Boise State University CIO, Max Davis-Johnson, talks about how the Office of Information Technology leverages technology, process and people in innovative ways at Boise State.
Video Transcript of Max’s Minute: Innovation is Not Only Technology
[inspirational music]
Hi, this is Max Davis-Johnson, Boise State University Office of Information Technology.
Today I want to talk a little bit about innovation.
Some of the innovation that we do within Office of Information Technology. Certainly because of the ways technology changes, the new things that come out all the time, we have opportunities to innovate.
But, I think the important thing here is that we have to remember innovation is not only technology, it’s the process and the people involved with the technology that really drives the innovation that we’re trying to do.
So one of the areas we’re doing a lot of innovation in is in our web and mobile development areas using AWS or Amazon Web Services.
So one of the things we’re doing is the Anthropology department where we’ve delivered a mobile app called TAWKS. It tracks activity certain times during the day and essentially it’s collecting data that will be analyzed in the future.
We’re developing the new orientation system–it’s the registration system, it tracks them, it registers them, it collects money, it’s a very unique application to Boise State.
For the nursing program, the online nursing program here at Boise State, which is one of our largest online programs, we’ve delivered an online faculty database that has the potential to scale to the rest of the university over time.
Another application that we’re in the process of developing is in support of all the camps here, that happen in the summer here at Boise State. We need to be able to register potential campers, facilitate their experience here.
We’re also using the Amazon Cloud to move some of our, hosting of some of our core systems.
So, we’re doing a lot in the Amazon Cloud and will continue to do that.
Another area that we’ve done some innovative things in is in our classroom support model. Currently, OIT supports 150, directly supports, 150 classrooms here on campus. And of those classrooms, you know, we’re responsible for making sure all the technology works and there’s a large amount of technology in every classroom.
And so on a nightly basis, we will poll every classroom to make sure all the equipment is working. And this is all automated.
And basically what this has done, this has literally reduced the number of classroom support calls by 90 percent–the fact that we are proactively, through automation, resetting classrooms basically every night.
There’s any number of innovations that we do, some of it’s visible, some of it’s not. We’re going to continue to try new things, we’re going to continue to try new technology. Some of it’s going to work, some of it we will scale. Some of it, once we try it, we’ll go, hum, not so good. But it doesn’t mean we’re going to stop trying new things.
So again I appreciate you taking the time to listen and, until next time, thank you.