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According to Patton, human resource departments tend to be one of the last areas within higher education to adopt new technologies. Over the past few years vendors have begun developing new products based on college and university needs, especially in the human resource area.  Most human resource departments have an enterprise resource planning system (ERP) or a Human Resource Information System (HRIS), which is used in conjunction with compatible, or sometimes not-compatible, vendor services. SunGard continues to offer more and more human resource services, including an effort certification system, which monitors and collects data on how many hours certain employees are spending on research, if their salary is paid through a grant. In the mid 2010s, SunGard and PeopleSoft partnered to create an applicant tracking system that offered three programs in one: a position description model, a performance management module, and an applicant-tracking model. While some improvements have been made, human resource departments need to embrace the new technologies, and utilize the offered services in the front of the office, as well as the back. Most of the examples within the article are large, state universities, such as Florida Atlantic University, Oklahoma City Community College, and the University of Utah. Duke University is mentioned, however, Duke is a large, elite university with more financial resources than most other private institutions. The question remaining is if the cost of human resource modules are justified at smaller institutions? Hopefully the future will bring options to colleges and universities with a few hundred employees, rather than a thousand. 

This authorless opinion article from the Chronicle of Higher Education is a report on the technologies that enhance student-learning process in 16 Higher Colleges of Technology (HCT). The colleges employ the use of many advance technologies to foster student independence and the development of life-long skills. Rather than rely on just online course, these HCT's employ the use online learning tools and classroom technology to offer more than 3000 online courses, and other ICT applications such as online social networks, podcasts and management systems. The article furnishes a list of the major applications ranging from online learning tools and management systems, to anti-plagiarism and social book-marking applications. Classroom technologies include smart boards, virtual classroom applications, touchscreen computers, cameras and streaming servers. Strengthening the utilization of innovative technologies to strengthen teaching and learning are technology departments in each of the colleges. The intended audience of this article is the higher education community.

Ben Showers, the author, admits to keeping the projections optimistic, and avoiding the issues of privacy, protection, and data shadow.The article describes five changes to mobile technology that will influence higher education into the future. The first change is mobile devices as a platform for learning and courses. Currently, mobile applications are more of a stepping-stone to larger course-management sites. In the future, students will desire actual learning platforms on their mobile device. The second change focuses on mobile realities. Augmented reality on mobile devices now allows the digital world to overlap with the real, physical world. Higher education institutions are able to use these new augmented reality technologies to aid students in find resources and information on-campus. The third mobile technology to affect higher education is mobile form. In the future, mobile devices will become more personalized and much smaller. As devices are created within glasses, earpieces, and sensors, higher education will have to adapt to those changes. Mobile scales are the fourth change to mobile technology Showers highlights. Large universities will have the ability to personalize each student's experience, offering an educational concierge service never before imagined. Finally, mobile disconnectedness will influence higher education. As students' lives become infiltrated with information via mobile devices, using the Internet, campuses should offer wifi coldspots. Wifi coldspots will offer students and faculty an opportunity to detach from the online work, taking a break from the academic world. 

The article gives a basic explanation of a few useful technologies to be used within an academic setting. First, a case is built for how technology can increase engagement and learning within the classroom, whether on-ground or online. Then the use of the internet, cloud computing, and multimedia are described. The authors highlight audio (podcasts and live chats), video (simulations, films, streamed videos, and screencasts), and blogging as multimedia options to be added to the classroom. In addition to multimedia, classroom learning can occur in a more mobile fashion. Many of the previous methods mentioned are use on desktop, laptops, and tablets. More and more students are utilizing their smartphones to access academic information. BlackBoard and eCollege both offer smartphone applications, which allow students and professors to access their course management sites through their phones. iPads are mentioned, but academic uses for these devices are yet to be determined. Finally, some institutions are offering degrees through Facebook, the social networking site. The Global MBA and The University of Whales in England, both offer MBAs through courses taught using Facebook. The article nicely summarizes a few technologies to be used within the classroom to enhance the students' experience. While the list is limited, and already out of date a few months after publication, the notion of using technology in the classroom to create a more dynamic experience is conveyed. The conclusion is a call for more research and study into making technology more effective within the classroom. 

Marla Clark, an editor at EdTech magazine, covers the four most effective, and highest in priority, IT investments in the United States in 2012. Clark uses data from a variety of IT surveys, collecting information from more than 550 college and university IT administrators. The intended audience is anyone interested in technologies influencing higher education. The first technology described is the mobile application. More than 60% of the campuses participating in the survey embrace mobility within their IT structure. Public universities lead with more than 77% offering mobile apps in connection with the institution, with private schools at 67%. The second efficient technology is cloud adoption. While many colleges and universities have been slow to transition to cloud technologies, those that have, are utilizing the options more fully. Now institutions are moving calendars and learning management systems to the cloud, instead of just storage and archival materials. Integration of IT into classroom/course instruction is the third item on top of colleges and universities' priority list. 74% of the institutions participating in the survey indicated curriculum integration is a top priority for the next few years. Finally, almost exactly half of the colleges and universities surveyed believe massive open online courses are a viable course delivery module. Of the 50% that look favorably on massive open online classes, more than 60% are unsure of how to earn revenue using the technology.

This video was posted by Illinois worknet to acquaint education stakeholders with some of the technological advances being developed to address the challenges currently facing higher education. The short comings of what is available today include inability to support personalized learning; lack of educators skilled in the application of technological tools; constantly changing products; adaptability, appropriateness and validity issues; cost; and meeting sate standards. Technologies are now being designed and produced, to address those shortcomings by providing opportunities for personalized and student-centered learning experiences that are engaging, meet individual student needs, convenience, learning pace, and combine both online learning and face-to-face interaction. These hybrid models are being created in the short, mid and long-term horizon. Right now students have access to countless free applications. In two to three years, the article predicts that there will be an increase of learning analytics that collect and translate large amounts of data, as well as personalize the learning environment. In four to five years, it is expected that there will be gesture based computing and the Internet of things. The Learning Registry (LR) and the Shared Learning Collaborative (SLC) are technologies being developed to provide effective learning tools that provide filters for finding, interpreting, organizing and retrieving data. While the LR is currently in use, the SLR is in its pilot phase, and was introduced to five schools in the United States. The ultimate goal of these technologies is to use learning analytics that use rich data streams to inform and create personalized learning experiences and pathways.

MIT - center for information systems research research. Some interesting topics on governance of IT in systems. Some good policy application.

TEDI - teaching and educational development institute in Australia. Interesting resource connecting instruction to technology application. Unique perspective - more out-of-the box stuff.

interesting global perspective (maybe for AA).

Gordon Friedman, president of the non-profit National Laboratory for Education Transformation, employs metaphoric prose to portray the relationship between technological advances and faculty inertia that has hindered the advancement of higher education into the twenty first century. He uses the term cloud to refer to the virtual, server-based world, and fog to depict the technological apathy and bureaucratic red taped nature of higher education that refuses to tap into the data mine available through technological systems. The cloud offers a transparent and cost effective way to systemize institutional operations. Friedman clarifies that what he advocates is not mindless extrapolation of data, but rather a shift to embrace the reality of twenty-first century students, who exist in a world where their personal data is captured by the various web applications they routinely patronize. Unlike these applications that use captured data to construct the essence of their customers, higher education remains an impersonal enterprise that does not utilize the existing data to design a more personal learning process. To Friedman, online courses, digital curricula components and apps are not sufficient, because unlike the cloud, information flow is one directional. This article is directed at higher education institutions. To lift the fog, Friedman states that colleges ought to adopt three principles of the cloud namely: identity formation and management whereby students develop a sense of ownership through the maintenance of their own identities; social networks and learning communities where learning is student centered and self paced; and data mining and assessment faculty collect and use student data to monitor the teaching and learning process.

Brad Jennings, a Louisburg College employee, and education technology enthusiast, created a video on how to use the Open Learning Initiative. The video is targeted towards higher education instructors and educating faculty members in incorporating the Open Learning Initiative in their courses. The Open Learning Initiative assists students in learning course material through an online site, collecting data on student learning styles, and adapting how information is presented for each student. The courses are self-paced and allow students to master material at their own speed. Jennings navigates the Open Learning Initiative website, explaining the three log-in options: instructors, independent learners, and academic students. An instructor can create an account, and then log-in to create online courses for free. There may be small maintenance fees associated with a few select classes, but the Open Learning Initiative team offers to waive the cost if it prevents a student from enrolling. The additional costs are typically $10 to $15. The instructor would download the Course Builder application, build their course, and house it on the Open Learning Initiative cloud for free. Once the course has been created, students can log on to the Open Learning Initiative site and enter the course key to view the material. 

Malcolm Read talks about the benefits of collaboration not just on higher education community, but on information and communications technology (ICT) community as well. He also highlights the role of the virtual environment in enhancing collaborative research, and the impact of cloud technology on research, teaching and learning, and higher education management. ICT infrastructure has benefitted from the growth of collaboration research, facilitated by the World Wide Web. The usage of the virtual environment for virtual research has not been without its challenges, one being that the technology tools and applications usually require specialist support, and has high overhead costs, which are usually borne by the researchers themselves. Read argues that it is time for a new profession of research technologists to emerge with the skills to support collaborative research, identify generic approaches within the field of research, provide the required training, and provide maintenance of related infrastructures. Another alternative would be to heighten the professionalization of personnel who service the e-learning environment. On cloud computing, Read believes that the wealth of information available through the cloud is a valuable resource to administrative computing in the sense that it offers a cheaper data storage option. Of course one of the most obvious benefits of the cloud, is that it offers access to web 2.0 operations such as blogs, wikki and of course emails. The way each institution uses cloud technology however, will differ according to their individual needs, a point that should be taken into consideration if an organization should opt to design processes in collaboration with other institutions. Read sees virtualization as a solution to the problem because it can be used on any single computer, to run different applications, making it shareable between institutions. One concern here however is that of data security and duration of service. The crux of th

The authors of this article work for the Center for Teaching, Learning, & Technology at Washington State University. They looked at learning management systems and how currently they do not accurately capture what students have learned. Both authors discovered that the majority of assignments that make up students' experience with the higher education curriculum do not ask them to think, but to recall lectures, text, or both, which may be why LMS are designed to reflect this idea. They examine the concept and perception of a learning environment from the classroom to the internet and their relationship to views of teaching and learning. Examples and research, including an example of a Web 2.0 pro-social effort, are used to demonstrate the difference between the current state of teaching and learning, and an emerging vision. The authors refer to Educause Center for Applied Research, Morgan's (2003) study. Morgan reports, faculty were gaining, at least one key principle of good practice from LMS, increased feedback to students (Chickering & Gamson, 1987) through the use of the online gradebook. According to Morgan (as cited by Brown and Peterson, 2008) this was an outcome that "alters" faculty relationships with students and students with their own work. The authors predict that the successful LMS application of the future will be a gradebook that accommodates shifting ways of receiving feedback. The authors believe that a successful gradebook will be recognized as a communication tool that allows faculty and students to have a variety of communication options (faculty to student, faculty to groups of students, etc.). They point to the instructional challenge of guiding the tool discussion toward issues related to outcomes and what quality performance looks like. The authors refer to the LMS of the future capturing not in our learning about, but in learning "to be". Faculty are seeking a place for students to learn and operate which complements student im

Garnet, Inc. is an internationally recognized leader in information technology and high tech industries. Their team of researchers and consultants are widely known and accepted for their thought leadership and advice in the private business sector and in higher education. Often, insight from Gartner is considered when making strategic plans for an organization where IT plays an essential role. An annual report on IT issues provides a hit list of topics for CIOs to consider. The Gartner report can be used alongside industry reports from EDUCAUSE and the New Media Consortium to help decision makers understand emerging technology. In this 2014 report, Gartner analysts report on Mobile technology inclusive of both devices and applications (apps); cloud technology, including software as a service (SaaS) models and vendors; and intelligent machines and "the Internet of things", a reference not only to the ubiquitous Internet but also a growing realm of "smart" devices and appliances connected to people via the web.

The New York Times dubbed 2012 "the year of the MOOC" and throughout 2013 universities and colleges of every size and shape scrambled to make sense of the phenomena of massive open online courses (MOOC). Some institutions gambled big on MOOCs, thinking that the massive online format would ease crowded classrooms and cut down the cost of paying faculty (adjunct and otherwise) to teach hundreds of students the same required content. San Jose State was one such institution, taking the risk of placing freshmen into a MOOC for a basic math course, a project which had disastrous results. In this article, Georgia Tech explains how they intend to continue applying MOOCs to solve campus problems, citing the San Jose State case as an example of what not to do. GA Tech announced in 2013 that they were going to offer a master's degree via MOOC, one of the first credit bearing MOOC-to-degree programs in the country. While MOOC interest has waned since the start of 2014, GA tech continues their work, with a waiting list of applicants ready to jump into the next MOOC-to-degree cohort. This articles serves as an example of managing emerging technology and GA Tech leadership is a group of individuals to monitor as the next few years roll out. Does the program continue? Do graduates succeed? Can the school sustain the program? Does the school launch addition programs following that model? Do other schools make a similar attempt? Any research that comes of the GA Tech endeavor will be interesting.

This blog post can be viewed as a supporting material to aid a reader in understanding the 2014 Horizon Report. Blog authors at Columbia's Center for New media Teaching and Learning review the Horizon Report and summarize its findings along with thoughts for application at Columbia. This summary of the report and insight from a prestigious university may aid a researcher in understanding perspectives on emerging technologies. The value here is in the author's perspective as an educational technology professional who manages campus technology and partners with faculty in adopting emerging tools and resources. He includes examples of past experience in technology adoption alongside thoughts about Columbia's opportunities to adopt new tools. For example, he describes the challenges associated with hybrid and flipped model teaching in response to the Horizon Report's concern for adoption and adaptation to emerging models and technology.

This research study was carried out by Julia Matuga of Bowling Green University in Ohio, to discover the relationship between self-regulation, goal orientation, and academic achievement of high school students enrolled in online college courses? Many United States secondary schools require their students to take at least one university online course before graduation and to capitalize on funding opportunities, many universities offer high school students access to their online courses. For this study, 43 high achieving high school students applied and were selected to take one online science course at Bowling Green University. The students were examined to record any changes in motivation, goal orientation and self-regulation while they took the online courses. Data collection methods used for the study were pre and post-tests, students application essays, focus group meetings, self-evaluations at the end of the courses and a Motivation Strategies for Learning Questionnaire (MSLQ) given at the beginning and the end of the program. 42 students completed the program and all but two of them passed the online course. From the results, they were classified into high achieving, average, and low achieving students. The results revealed that low achieving students recorded the highest self-regulatory scores while the scores for high and average-achieving students fell. The high achieving students had the highest motivation subscale mean scores before and after taking the online courses. The study concluded that while the question of how online learning environment impacts motivation, self-regulation and student achievement is still being investigated, the study is still recommended as a model for higher education online programs seeking to attract high school students. As online programs gain popularity, student learning will need to be supported and this study might offer a foundation for future research.

educause quarterly journal top ten IT challenges of 2000

This article written by Jennifer Natsu, is focused on the way learning trends have shifted to accommodate the learning styles and preferences of the present generation of students. Twenty-first century students live a connected world where they constantly communicate and share experiences through applications such as Facebook, twitter etc. Many colleges have noticeably adapted their pedagogic methods to accommodate these trends by using similar technologies to engage students. Duke University for instance, uses a "virtual hall" to engage in conversations with students in other parts of the world as well as CEOs. Harvard physics students adopt a discussion model, facilitated by small groups. This in essence, is the face the new age of education where passive learning is being replaced by more dynamic models of teaching and learning. Jennifer Natsu is a frequent contributor to e-campus news, reporting on developments in higher education.