaping the UWM campus by integrated students and faculty into one cost-effective community platform. This presentation will delve into new trends and what students want, explore how new e-mail and collaboration tools benefit campuses, and feature an interactive Q&A session.


• The Power of Two: Providing Exceptional Information Technology Services Through Shared Responsibility

Oakland University, a midsized public university with approximately 18,000 students, successfully divides responsibility for IT service and support between centralized and divisional/college support groups. By using this collaborative approach, the university has been able to deliver high levels of customer service and technology at lower organizational budget and staff costs than are typically found at institutions of the same size with other models. This presentation will explore the successes, challenges, and surprises of collaboration in a distributed IT environment and will focus on the techniques and tactics that have produced the greatest benefits in this model.


• The Student Toolkit: Leveraging Web 2.0 Applications for Student Use

Faculty can be easily overwhelmed by new technology. This session will focus on technologies that faculty don't have to master but can direct students to use themselves.


• Centralized and Decentralized Aspects of Support Environments: A Comparison of Two Universities

Illinois State University and the University of Memphis use centralized help desks and decentralized support units as part of their technical support infrastructures. The presenters, who represent the centralized help desk at Illinois State University and a decentralized support unit at the University of Memphis, will compare and contrast their support organizations, identify strengths and weaknesses of the decentralized support model from their perspectives, and note lessons learned from their experiences.


• Defining an IT Workflow, from Request to Support

A large IT department composed of many units has inherent challenges in communication and coordination as customer requests are handled. This presentation will describe the process used by Miami University in attempting to define the proper steps as well as include a review of the resulting "IT workflow" steps.


• Seminar01: Building a Blueprint: Net Gen Students, Web 2.0, and the Future of Learning
  PLEASE NOTE: Separate registration and fee are required to attend this seminar.

Today's students, shaped by a lifetime of technological innovation, are increasingly different from the faculty who will teach them. How can we leverage todays technologiesfrom wikis and blogs to social networks and cyberinfrastructureto better serve their needs? In this interactive workshop, well use the student voice and our own knowledge of learning and learning technologies to construct a blueprint of what the future might look like. Can we create borderless classrooms where students work together to solve complex problems? Are there opportunities for knowledge sharing inside a lecture? How can we teach critical thinking? Together, we'll build new models for learning that test these questions and stimulate our imaginations.