The main difference between early and late adopters may just be basic IT proficiency. Attention to the IT competence of graduate students, especially teaching assistants, is crucial. There are pockets of IT innovation at USC, but many faculty members are averse to using IT in teaching, uncomfortable with IT, or slow to adapt to new technology. Faculty should be specifically rewarded for developing new and effective IT methods, products, processes, and strategies. IT users should not be on their own with respect to institutional infrastructure and support.
Information technologies evolve quickly, and they become out-dated quickly.
A high degree of general competence in any given department should be cultivated so that support is easily forthcoming from within the department itself, and not just from IT staff. Faculty should in turn be sensitive to IT staff capabilities and what can reasonably be expected of them with available resources, and highly qualified personnel who serve well in this capacity must be retained. Disciplines with a heavy technology component and thus with greater funding resources have a great advantage over disciplines with more limited financial resources. The Development Office should make IT support and faculty development a major fundraising priority, especially to fund IT use in disciplines with meager funding resources. We should especially try to identify most pressing technology needs shared across all disciplines but which no one unit is able or likely to fund.