Top Campus IT Challenges for 2001
Roberta L. Lembke, Julia A. Rudy · The EDUCAUSE quarterly/EDUCAUSE quarterly · 2001
Last year, EDUCAUSE conducted a survey developed by the Current Issues Committee in conjunction with the EDUCAUSE staff to capture information from members about their most pressing campus IT-related challenges. Approximately 37 percent of the 1,241 primary representatives who were asked to participate responded to the Web-based survey. This survey asked recipients to check 3 issues from a grid of 33 (and provided an opportunity to supply an “other” issue) in response to each of four questions (see Table 1). The survey results were published in EDUCAUSE Quarterly as well as on the EDUCAUSE Web site (see http://www.educause.edu/issues/ survey2000.html). In February 2001, we repeated the survey (with minor changes) using the same methodology and approach. Primarily as a result of suggestions from last year’s respondents, several issues in the grid were slightly reworded and seven new issues were added (see Table 2 and http://www.educause.edu/issues/ survey2001/questions.html). In addition, survey respondents were asked to select up to five rather than three issues in response to each question. This year the e-mail message soliciting survey participation went to 1,535 primary representatives, with 567 individuals participating for the same return rate of 37 percent. An analysis of the respondents’ demographics (such as institution Carnegie classification, size, and control) revealed that the percentages of the respondents in these categories for the most part match the percentages of these categories in the EDUCAUSE membership, with medium-large institutions somewhat overrepresented and community colleges somewhat underrepresented. Like last year, the analysis shows that the four questions produced some notable differences in the way members viewed the importance of an issue. We aggregated the numbers for each issue into a percentage based on the total number of times respondents picked an issue as important in response to the question. Each issue’s ranking depends on this aggregate.