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Workgroups

Digital Campus Workgroup(s) were charged to:

  • Identify the major issues that should be addressed within the workgroup area
  • Selection of top three issues
  • Bring potential ideas without money or resources considerations as a barrier
  • Compose recommendations to resolve these issue(s)
  • Identify metrics of success for identified issue(s)
  • Identify the communication and dissemination strategies before your recommendations occur to all the different constituents (students, faculty, staff)

TECHNOLOGY INFRASTRUCTURE: all connections and programs that will make this work

Lead: Teresa Cochran, Assistant Dean for the College of Allied Health Professions
Lead: Greg Karst, Executive Associate Dean for the College of Allied Health Professions (retired)

    • Michael Ash
    • Melissa Diers
    • Nancy Krusen
    • Emily McElroy
    • Ben Stobbe

Recommendations: 

    1. Anywhere, Anytime IT Transforms
      • Focus group has similar recommendations to Student Experience
      • Examine and establish a comprehensive view of institutional technology fee structure and establish a sustainable funding model; to align revenue with replacement costs and address how fees are returned to programs or divisions as appropriate 
      • Coordinate accreditation and curricular standards to ensure the needed accreditation requirements are addressed across divisions
      • Establish an agile team across technical disciplines to administer a command center of specialists who collaboratively work together to predict, troubleshoot, and resolve campus technology-related issues
      • Develop an intranet-facing scorecard that displays the current state of the services provided by enterprise IT.  The metrics displayed should be the critical success factors that are necessary to deliver value to the students, faculty, and staff.  Services displayed should correspond to the repository recommended in Student Experience
      • Create a repository of classroom technological capabilities and room scheduling available on all devices
      • Implement a downtime notification process to notify the community of education systems
    2. Cultivate and Advance Information Technology’s Role in Education
      • Ensure Information Technology leadership is an integral participant in enterprise strategic planning
      • Develop a process to proactively identify and mentor communities to embrace emerging technology (artificial intelligence, virtualization, e-portfolio, etc.).
      • Develop a process to support the increasing needs of persons with disabilities or impairments – a universal design for learning, and accommodation-ready instruction
      • Populate the institutional digital asset and archive platform to highlight dependencies and features sets of every software to avoid duplication or loss of opportunity to bargain collectively
      • Increase the number of instructional designers and technologists to assist faculty, students, and staff
    3. Foster a Learning Community which Values Data
      • Proactively gather education research needs to assess the technological support needed for pedagogical requirements and curricular change
      • Implement resources (data warehouse, database interface from all identified systems and team) to support the use of standardized data and analytics to improve decisions (i.e., alignment of the learning goal, college goals, and institutional goals)
      • Develop processes to ensure systems are interoperable, expandable, and have elasticity by relying on analysis from the enterprise IT architecture team
      • Implement shared services governance processes with input from all stakeholders that aligns and prioritizes initiatives; ensure alignment of technology strategy with strategic goals and is transparent and widely distributed. Publicly report and communicate on all IT large projects 

STUDENT EXPERIENCE: the learning environment and all student touchpoints

Lead: Yun Saksena, Associate Dean for Education of the College of Dentistry

    • Christine Arcari
    • Betsy Becker
    • Melissa Diers
    • Anthony Donovan
    • Faye Haggar
    • Sarah Hotovy
    • John Lowe
    • Peggy Moore
    • Devin Nickol
    • Frank Pietrantoni
    • Janice Tompkins
    • Tammy Webster

Recommendations:

    1. Empower Students to Succeed with Digital Inclusion  
      • Learning environments should offer a uniform experience throughout the campus 
      • The experience should include the following: 
        • Connected Campus 
        • Educational Technology Digital Warehouse 
        • Learning Space Sustainability Plan 
    2. Technologically Empower Students for Success 
      • Simplify and personalize access 
      • Fund and implement a physical student information technology Help Desk 
      • Provide student UNMC bulk negotiated device purchase/lease program 
      • Creation of a centralized repository that contains information outlining Information Technology services offered to students, faculty, and staff 
      • Define and implement standards for faculty and program usage of the Learning Management System and educational applications 
      • Enable all colleges and students to have access to an EPIC sandbox-learning environment. 
      • Create a sharable and customizable student learning and study system with the ability to curate resources within the course and external to the LMS 

DIGITAL SKILLS: training of faculty, staff, and students

Lead: Jay Moore, Senior Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, College of Medicine

    • Ann Alexander
    • Megan Blusys
    • Liane Connelly
    • Mike Dierks
    • Melissa Diers
    • Emily Glenn
    • Suhasini Kotcherlakota
    • Linda Love
    • Analisa McMillan
    • Lisa Moravec
    • Kari Simonsen
    • Lynnette Leeseburg-Stamler
    • Tammy Winterboer
    • Aileen Warren
    • Rowen Zetterman

Recommendations:

    1. Promote Digital Fluency and require Digital Literacy with the creation of an Office of Digital Innovation that is staffed with full-time and associated specialists that will facilitate the implementation of:
      • Tracking and dissemination of lessons learned about best and failed practices to ensure knowledge is available from one unit to the next.
      • Support the continual process of learning by providing resources and time to develop digital fluency to contribute to the daily work and progress in their role at UNMC for all students, faculty, and staff.
      • Creation of a technology innovation virtual or physical lab that promotes the utilization of emerging education-related technologies.
      • Incentivize the participation in technology events, authorship, and representation at local, regional, national, or international events.
      • Creation and administration of digital skills challenges and provision of badges, certificates, and prizes to incentivize completion of those challenges.
      • Creation, funding, and administration of granting opportunities made available to individuals, departments, and academic units to develop programs in coordination with the Office of Digital Innovation that improve digital literacy.
      • Implemented by Human Resources, the establishment of digital literacy requirements regarding recruitment of faculty and staff.
      • Identification and integration of digital literacy competency assessments, in the evaluation, promotion, and tenure guidelines for faculty and staff.
      • Definition of the required number of continuing education credits regarding digital literacy needed by faculty for promotion and tenure.
      • Advocate the completion of interactive digital literacy training modules for all onboarding students, faculty, and staff.  The modules should be specific to different roles within the institution.   The modules would include competency self-assessment to assist students, faculty, and staff in identifying the areas of deficiencies. 

Analytics and Decision Support: the potential gaps in systems and operations to ensure data can be utilized contribute to planning & decision making

Co-Lead: Hank Robinson, Director of UNO Institutional Effectiveness
Co-Lead: Dan Moser, Director of UNMC Academic Technologies

    • Phil Covington
    • Melissa Diers
    • Jeanne Ferbrache
    • Heidi Keeler
    • Jennifer Larsen
    • Kendra Schmid
    • Tom Walker

Recommendations:

    1. Allow Observation of Developing Data Collection
      • Allow the workgroup to see an existing or developing data collection and analysis framework that may be replicated to meet the analytical needs of a digital campus
        • iExcel is a perfect candidate to provide best practices and provide a case study that could inform the campus recommendations.  iExcel has a level of complexity with a variety of engaged partners, the extensive data that will be captured and analyzed and its many facility-related opportunities. The committee can observe and study the activities that IEXCEL is already engaged in as it moves closer to facility opening.
        • Committee representatives should observe/participate in the iExcel and Davis Global Center data analytics efforts and produce a report detailing the Davis Global Center data capture and analytics plans for committee review and use in making recommendations for the UNMC Digital Campus.
    2. Develop Analytics and Reporting Systems Recommendations
      • Using the iExcel study and the Committee’s and UNMC Expertise, develop a recommendation for usage of current institutional resources and/or the addition of new applications and services to create a Digital Campus Analytics and Decision Support System.