The CIO Council at Harvard University hosted the second Harvard IT Summit in Cambridge, MA on May 31, 2012. We are excited to work with the Center for Digital Education, an external research institute specializing in higher education technology trends, to offer the Summit. This full-day event is designed to provide an opportunity for members of Harvard’s broad IT community from schools, museums, libraries, research centers and administrative groups to come together to discuss technology trends, innovations and best practices in administrative, instructional and research computing.
Anant Agarwal, President, edX
Anne Margulies, Vice President and UCIO, Harvard University
After the morning plenary sessions, Harvard faculty and staff presented on a wide variety of IT projects and initiatives and shared their challenges and lessons learned. External industry practitioners participated in an exhibition space and lunchtime educational sessions in CGIS to share information and demonstrate on industry trends and practices. A continental breakfast and lunch was provided, and there was a closing reception in the Northwest Building at 3:40 p.m.
We encourage participants to discuss the Summit via Twitter. #hitsummit
Thank you,
The CIO Council
BACK TO TOP
8:00 – 9:00 a.m. – Registration and Morning Refreshments, Annenberg Hall
9:00 a.m. – Welcome, Sanders Theater
Anne Margulies, Vice President, University Chief Information Officer, Harvard University
CIO Council Panel, Discussion of Strategic Plan
Keynote Presentation, Sanders Theater
Anant Agarwal, President, edX
11:00 – 11:15 a.m. – Break
A listing of exhibitor and concurrent session room locations will be printed in the conference addendum.
11:15 a.m. – Noon – Concurrent Sessions 1
An Introduction to IT Service Management and the IT Infrastructure Library
This session gives a high-level overview of IT Service Management (ITSM) and the IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL). We will address WHAT ITSM and ITIL are and WHY an IT organization should implement these concepts, and some ideas and recommendations on HOW to get started.
Brian Leishman, IT Service Management Analyst, Harvard University Information Technology
Matthew Wollman, IT Service Management Analyst, Harvard University Information Technology
SEAS Code Repository: Getting Academics to Think Like Engineers
The speaker will present a new tool designed to let students, instructors and researchers share and collaborate with source code in ways that teach academics how to think like engineers. He will discuss how this open source platform similar to github has been adapted to make homework submission like a real software engineering process. This approach encourages open collaboration between students, and enables researchers to collaborate internally or publish online. Last, he will touch on how this technology can make a "ubiquitous home” possible at Harvard.
Robert Parrott, Director of Academic Computing, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Library Technology in Transition: The Harvard Library from an IT Perspective
The Harvard Library is defining new strategic directions that will align the Library with 21st Century Research Needs. Technology is a key component to this ambitious agenda. Mary Lee Kennedy, Senior Associate Provost for the Harvard Library, and Tracey Robinson, Managing Director for Library Technology, will present an overview and answer questions about the reorganization of Library Technology at Harvard. The transition continues through the spring and this session will provide an opportunity for interested IT staff throughout Harvard to get an up-to-date report on organization, services and high-priority IT projects.
Mary Lee Kennedy, Senior Associate Provost for the Harvard Library, Office of the President and Provost
Tracey Robinson, Interim Managing Director for Library Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Unifying Your Learning Environment: Lessons Learned and Best Practices
HBS IT was challenged with creating a new environment that leveraged technology to increase team collaboration. Teams would switch regularly and these changes had to ripple through a portfolio of solutions. Student teams and faculty cut in and across various sections, but still had to adhere to enterprise security standards – further complicating the challenge. The solution also had to guarantee this exchange of information was seamless to users. HBS IT will explore the architectural approach used to achieve its goal, including best practices and lessons learned.
David Aznavoorian, Director, Database Services and Information Security, Harvard Business School
David Goodrich, Director, Application Development, Harvard Business School
IT Partnerships to Support a New Curriculum
Harvard College is migrating from the undergraduate Core Curriculum to a new Program in General Education. In this presentation, learn how HUIT's Academic Technology Group partners with faculty, students and colleagues in the libraries, museums, teaching and learning center, writing program, undergraduate education office and others to help design new courses and improve existing instructional services.
Ramona Islam, Curricular Design and Research Librarian, Harvard Library
Stephanie Kenen, Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education / Administrative Director of the Program in General Education, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Katie Vale, Director, Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Akiko Yamagata, Museum Educator, Harvard Art Museums
Lessons Learned in Creating and Using the Global Classroom
Going to class no longer means going to a classroom on campus. Videoconferencing brings faculty and lecturers into the room, while video streaming, mobile video conferencing and collaboration tools allow students at a distance to actively participate. The technology is daunting but, as we have learned, it is only part of the puzzle. In this session, we will share the lessons we have learned in designing, and then teaching and learning in Harvard’s global classrooms.
Len Evenchik, Assistant Dean for Distance and Innovative Education, Harvard University, Division of Continuing Education
Bill Robinson, Ph.D., Software Architect and Manager of Software Development Harvard University, DCE Distance Education Program
Harvard's LMS: Future Directions
The emerging IT strategic plan developed by the CIO Council recognizes the learning management ecosystem as a key asset in enabling the university's goals in teaching and learning. In this session, we'll provide an update on HUIT's overall academic technology directions, with particular attention to the centrally-provided LMS and the process for moving that forward, in partnership with the schools.
Paul Bergen, Director, iCommons, Harvard University Information Technology
Samantha Earp, Managing Director, Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Harvard Faculty Finder: Enabling University-wide Faculty and Research Discovery
This session introduces Harvard Faculty Finder (HFF). HFF indexes and links existing sources of faculty information across the University to provide an institution-wide view of the breadth and depth of Harvard faculty and scholarship and to help students, faculty, administrators and the general public locate Harvard faculty according to research and teaching expertise. The HFF web services interface enables other systems to extract data for use in other applications across the University.
Amy Brand, Assistant Provost for Faculty Appointments, Office of the President and Provost
Griffin Weber, Chief Technology Officer, Harvard Medical School
View Presentation Slides
Student Employees in Higher Education IT: Indispensible or Staff Narcotic?
In Educause Quarterly, John Mrazek wrote, “The use of student workers was slowly destroying [his] team’s reputation . . . ” (Mrazek, 2003) In this session, the presenter will engage Mrazek’s view of student IT staffing and offer a nuanced view of student employees’ strengths and weaknesses in the Harvard University IT context. Management processes will also be introduced that can foster staffing models that are beneficial to both IT departments and their student employees.
Jared Thomas, Walk-In Support Center Manager, Harvard University Information Technology
Noon – 1:30 p.m. – Lunch and Networking, Exhibit Area, Northwest Building
12:30 – 1:30 p.m. – Exhibitor Education Session
The Education Cloud: IT as a Service Leveraging Internet2
The U.S. invests 2.68 percent of its gross domestic product on publicly-funded research and development. It is clear that academic communities and research institutions are helping to lead these efforts and drive innovation. Working with Internet2 and other national research and education networks, Dell continues to collaborate with the global research and education community to advance innovation around big data and research storage services, open source frameworks for research and academic and administrative initiatives facing institutions today. This session will discuss industry leading solutions including cloud and virtualization and efforts with the Internet2 community to even further enable the next generation of discovery.
Brett Emmerton, Director, Platform Solutions, Global Education, State and Local Services, Dell
A Vision: Technology Supporting the Future of Higher Education
Extreme pressures are facing higher education; economic constraints, accountability, scrutiny, dynamic changing learner behaviors and disruptive technology. To meet these challenges, higher education must be as innovative, dynamic and flexible as it’s environment. Technologies supporting higher eucation must integrate and aggregate the administrative, academic and research worlds into a seamless ecosystem. Insight must be embedded in processes. Deployments must be flexible and scalable. Time-to-value for IT projects must dramatically shrink. Constituents: students, faculty, researchers, staff and executives must multi-task the management of their roles and responsibilities as one. Learn how Oracle innovation is today meeting the needs of the future.
Joe Burkhart, Director Higher Education Solutions, Oracle
Cole Clark, Global Vice President, Oracle Education and Research, Oracle
1:30 – 2:15 p.m. – Concurrent Sessions 2
What Would You Do with Five Million Hours of Computing and 50 TB of Storage?
This talk will present the Open Science Grid and XSEDE (Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment), two NSF-funded national supercomputing environments available to the Harvard community. These projects provide access to specialized hardware for capacity computing, data processing, storage and visualization. The talk will present ongoing projects and discuss how Harvard researchers, students and instructors can leverage these resources.
Ian Stokes-Rees, Scientific Computing Consultant, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
The Student IT Experience Initiative – A Case Study and Roadmap
This panel will discuss strategies to support “student involvement,” one of HUIT's seven high-level goals. Topics to be covered include the role of the Student IT Advisory Board and student IT advisers in project planning, the collection and prioritization of student ideas and strategies to tap into student creativity and technical expertise. We will also examine how this initiative fits in with HUIT’s ongoing IT service strategy to support teaching, research and learning.
Peter Baskette, Director of Service Management and Operational Integration, Harvard University
Shannon Rice, Senior Product Manager for Academic Technology, Harvard University Information Technology
Patrick Rich, Graduate Student in Linguistics / Secretary, Graduate Student Council
Kate Stanton, Assistant Dean of Undergraduate Education, Harvard College
Jim Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice / Chief Technology Officer, Harvard University Information Technology
Harvard's University-wide Student Information Systems
The speakers will present the current initiative to develop a University-wide approach to Student Information Systems. The session will first explore the vision and strategic objectives for the project. We'll then discuss how lessons learned from recent efforts around SIS helped shape the project approach. Finally, we'll discuss the methods for ensuring cross-school and cross-functional collaboration.
Michael Burke, Registrar, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Katie Luddy, Senior Project Manager, Harvard University Information Technology
Shaping the Future of Humanitarian Action: HPCR's Experiential Learning Lab
Over 200,000 professionals are engaged in providing emergency relief worldwide. After decades of efforts to professionalize international responses to crises, information technology has emerged as a central tool to share knowledge and perspectives across the aid industry. Through a series of twice monthly global webcasts via WebEx/Twitter, video conferencing and Basecamp for working groups and animated learning modules via Articulate, HPCR's agile team has helped to foster a global community of humanitarian professionals.
James Brockman, Distance Learning Coordinator, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard School of Public Health
Claude Bruderlein, Director, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard School of Public Health
Dustin Lewis, Program Associate, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard School of Public Health
Anaide Nahikian, Program Coordinator, Program on Humanitarian Policy and Conflict Research, Harvard School of Public Health
Research Data Sharing: Dataverse at the Library
The Dataverse Network is an open-source data repository developed at Harvard's IQSS which is used to publish, share, cite and archive research data. The Library and IQSS are working together to offer Dataverse to all Harvard researchers. In this talk, we will present the Dataverse Network from front to back, including: 1) examples of how it is being used at Harvard, 2) description and demo of the new metadata extensions and API recently available as part of v3.0 release and 3) details on the hosting architecture that makes the Dataverse run. We will end with a summary of the future offerings and plans.
Gustavo Durand, Dataverse Development Manager, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Wendy Gogel, Manager of Digital Content and Projects, Harvard Library
Bill Horka, Infrastructure Developer, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Alex Storer, Research Technical Consultant, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Course Pack to iPac: How HGSE Went Digital
As part of a cross-department process improvement initiative, HGSE recently piloted its first fully digital course packs, called iPacs, for several courses with the goal of moving all course reading materials online for fall 2012. Learn how HGSE went green, saved money, became more responsible copyright-wise, leveraged existing digital resources, honed
processes, re-structured course sites and improved the student experience . . . all through the iSites platform and associated library tools.
Gino Beniamino, Instructional Technologist, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Carol Kentner, Course Administrator, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Trisha White, Technology Support Services Team Leader, Harvard Graduate School of Education
WorldMap for Research and Collaboration – A Geospatial Approach
WorldMap is an open source, web-based GIS application developed by the Center for Geographic Analysis at Harvard University. It allows users to compile, analyze, archive, search and share over the web all types of geospatial information without the need to use difficult-to-learn GIS software. For educators, WorldMap presents a unique opportunity to analyze research data that can be spatially displayed and also be collaboratively developed.
Jeff Howry, Research Associate, Semitic Museum, Faculty of Arts and Sciences and Gulf Encyclopedia for Sustainable Urbanism Graduate School of Design
View Presentation Slides
Accompanying Links
Driving Pedagogical Innovation with Technology
Last spring, HBS infused new levels of innovation into the pedagogy of the first-year MBA. Paramount to the curriculum was creating deeper student collaboration through experiential, immersive, field-based learning. The School facilitated this learning through the development of a new set of online tools that encouraged self-reflection, peer feedback and collaboration/sharing through portals and videos spaces. MBA and HBS IT will walk you through the changing pedagogy and explore how they crafted these technology solutions to complement the goals of the new program.
Susan Borges, Field Immersion Experiences for Leadership Development, Harvard Business School
Elizabeth Hess, Managing Director, Educational Technology Group and Web Development, Harvard Business School
Flipping the Classroom through Video Annotations
Digital video, one of the fastest growing sources of media available online is becoming an indispensable primary resource in many of the academic disciplines. Students now use instructional videos to review lectures, visualize classroom cases, reexamine lab practices or learn languages. Video annotation tools in pedagogy introduce a new model of classroom engagement transforming the unidirectional video discourse into a bidirectional exchange and flipping the common instructional approach. Through video annotations, teachers can assess the level of student engagement probing misconceptions around specific topics and addressing them in the classroom or by embedding new reformulated material as commentaries within the video. Teachers can further reflect on their own teaching methods based on the feedback gathered though student commentaries or questions about the material.
Philip Desenne, Academic Technologies Senior Product Manager, Harvard University Information Technology, Harvard University
2:15 – 2:35 p.m. – Networking Break
2:35 – 3:20 p.m. – Concurrent Sessions 3
Classroom Response Systems at Harvard FAS: Status and Trends
The presentation will describe Harvard University Information Technology’s experience of supporting the Turning Technologies classroom response system for FAS courses after more than two years. It will also include recent developments about Learning Catalytics, new software developed by Eric Mazur’s team that allows instructors to go beyond multiple-choice questions and to manage the interactive classroom through peer instruction. The audience will have the opportunity to experience Turning Technologies and Learning Catalytics firsthand during the presentation.
Daniel Jamous, Senior Instructional Technologist, Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Tolu Odumosu, Post-Doctoral Fellow, School of Engineering and Applied Science, Harvard Kennedy School / Teaching Assistant, General Education, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Julie Schell, Post-Doctoral Fellow in Educational Research, School of Engineering and Applied Science
Bringing Curriculum to Life: Best Practices for Building Multimedia Content
As technology matures, the appetite for dynamic, multimedia content continues to grow. Increasingly tech savvy learners drive demand for richer, more engaging educational content. Come hear how you can meet these demands in effective and appealing ways from two of Harvard Business School’s multimedia experts. They’ll review best practices and key learnings on technology choices, storytelling, faculty engagement, mobile development and more.
David Habeeb, Lead Multimedia Developer, Educational Technology Group, Harvard Business School
Ruth Page, Senior Multimedia Producer, Educational Technology Group, Harvard Business School
Going the Distance: Converting a Residential Executive Education Program into an Online Program
Learn how HGSE collaborated across departments and between faculty and staff to convert a long-running residential executive education program into a fully online six-week experience. We will discuss our planning/design/ development/delivery process, the technologies we used and our multi-tiered approach to faculty coaching and participant on-boarding. We will share specific plans to leverage mobile to better meet learning goals in this program, as well as plans around technology-enhanced learning in executive education at HGSE more generally.
Gino Beniamino, Instructional Technologist, Harvard Graduate School of Education
Kristin Lofblad Sullivan, Manager of Instructional Technology, Harvard Graduate School of Education
More than Email and Disk Space: Supporting Undergraduates in Building a Digital Portfolio
The long-term IT commitment to students is not much more than an email account, storage space and, perhaps, a personal web page. Would students benefit from building a persistent digital portfolio of work, cutting across courses, projects and personal interests? Can every student be given a virtual cluster of computers on their arrival that they will use throughout their studies? What would such a system look like? How would students use it? What is in place now that could support such a goal? Could this benefit graduate students and faculty as well?
Ian Stokes-Rees, Scientific Computing Consultant, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Teaching in the Cloud: Using IaaS in the Classroom
In this roundtable, we'll discuss how cloud infrastructure providers are being used in courses, including local (such as OpenNebula or OpenStack) and vendor (Amazon EC2) solutions. We touch on the advantages and disadvantages of running in the cloud, including security concerns. Lastly, we will discuss where "the cloud" is going in terms of the classroom and independent learning, and how Harvard might respond.
Samantha Earp, Managing Director, Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
David Malan, Instructor, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Robert Parrott, Director of Academic Computing, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Hanspeter Pfister, Gordon McKay Professor of Comoputer Science, School of Engineering and Applied Sciences
Jim Waldo, Gordon McKay Professor of the Practice / Chief Technology Officer, Harvard University Information Technology
From 200 to 17,000 Processing Cores in Five Years
We will discuss how we have consolidated and coordinated scattered, independent research computing assets within the sciences to provide a seamless, integrated private research computing cloud. Over 17,000 cpu now provide support for over 5,000 researchers including over 4 petabytes of storage. This distributed computing system has dramatically improved our ability to solve large data-driven and grand challenge scientific problems. We will also talk about how new data center facilities in Holyoke, MA to open in 2013, will further increase and extend our capabilities.
James Cuff, Director of Research Computing / Chief Technology Architect, Research Computing Division of Science, Faculty of Arts and Sciences
Research in the Library? Informatics Opportunities for the Present and Future
Long past are the days when the university library was a place for musty tomes and shushing librarians. Advances in computer science and informatics have reshaped user expectations and ushered a new age of interconnected, ubiquitous and, sometimes, magical information services. The Center for Biomedical Informatics has enjoyed a rich and collaborative relationship with the Countway Medical Library. Together, we would like to share how this relationship has enriched medical informatics projects, and discuss how research in these areas can benefit the core mission of the library.
Daniela Bourges, Lead Architect, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Jonathan Kennedy, Senior Software Engineer, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Dougal MacFadden, Director of Informatics Technology, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
Alexa McCray, Associate Professor of Medicine at Harvard Medical School / Associate Director, Countway Library of Medicine / Co-Director, Center for Biomedical Informatics, Harvard Medical School
David Osterbur, Director of Public and Access Services, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
Juliane Schneider, Metadata Librarian, Countway Library of Medicine, Harvard Medical School
View Presentation Slides
Just One More Thing . . . Enabling Seamless Mobile Integration
Utilizing the latest available open standards technologies, it is now possible to create an enterprise-quality research or administrative web application that allows for the simultaneous creation of mobile iPad and iPhone versions at little extra development cost. The key is to use the correct standards. The speaker will show you how.
Nick Sophinos, Technical Lead, Harvard Catalyst
The Harvard Web Publishing Initiative
The past few years have seen a rapidly growing need from FAS and Central Administration departments for coordinated services and support for web publishing. In the spring of 2011, Harvard University Information Technology (HUIT) and Harvard Public Affairs & Communications (HPAC) evaluated existing support for web services and made recommendations for providing additional resources to departments, centers and offices to meet their web development and maintenance needs. In partnership with The Institute for Quantitative Social Science (IQSS), this three-year initiative will define common tools and services for website publishing capable of meeting the widest possible range of departmental needs. This presentation describes the software and services that will emerge from this unique, cross-departmental partnership, and describes how we will help departments conduct business effectively and efficiently through a coherent, well-designed web presence.
Ferdinand Alimadhi, Lead Application Architect, Harvard Web Publishing Initiative / Manager of Statistical Programming, Institute for Quantitative Social Science
Paul Bergen, Director, Academic Technology Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Ben Sharbaugh, Digital Media Strategist, Harvard Public Affairs and Communication
Amy Winder, Manager of Client Relations, Administrative Web Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Enterprise Business Intelligence – Current State and Future Direction
What is Enterprise Business Intelligence? We will discuss the Business Intelligence Roadmap for the University, including the evolution of how we access information at the University and, more importantly, how that information is used in the day-to-day running of the University. These capabilities have spanned producing simple listing reports to reports with interactive features to the enablement of longitudinal analysis. Included in this session will be demonstrations of current reporting and new technologies on the horizon.
Kathy Genovese, Business Intelligence Manager, Enterprise Data and Business Intelligence Services, Harvard University Information Technology
Jason Shaffner, Director, Financial Systems Solutions, Harvard Financial Administration
3:20 – 3:40 p.m. – Networking Break
3:40 – 5:00 p.m. – Closing Reception and Exhibit Area, Northwest Building
5:00 p.m. – Adjourn
