Session Narrative
In the bustling production of higher education, IT often operates behind the scenes?yet it plays a crucial role in setting the stage for student and institutional success. This session delves into the often-overlooked influence of IT business processes, infrastructure, and services on the campus community and highlights the imperative for IT professionals to leverage their unique insights and expertise to foster improvements across the institution. Drawing parallels with a theatrical production, where the magic of a diverse backstage crew ensures a flawless performance up front, we explore how similar dynamics apply across IT services, teaching and learning, and student support functions. Just as the quality of a performance can be disrupted by backstage challenges, so too can the student experience suffer from unseen business process and service bottlenecks and inefficiencies across areas. We’ll explore how IT can take on the role of stage manager at your institution, working hand in hand with other units to create incredible experiences for your students. We’ll delve into examples of how UNLV has successfully leveraged technology to enhance all aspects of the student experience and create a seamless, engaging experience that rivals the best productions. Join us as we pull back the curtain and reveal the magic of IT as a stage manager. Together, we’ll explore how your institution can put on a performance that will leave your students inspired, engaged, and eager for an encore.
Session Notes
Act 1: Production coordination
Roles of IT across the institution:
- Strategic planning
- Align IT initiatives with institutional goals
- Create technology roadmaps
- System integration
- Harmonize SIS, LMS, Workday, and key systems
- Ensure seamless digital environment
- Change management
- Oversee implementation of new systems
- Coordinate training and user preparation
Act 2: Communication & problem-solving
- Central point of contact
- Incident response and problem management
- Adapt to sudden changes in institutional needs
- Cross-departmental collaboration
- Facilitate communication between IT and other units
- Mediate competing tech needs
- Handling unexpected issues
- Incident response and problem management
- Adapt to sudden changes in institutional needs
Act 3: Smooth performance
- Daily operations management
- Monitor system performance and availability
- Coordinate routine maintenance and updates
- Quality assurance and improvement
- Maintain consistency in user experience
- Gather and act of user feedback
Curtain call: Impact on student succcess
- IT stage manager
- Critical in coordinating “university production”
- Call to action
- Continue elevating IT’s role in strategic planning and decision-making
Session Reflection
I didn’t take much away from this session. It was interesting (and kind of gimmicky) to relate the role of IT across an institution to a stage crew in a theater production. The info that was shared isn’t anything new and really doesn’t apply to Academic Technology. I think a lot of the items covered today could be beneficial for those in our central IT team. Based on the info, it almost feels as though IT needs a person or team dedicated to communications – a way to centralize the messaging coming from project teams to the end users related to outages, upgrades, new rollouts, etc.