University of Adelaide appoints CIO

The University of Adelaide has appointed Mark Gregory as its CIO to drive its 10-year strategic plan to transform e-learning and IT across its education and research portfolios.

“The new 10-year strategic plan acknowledges the significant changes underway in higher education globally and the key role of technology,” Gregory said in a statement.

“World-class technology will be essential to remain competitive, enhance student learning and grow research collaboration opportunities. It is an ideal time for the technology team to make a transformative contribution to a great institution.”

Gregory was CIO for Portland State University from 2000-2008 before he took on the role of associated vice president (finance and administration) for the university.

University of Adelaide vice-president (services and resources) Paul Duldig said that Gregory’s appointment as CIO is a “coup” for the university as it starts to implement its strategic plan.

“What we’ll be looking at Mark doing is probably in early to mid-2014 we’ll start to think about the future of our IT architecture as it relates to learning and the student experience,” Duldig told CIO Australia.

“In this stage we are in ‘enhancement mode’. The main elements of the new plan are that the university will make small group discovery central to the university experience. To do that we will be relying a lot more on e-learning and technology-enabled teaching and learning so that we can free up our teaching time to be in smaller groups. That’s really based around research-led group discovery.

“We are certainly looking at how to enhance our use of Blackboard [learning management system]. We are also looking at what audio-visual support is needed in our teaching spaces, particularly as we move to small groups and more technology-enabled teaching. We are looking at what services for students we can automate, and run through our e-commerce solution and our portal.”

In December last year, Duldig said the university plans to treble its investment in e-learning and enhance its IT capacity to meet the changing needs of students and research.

This article was updated on 22 March 2013, 4pm (AEST).

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