Relationship of College-wide and Technology Planning at FSCJ

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1 Page 1 of 10 Relationship of College-wide and Technology Planning at FSCJ The purpose of this document is to describe the relationship between the College s strategic planning process and the IT Strategic Plan and budget. The College planning process results in the creation of college-wide goals and strategic initiatives. The following depicts the alignment of college-wide initiatives related to technology to college-wide goals. College Goal One: Prepare Students for Distinctive Success Smart Classroom Renewal The college has continued to support its students and faculty by providing Smart Classroom technologies throughout most of its instructional spaces. The world is rapidly changing from and analog to digital audio visual equipment. Much of the new media requires digital equipment to be played and is often copy protected and restricts playback through analog devices. In order to keep up with the changes we are prototyping a new Smart Classroom standard for the college. Slowly replacing old smart classrooms and building new ones around digital audio visual equipment which, will allow the emergency media types to properly be shown in the classroom. Cloud LMS The major initiative is the Cloud LMS platform, which is aimed at enhancing the current learning management system and providing faculty and students with a high quality comprehensive courseware system. The benefits for the college derived from having a Cloud LMS include: (1) support, (2) maintenance, (3) training, (4) high quality student experience, (5) content management, backup/disaster redundancy and security, and (6) integration of ARTEMIS and other systems to a single learning management system.

2 Page 2 of 10 Digital Content Distribution System itunes U, with the advancement of this tool, is now able to create, upload, and deliver interactive content through the itunes platform. At present, we are investigating its uses within our environment. This platform has potential for video, digital books, and a learning management system. Rich media can be accessible (via mobile and desktop) to students and faculty through a familiar interface and a stable platform. College Goal Three: Optimize Access and College Goal Four: Provide an Extraordinarily Positive Experience Connections Student Portal Conversion The second iteration of the College's student portal system, Connections was released in May As a critical component of improving self-service to our student population, an update and conversion of the student portal system to the SharePoint 2010 platform was initiated in February 2012 for pilot release in Fall Term Since the release of Connections, the College's services have expanded since the release and advancements in portal frameworks now offer greater functionality and service. The objective of this initiative is to improve the interface, quality, and service of the student portal system. Through enhancements to the current functionality offered in Connections, and leveraging the built-in functionality of the SharePoint platform, an improved student experience will be offered to the student population in the new portal system. Continuing Education Student System In effort to better serve our continuing education student population, a separate 'short' web registration and application system was developed in late 2011 and released in February With new branding and course listings for only continuing education students, this new system is targeted specifically to provide an improved experience to the College's current and future non-degree seeking students.

3 Page 3 of 10 The new system allows these non-degree seeking students to complete a newly-developed 'short' application process for non-credit courses, allowing them to immediately register and pay for their selected classes. The goal of this newly implemented process is to improve the ease and speed of the application and registration process for non-credit courses, increasing enrollment and student satisfaction. Keeping Technology New Due to significant fiscal constraints over the past few years, the college had to suspend its scheduled technology refresh program. As a result, the age of the inventory reached a level where replacement was critical to ensure a positive student computing experience. The cyclical acquisition of new workstations creates the opportunity for the college to resynchronize to a reasonable and sustainable refresh cycle. The benefit to the college is a positive student computing experience in line with the standards of excellence we strive to uphold in all aspects of teaching and learning at the college. Next Generation Faculty Computing We are currently deploying the fourth full refresh cycle of the Faculty Computing Initiative (now beginning its fifteenth year). The current implementation includes a focus on mobility as well as adoption of the Mac. This provides for the greatest flexibility, best overall performance, broadest selection of tools, and best lifecycle. Providing Apple hardware along with the integrated suite of software puts more resources at faculty's fingertips, enabling them to conduct explorations essential to learning. The intuitive Mac interface ensures professors are not lost in the process of making the technology work and are therefore able to focus more on the delivery of the subject at hand. The benefit to the college is a positive faculty computing experience in line with the standards of excellence we strive to uphold in all aspects of teaching and learning at the college.

4 Page 4 of 10 Mobile Computing The college is in a great position in that is embraces open computing standards and adoption of most of the devices its customers want. The newest wave of tablet and phone based computing has created exciting new possibilities while also providing challenges in providing enterprise class services to these devices. New management products will be needed to provide application and profile deployment and updates to these customer devices. Adopting these mobile computing devices and management tools will allow the college to provide easy, cutting edge services to our customers. Telepresence The college has a strong telecommunications network architecture that can support any of today s expected technologies. It has a robust video conferencing and telepresence architecture in place that can easily be expanded by adding additional video endpoints. The endpoints can be high definition conference rooms as well as personal high definition conference units. Adding additional endpoint, personal or conference room based, will continue to reduce travel costs and add to employee efficiency. Employees no longer need to drive between campuses or to other organizations for face-toface meetings, if those locations also have conferencing capabilities. Infrastructure Enhancement The college has a strong telecommunications network architecture that can support any of today s expected technologies. As equipment ages and the campuses continue to grow in size and in the number of devices that connect to the network, equipment needs to be replaced and augmented. New technologies will continue to come out that put more demand on our networks and require new design strategies. As the college continues to keep up with replacing aging network equipment and expanding the current structure to meet new needs, it will continue to

5 Page 5 of 10 enjoy the speed and reliability of its network and continue to see new technologies and features delivered. Office 365 The college has a very robust and calendaring system. It continues to search for better and more efficient ways of providing these services. Microsoft is currently in a position to offer a hosted model for the system he have in place, and offer all of the same features we enjoy now. We are planning to move to this hosted model as well as migrate our students from the hosted live.edu environment to the office 365 environment. Moving to this hosted model will allow Microsoft to handle: the growing storage needs demands disaster recovery and business continuity needs archiving tight integration with its other hosted services Data Storage Enhancement The college has a significant investment in data storage. While this storage was sufficient for many years, the amount of data retained by the college continues to increase. At the same time the hard drives on which the data is stored continue to age and eventually need to be replaced. We must keep up with our current storage as well as predict its growth for its useful life. This includes working data storage and storage for backups. Continual investment in the Storage Area Network (SAN) will provide reliability, stability, new features, and options as well as keep up with the continual growth of the college s stored data. Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Planning While the college has a significant investment in its Business Continuity and Disaster Recovery Plans, its server and storage equipment continues to age. At the same time, new requirements are continually added to the environment. To keep the identified minimum services running during a

6 Page 6 of 10 disaster, the college needs to continue to invest in maintaining and expanding its servers and storage at its Disaster Recovery (DR) site. Keeping the DR site up to date will keep the DR plan viable. Digital Imaging & Workflow System Digital imaging and workflow provides for electronic management of documents associated with operational and administrative processes. Users can efficiently store and access documents in an electronic searchable format. The system also permits processing documents through workflows and decision processes for greater accountability and management. The addition to E-Forms allows for the automation of paper document processes that currently exist throughout the college. The electronic forms provide efficient processing of digital forms, increased security, and electronic backup of process documentation. Cloud ORION (Includes Cloud HR, Cloud PR, Cloud Finance, Cloud Purchasing, Time and Attendance, ORION 3 Student, and Cloud Financial Aid) The college administrative system (ORION) composed of business modules for routines operations has become antiquated and requires replacement or modernization. The rise of cloud based application providers that allow for significant increases in security and disaster recovery provide for the replacement of the administrative ORION modules. Replacement options include Software as a Service (SaaS), Platform as a Service (PaaS), legacy modernization, or a hybrid approach using combinations of the aforementioned options. The replacement will require management of critical integrations between the above modules and the student information system (SIS), credit and collections, and facilities management system. Replacement of the following modules providing increases to productivity and efficiency are critical to the college mission, values, and goals. Payroll (payroll functions and time and attendance)

7 Page 7 of 10 Human Resources (human capital management, benefits, and instructor resource management) Financial management Purchasing Financial Aid ARTEMIS Collaborative Suite In 2011, the ARTEMIS Employee Portal was converted to run on the SharePoint 2010 platform. While the initial phase of the conversion was to migrate the existing portal functionality, the SharePoint 2010 platform would be used as the basis of the second phase of development: team-based sites for collaboration and information sharing. Leveraging the built-in features of the SharePoint 2010, including document libraries, discussion boards, user profiles and audiences, existing team sites can be converted from static web sites to dynamic, online user communities. By extending the built-in features for content management, the user groups will now be able to immediately manage their content inside the portal, rather than rely on a third-party to do so. Kaltura Kaltura is a digital media repository used to deliver video content. The platform integrates with Blackboard, SharePoint, and Media Space. This platform was chosen for its feature rich environment and ease of use. Kaltura's planned release is in three stages: (1) Blackboard plugin will be available, (2) Media Space, and (3) SharePoint plugin. This allows faculty and staff to upload, capture, and deliver content on various devices throughout the college. Kaltura also provides ability to stream in real-time at an adaptive rate. KPI The purpose of this initiative is to create measures in support of the College s identified Key Performance Indicators (KPIs). The current list of KPIs includes:

8 Page 8 of Student outcomes a. Remediation survival b. First year survival c. Certificate completion d. Associate degree completion e. Bachelor s degree completion f. Achievement of learning outcomes g. Graduates continuing education h. Graduates employed 2. Enrollment 3. Net operational revenue 4. Net non-governmental enterprise group revenue 5. Constituent satisfaction a. Student satisfaction b. Employer satisfaction c. Employee satisfaction The measures will support the college-wide initiative of planning and performance measurement at the college, including institutional effectiveness goals. Business Intelligence The purpose of this initiative is to create a comprehensive, flexible, adaptive, and user-friendly business intelligence environment for the college community. This environment will greatly enhance the users familiarity with the data they own, decrease the user dependency on the IT staff for reporting, increase the ability of the user to verify and validate the ORION data, and provide college administration with rich, cognitive, enrollment management tools. The business intelligence environment lends to every aspect of state, federal, and local reporting, including support of the SACSCOC, QEP, and other institutional initiatives. Further, it provides a single source of truth for the college and helps to eliminate multiple, divergent processes and results. Each of these projects is estimated for resource requirements resulting in the development of a decision package. The decision package serves as a complete analysis of the five-year business case for the project and includes: cash flow,

9 Page 9 of 10 internal rate of return (IRR), breakeven point, net present value (NPV), and return on investment (ROI) to establish a project value (EVA). The decision package is then evaluated as part of a zero-based budgeting process (modified to begin at the 80% level) along with the rest of the IT operational and capital budget items. In addition to items such as these, where the project is part of a specific college-wide initiative, there are IT specific goals and initiatives that support the college-wide goals. These all start with the technology vision, mission, and CIO s charge statement and result in the creation of three technology goals as follow: Technology Vision Statement Florida State College will be viewed as a technological leader providing superior access to the resources of scholarship and career preparation through the application of advanced technologies. The five-year vision will be focused on three major issues: an environment for a digital native majority, provision of first-class academic computing, and flexible and agile delivery models. Technology Mission Statement The Mission of the Technology Team is to provide the highest quality technological resources possible to the college to support achievement of the college s mission, vision, goals, and objectives. CIO s Charge Statement The Technology Team at Florida State College will pursue every technological advancement of promise for the improvement of the educational process, engage in continuous improvement of quality of services provided to clients, and conduct business in a professional and instructionally-focused manner. Florida State College s comprehensive technology vision will be realized through the achievement of three general goals: Technology Goal 1: Achieve and Maintain an Educational Focus This goal is achieved by deliberately directing all resources toward students, their transactions and interactions with the college, and the processes that most directly affect them. In Driving Customer Equity, Rust, et al, remark, understanding the customer is more than listening to the customer [it] requires an understanding of the factors that motivate [them]. This is instructive as strategies and methods for achieving focus are developed. This focus includes emphasizing the lab and classroom computing environments but also includes faculty computing, instructional software, courseware, and individualized portal development. Additionally, this goal requires effective resource stewardship that ensures cost effective and efficient solutions, including

10 Page 10 of 10 cloud and other emerging technologies that optimize the resources available to the College. Continuing a limited emphasis on administrative systems is necessary to provide the resources, management, and technical attention needed to meet the demands of instructional systems, new methodologies, and the arrival of digitally advanced students. However, replacement of some administrative ERP modules will be necessary in the first half of the five-year plan. Ultimately, exceptional execution of high quality plans will determine the degree of success in achievement of this goal. Technology Goal 2: Technological Leadership and Value Creation Achieving technology leadership position (and maintaining it) is achieved through the application of technology as a value creation engine. This includes the enrichment of business processes in the higher education value chain, the enablement of new business through advanced technology capabilities, and direct support of organizational advancement through early adoption of significant valuecreating technologies. Technology Goal 3: Technological and Organizational Agility The extremely rapid pace of technological change and the similarly fast churning development of technology dependent educational delivery systems and educational methodologies results in an environment in which, to be successful, technology organizations must become adaptable agile enterprises. Agility is best achieved through the establishment of an overall architecture that provides a manageable level of platform/solution independence, rich platform selection, and a workforce based on intellectual horsepower rather than specific skills. cw/rjr November 2012