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From: Alerts [mailto:
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Sent: Wednesday, June 05, 2002 4:43 PM
To:
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Subject: Alert: Information Technology (227)
4th Conference on Information Technology in Tertiary Education
25 to 27 September 2002, Durban, KwaZulu Natal, South Africa
The Conference on Information Technology in Tertiary
Education (CITTE) is a biennial event held under the
auspices of the associated IT Directors of higher
education institutions in South Africa. CITTE provides a
forum for scholars and technical specialists alike to
exchange knowledge on the modes and principles of
applying IT to the purposes of higher education.
Few practitioners would dispute that the challenges of
meshing information technology with tertiary education
are of no small magnitude, while the rewards of doing so
successfully are - or are said to be - glittering. Facing and
mastering these challenges in a context of rapid
globalisation - an uneven phenomenon, made more
uneven still by the sum of the responses to September 11
2001 - is particularly complex in a developing society
marked by deep disparities in wealth and access to
positional goods. It is for this reason that the conference
organisers have selected, as a special theme,
Information Technology in the African Context, and
particularly invite contributions in this area.
More broadly than this, the conference aims to bring
together people from both the scholarly and technical
domains, on the broad principle that the deeper the
mutual understanding between these two worlds, the
greater the benefit to higher education.
It is the intention of the conference organisers that, while
a high standard of scholarship will be maintained in
formal papers and presentations, it is nevertheless
appropriate to create spaces for relatively informal and
practical sharing of ideas and solutions. Focus area 3 is
designed to accommodate more informal and practically
orientated sessions in which practitioners can present
and comment on technical victories and defeats.
Papers and presentations are solicited in three focus
areas:
Focus area 1: Information technology and the goals of
higher education. This area poses questions such as:
How are collaborative on-line learning communities
designed and supported? What roles do learners,
facilitators and designers play in collaborative on-line
learning environments? How can software tools be used
in processes associated with the conversion of content,
which is ubiquitous, into knowledge? How can cognitive
development be supported in collaborative learning
systems that include different technological tools and
communication devices? Are our educational paradigms
still adequate? Have they ever been?
Focus area 2: Riding the tiger: managing IT in higher
education. Rising demands for services and contracting
budgets place IT managers in a squeeze that becomes
tighter each year. What works best? What approaches
should we adopt to application development strategy, to
technology lifecycle management, to managing demands
for highly disaggregated access to public goods such as
bandwidth? What staffing strategies work in a deeply
distorted labour market? What approaches to IT
governance work best in an environment of
unprecedented, rapid, and unpredictable change? How do
we protect long-term interests without compromising on
the short term? How do we win today while making sure
that weÆre in an even stronger position to win tomorrow?
Focus area 3: The technical challenge: triumphs and
defeats. This is primarily intended for the sharing of
concrete experiences in the many fields in which IT staff
work: system implementation, client support, network
management, student computing, training, and so on.
Expressions of interest and proposals for papers or
presentations should be submitted to the committee chair
at the email address
greaves@nu.ac.za. Requests for
general information should be directed to
info@citte.nu.ac.za. The deadline for abstracts/proposals
is 30 June 2002.
E-mail enquiries:
info@citte.nu.ac.za
Website:
http://citte.nu.ac.za
Submission deadline: 30 June 2002