Stockholm (IT
and Management Information)
The
Stockholm meeting (5-6 June) was hosted by the University of Stockholm. Five
presentations were given, including two by Swedish guest speakers, one by a
Swedish Steering Committee member, one by the Project Manager, and one by a
Spanish member. Since several of the
presentations were general talks or provocations of discussion, not all have
been summarised here. Rather, we
provide a brief summary of the nature of each talk, with longer summaries of
two of them.
The
talks may be categorised as referring to:
A. particular
applications or products
B. case
studies of institutional use of IT
C. general
discussion of IT as an idea.
A Applications
Executive
Information Systems (EIS) in Sweden
Petter
Green illustrated an EIS tool called HAT which is used for interrogating
institutional databases.
Introducing
an Electronic Diary System
Trevor Field, University of Aberdeen (UK)
Trevor Field described the way in which a commercial networked electronic diary package had been introduced during the spring of 1998. He pointed out that an earlier attempt several years earlier had failed, and - with hindsight! - was able to indicate how the University had learned from these mistakes in the second attempt.
B Institutional
Use
Alfonso de Alfonso, Gerente at Pompeu Fabra University in Barcelona
(ES)
Alfonso
de Alfonso described a large-scale attempt to reform the educational provision
by means of IT. He stressed above all
the need for an overall vision, and the ways in which all parts of the
university needed to be aware of the educational values and benefits.
Organising a
modern European university with IT
John Furstenbach, Universtiy College of South Stockholm (SE)
described
the organisational possibilities offered by IT in a brand-new institution - the
College was established in May 1995, with 1200 students in 1996 growing to 4000 fte's by the session 1998-99. Administrative staff numbers had similarly
grown from 5 to something over 70. Two
further campuses were envisaged. John's presentation
concentrated on the ways in which IT gave the possibility to devolve or
distribute certain administrative tasks within the institution. Traditional
finance, personnel and student records departments have been distributed to the
different buildings. The role of the
remaining central parts of these functions will be to perform non-routine tasks
(such as recruitment) and to maintain competence in the distributed units.
C General
Ideas
The
Long-term impact of new Technologies on European HE
Bjorn Kirsebom, Foundation for Knowledge and Competence Development
(SE)
Bjorn
Kirsebom (a former senior civil servant and now Director of the Foundation for
Knowledge and Competence Development in Sweden) developed the idea of how
advances in IT would impact on the provision of HE. His Foundation specialises in technology transfer between
universities and industry, but he went well beyond this to ponder the effects
of advances in communications on tuition, library holdings and residential
provision. .
Not
surprisingly, this topic encouraged much speculation, and reflection on why,
exactly, a physical university is really necessary. It is simplistic but fair to point out that the participants
agreed that the benefits which students gained from social interaction and
physical presence at a campus were analogous to those derived from the seminar
itself - and this interaction was proved later in the evening with a
magnificent dinner provided at the Botanic Gardens by the University with the
hosts quite exceeding their scheduled activities by leading traditional Swedish
singing during the meal.