College of Education Starts Strategic Technology Planning

by Catherine Bindewald

In her State of the College of Education Address last February, Dean Donna Browder Evans spoke of ways to stake out Ohio State's leadership claim among America's teacher preparation institutions. She included a prominent role for technology among her other goals to realign and reinvigorate teacher preparation programs, strengthen research and grantsmanship, become more accessible, and increase diversity.

For Education's faculty and staff to remain competitive, she said they must dramatically and creatively strengthen their technological infrastructure in programmatic and support areas, and understand whether and how technology can enhance the teaching and learning process.

In June, she formalized the work of the technology challenge by convening the Dean's Technology Committee. The team is developing a plan to meet the hardware, networking and software requirements of a state-of-the-art college and establish organizational and administrative structures to support it. The committee, chaired by Suzanne Damarin, wants a plan that is responsive to both the university's Academic Plan and P-12 initiatives and consistent with the technology philosophy and practices of the Offices of the CIO and the university community. The plan will have long-term and short-term components, with short-term priorities articulated within the longer-term goals.

The College of Education is represented on the committee by Chairperson Damarin and Caroline Clark, Michael Sherman, Scott Sweetland, Cynthia Tyson, Paul Vellom, Richard Voithofer, and Joe Wheaton, plus staff members John Chovan and Charles Lynd. Additional members include Diane Dagefoerde of the College of Humanities, Bob Gustafson of the College of Engineering and CIO Ilee Rhimes; and from Ohio's education community, Timothy Best of Ohio SchoolNet Commission and Margaret Kasten of Ohio Resource Center.

The committee met weekly during the summer and completed the first phase of its work in July with the submission of its first interim report to the dean. The committee recommended that the dean implement a three-year replacement cycle for computers and that faculty and staff be given a choice of four "baseline" models from which to choose and that a standard package of software be included. This fall, the committee begins focusing on the strategic planning process to make recommendations on the full scope of technology use in the college.