Sidebar: CIO at the Head of the Class

Computerworld - Scan the daily calendar of Temple University IT chief Tim O'Rourke, and you're just as likely to find him meeting with a classroom renovation crew as with an IT project team. He might also be meeting with a faculty committee that's designing and updating course content.
The reason: "Technology has gotten into every aspect of what we do here," says O'Rourke, whose official title is vice president for computer and information services at the 33,000-student university in Philadelphia.
Blackboard, the university's ubiquitous, Web-based course management system, is a prime example, he says. Students can use the online system to retrieve professors' lecture notes and assignments, plus work on projects in online groups. "Five years ago, we had 11 courses on Blackboard," O'Rourke says. "Now we have 5,000 courses on Blackboard, so it has become a critical system."
One of O'Rourke's key responsibilities is working with professors to leverage the Blackboard system in cost-effective ways, such as designing course content and assignments to include a minimal amount of downloading and printing, which the university has provided free of charge to students.
"As Blackboard and the Internet become more heavily used, it's nothing for a faculty member to tell a student to go to the Web and print out a report and bring it to class. But one of the big problems now is when you print 6 [million] or 7 million pages, it's a very expensive proposition," he says.
In the classroom, virtually all of Temple's professors employ digital technology, "so I'm also very involved in the physical layout and construction of classrooms," O'Rourke says. In addition, he's closely studying how students' study habits are changing and the effect those changes will have on the campus's physical and digital infrastructure. "For example, students don't go to the library to study anymore; they go to the computer lab, and even though 80% of students have their own PCs, they don't want to study in their dorm rooms. That means looking at building additional computer labs to handle the changing habits," he says.
"The faculty and administration here understand the impact of technology, and they use [the CIO and IT the department] as a resource. It's our job to let them know all of the ramifications," O'Rourke says.