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:: IT Managment

LAYING THE GROUNDWORK FOR AIWhile plenty of applications have surfaced for the use of artificial intelligence in learning and teaching, AI is reshaping how IT works, too.

As the maturity of artificial intelligence advances, so does its use on

campus. The 2019 Educause Horizon Report identified AI as one of six technologies

worth consideration as a driver “of innovation and change” in colleges and universities.

The use of AI for accomplishing tasks and activities historically handled by humans has

big appeal to the newest generation of students — people who prefer to talk with their

phones to get directions, rely on algorithms for recommendations and choose self-ser-

vice (including self-driving cars) over human interaction.

By one estimate, AI in the K-20 market is growing annually by 48 percent. According

to market researcher Technavio, AI use in education has picked up in three areas:

• Student support outside of the classroom, particularly for coaching and tutoring

• Automation of routine administrative tasks, such as grading papers and tests

• Immersing students into learning in new ways by anticipating how they might re-

spond and what should come next

While AI is becoming a go-to choice for addressing these academic areas, IT organi-

zations on campus are also finding new uses, especially in the area of tech support.

According to Loren de la Cruz, senior product marketing manager for Cherwell, while

AI capabilities are still in their infancy, the ability already exists for a program to use

historical data to automatically resolve issues.

“What we’re moving toward is a digital transformation where mundane tasks that were normally done by individuals sitting at a desk are automatically happening through the capabilities of AI.” —Loren de la Cruz, senior product marketing manager, Cherwell

:: IT Managment

“For instance, if someone says, ‘I’m having a problem with a LaserJet 7400,’ as

they’re typing that in, artificial intelligence could be searching the database for other

incidents with that particular type of device and would automatically respond with sug-

gested resolutions to the problem,” she said. If one of those hit the mark, she added,

that Level 1 trouble ticket could then automatically be marked as resolved and the

incident closed.

Currently, there’s a big movement afoot to add chatbot integration so people can

talk through their problem and get help from the service desk in that format. Behind

the scenes, the bots are chewing on the query with natural language processing (NLP)

and dipping into the knowledgebase for mostly canned responses. A giant step up from

that is the use of virtual agents, which are capable of building up their understanding

from previous interactions through machine learning.

In some cases, users can’t tell the response is automated; they hear typing in the

background and human-like pauses. And when a bot doesn’t recognize what’s being

asked, it can escalate the job to a live agent by automatically filling out a service ticket

and forwarding it to the appropriate person, then getting the right answer in the back-

ground and delivering it or handing off the work to the human and tracking follow-up.

Expanding the capabilities of AI is a major area of focus for Cherwell, de la Cruz

added. “What we’re moving toward is a digital transformation where mundane tasks

that were normally done by individuals sitting at a desk are automatically happening

through the capabilities of AI.”

A 2018 research project undertaken by IDG Connect on behalf of Cherwell found that

among all business segments, including higher education, seven in 10 organizations

(71 percent) had already implemented AI in at least one IT project or were current-

ly doing so. Payback was likely to be

high, too. Two-thirds of respondents

(64.5 percent) — all decision-makers

in management roles — predicted that

AI systems would generate a return on

investment for their IT units within 12

months. Three in 10 survey participants

reported that with the help of AI, they

expected IT to “assume a greater status

within the organization” based on the

automation of “lower-value work.”

Another two in 10 (21 percent) said

that machine learning would help them,

“identify patterns, proactively improve

processes, and identify potential new

service offerings.”

Given the bullish attitude of IT leaders

on AI, if you haven’t already begun

adoption, it’s time to lay the ground-

work. De la Cruz offered three areas of

focus:

• Build a solid approach to knowledge

management. NLP can’t stand on its

own without robust content and data

tracking.

• Promote a culture of self-service. If

your staff and students aren’t pre-

pared and trained to help themselves,

your tech staff will never be freed up

for more strategic work.

• Demand platform interoperability. New

tools and services in AI are arriving

monthly. Don’t bet big with a single

all-encompassing solution; choose a

platform that emphasizes integration,

plug in small solutions that address spe-

cific needs, and then build from there.

OUT OF BANDWIDTH FOR INNOVATION? IT’S TIME FOR IT TO SIMPLIFYSimplification showed up on the recent 2020 Top IT Issues list from Educause. Without it, you may never have the capacity to innovate.

The latest roster of top IT issues from Educause details 10 areas where IT leaders

in higher education are putting their attention over the next year. The 2020 list of

“grand challenges,” as it’s called, includes a lot of repeats: evergreen concerns such as

information security/privacy and sustainable funding. But there are also new entrants,

including the topic of “administrative simplification.” Along with the issue of digital

By pursuing simplification in operations — both back end and front end — institutions will gain the time and resources they need to be able to direct more of their efforts towards students’ needs.

:: IT Managment

integration, administrative simplification makes up a broader

theme of “simplification.”

As Susan Grajek, vice president for communities and research

for Educause, explained, the issue of digital integration includes

making sure that systems and data can work and scale “across

multiple applications and platforms.” And administrative sim-

plification is the application of “user-centered design, process

improvement, and system reengineering to reduce redundant

or unnecessary efforts and improve end-user experiences.”

In both cases, she said at the association’s annual confer-

ence, this is really about enabling IT “to do more with less,

to innovate when our current systems and processes are so

complex and convoluted,” and to deliver “good experiences to

our end users, to our students, when they’ve got to do those

complicated, convoluted processes.”

To put the issues into perspective, Educause queried its

members to understand how extensively those practices are

being incorporated into the campus IT strategy. Then the orga-

nization compared the data over the course of two years.

The need for institution-wide data management and integra-

tion has not changed much between 2018 and 2020; nor has

the use of shared services. However, there has been increased

attention paid to enterprise architectures, integrations and

workflows (from 50 percent in 2018 to 56 percent in 2020) as

well as user-centered design (from 33 percent to 39 percent).

Grajek suggested that those were “two relatively large

increases.” After all, she noted, change is slow in higher ed, and

the impact of user-centered design and updated enterprise

architecture can be dramatic.

As part of the process of assessing the top IT issues, Grajek

also asked a small panel of exemplary IT leaders to share their

greatest hopes for what higher ed could achieve related to

those issues over the next three to five years. Their responses

centered on developing standards and tools to simplify out-of-

the-box integration and facilitate better analytics, and for insti-

tutional services to become as easy to use as consumer apps.

The overall goal to simplify IT is worthwhile, Grajek added. By

pursuing simplification in operations — both back end and front

end — institutions will gain the time and resources they need

to be able to “direct more of their efforts towards students’

needs, whatever that means, from mental health to retention to

recruitment to debt avoidance to job placement.”

Where to begin? “Break down the silos,” she advised. “That’s

not anathema anymore. It really is something that people are

embracing and moving toward.” After all, she pointed out, “If the

whole is more than the sum of the parts, you need to have a

whole to start with.”

The “2020 Top IT Issues” are featured on the Educause web-

site. A special report with additional insight will be published in

January 2020.

In much of higher education, the IT division has long been viewed as a giant

abyss — a sink hole into which the college or university seemingly pours funds to keep

up with the newest technological fads: collaboration classrooms outfitted with large

flat displays and microphone systems; sports arenas packed with gaming stations;

virtual reality labs stuffed with rolling chairs and wonky headsets.

RUNNING IT AS THE ENABLEMENT ENGINE ON CAMPUSThe right service management solution goes far beyond basic support desk activities to help you meet changing and growing demands across the institution, with fewer headaches and lower costs.

IT must create a vision so compelling that people will understand exactly what future results could be, versus what they are.

As an IT leader, how do you even

begin to reverse that perception of

superficiality? By turning your organiza-

tion into an enablement engine, adept

at maximizing operational efficiency,

improving user experience and being seen as ready and willing

to embrace meaningful adventures in tech. A service manage-

ment mentality lies at the heart of that answer.

Let’s review the fundamental challenges that sit between IT

being marked as a roadblock to innovation and being an enabler:

• Nearly half of all institutions are making business model chang-

es to adapt to student, faculty and staff demands and competi-

tive pressures (expanding curriculums, opening new campuses,

implementing online programs, and so on) — requiring digital

transformation to improve the campus experience.

• The job of delivering effective IT services is getting harder

due to the fragmentation of multiple stakeholder groups and

departments.

• The IT department has to keep up with cutting-edge learning

technologies — student success initiatives, collaboration

tools, adaptive learning, among them — while maintaining

the many systems that deliver business as usual.

Overlying all of those is a tendency in the campus community

to be change-averse. “Higher ed organizations are traditionally

staffed with people who have been there for years and years

and have the mindset of ‘We’ve been doing it this way forever.

Why change?’” said Loren de la Cruz, senior product marketing

manager for Cherwell. To counteract that tendency, IT must

create a vision so compelling that people will understand exactly

what future results could be, “versus what they are.” That means

showing them how their work can be made easier and the results

more effective.

A well-chosen service management solution forms the foun-

dation for creating a seamless digital experience for users and

addressing those many challenges. The mission of service man-

agement goes far beyond the traditional work of helping IT deal

with trouble tickets and manage its help desk (though the right

software does that too), explained de la Cruz. The full-flavored

idea of service management is to automate routine tasks and set

up streamlined workflows with as much self-service as possible.

The more that can be plugged into the hub of service man-

agement, the less IT will be viewed as scattered individuals

always in reactive mode, whiling away their hours resetting

:: IT Managment

passwords, reconnecting wayward

printers and saying “no” in meetings

where tech needs come up as a topic.

Rather than trying to be an all-in-one

solution, the best service management

solution draws on the software already

used by the organization and lets users

set in motion the actions they tradition-

ally turned to IT for.

Take the example of a new data

analytics course where faculty want

to give students access to a special-

ized program in a safe, sandboxed

environment. That’s a perfect use for

a virtual machine. You could follow a

manual (read: tedious) process where

the instructor fills out a form, a service

tech responds and eventually the faculty

member gets what’s needed. Or you

could go the self-service route. Say, the

university’s preference is to use Micro-

soft Azure. The right service manage-

ment layout could provide the user with

an outlet for requesting that VM directly

through a self-service portal, said de la

Cruz. “Once that request is made, the

service management workflow could

stipulate that the information be sent to

Azure to build the VM, then dynamically

send that information back with the IP

address of the new machine that’s been

created and notify the user to let them

know that it’s there.”

The same workflow could also include

steps to add the VM to the configuration

management database maintained by

IT for the sake of visibility and security.

Suddenly, that service tech’s time could

be dedicated to other higher-value ac-

tivities that can’t so easily be automat-

ed, noted de la Cruz.

This ability to put rote activities into

the hands of users is what numerous

consumer companies have perfected.

Now it’s time for higher ed to do the

same. The solution has a place not just

in IT, but also in other operational areas

that involve numerous repetitive activi-

ties, such as human resources manage-

ment, facilities management, project

and portfolio management and security

management.

That’s what people want right now,

said de la Cruz. “They want to go on their

phones and with as few keystrokes as

possible log their issues and have them

taken care of and resolved. They’re

looking for that Amazon-like experience,

and they want to be enabled. That’s what

service management is addressing —

this whole digital transformation for

efficiency.”

About CherwellCherwell Service Management is a cloud-based service management platform that helps higher educa-tion IT teams — and other units — implement, automate and upgrade service and support processes.

Learn about Cherwell at www.cherwell.com.