Campus IT Collaboration Evolves

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Opinion

Campus IT Collaboration Evolves

6/21/2007

By Terry Calhoun

Are folks in higher education inherently more collaborative than people elsewhere? As someone who has spent most of his adult life in and around the Academy and views higher education as a good thing, and as someone who views collaboration as a good thing, my "working conclusion" default is that people in higher education are indeed inherently more collaborative than others. On the other hand....

A couple of things I have recently read have caused me to think a little bit more about higher education and collaboration. One is a sneak peek at an ECAR study currently underway, provided by a 12-page document titled, "IT Collaboration: A Preview from the 2007 ECAR Study." Another is a section of the book 1491: New Revelations of the Americas Before Columbus, by Charles C. Mann. The latter book also managed to give an earlier life hero of mine, the physical anthropologist Ales Hrdlicka, clay feet that he didn't have before.

You see, in an earlier life I attempted to be an anthropologist, nearly finishing my Ph.D., and in the process was awarded the first ever Ales Hrdlicka Award by the American Association of Physical Anthropologists (AAPA), in 1976. Hrdlicka has sort of been a minor hero of mine ever since. However, in 1491, Mann explains in excruciating detail how Hrdlicka used his position as the editor of the AAPA's journal for 24 years in the early part of the 20th century to stomp all over any finds by others that supported early dates for humans in the Americas, a conclusion he was actively against. No collaboration there.

I knew about the "dinosaur wars," in which early paleontologists competed with each other, as much master showmen as scientists. But I didn't know that my hero, Ales Hrdlicka, rather than collaborating with others, actively worked to discredit their findings.

Sigh.

On the other hand, scientific papers nowadays are known for their long, long lists of co-authors, and the strong emphasis by the National Science Foundation on funding collaborative work wherever possible, especially across disciplines, indicate that maybe things have changed.

The ECAR report, especially, is encouraging. I've followed such large-scale collaborations as Sakai and Kuali for years, and the initial results of the survey, still underway, support that there is a lot of collaboration going on in higher education IT.

The data collection so far has consisted of three surveys. First was an initial survey, to all Educause member institutions, to determine which colleges and universities are engaged in IT collaboration and how much. The researchers then asked two targeted groups to complete additional surveys. One group consisted of institutions heavily involved in IT collaborative efforts and the other of colleges and universities that had not participated in significant IT collaboration within the previous two years.