Attending: Ben Alten, Landen Bain, Pakis Bessias, John Board, Al Crumbliss, Ed Gomes, Mike Gower, Alan Halachmi, Patrick Halpin, Billy Herndon, Donna Hewitt, David Jamieson-Drake, Kyle Johnson, Jamie Lee Klima, Ken Knoerr, Betty Leydon, Roger Loyd, Melissa Mills, Caroline Nisbet, George Oberlander, Lynne O'Brien, Mike Pickett, Rafael Rodriguez, Jeffrey Tackman, Al Trozzo, Robert Wolpert, Steve Woody, Dick Danner, Tom Metzloff

Review of Minutes and Announcements:

  • Blackboard meeting: 11/10 will discuss specs for enterprise verson of CourseInfo from 8:30 - 11:30 in Perkins 226. Contact Lynne O'Brien for segments that may be of interest to you.

Technology in the Classroom

  • Classroom, seminar rooms and court room were rebuilt/renovated over the summer.
  • We saw a short video of law school classroom experiences illustrating how IT upgrades are intended to support classroom learning.
  • Law students are required to have a laptop.
  • Lighting has to be in banks, angled away from screens; different window shades.

    used to provide appropriate light; etc.
  • Lesson: can't leave design to architects, need to have faculty involved in design phase.
  • Tom also demoed use of multimedia in a lecture on punitive damages.
     
  • Sometimes easy to forget what screens it's okay to draw on with which markers.
     
  • First challenge is getting faculty to try technology use; second is to get them to follow up and improve on their initial attempts.
     
  • "Healthy competition" among faculty talking to other faculty is a motivator for productive use of technology in the classroom.
     
  • Another motivation for IT in classroom use is responding to increasing student demand for information in computer-accessible formats, since increasingly that's how they're working.
     
  • Concern expressed about accessibility of information stored by faculty on the web.
     
  • Takes so much support to make classroom works that it's hard to see how IT enabled classrooms could be institutional resources -- too much demand from local school.
     

  • Law School technology for teaching and learning - Dick Danner

    Discussion of the technology in the classroom - Tom Metzloff

    IT needs to "work" in terms of utility for faculty to support instruction, not just look cool

IVY+/Educause update - portals and wireless

  • U Minnesota portal definition: a tool for building and sustaining relationships, where each person gets a personal, preferred way of relating to the university, to aggregate and personalize services.
     
  • Used in conjunction with global login, allows students to personalize their web view.
     
  • Advertising allowed in "shopping" areas students create, helps subsidize portals which are expensive.
     
    • loan repayment calculator
    • maps with class schedules
    • can purchase books
  • Can create a "brand" of portal using "tickets".
     
  • Behind portal, organizations have to get together to provide conjoint services:
     
    • e.g., to sell books on the web, registrar and bookstore need to get together to build the capability behind the portal
  • Once the portal is out there, pressure will be put on units to keep info up to date.
     
  • U of Washington in response to state survey that found people didn't really know about the university.
     
  • 90% of web hits were from outside the university; this fact influenced design focus.
     
  • Duke has an institution-centric view of Duke, which is not necessarily a good thing.
     
  • Issues that need to get solved:
     
    • authentication,
    • online approvals,
    • security
  • Person from Princeton said when portals are created, most people don't actually change it much, so it's important to organize the portal well up front by designing it with end users to begin with.
     
  • Portals cost money:
     
    • U of Minnesota had 1.5M for web development team plus 1M for other expenses.
    • UVA got $25M gift to develop a student portal
  • Portals can help sustain relationship with students after they graduate and become alums.
     
  • Need to pull together components of a portal that already exist
     
    • maps
    • calendar
    • Aces
  • Concern raised about privacy in portal context, esp. given that outside vendors would be given types of access to personal info in order to deliver customized services; also "cookies" would be emplaced.
     
  • Committee chaired by the provost will have high-level web oversight, then a second level group representing campus constituencies to do design per direction provided by oversight group.
     
  • No official decision has been made to do a portal but things are moving.
  • Wireless takes a lot of planning, Carnegie Mellon is doing a big project that we can learn from, planning to deploy a lot of wireless handheld devices.
     

  • Betty Leydon:

    Portals

    Wireless

    Discussion:

    John Board asked why so many CIOs are leaving their schools (around 6 are open).
    Betty said lots of reasons for leaving, some successful startups, some frustrations where they were, some retirements.

OIT response to the academic strategic plan

  • Build up departmental support: currently departmental support is spotty, due to departures.
     
    • introduce departmental training.
    • provide protection against staff turnover.
  • 24 hour support.
     
    • MCIS help desk has 24x7 support, but OIT help desk does not; want to move campus support that way.
    • students work through the night, so can use students as "RTA"s to provide online support at night.
  • targeted support for new technologies.
     
  • support for researchers.
     
  • assessing student skills, provide cd-based CBT ahead of time so students have adequate skills.
     
  • improve online survey capabilities.
     
  • "classroom uplift", e.g., where we're meeting today, including wireless, loaner laptops for non-hard-wired classrooms.
     
  • mass storage for centers like genomics project and BIAC which require terabytes of online storage.
     
  • keep network upgraded (e.g. internet 2 efforts) - keep backbone fast.
     
  • beef up ways to support security for departments.
     
  • working with ECE/CS to develop R&D "labs" to foster development of new ideas and "harvest" for institution.
     
  • decide - should we require laptops for all undergrads? Would also need to support wireless/mobile computing in classrooms and commons areas
     
  • remote access: make it reliable and secure
     
  • LDAP phase 2: not just replace online phonebook but support enterprise security model
     
  • OIT staff diversity; new hiring procedures and goals.
     

  • Mike Pickett

    Melissa Mills: need help for faculty to use technology.
    MP: academic plan has some of that in there, so OIT's response is what they need to do to help that happen.

    Patrick Halpin: ITAC should see actual plan
    MP said he'd circulate a draft subject to approval of "powers that be"

    Give suggestions to Mike on how to improve proposals for OIT response to university plans.