Joe Sabado – Higher Education & Technology Leadership

The topics of change and innovation, specifically technology-related, intrigue me. I read about disruptive innovation, diffusion of innovation, and continual improvement process. At this point, I’m still trying to wrap my thinking as to how these relate and when can/should they be applied in higher education. I have more questions than answers, so I seek new knowledge and perspectives to make sense of it all.

I work in the technology field within higher education, where I’ve witnessed and implemented business processes enabled by technology since the mid-1990s. In the last few years, the pace at which technologies change has become even faster. Who would have imagined the growth and impact of social media, cloud, mobile, and big data just five years ago? Last year, I started noticing more articles about wearable computing and the “internet of things.“. The blurring of the lines between computing services and products only available via IT departments years ago and those readily available to consumers, also known as “consumerization of IT,” has only become more pronounced in the last few years. These changes have provided opportunities and introduced new challenges. All these observations have led me to become more interested in anticipating where the future of higher education and technology may be heading.

If change and innovation in higher education are only about technology, maybe it would be easy if not because change involves culture, politics, traditions, paradigms, and personalities. Technological changes happen within how higher education views itself regarding its perceived roles (preparing students for careers, providing civic service by molding students as productive citizens, research) and how it operates (shared governance, teaching methods, funding priorities, etc.). There is no consensus on these views. The role of faculty and teaching methods are now being challenged in light of new learning opportunities provided to students because of technology, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and personal learning networks. Current technologies have also added a new spin to the old debate of how individuals learn (objectivism vs. constructivism).

Beyond philosophical debates about the role of technology in higher education, from a practical perspective, it takes time and resources to introduce and implement new ways of using technology. It’s a process, and the process involves human emotions. As one who works in IT, my role is a service provider to my university’s communities of staff, faculty, and students. At the core of my responsibility is ensuring the systems they use work appropriately as they would expect. Network outages and disruption of applications/web services are what we try to avoid.

Given that failures, trial-and-error, and not-so-perfect systems that lead to disorders of services are all part of the process when introducing new systems, how do organizations balance the need to manage stability and provide room for transformational (potentially disruptive) innovations? How do organizations gain buy-ins from faculty, staff, students, and administrators to adopt new systems and ways of doing things? More importantly, the question is when and how do we know when to apply incremental improvements vs. introducing a new way of doing things and disrupting the system?

I’m hoping someone in higher education has figured out the answers to the questions I pose above because I have yet to figure all these out. Let’s talk if you have figured it out or have some ideas.

n light of new learning opportunities provided to students because of technology, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOC) and personal learning networks. Current technologies have also added a new spin to the old debate of how individuals learn (objectivism vs. constructivism).

Beyond philosophical debates about the role of technology in higher education, from a practicality perspective, it takes time and resources to introduce and implement new ways of using technology. It’s a process, and the process involves human emotions. As one who works in IT, my role is a service provider to my university’s communities of staff, faculty, and students. At the core of my responsibility is ensuring the systems they use work appropriately as they would expect. Network outages and disruption of applications/web services are what we try to avoid. Given that failures, trial-and-error, and not-so-perfect systems that lead to disorders of services are all part of the process when introducing new systems, how do organizations balance the need to manage for stability and provide room for transformational (and potentially disruptive) innovations? How do organizations gain buy-ins from faculty, staff, students, and administrators to adopt new systems and ways of doing things? I suppose, more importantly, the question is when and how do we know when to apply incremental improvements vs. introducing a radically new way of doing things and disrupting the system?

I’m hoping someone in higher education has figured out the answers to the questions I pose above because I have yet to figure all these out. Let’s talk if you have figured it out or have some ideas.

image credit: http://www.innovation-post.com/what-is-the-difference-between-innovation-management-and-change-management/

Higher education IT departments’ indirectly support student learning, development outcomes, and student success by providing technical support to the departments. In addition, by employing students, higher education IT departments have opportunities to directly impact student success by providing them with experiential learning opportunities to learn soft and technical skills in preparation for their careers. Given thoughtful consideration, students could be provided with learning opportunities that complement/enhance the lessons they learn in the classroom. This mindset is consistent with the values of student affairs, the belief that learning happens within and outside the classroom.

Maximizing these learning opportunities requires re-examining technical job duties (code, troubleshooting) to include non-technical activities, so they may learn how to communicate, work in teams, lead, and develop critical thinking skills. One of the typical comments from computer science students we’ve hired is how much they learn about working collaboratively and in teams from their experience working for our department. They only get to work in teams in one or two of their computer science classes. As supervisors, how do we ensure that learning happens in the technical and soft skills areas? With career staff, we have performance evaluations based on job descriptions. We can extend this practice to students by providing them with performance evaluations and also defining learning outcomes, using assessment techniques to measure their progress towards these learning outcomes along the way. These learning outcomes could be grown in areas of technical and non-technical competencies.

By being intentional with the areas of competencies for our students to develop by defining learning outcomes, I believe they would be more effective in their positions. At the same time, we are contributing to their learning process and preparing them for the careers ahead of them.

Don’t you just hate it when you’re in a meeting and you share an idea but get ignored, yet another person says it and the room acknowledges the idea? What if you’re the other person who is acknowledged?

I was speaking with a student recently about this unfortunate experience. in her situation, she had proposed a topic to be included in a curriculum but it was ignored by the people in the room. However, when a male faculty member mentioned the same topic, it was readily accepted. My first reaction was that the other person’s position as faculty member might have been the factor as to why this happened. However, she tells me these unfortunate situations typically involve males. As a male, I am not always cognizant of my privileges based on my gender.

We all carry privileges we may not always be aware of. These could include any influence we have in our organizations based on formal titles or stature. While It’s probably easier to notice when we are ignored and get frustrated,  let us all be more cognizant about how others are being treated. When appropriate, use whatever privilege we may have and be the one to make sure their ideas are heard and appreciated.

This is as much as reminder to me as to anyone else I connect with on twitter or on other social media platforms.  Let’s practice what we preach when we tell others to practice kindness and be the leaders we’re supposed to be in our professions and our communities.

I was about to tweet something sarcastic and derogatory during the Oscar Award show,  about to join others who were mocking some celebrities,  but I caught myself and stopped.  Are we not to model the behavior we want our students and colleagues to be? From time to time, I see tweets that remind me to “check your last 10 tweets. Would someone hire you based on those tweets?”  Even the benign sarcasms can be misinterpreted on social media.  Look, I’m no Kristen Stewart fan when it comes to her acting but the tweets that came across my timeline were not the most positive, even mean. I actually felt bad for her as she limped on stage.  She may never see those tweets but some of the students or friends we’ve been preaching to about the proper use of social media may.

I’ve been guilty of not being so nice on social media either, not on purpose, but inadvertently.  If you catch me acting on social media in a way that’s not appropriate, make me accountable by calling me out .  Let’s make a commitment towards practicing what we preach by modeling good and acceptable behaviors we expect our students and others who are looking at our actions can follow.

“Team wins championship!” says Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs at UCSB, Dr. Michael Young.  He’s a big believer and practices that ideology. It’s also something I try to practice.  There have been some work projects I would have loved to be involved in significantly, but there are other colleagues who are better fit because of their expertise and experience and that I’m also working on some other projects.

I have come to realize that even as someone who may not be involved in these projects, I am part of a team and we are all in this together.  Using team sports as an analogy, sometimes we are on the starting unit and sometimes we will come off the bench but regardless, we could contribute in several ways:

• Be ready to “sub(stitute)” when called upon.  Your time maybe when the ball is tipped or maybe late in the  first quarter, fourth quarter or anytime in between.  Have the mentality of willingness to accept any responsibility given to you and be ready to perform anytime.
• Provide moral support.  I love seeing bench players engaged while they are not on the court and how happy they get when their teammates do things well on the court. I also love players who provide encouragement when their teammates are not performing so well.  Providing moral support also means doing the “small things”. It could be that one encouraging email to a co-worker or offering to take on a task others may not have time for. I think this is even more important as a leader. I remember my former department director moving papers and other materials from a cubicle to help out with one of my colleague’s move to another office. She was a busy person and while she didn’t do these “small tasks” of cleaning cubicles often, it showed me and my colleagues she was willing to do what was needed to be done.
• Provide feedback when appropriate. Players sitting on the bench have different perspectives than players who are on the court.  Offer feedback when appropriate towards the goal of improving the team performance.
• Learn for future projects. While you may not be involved in this current game (project),  learn for future projects when you will be called upon to lead.  I think time is a very rare commodity when it comes to learning, so when I have “down times”, I use them to learn on the side like reading materials related to projects on our department.
• Develop and adopt “team first” mentality. I admit that in the past, the source of frustration for me when not involved with major projects was ego.  I like being part of the action and I want to be involved in the decision making process. However, what I’ve come to realize is when I have the “team first” mentality, I become more positive and I am more productive and effective in my job.
• Eliminate “he/she should” and change to “I could” mentality.  I think we can all play the role of “Monday morning quarterbacks” and thinking we could do things better. When you catch yourself criticizing the performance of others like “He should be more communicative”, change it to “I could be more communicative.” By shifting our attitude to what and how we can contribute and how can improve ourselves instead of focusing on the shortcomings of others, we can add value to our teams.

According to an African proverb,  “If you want to go fast, do it alone. If you want to go far, go together.” From experience, I think this is a very wise idea to practice.

Image credit: http://blogordietryin.wordpress.com/2012/05/24/progress-blog-or-die-tryin-group-or-team/