Top 10 IT Issues, 2023: Foundation Models

Posted by: bluesyemre | November 1, 2022

Top 10 IT Issues, 2023: Foundation Models

The EDUCAUSE 2023 Top 10 IT Issues help describe the foundation models that colleges and universities will develop next year and beyond, acting on what was learned in the pandemic and framed by the three building blocks of leadership, data, and work and learning.

Recent times have brought about a Great Rethink that is upending previous models of management and working. Higher education is no exception. In 2023, institutional and technology leaders are ready for a new approach. They are responding to what we’ve learned from the COVID-19 pandemic, what we were beginning to address before the pandemic, and our shared, enduring beliefs in the power of higher education:

We’ve learned that we can operate an institution even when many people—staff, faculty, and students—aren’t physically present.
We’ve learned that many students deeply want and need physical presence but that they also want and need the flexibility that hybrid offers.
We’ve learned that institutions have unique cultures that play out differently in person and online.
We’ve acknowledged that we can rapidly change and adapt and that we don’t always need to do things the way we “always” did them.
We’ve learned that data sparks insights and that insights lead to better decisions.
We’ve demonstrated that technology fuels just about everything an institution needs to do and that as a result, the insights and guidance of a technology leader should help fuel institutional strategy.
We’ve recognized that IT staff need to help manage the business and further the missions, in addition to running the systems.
We’ve learned that our work and personal lives overlap significantly and that everyone needs flexibility between those lives.
We’ve seen that students are influenced by their ongoing digital experiences and that a good number of them want institutional digital experiences different from what we’re offering.
We’ve realized the importance of accentuating why and how working in higher education can be a rewarding career choice.

In 2023, thinking is giving way to doing. The old foundations—from enrollment to credentials to the campus to decision-making—are showing signs of wear. Existing foundations need to be examined and strengthened. New foundations may need to be developed. Institutional and technology leaders are building solid foundation models for higher education.

This notion of foundation models is inspired by recent developments in artificial intelligence. Foundation models are the basis of a new AI approach that applies vaster scale and scope to existing AI techniques.^Footnote1 Previous approaches were limited in flexibility. They were task-specific. They worked with prelabeled datasets and examined the data element by element. Each model learned the rules for its particular purpose and was optimized for that. AI foundation models develop new capabilities on their own. This makes them flexible and reusable beyond the original, specific purpose for which they were used. Scale matters: the bigger a model gets, the better it works.

But something as powerful as foundation models carries serious ethical risks, and these risks need to be considered now, rather than when it’s too late. The risks include biased algorithms and incentives, uses that replace rather than augment people, investment and development needs on a scale that edges out small organizations, and imperiled privacy and cybersecurity.

The concept of foundation models needn’t pertain only to artificial intelligence. We can apply it, metaphorically, to higher education. Many institutions are working to address such issues as enrollment, affordability, and graduation rates and to improve areas such as decision-making, staff engagement, students’ success, and diversity. Ongoing structural challenges can make this work more difficult and expensive. Data is often siloed, but the questions leaders need data to inform transcend the siloes. Systems are focused on addressing specific tasks and thus provide a splintered, perplexing experience for the students and other people who use them. Scaling solutions across the institution, or beyond it, by adopting cloud services could increase efficiency, but many existing processes or locally developed technologies don’t easily lend themselves to off-the-shelf solutions. As hybrid forms of working and learning take hold, existing technologies, support models, and learning strategies need to be broadened beyond their original purposes. As staff bring to their work changed expectations influenced by the pandemic and socioeconomic concerns, new models of leadership and management need to be fostered. Progress in all these areas could be accelerated with more flexible, reusable, and scalable models.

In 2023, the Top 10 IT Issues focus on acting on the results of what we’ve learned and on the challenges that institutions are facing.^Footnote2 The issues describe the foundation models that institutional and technology leaders are developing. We’re moving from task-specific and silo-specific work and strategy and infrastructure to institution-wide, flexible, reusable models for running the higher education institution and achieving its missions. We’re outsourcing technologies and integrating data to achieve the benefits of scale. We’re embracing our humanity and our needs for purpose, connection, and trust. And we’re continuing to recognize the ongoing duty to safeguard privacy and cybersecurity.

2023 Top 10 IT Issues

#1. A Seat at the Table: Ensuring IT leadership is a full partner in institutional strategic planning
#2. Privacy and Cybersecurity 101: Embedding privacy and cybersecurity education and awareness in the curriculum and in the workplace
#3. Evolve, Adapt, or Lose Talent: Creating a workplace that allows for and supports movement up down and sideways to accommodate shifts in personal and professional goals and to foster healthier work/life balance
#4. Smooth Sailing for the Student Experience: Using technology, data insight, and agility to create a frictionless student experience
#5. Enriching the Leadership Playbook: Leading with humility and candor to engage, empower, and retain the IT workforce
#6. Expanding Enrollments and the Bottom Line: Focusing data and analytics initiatives on identifying academic programs with high potential for recruitment ROI
#7. Moving from Data Insight to Data Action: Converting data analytics into action plans to power institutional performance, enhance operational efficiency, and improve student success
#8. A New Era of IT Support: Updating IT services to support remote/hybrid work
#9. Online, In-Person, or Hybrid? Yes: Developing a learning-first, technology-enabled learning strategy
#10. SaaS, ERP, and CRM: An Alphabet Soup of Opportunity: Managing cost, risk, and value of investments in new ERP solutions