On September 4 2010, a massive 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck the Canterbury region in the South Island of New Zealand. The response from the University of Canterbury was immediate and carefully co-ordinated, with the university's web-based environment and a responsive site developed on the social media platform "Facebook" becoming…

Two decades ago, many campuses mobilized a major effort to deal with a clear problem; faculty and students needed access to desktop computing technologies. Now the situation is much more complex. Responding to the current challenges, like mobile computing and social networking, will be ore difficult but equally important. There is a clear need for…

This article investigates the relationship between policy (conceptualised as goals, values and resources), organisational culture and e-learning use. Through both qualitative and quantitative research methods, we gathered data about staff and student perspectives from four diverse South African universities representing a selection of ICT in…

Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate the need for managers of public universities to pay attention to performance management practices and information communication technology (ICT) adoption in order to achieve successful managed performance. Design/methodology/approach: Using a disproportionate stratified purposive approach, a…

Do campus IT departments harm higher education? Wall Street Journal personal-technology columnist Walt Mossberg suggested as much during a speech he gave to high-level administrators at last June's Chronicle of Higher Education presidents' forum. Mossberg caught the attention of campus CIOs when, according to the Chronicle, he described large IT…

This article describes electronic board portals and how they can contribute to the efficiency of the functioning board in delivering timely information for decision making. The electronic board portals are provider-hosted services that allow those who prepare board materials to organize and place on the Web a secure version of board packets, with…

Discusses the shifting focus regarding information technology in higher education from technology itself toward the people and business processes connected with it. Describes the University of California's efforts toward a new business architecture, and an Educause-sponsored forum on e-business discussing the same themes. Offers discussion of the…

Explores the influence of information and communications technology (ICT) infrastructure changes on higher education. Addresses issues such as ICT hardware, networks, and leadership and skills; budgets; policy (including access to information, information privacy, information security, and ownership of faculty course materials); changes in…

In the spring of 2005, the author, the retiring president of EDUCAUSE, was asked to be the keynote speaker at the EDUCAUSE Western Regional Conference. The conference theme was "Winds of Change: Charting the Course for Technology in Challenging Times." What that brought to his mind was the era of the great sailing ships of the eighteenth and…

Universities are quickly moving from brick and mortar toward online classroom settings. The online setting provides students with increased accessibility and flexibility to attend classes they would normally be unable to attend. Unfortunately, for those students who never attend classes on campus, many campus resources are not accessible. Students…

The widespread deployment and use of Information Technologies (IT) has paved the way for change in many fields of our societies. The Internet, mobile computing, social networks and many other advances in human communications have become essential to promote and boost education, technology and industry. On the education side, the new challenges…