Hallbach noted another trend becoming more popular is that of collaboration and public-private partnerships.
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“That’s really as we’re seeing today’s generation of learners and their demand for ubiquitous connectivity; the expectation that their devices and applications they need to access through those devices are always accessible, and that they’re intrinsically safe in the microcosm of the university,” she said.
Top Priorities for Higher Ed IT Leaders
These include:
1. Higher education transformation drivers
2. Optimizing educational technology
3. Student success technologies
4. Workforce hiring and retention
5. Institutional data management
6. IT funding models
7. Business intelligence and analytics
8. Enterprise application integration
9. IT organizational development
10. E-learning and online education
Higher-ed digital IT trends include:
1. Advanced digital media capabilities
2. Digital situational awareness and wayfinding
3. Optimized retail
4. Always-connected global workforce
5. Ubiquitous connectivity
6. Comprehensive physical security
7. Data analytics and machine learning
8. Mobile first
9. Wearables and life
“You can still have very secure environments and still have an open and collaborative culture,” Hallbach said. “It takes practice and starts with compliance and governance, knowing where your network is, and where your data is. There are fundamental steps you can take to maintain the kind of openness that makes university communities so great at the same time that you lock down, with proper control, the type of data we know is most vulnerable based on our research.”
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