Underutilized in higher education, soft systems thinking can mitigate common challenges in implementing instructional design and technology initiatives. A valuable approach is soft systems methodology (SSM), which captures multiple stakeholder perspectives in rich pictures and activity models to support structured conversations about how to…

Two broad ideas emerge from reflections on my career in global and international education: first, that my "lived experience" offers both intelligence and ignorance in terms of how I view the world; and second, that the essence of my humanity is enhanced through my identification with and sense of responsibility for fellow humans. The…

The board of Fiserv (an investment management company) has already decided to close the business no matter what. Agile Financials has agreed to buyout Fiserv and retain part of the Fiserv staff if the purchase deal closes. However, if too many of Fiserv's clients left with their accounts or if the customer satisfaction index (CSI) continued to…

Education ecology is a new crossover research field in network age. Its research content can be either microscopic classroom teaching or macro educational ecology research on teaching and culture. The university music classroom is a special kind of ecology. The reason why this is special is that compared to natural ecology, the classroom ecology…

Multi-campus public higher education governance systems exist in 44 of the 50 U.S. states. They include all the largest and most influential public colleges and universities in the United States, educating fully 75 percent of the nation's public sector students. Their impact is enormous. And yet, they are largely neglected and as a tool for…

The focus of Thematic Working Group 1 at EDUsummIT 2017 centred on the need for alignment in education systems and was driven by two key questions relating to (a) if and how all the parts of an education system work together to support the type of learning envisioned in the twenty-first century, and (b) if there is alignment, what is the…

This report presents an innovative approach for higher education institutions to better support students from diverse backgrounds. It explores how colleges and universities can fulfill a student success agenda through the creation of a diverse infrastructure that enables the overall institution to effectively mobilize to serve diverse student…

In recent years, there has been a tremendous increase in the popularity of distance education among higher-education administrators. Students in growing numbers are also taking advantage of the flexibility and accessibility that distance education offers. This growth, however, has been a mixed blessing since it derives from using the Internet…

The routine jobs of yesterday are being replaced by technology and/or shipped off-shore. In their place, job categories that require knowledge management, abstract reasoning, and personal services seem to be growing. The modern workplace requires workers to have broad cognitive and affective skills. Often referred to as "21st century…

The central argument of the article is that while the building, the collection and the staff were inseparably linked, in a digital environment these facets of the library are diverging. This divergence clouds the process of envisioning a future for the library, but, if properly defined, it is a source of clarity, which sheds light on strategic…

In this article, the author discusses the important relationship between robust technical and human systems when face with emergency. It offers several strategies as essential to reacting effectively to a crisis. When a crisis occurs, it is critical that the administration provide the appropriate information as fast as possible to the people who…

This paper presents a new laboratory-based module for embedded systems teaching, which addresses the current lack of consideration for the link between hardware development, software implementation, course content and student evaluation in a laboratory environment. The course introduces second year undergraduate students to the interface between…

Each year, the members of the EDUCAUSE Evolving Technologies Committee identify and research the evolving technologies that are having--or are predicted to have--the most direct impact on higher education institutions. The committee members choose the relevant topics, write white papers, and present their findings at the EDUCAUSE annual…

The rapid evolution of System-on-Chip (SoC) challenges academic curricula to keep pace with multidisciplinary/interdisciplinary system thinking. This paper presents a curricular prototype that cuts across artificial course boundaries and provides a meaningful exploration of diverse facets of SoC design. Specifically, experimental contents of a…

Informatics is a branch of computer science that concerns itself, in actuality, with the use of information systems. The objective of this paper is to focus on the business curriculum for graduate students and their gaining proficiency in informatics so that they can understand the concept of information, the access of information, the use of…