Building Inter-Campus Communication and Collaboration: UChicago’s Learning Technology Group

Support for learning technology at the University of Chicago is widely distributed across multiple schools, divisions, and programs. Although there is an executive committee?the Board of Computing Activities and Services (BCAS)?that presides over campus-wide IT matters, information-sharing about day-to-day support for instructors and students across campus was formerly limited. Many IT groups were unaware of other units’ services and resources, creating silos that impaired support for faculty, students, and staff. To help break down barriers and improve communication, the Learning Technologies Group (LTG) was created. The LTG is an ad hoc group of learning technologists, instructional designers, and librarians who meet six to eight times a year to share updates about their resources and services. These informal meetings of frontline staff who support teaching have created new relationships that have greatly improved our ability to connect our users to services and resources. New opportunities to collaborate have also resulted, as LTG members can now identify common needs among our diverse service communities.