One of the truisms about computers is that they're difficult. Despite the fact that the PC Revolution is now well into its third decade and the continuing improvements in the user friendliness of PCs and Macs, printers and scanners, and software and the Internet, using a personal computer can still be a hair-raising experience. This is…

For largely historical reasons, information and communication technology in education has been heavily influenced by a form of constructivism based on the transmission and transformation of information. This approach has implications for both learning and teaching in the field. The assumptions underlying the approach are explored and a critique…

There is growing recognition that the economic climate of the world is shifting towards a knowledge-based economy where knowledge will be cherished as the most prized asset. In this regard, technology can be leveraged as a useful tool in effectually managing the knowledge capital of an organisation. Although several research studies have advanced…

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,…

Geographers are fully engaged in the debate surrounding the impact of new information and communication technologies (ICT) and there has been a proliferation of research on the impact of ICT on geographical education. This includes analyses of how ICT may affect geographical learning paradigms (Hill & Solem, 1999; Rich et al., 2000; Solem, 2000)…

Connecting the debates in social theory with examples from recent advertising that draw on meanings and images of children, this chapter shows how some recent representations of childhood that engage explicitly with new information technologies are forms of economically invested socialization, precisely through their subscription to changing…

The author of this article describes the central IT structure of her institution, the University of Wisconsin at Madison. Based on her experiences, she observes that building and maintaining a community of support that spans the central IT organization and the distributed IT support providers presents real challenges. As such, she believes that…

In the wake of Hurricane Katrina, organizations are reexamining their strategies for ensuring the continuity of their core operations. Business continuity has become a focus for higher education institutions nationwide as they watch Gulf Coast administrators who are experiencing the very real problems of recovering from a natural disaster. For…

Over the last few decades, innovations in information technology have brought about fundamentally new approaches to research. As a result, research methods, practices, and institutions are evolving into forms quite different from those that have dominated modern science. These changes are so significant that they are leading to theoretical…

In this article, the author calls for librarians to find ways to implement technology projects with very limited budgets and to consider all the cost components of a technology project amidst the economic pressures. The author offers some perspective on what is involved in trying to accomplish important work with limited resources while…

This article explores obtaining grants as a way of funding technology projects in the library. The authors' approach views technology as a component of a grant project or a way to accomplish the goals of a project. One can be more successful in his or her grant work by addressing existing community needs, rather than by requesting funding for…

In their efforts to better understand, plan for, and make decisions about information technology on campus, higher education leaders need data. They need benchmarking and longitudinal data. They need data about IT budgets, expenditures, and investments. They need data about IT staffing. And they need data about IT programs, planning, policy, and…

A BioLogica trial in six U.S. schools using interpretive approach is conducted by the Concord Consortium that examined the student motivation of learning genetics. Multiple data sources like online tests, computer data log files and classroom observation are used that found the result in terms of interviewees' perception, class-wide online…