Developing an instructional technology intranet plan for schools

Instructional Technology Plan

In creating an instructional technology plan the objectives of making content more pervasively available through a school and community-wide Intranet, the addressing of legal and regulatory compliance issues including protecting the privacy of student records and the assurance of business continuity and disaster recovery are presented in the context of this plan.

Intranet Project Considerations and Plan

In creating an Intranet the first steps need to be defining what information is needed by whom, and for what purpose. This process mapping is essential if the Intranet portal is going to be of value to everyone at the school, from a school employee, teacher, parent and student perspective. As a first step, the process mappings of each dominant workflow in the school and community need to be defined. From this analysis, a set of workflow diagrams can be created and the roles of each person's job in the school and the information needs of students, parents, and the community relative to the process workflow can be defined. Only after creating this workflow matrix of roles by users can the essential tasks of actually building the Intranet begin.

The Intranet itself needs to have the following: user authentication including single sign-on; personalization; content management and taxonomy definition tools; tools and adapters for integrating content and knowledge management databases; and a strategic plan for how the build out an enterprise-wide portal supports the most commonly used processes in the school including the creating, organizing, managing and publishing content. AMR Research as completed a series of studies showing how portals can be made more effective by streamlining content management strategies and serve as the first step in adopting a Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA). Their landmark reports by Klein, Russ (2006) and Murphy and Columbus (2002) on the subject includes a methodology for organizing content first by information type intersected by point in the information or task process supported and includes vendor evaluations.

Once a portal strategy has been defined the specific requirements of each workflow can be tailored to the needs of each individual users and user groups. Both Klein, Russ (2006) and Murphy and Columbus (2002) advocate starting small and focus first on critical needs then expand portals to more complex requirements. Specific steps needed to implement a portal are as follows:

Map out and organize common processes across all workflows and look for ways to trim redundancies in them first before applying any technology to them.

Define and stick with a single portal platform for greater cost and time savings in administration. Consider open source portal offerings including uPortal. Olson (2002) provides an excellent case study on how colleges, schools and universities are making use of open source portal applications to alleviate redundant and often conflicting data in multiple portals.

Define and build out a portal development plan that encompasses all shared processes across the all areas of the school.

Define a portal roadmap that allows for eventual move to Web Services based on a Service Oriented Architecture. This approach to defining an SOA-based platform will make the growth of content much more manageable over the long-term.

Compliance Strategies Demand Enterprise Content Management

To ensure the school's information technology plan stays in compliance with the many regulations regarding the protection and use of students' information, a Security and Audit Control framework must also be developed. The purpose of this framework is to protect the privacy of both school employees and students, in addition to making Records Management, Business Process Management, and a Portal Framework available as a system-wide resource for the specific collaboration, content management, search and retrieval implementation plans to act as a unifying it strategy across the diverse student records in all the systems in both the school and the broader school district according to Klein (2006).

Note that this framework also includes support for Expert Network and Learning Management applications to also increase school employees, teachers, and students' productivity as well.

Figure 1: Electronic Education Record Systems Hierarchy

Source: Murphy and Columbus (2002)

Summary

For many schools, their continued growth is going to force the development of content management systems that can scale to 3X to 5X the level of activity today. To accomplish this without disrupting existing performance of the schools' Intranet portal and content management systems, the processes that are most commonly completed in the school must first be understood and mapped, and then translated into the content needs the Intranet will fulfil. Second, a framework for ensuring the security of the student records needs to be defined and managed as part of the enterprise content management (ECM) system first, followed by initiating off-site storage of records and the development of an it Continuity Plan. The use of hosting services is an excellent alternative, as it provides the school with the opportunity to selectively back up and keep secure records no longer needed in the office, and given the growth of Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) there is also the potential to have a very cost effective fall-back strategy in place in the event any disruption in service occurs.

Sources:

Klein, Russ (2006) -. Achieving Collaboration Excellence: Content Management, Data Integration and the Enterprise Portal. Aberdeen Group Research Report. Aberdeen Group. August, 2006

Murphy, Jim and Columbus, Louis. Re-Orienting Your Content and Knowledge Management Strategies. AMR Research. Report. October 31, 2002. Boston, MA. Downloaded from the Internet on February 9, 2007 at http://www.lwcresearch.com/filesfordownloads/ReorientingYourContentandKnowledgeMgmtStrategy.pdf

Olsen, Florence. The Power of Portals. The Chronicle of Higher Education. Page A32. Downloaded from the Internet on February 9, 2007:

http://www.buffalo.edu/aboutmyub/pdf/48a03201.pdf