CI 8395 reading reflection#4

I continuously read CI 8395 assignments. Reminding myself – don’t be distracted by enormous lines of knowledge and inquires permeating in all kinds of publications. So far, my readings are focusing on research methods and methodologies, according to the syllabus guidance. After having posted my reflections, I told myself that I need to concentrate on what I promised myself in the first reflection. Visualize the big but start from small, and do it right now! I have a preliminary draft to critique on Aviv et als’ Network analysis of knowledge construction in asynchronous learning network.
But what happens is that there are always some endorphinic surprises waiting ahead when browsing is part of the cyber habits (or OCD – online compulsive disorder?)! An interesting article tied to one of my observations I need to post right now! It is Luke Fernandez’s article – “An Antidote for the faculty-IT divide” (EDUCAUSE quarterly, Vol.1, 2008) that articulates one of my long term observations on the relationships among IT department, administration and faculty body (both in UW-Stout, and CVTC, but not sure yet at UMN). The catchy phrase in the article is “Do campus IT Department harm higher education?” He narrates an episode from one of the renowned personal-technology columnists (Wall Street Journal) Walt Mossberg’s indictment on IT Department’s “regressive, poisonous, and centralizing power” that negatively affects on technology development in many campuses. It happened during Mossberg’ giving a speech to high-level administrators at last June’s Chronicle of Higher Education presidents’ forum. Mossberg accused IT departments of centralizing technology and maintained that these centralizing initiative discourage the development of solutions tailored to the needs of individual users. As Mossberg put it, “big IT departments don’t want to learn it because they don’t want to support it. It’s part of the problem of centralizing all this stuff.
For unknown reasons, the speech transcript was not released, but the ripple effect arouse debate and dissection in the EDUCAUSE CIO email discussion list, on a Chronicle of Higher Education podcast, and in the November/December 2007 issue of EDUCAUSE Review.
Fernandez concludes that good relations between IT and faculty can be promoted by understanding and addressing the cultural divides that exists between the administration and faculty.
This event added one more “elephant- in- the -room factor” to one of my research interests – macroscopic contextual analysis of online teaching and learning environment.