CUNY’s 11th Annual IT Conference
Thursday and Friday, November 29 and 30, 2012 @ John Jay College of Criminal Justice
Instructional/Information Technology in CUNY: Change and Persistence
The City University of New York’s 11th annual IT Conference considers the calculus of gain and loss in the relentless, accelerating march of change. What changes are transformative, and which are just trendy? What endures despite change, and possibly helps shape our experience of it?
As has been the case since its inception, the conference will be held at John Jay College, offering overviews of the University’s key IT initiatives, demonstrations of how technology continues to change teaching, scholarship, and administration, and a chance to meet with vendors. As always, proposals for presentations are invited from the CUNY community, particularly those addressing not just change but which principles persist in spite of change and ideally inform its direction.
- What underlies all our work? Print journalism wanes, but the need for information only grows. Business models for music and movies have changed, but song and stories are as old as humanity and will last as long. More vital than entertainment, education is a fundamental need that is also an economic driver. What are its best means and channels now? How can we expect them to change, and how can we tell whether those changes are improvements or threats?
- What core functions and missions are we addressing with technology? How does it extend our outreach, our efficacy, our overarching purpose? How do we guard against possible losses – to security, privacy, integrity, even knowledge – that can accompany change? As we confront change, what new responsibilities do we incur? What new chances can we seize?
- What do changes mean for what lies beyond our borders, and perhaps the ability of those borders to persist? How does change affect our interdependence, our self-definition, our competition? What changes can we expect to the shapes knowledge takes? How do we need to think about changing forms of publication (of textbooks, of scholarship, even of student work)? What new opportunities exist for collaboration within our system and with systems beyond?
- What planning do we need to do? What do we need to talk through together as we weigh priorities, consider investments of time and resources? What ongoing discussions and structures do we need to consider the changes we know will come but need to be managed?
Proposals for panels or presentations but also roundtables, workshops, and interactions are welcome. Specifying preferred format as well as focus, proposals should include a title, an abstract of no more than 200 words, and the name and affiliation of each party to the proposal.
Proposals were due by 9/14/12 and are no longer being accepted. Thank you for your interest in the conference.
If you have questions or comments about this process, contact the conference chair, George Otte, at George.Otte@mail.cuny.edu
