Higher education, is entering a period in which it is the "connections" between everything and everyone that are of importance. This development is most conspicuous in teaching and learning and is enabled by information technology, social media, and mobile devices. This advent of "connected learning" is having an impact on all…

The EDUCAUSE Awards Program, under the guidance of the EDUCAUSE Recognition Committee, has announced the three 2012 winners who are recognized for their peer endorsement and distinction to professional accomplishments in higher education information technology. Winner Melissa Woo is recognized as a strong leader and one who is expected to achieve…

While recognizing that digital access is not evenly distributed in the United States, which is to say nothing of the global distribution, one can safely say that this transformation is already here; people are already at the moment in which the ability to use social media, and particularly social media as amplified through the power of the mobile…

Mobile use of the Internet is on target to surpass fixed use by 2014. Three-fourths of all college/university students have purchased or intend to purchase an Internet-enabled handheld device within the next year. The smartphone market is changing almost monthly. Attempting to manage even just one or a few "devices" is becoming a lost…

One of the great ironies for those who are in higher education information technology is that, in the coming years, doing the best-possible job for their institutions will mean finding the optimal ways to replace their function with outside services. In other words, a critical part of their job will be to outsource themselves as effectively as…

In the past several years, a series of influential conversations has elevated the importance of place, of space, of design principles, and of learning in the evolving IT infrastructure of higher education. Today, the impact of emerging technologies, diverse learners, strategic campus issues, new course design methods, and recent findings in…

As the second decade of the public Internet reveals a desire for immediate access to greater certitude, CIOs and other campus leaders have an opportunity to rethink how questions find answers that are good enough or quick enough for the context of need. (Contains 5 figures, 1 table and 6 notes.)

Defines middleware, often called the "glue" that makes the elements of the cyberinfrastructure work together. Discusses how the National Science Foundation (NSF) Middleware Initiative (NMI) is consolidating expertise, software, and technology to address the critical and ubiquitous middleware issues facing research and education today.…

In this article, the author relates the big role of computers in his life as a writer. The author narrates that he has been using a computer for nearly twenty years now. He relates that computers has set his writing free. When he started writing, he was just using an electric typewriter. He also relates that his romance with computers is also a…

Describes nine patterns evident in the changes that information technology is bringing to education, then discusses the characteristics of higher education's "new academy." (EV)

Once upon a time, there was the mainframe. Only a handful of applications were available on this great big computer. A few hearty users took advantage of these applications, often accessing them one at a time. Folks generally did not expect to use any application with another. Why would they? Now, of course, the world is very different. College…

A year ago, my colleague Charles Grisham and I wrote an EDUCAUSE Review article entitled "Why IT Has Not Paid Off As We Hoped (Yet)." In short, we argued that information technology has not yet transformed higher education because the areas of teaching and scholarship, the "heart" of colleges and universities, have remained relatively untouched by…

Have you ever heard, "If we could just find a good CIO, these problems would go away"? Certainly, having a strong and wise leader at the top of the IT organization is important; however, having such a person is not sufficient to effectively integrate IT into a key part of the institutional strategy. In a number of recent EDUCAUSE Review articles,…

Much has been written recently about the Net Generation--the generation (roughly twelve to twenty-five years old) that makes up the majority of students attending U.S. colleges and universities--but relatively little attention has been given to the college and university faculty who teach them. Faculty roles and the processes of teaching and…

Open source software projects involve the production of goods, but in software projects, the "goods" consist of information. The open source model is an alternative to the conventional centralized, command-and-control way in which things are usually made. In contrast, open source projects are genuinely decentralized and transparent. Transparent…