Dear HUMANE Member,

Our final HUMANE Seminar of 2010 will be hosted by the University of Lisbon from Friday 19th to Saturday 20th November. The topic is Information technology tools in the university: promise or pitfall?

Seminar Chairman Lambert Verveld (University of Groningen) writes:
How do modern information technology tools influence the way universities function?

What is the impact of the integration of data at different levels (study/research programme / faculty level / university level / country / EU) or the integration of data from different data sources (student administration, personnel administration, output data, financial administration, etc) on the way we govern the university?
How does modern communication technology influence the way we communicate with our constituencies and stakeholders? Google, iPhone, Facebook, LinkedIn, Twitter and other social communication media technologies change the way we communicate. Are we prepared for the way our environment wants to communicate with us? How far do they also change the networks we are used to, how deeply do they change the groups or people that we see as our constituency, or how and where we recruit students and staff?

The question is whether we are merely adjusting ourselves to new circumstances or are we experiencing a revolution that also changes the face of our universities. We are part of the quickly changing pattern of the global knowledge system.

At the seminar we try to get an expert insight into the question how the future development of information technology influences organizations like universities, then we will take a look into the question how the administration of the university changes and as a result: what influence this has on governance issues. Lastly we will touch the issue how university’s communication with our internal and external environment is changing and what we believe is opportunity and threat.

We would like colleagues and experts from within the universities to take part in this seminar. The seminar is aimed at two outcomes: 1) getting a better insight in present and future IT developments in relation to the management of the university and 2) defining issues in this respect that are of importance for later seminars.

Speakers already lined up:

Hans Jürgen Simm (Kanzler, University of Bielefeld, Germany)

Perspectives and expectations of the university in the rebuilding of their processes in research, teaching and administration

Mike Roberts (IT director, University of Warwick, United Kingdom)

Overcoming barriers to IT enabled efficiency improvements in Higher Education Institutions

Florence Egloff (Directrice du Département Services, AMUE, France)

Creating common information systems for Higher Education

Yves Chaimbault (directeur général, Université Paul-Valéry , Montpellier 3, France)

Does Social Media help communicating services to our clients?

Susanna Rautio (Head of Digital Communications, University of Helsinki, Finland)

The use of social media in managing marketing and communication: a case study from the University of Helsinki

Universities see themselves faced by challenging social, educational and operational tasks. The list of strategic themes is widely known: a pioneering role in innovation and in the development of the Europe as a centre of knowledge, serving an ever greater variety of target groups, offering more individual customised solutions as to form, place and time of teaching, etc. And all this on a limited budget. These challenges and objectives mean, among other things, high standards for the information household of HE institutions. In the past years the insatiable hunger for customised information has meant a strong increase in the complexity of the information households of HE institutions. It is becoming clear that a qualitative leap will need to be made so as to create and support a cohesive context in which the complexity can be controlled.
(Source: surffoundation.nl)

The Internet has become a household commodity in our 24/7 economy. Staff and students in higher education demand access to information at any time of the day for retrieval and processing. They require information that is just in time, just in place and just for me. For them it is self-evident that they need to enter all kinds of data only once. This imposes great demands on the organisation of an institution’s information provisioning. How is an institution to organise this, and which instruments can it use in doing so?

(Source: Surffoundation.nl)

Cost
HUMANE Seminar cost € 495 (plus VAT if your institution is not VAT registered). Accompanying persons to the social events are charged at € 160.

Register online
Use this link: http://www.humane.eu/Registration-Form.161.0.html or contact me at tim.evans@esmu.be

Best wishes,
Tim

Tim Evans
Head of Office / HUMANE Secretariat
ESMU aisbl
31 Rue Montoyer, Box 2
1000 Brussels
Tel: ++ 32 (0)2 289 2463 Fax: 2467
www.esmu.be Link: www.humane.eu/Registration-Form.161.0.html