Reprint of IT Facilitating Teaching and Research: this article of mine that was recently published in CIO Review Magazine’s Education Edition offers my observations about how IT needs to take a more deliberate role in not just supporting academics and research but also to stimulate it. I used our example of investing in a SAP HANA Appliance and committing staff resources to support the use of it for teaching and research. This has proven to be beneficial even without the opportunity for our Business ERP students to get hands on experience or the Autism Spectrum Identification research project now using it. It has been successful by just expanding our staff expertise in this area.

Nonavitra Video Wall

Now we have a few more of our investments showing potential and all of these solutions have been developed by our student employees. We built a 8×10 ft 3×3 video wall that our students named Nonavitra that we have located in the library so that everyone can use it. Here is the Library Guide describing what it is and the procedure for access. We are seeing use range from the ERP business students presenting their SAP Dashboards, examination of gigapan photos from geology, Electromagnetic Compatibility display from ECE, students exploring NASA Eyes to the Rugby Club using it to watch a video of an upcoming opponent.

MinerFly Drone

We are also looking at mounting a LiDAR camera on our new helicopter drone. Again another example where IT provides a tool that can stimulate research, but IT also owns maintenance and operator expertise that is critical for taking advantage of the drone. We have built a digital signage solution that we call MinerBytes based on the Raspberry Pi computer that is being deployed throughout campus. We are also close to finishing our production version Segway. I will save the Segway story for another post, but again another project which provides incredible experience for students that just might translate into something that can benefit our university.