TECHNOLOGY PLANNING

The purpose of Technology Planning

Technology plan serves as a roadmap for educational institutions to reach their ideal state

of technology integration where the teaching and learning is augmented and administrative

operations are enhanced through robust computing equipment and digital tools. It is a process

that is formalized with a technology planning document that outlines the vision and the core

principles of the organization, its technology goals and objectives, and actionable strategies to

accomplish them.

Technology Planning Phases

Anderson and his graduate students (1996) identified five main phases of the technology

planning process that the institutions go through as they strive for bringing their technology use

to the next level:

Phase 1: Recruit and Organize a Planning Team: A technology committee

representative of all the stakeholders is formed to oversee and direct the process.

Phase 2: Research: The current state of the technology use within the institution is

delineated, areas of improvement are identified, and current trends and successful

strategies that have the potential to address these needs are explored.

Phase 3: Construct Technology Plan: Based on the findings from the research phase,

technology vision and mission of the organization are created, core principles are

identified, and goals and objectives are set.

Phase 4: Formalize the Planning: Strategies and initiatives are identified for reaching

the goals and objectives of the institution.

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 Phase 5: Continuously Implement, Evaluate, Revise: An on-going assessment plan is

created to evaluate the accomplishment of the goals and the success of the initiatives.

PHASE 1 Recruit and Organize Planning Team

The first phase in developing a technology plan is to establish a technology committee

that will direct and manage the entire process. To develop a successful plan, all perspectives and

ideas from a broad range of stakeholders should be collected. It may not be feasible to have all

the representatives on the formal committee, attending meetings and providing input at every

stage of the process, however there are numerous ways to get and keep them engaged.

In higher education there are primary stakeholders whose academic activities and daily

work tasks would be directly impacted by the decisions about what kind of technology to use on

campus, and there are external stakeholders who have an interest in the educational outcomes

that the institutions produce. We should aim to have all the stakeholders that belong to the

university community (e.g. campus leaders, faculty, students, departments, administrative staff

members) as well as the stakeholders in the community (e.g. employers, economic development

boards, regional and national industry organizations) to be represented on the committee.

Barry University Stakeholders

1. Provost: The chief academic officer who creates the academic vision of the university. His

input is extremely important to create the vision statement for the technology plan. For an

effective implementation, the provost and the CIO have to be in direct communication.

2. Chief Information Officer: The CIO is the main source of information about the current

technologies used on campus, effective ways to leverage these tools, and capabilities of the

existing infrastructure for integrating new technology initiatives.

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3. Deans and Faculty Members: Faculty members who represent each school or department

are also expected to contribute. They will provide valuable feedback regarding their use of

technology in classrooms, and technology needs considering their respective disciplines.

4. School of Education Representatives: These representatives constitute our in-house

learning experts who can assist in identifying best instructional tools based on contemporary

research in their field.

5. Vice President for Administrative Services and Organizational Development: She is the

head of the organizational development team that provides training to faculty on effective

instructional strategies, and staff members on the use of technology resources. She can give

feedback about the areas for which the faculty and staff would require additional

professional development.

6. Vice President of Mission and Student Engagement (Student Affairs): BarryU assumes

a holistic approach when it comes to student development. The individual in this position

can provide data on how we support students throughout their academic careers, and this

information can be used to identify aspects of college experience that can be improved using

new technologies.

7. Director of Library Services: The library services are central to research activities. The

director will inform the committee on the current state of technology and opportunities for

improvement of research enterprise of the university.

8. Registrar: The data regarding the academic performance of students will provide insights

about classes that would benefit from instructional advancements.

9. Director of the Center for Academic Success and Advising: Students with low academic

performance should be given specific attention when identifying new initiatives. The

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 director can provide data on the subject areas students struggle with and about best

educational approaches to help students reach an academic level that will enable them to

complete their studies.

10. Director of Career Development Center: In order to prepare students for the workforce

we need to help them gain certain competencies. This individual can help the committee

understand what skills and competencies the employers expect students to demonstrate.

11. Director of Residential Life: This director is responsible for managing the technology use

in residential areas and therefore can offer valuable input about use of technology outside

the classroom.

12. Director of Accessibility Services: It’s extremely important to ensure the accessibility of

any technology tools and resources for students with disabilities. The person in this position

will be responsible for accommodating these needs.

13. Students: We need to communicate with students to understand what current technologies

they are using both for their personal lives and academic activities, how they perceive the

use of technology on campus, and what new technology tools and applications they would

be interested in using to study and improving their learning in the classroom.

14. Employers: An advisory board from a select group of employers can be created to solicit

input about industry demands and gaps in skill development.

15. Employment development entities: Talent Development Network is an agency that strives

to develop and promote the local workforce of South Florida by generating paid internships

for students who are attending the universities in the region. This organization as well as the

government agencies that track the employment data for the higher education institutions

can provide valuable input.

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PHASE 2 Research

Prior to building a technology plan, we should spend a considerable amount of time to

evaluate the current state of the technology use on campus including the strengths and aspects

that need improvement; to identify the gaps and weak points within our network and

infrastructure; to determine technology tools that can be utilized to answer these needs; and to

explore methods to effectively and efficiently integrate and use this technology.

Each member of the committee has access to reports and data they have already been

collecting as a part of their individual roles, which would be an invaluable resource of

information to paint the whole picture. Some other methods to retrieve additional input may

include: using assessment tools specifically designed to evaluate how students, faculty members,

and staff members are using technology – some of which the IT department already uses; having

focus groups; conducting on-site observations of the use of technology; and analyzing the

educational outcomes data provided by state and government agencies.

We should also research the use of technology on other college campuses to understand

where we stand in technology integration. Last piece of research would be exploring the

educational technology tools and technology infrastructure and systems that are designed for

college campus activities. After collecting all the data we should conduct a SWOT analysis to

understand what we are doing right about technology use on campus, how we can improve the

existing resources, what else we would need to implement for improving the current assets, and

what our limitations are to overcome.

PHASE 3 Construct Technology Plan

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 The next step before we can design our technology plan will be creating a compelling

vision statement that will serve as a foundation on which we build our goals and strategies. The

success of the rest of the process will depend on how the vision statement was created and how

much support and buy-in we could secure from the stakeholders. Hall (2008) provides some key

ideas and strategies we can implement to ensure the creation and execution of a successful vision

statement:

Feedback and ownership: We should reach out to a broad range of stakeholders and

engage them in the process without necessarily requiring them to serve on the committee. We

can have focus groups with the specific stakeholders on topics relevant to them; utilize listserves

and public forums to solicit feedback; conduct town-hall forums throughout the Barry

community to motivate the staff members to participate in the process; and join student councils

(i.e. student government association and campus activities board) to discuss their ideas at their

regular meetings.

Publicity and on-going communication: Once we engaged the stakeholders to the

process, they also become attached emotionally. We have to find ways to keep this momentum

going by updating them on the progress of the new initiatives. We can have a webpage on

Barry’s site to share the technology plan and all the associated goals and strategies. As we make

progress, we can update the site to reflect what steps have been taken towards the achievement of

the goals along with the results of our efforts.

Monitoring and evaluation: To be able to report our progress, we will first need to

come up with an assessment plan that would thoroughly monitor and evaluate the attainment of

our goals. We should help our stakeholders envision how successful implementation of our

strategies will transform the education and administrative functions, and share with them the

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assessment strategies and evaluation metrics for each goal so they can monitor the progress

themselves.

Alignment: We should show the entire university community that the technology vision

is created in line with the university’s strategic plan and academic vision. The improvements and

new initiatives that will be implemented through the technology plan are just means to support

the university’s overarching mission, and to help the university achieve its strategic goals. It is

also very important that the IT staff members and the administrative personnel who take care of

behind the scenes tasks understand that their individual roles also align with the technology and

university vision, and their day-to-day tactical work significantly contribute to the long-term

educational advancement of the university.

In addition to creating a powerful vision, we should also set up our values that will guide

the process and inform our actions and decisions. To identify our values, we should answer the

questions “What is important to us?” and “What describes the character of the Barry

University?”. Similar to the process for building a vision statement, we should obtain input and

feedback from the key stakeholders as we identify our values.

PHASE 4 Formalize the Planning

In this phase of the process, we will be creating our goals and objectives as well as

identifying key strategies to achieve these goals. We will assess the technologies that are

available to answer our needs and choose the most appropriate ones considering our

infrastructure and its capabilities. We will develop measurement metrics to assess the success of

the process. This will also be the phase where we budget for implementation of new technology

tools and resources as well as their maintenance expenses.

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PHASE 5 Continuously Implement, Evaluate, Revise

The technology plan is a working document and the technology committee’s job does

neither end with the implementation of the plan nor with attaining the goals that were covered in

the initial document. There should be an on-going assessment plan/process that is completed on a

regular basis to monitor the technology use, evaluate strengths and weaknesses, identify and

implement new strategies, evaluate the outcomes, and revise the document as needed.

Sample Technology Plans

University of Florida and Boston University created well-designed technology plans that

can be used as models while we build our own plan at Barry University.

University of Florida

UF dedicated 12 months of hard work before they put together a technology plan. They

reviewed the plans of their peer institutions, conducted interviews with senior leadership, held

focus groups with faculty, staff and students; explored the trends for IT in education and

industry. They then identified current and emerging technology needs for their campus, as well

as innovation opportunities that will support the mission of the university.

Following the need assessment, they created six topical advisory committees to work on

the areas of education and outreach, research computing, information security, web services,

administrative systems, and shared infrastructure. Their planning document focuses on each of

these areas by outlining the associated goals and objectives. Each area has its own vision that

describes what the university is aiming to achieve in that area. They also featured a student in

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each section, who shared their perspectives on the ways the university is facilitating technology

use on campus and contributing to their academic pursuits.

They ended the document by explaining how their efforts are advancing the university’s

mission. To support their argument, they also included statistics about online educational

materials, and research outcomes.

Boston University

Boston University created an interactive website to share their technology plan, which

motivates the reader to explore further. On the main page, they included their overall goal and

principles. The viewer can click on each of the principles to reveal their descriptions. They also

identified six areas of focus which they called capabilities: learning quality and innovation,

research leadership, operational efficiency and effectiveness, collaboration across boundaries,

data management and analytics, and sustainability and risk management. They provided a long

list of initiatives and color coded them according to the capabilities they would fall under.

In comparison to the University of Florida, the Boston University provided more detailed

descriptions of individual strategic projects that help them accomplish their goals. They

explained what these technology resources, tools, and applications are; how they implemented

and utilized them; and the outcomes they have observed.

References:

Anderson, L. and Graduate Students (1996). Guidebook for Developing an Effective

Instructional Technology Plan, (v 2.0). Mississippi State, MS: Mississippi State University

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Hall, D. (2008). The technology director’s guide to leadership: The power of great

questions. Eugene, OR: International Society for Technology in Education. ISBN: 978-1-56484-

244-2

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