Through our four years experience with the NSF grant, "Advanced
Networking with Minority-Serving Institutions (AN-MSI)," the
Educational Consulting Foundation principals learned that the most
effective way to assist educational institutions in upgrading their
information technology infrastructure and support is to visit the
campus and talk with the users - the administration, faculty, staff
and students - in addition to the IT support staff. By discussing
issues with all involved parties on the campus, a comprehensive
understanding of the user requirements for software, hardware and
user support can be obtained. As a result, the network and computer
resources needed to meet these requirements can be more accurately
determined. Depending on the size and complexity of the campus and
any satellite campuses, an assessment visit typically takes one
or two days for a team of two to five team members. The team leader
gathers reports from each team member and compiles a report describing
the findings and recommendations for action, and sends the report
to the school's president or chancellor within approximately a month.
We find this approach to be substantially more effective than sending
people off campus to a course. We often see examples of trainees
returning from a course and trying to describe the lessons learned
and the benefits of implementing them, and having the information
fall on deaf ears for a variety of reasons. The consequence often
is "no ripples in the pond" - no results to show for the
expense of the course and time away from campus by the attendees.
Campus visits can lead to better communication between the IT staff
and the users who, in some cases, have had little or no prior interaction
except to address problems.
Schools we have visited have told us that they have been impressed
by the quality of the findings and recommendations, the lack of
boilerplate, and the low cost for such a high quality product. We
have been invited back for additional consultation, in one case
nine times and counting. References are available upon request.
