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RedDot Finds College and University IT Departments Spend Disproportionate Time on Basic Web Content
Demands on IT Departments Rise Across the U.S. According to Survey by The Open Text Web Solutions Group
Open Text Corporation, the independent provider of Enterprise Content Management (ECM) software and solutions, said a survey by RedDot, The Open Text Web Solutions Group, shows that the demands of managing Web sites is overloading university IT departments. The survey of IT professionals in colleges and universities across the U.S. found that the demands on IT departments have risen fast because IT staffers must spend a disproportionate amount of time managing Web content, rather than pressing IT projects. Respondents were surveyed at the recent Creating an Online Campus and HighEdWebDev conferences.
In the survey, 91 percent of respondents said demands on their school’s IT departments have risen, most of which involve requests by faculty/staff to take care of basic Web needs. The majority of these requests involve IT departments making content updates to various pages of the campus Web site, something that can be easily achieved by faculty/staff.
"This survey clearly shows the need for Web content management software in the world of higher education technology,” said Marc Goldstein, Vice President of Sales for Exgenex Education, the organization that presented the Creating An Online Campus event. "IT professionals from colleges and universities across the country continue to find themselves mired in the daily routine of content updates on their campus Web sites and Intranets. Though important, these tasks place unnecessary demands on an IT staff that needs to focus on more complicated issues. Web content management software allows an administration’s staff and faculty to update Web content on their own, liberating the IT staff to address mission-critical IT tasks."
In addition, the survey found that 64 percent of respondents said the number of tasks students and staff can accomplish on their own campus Web sites has increased in just the past year. These tasks include registering for classes, dropping/adding classes, class roster functions and other campus activities that in the past required in-person meetings or traditional paper-based systems. The survey also found that 70 percent of respondents expect increases in online admission submissions in 2007.
Other findings include:
- A majority of respondents (53 percent) said an up-to date and easily navigated Web site is very important to their institutions
- 43 percent felt that their institutions have been successful with current online offerings, while 26 percent said the offerings have been only somewhat successful - which may be why 80 percent of respondents say their institutions are planning some type of changes to their online resources in the next year
Methodology
This higher education survey was presented to a variety of higher education IT faculty from colleges and universities across the United States. The study was conducted at the "Creating an Online Campus" Event (October 3-4, 2006) and the HighEdWebDev 2006 Conference (October 22-25, 2006) with over 80 respondents successfully completing the survey. The questionnaire is available upon request. 06.03.2007, Larry Greenberg (TrylonSMR) for RedDot
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