Wiki CIT

Hi Guys


The delay in the faculty programmatic review opens up the possibility of doing it in a different way. Normally the inputs into the process are very small number and not very diverse. In fact most of the inputs come from ourselves.


What if we were to open it up to the review process and make it completely public? In computing we are very good at getting input from industrial sources, but we could cast our net even further. What if very early on we invited input and discussion from any interested stake holders, be they students, industry contacts, parents, or whoever. Most of the stake holders in science and engineering are very computer literate and would be able to use any web based tools we chose to make use of.


We could attempt to start with a blank slate for how things should look and get the community of interested parties to devise out strategy and programmes for us. Of course, some publicity would be required to get people interested, but that is a good thing anyway. A lot of thought would have to go into the kind of tools we use and just how open we make ourselves, but I think it could be done. We don’t have the resources to develop new tools, but even off the shelf tools (e.g. wikis and blogs) could help us achieve something.


Perhaps there is insight out there that our current review methods cannot capture. Perhaps there are important things simply not on our radar. If we cannot hope to find them, maybe they can find us.


For starters, imagine a website where ANYONE could start the process of designing a module at CIT. Any serious proposal with enough support could be shepherded through the approval process at CIT and eventually offered. Imagine if you were to scale up that kind of thinking. Once you start to think in that way, a variety of possibilities and opportunities start to present themselves.