Advancing Campus Efficiencies : A Companion for Campus Leaders in the Digital Era

Technology is continually changing the world. In higher education in particular, new technologies can be applied to great advantage by campus communities seeking to offer better services for students in more efficient ways. Written for deans, vice presidents, and presidents of all higher education institutions, Advancing Campus Efficiencies provides straightforward advice that is intended to help colleges and universities respond to calls for greater accountability and their students' rising expectations for access to advanced technologies.

The book envisions a dramatically different way of delivering courses; disaggregating and reassigning teaching functions; and increasing differentiation, collaboration, and innovation―all enabled by the appropriate use of information technologies. Drawing on the Western Cooperative for Educational Telecommunication's (WCET) more than 15 years of work on the effective use of technology to increase quality and efficiency in higher education, the book offers valuable insight on

• Whether for-profit institutions enjoy a competitive advantage over public and independent institutions
• The most critical issues facing higher education today, and possible solutions
• Strategies for managing the cost of integrating information technologies into teaching and Learning
• How to lead campus transformation using communication technologies
• Connecting students and faculty through distance learning and telecommunication systems
• The role of openness in the future of higher education

Offering new ideas on how to deploy emerging information and communication technologies, Advancing Campus Efficiencies will be a companion―both comfort and guide―for educators undertaking the work of inspired leadership that will be required to achieve the new design of higher education.

Sally M. Johnstone is vice president for academic affairs at Winona State University and former executive director of WCET, the Cooperative advancing the effective use of technology in higher education. In that capacity she worked with institutions, states, and provinces on planning and policies for the integration of technology into the academic structures of higher education institutions and systems. She also leads workshops and gives about a dozen invited addresses each year to higher education organizations throughout the world. Dr. Johnstone has authored dozens of articles, book chapters, and major reports on open and distributed learning; served on the governing boards of both higher education associations and institutions; and currently serves on the editorial boards of several academic journals. She was a faculty member and an academic administrator after earning her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill.

WCET is a member ship organization of 275 member located in more than 45 U.S. states and 7 countries. WCET member are primarily public colleges and universities but also conclude private institutions, government agencies, and corporations. The WCET staff develops research projects that focus on integrating technology into the teaching and learning processes, consults with higher education institutions, holds professional development conferences for practitioners, and generally supports WCET members in the planning and implementation of e-learning. WCET was founded in 1989 by the Western Interstate Commission for Higher Education (WICHE).