Ohio Higher Education Computing Council Conference 2023

 Impressions from OHECC 2023

During the second week of May, I attended the Ohio Higher Education Computing Council conference at Wright State University.  Last year, I was able to attend the one at Ohio University where I work and because of that experience, I was looking forward to the conference this year. 

I really enjoy this type of smaller regional or state conference. The major conferences, like ISTE are great for the sheer size and amount but I always feel I get overwhelmed with choices at those and don't feel I get as much as a connection with people than at a smaller conference. 

OHECC was a half day of presentations on Wednesday, a full day on Thursday, and then ended on Friday at lunch which gave us enough time to get home at a reasonable time.

Besides six presenters from OHIO, we had a nice contingent of participants that attend the conference. Besides meeting new people in the field from other places, it was nice to get to connect with people at my university since I don't often see them face to face anymore. 

On Wednesday afternoon after the keynote speaker, I attended a  session on Instructional Technology/End User Support where we talked about a few different topics. Later in the afternoon, Jeffrey Wolfe & Sally Smathers from Ohio University presentation titled, Connecting Front-line Employees to University Initiatives focused on Objects and Key Results (OKR). It was nice to hear another area's perspective on this and how they implemented it. They were able to set objectives using the framework and are continuing to move forward and expand what they are doing with it. 

In the evening on Wednesday, we had dinner at the National Museum of the United States Air Force which was a real treat! It is made up of four hangers with over 350 planes and thousands of other artifacts. We had a few hours to explore it with friends, but you could easily spend a full day there. I really enjoyed the rockets and some of the experimental planes.

Thursday, I started off with a presentation Rob Perry from Veeam and David Belville from Ohio University titled, Ohio University Data Protection - Veeam Software Corporation. This is not something I normally deal with, but it was informative and allowed me to see how we work with a vendor at OHIO to protect our systems. I particularly liked the graphic that showed how our data is backed up and illustrated the 3-2-1 backup rule. The last morning session I attended was, Demystifying Assistive Technologies by Laura Fathauer (Miami) & Jill Bateman (Ohio University). This session was excellent at showing how assistive technology is really for everyone and what ways we can better argue for implementation using legal, moral, and business reasons. Video can be a powerful way to get your message across and to do that they showed several, but one that stuck with me was Sady, which shows that when we design technology for everyone, then anyone can use it. 

I was also able to take an IT campus tour at Wright State during the afternoon which was insightful. We got to see several of the classrooms including a large interactive one. Tom Hanks is associated with them and they have a building there named after him which houses a Mac computer editing lab and a theater among other things. We also go to see their server room, which I found fascinating. Lots of noise!

active learning classroom

large lecture auditorium

film reel

Wright Flyer replica in library

suction cup to lift floor panel

servers

Thursday afternoon wrapped up with time for a vendor showcase. They had about 40 vendors there and I did take the time to talk to almost all of them. Unfortunately, most of them dealt with backend related services and I only saw about four that were relevant to me. Samsung had an interesting interactive display that could be useful in some cases. It's not as feature rich as the Surface Hub, but it is significantly less, which makes it attractive.  

Friday was my presentation day! My colleagues Michelle and Lindsey had a presentation scheduled the same time as mine so I was a little bummed that I wasn't able to attend theirs. I was also a little worried since it was the last day and an early time after a late night of trivia that it might be a little sparsely attended. However my fears were unfounded and it was well attended with lots of engagement! Maybe it was the fire alarm that went off earlier at the hotel ;-). My presentation was titled, Engaging Instruction with Microsoft Surface Hubs in the Classroom​ and was about what we found during our pilot of Surface Hub. I found a few interesting things out during the discussion we had. The first is that there are at least two other schools in Ohio using them, with one that has over 50! The second is that when I asked the question, "Who is interested in deploying these at your school or thinking about it?", no one raised their hand. I was a little taken aback, but some went on to explain that they had already chosen a system at a significant cost and were into a multi-year contract with support for these systems. The Surface Hub is expensive and won't serve every classroom that is on campus, so I can see where there would be hesitation. Hopefully the price for these will continue to drop they develop it. 

The sessions on Friday ended with a session for Instructional Technology/End User Support. This was a great way to end the sessions by coming together and discussing some topics that were relevant. This included student laptop programs, video meeting software, physical spaces on campus, funding big initiatives, MFA, and making stakeholders aware of changes to software.

Youngstown State currently has a program where they loan out up to 1400 laptops and other devices, such as mobile hotspots for $50 per semester. This type of program can be beneficial to both a university and students because it can reduce the need for a university to maintain computer labs and helps students in need have access to a computer without having to fully purchase one. This discussion also focused on the need for staff and faculty computers as well as they types of computers needed. Most schools have some parameters in place to determine what computer model would be needed for a user. The issue of providing stakeholders at a university accessible devices for use will continue to be an issue. 

The topic of which and how many types of video conferencing software we support at our universities. The majority supported one or maybe two, but there were one or two who supported more than that. Supporting multiple systems that do close to the same thing can be a real drain on resources and I believe make the student experience more difficult. One of the issues is that none of these systems are perfect and people get used to one and that becomes their favorite and it's hard to make that switch. The universities that support only one argue that having a fragmented choice make it really difficult to keep up with everything and one system keeps it simple for everyone. 

At universities and other places, enterprise software updates are great because you no longer need to go from computer to computer, but it has brought other challenges such as update fatigue and training issues. I try to keep up with roadmaps and version change announcements, but sometimes things will fall through the cracks. The most recent example is that when I went to go into a new Microsoft Whiteboard instance, I found that they had added a timer to use. It wasn't that big of a deal because it didn't affect usability but I have gone to a training, where suddenly a feature is removed or changed and that can be an issue. Imagine going into a classroom expecting something to work the way it always has and it has suddenly changed or gone. This can throw off a lesson or a the very least affect your timing. We didn't seem to be able to come up with anything beyond communication and regular review, but we will continue to work on this.

Multi-factor authentication is another topic we discussed, mainly who is using it and how. On June 9, 2023 there is an update to the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act that will go into effect and deals with universities having MFA for their stakeholders. Authentication fatigue also happens and many of us are working to reduce some of that and  we struggle with the software not always working as it is advertised to work. Working with vendors on this is a struggle. This is where training and support are also important and many of us have systems in place to support users as they try to set up the systems. Finally, looking to the future we talked about how big initiatives were paid with COVID-19 funds and we need to have better planning in place to that we can update these systems when needed. Several people mentioned that they are already working to come up with funding to purchase updated equipment in a more cyclical manner so that they can replace a little every year. We also talked about strategies such as replacing Macs every five years compared to PCs which are replaced every four years to help with offsetting costs for more expensive equipment. 

Another topic was our physical campuses and the infrastructure used to support that. Many of us are currently looking at 40-60 percent of spaces on campus as being under utilized. At this point, this issue is better suited to a university wide discussion, but we talked about how we can support that with data and communication of what resources are being used.

I found the conference to be well worth my time and enjoyed talking to people from other universities as well as my own. Getting a chance to talk about issues and learn new things in formal sessions and informal get-togethers was valuable. One of my biggest take-aways in general is that we all are facing many of the same issues and conferences help us to come together and talk about them, which makes them valuable. 

Below is a new feature to my posts that I am adding to help me better share and reflect on what I am reading. I don't have anything in the "read" section but hopefully that will grow shortly. 

What I'm Reading 

This is a current book list of what I am reading related to Academics and Technology. As I finish a book, I'll put a little posting in that week's blog post and move the book to what I've read and include a link to the post where I wrote about the book. 

• Why they can't write : killing the five-paragraph essay and other necessities by John Warner
• Reality is broken : why games make us better and how they can change the world by Jane McGonigal
• SuperBetter : a revolutionary approach to getting stronger, happier, braver, and more resilient* by Jane McGonigal
• Education and technology : key issues and debates by Neil Selwyn
• Creating a pipeline for innovation within your college or university : a guide for higher ed leaders and innovators by David Kiel
• Musicophilia : tales of music and the brain by Oliver Sacks
• The perfect wrong note : learning to trust your musical self by William Westney
• Learning innovation and the future of higher education by Joshua Kim and Edward Maloney
• The real work : on the mystery of mastery by Adam Gopnik 
• Engaging in the scholarship of teaching and learning : a guide to the process, and how to develop a project from start to finish by Cathy Bishop-Clark and Beth Dietz-Uhler
• The real work : on the mystery of mastery  by Adam Gopnik
• Shortchanged : how Advanced Placement cheats students byAnnie Abrams

What I've Read

This is a book list of what I read related to Academics and Technology. If you click on the title it will take you to the post where I wrote about the book.