5. Campus training
Our campus does not have a dedicated “staff development” department. Our academic side does a fantastic job of engaging and training our faculty through the Center for Academic Excellence; however, the staff side was lacking. After a brief review, we discovered our students could use some assistance as well with basics like Excel, Access, and PowerPoint.
Fairfield University decided to purchase a site license for Lynda.com, making it available to everyone via our university portal—and within six months, this hosted solution boasted nearly 1,600 users and 13,638 videos viewed, to the tune of 911 hours. It continues to provide benefits as we roll out Office 2013 and new operating systems.
You might be thinking, “Ugh. We already invested all of this cash in outfitting our space with extreme solutions. If we walk away now, it’s like throwing money away.” Not necessarily. Agility will be key for the next few years. No vendor or solution should make you feel trapped into continued use.
If they do, now’s the time to start wrangling out of their grip. Do the math. Include upkeep, support, replacement parts, energy, time, staff, reliability, and risk—and compare that total to the total cost of a more economical and flexible solution. In our case, in every case, it made sense to boldly go where few have gone in technology at our institution—to the land of minimalistic, clean, and user-friendly.
Now, more than ever, the theme needs to be: consolidate, streamline, and prepare for a future of rapid technology growth. This future can only be realized effectively through the simple use of equipment in thoroughly scalable environments.
Paige Francis is the CIO for Information Technology Services at Fairfield University in Fairfield, Conn. A Northwest Arkansan turned New Englander, Francis was named as one of the Top 50 Most Social CIOs in Higher Education and one of Computerworld’s 2014 Premier 100 IT Leaders. She is also a member of eCampus News’ Advisory Board.
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