Minutes

February 22, 2007

Owen Astrachan, John Board, Ken Hirsh for Dick Danner, Nevin Fouts, Tracy Futhey, Susan Gerbeth-Jones, Daron Gunn, John Pormann for Craig Henriquez, Billy Herndon, Rick Hoyle, David Jamieson-Drake, Roger Loyd, Varun Marupadi for Dmitriy Morozov, Tim Bounds for Caroline Nisbet, Lynne O’Brien, Mike Pickett, Rafael Rodriguez, Trey Turner III, Robert Wolpert

Guests:Rebecca Miller and Ginny Cake, OIT; Kevin Lee, DHTS

Start time : 4:05

Tracy Futhey - Rebecca Miller has been working on a project to move the OIT website into the CMS and give it a new and updated look. This is a quick look at where we are going, not so you can critique it but to let you know that if you want to say something, she's the one.

Rebecca Miller - There are two designs. The primary idea is that we’re breaking down the site by services and you don’t need to know how OIT is organized to get what you need. (shows slide show of two design options)

Robert Wolpert – How does someone ask about the navigation on the site? The frustrated user, you have about 10 seconds to get that person’s attention.

Daron Gunn – Were there any discussions about leaving the dropdown lists on the Help Desk page?
Rebecca – The Help Desk found that when they asked, people said they liked the dropdown. For now it’s there.
Part of what we’re going to be doing is implementing work flows to make sure the content stays current.
There’s a survey, so if you want to comment, you can take it today.

John Board – We’ll send the survey URL to the ITAC list.

I. Fuqua Global Technology – Satyam, India, and Goethe, Germany

Nevin – I’m going to give a globalization update. First the background. (starts slideshow) Fuqua was founded in 1969, not in major city, but in a great area. We wanted a top-tier business school with reputation for global perspective and innovation.
One of ways to get the brand out is to have some presence around the world. How we do that is important. You can’t build buildings all around the world unless you have lots of money.
Our program includes the MBA, the Executive MBA, Executive Education and the Duke MBA.
We currently have partnerships with the University of Frankfurt, Seoul National University, India Institute of Management, National University of Singapore.
Fuqua was the first b-school to integrate Internet into the curriculum; it was the first to launch a degree program using a largely distance component; it pioneered the Place and Space model of learning.
Place and Space started with the Duke global executive MBA program in 1996. It’s a  combination of residencies and Internet-based learning and we use it in four degree programs.
We wondered how to meet requirements of the corporate customer in India who can’t afford to send people around the world to a residential program. We signed an agreement two weeks ago for the executive education program in Hyderabad.
In Ahmedabad, we’re working with the “Harvard of India,” the Indian Institute of Management, working on joint executive education. We’re just talking about it now. We’re working with a company that has a specific need to educate its managers.
In Germany we have the Duke Goethe degree program with University of Frankfurt. It’s a dual-degree program with 37 students. It meets a market niche. The University of Frankfurt is doing most of heavy lifting. We don’t need permanent people or IT people there, just help with recruitment and admissions. It’s a team effort and we decide who’s going to own each part of it.
There’s one residency a month. A new facility is under construction and scheduled for completion March 2008.
Other Duke global residencies all around the world – the new areas we’re working on are Seoul National University, where we have a memorandum of understanding that opens the door for joint education programs. And in Russia, the Skolkovo School of Management in Moscow has asked to work together, so we’re in the early stages of that.
With the Multi-Modal Learning Model, we’re using mobile content – video, podcasts and web conferences. The kickoff session that might be face-to-face or virtual, depending on what we decide. We’re trying to establish a program that meets our goals at a reasonable price.
Why the new model? They want fewer days away from work, need lower-cost models in global market, increased interest in ROI.
New technologies are available for students and faculty are able to do things once and not have to keep doing it. Effort goes into initial planning and filming, then they participate in web conferences.
(Shows slide of MML format.)

John Board – How are you finding, in India and other countries, the difficulty in making the connections? Are there high quality connections and affordable bandwidth?
Nevin – It’s pretty good. Videoconferences work well, web conferences work pretty well. The challenge is the time difference. There’s a 10-hour difference. Someone has to get up early or stay up late, and that creates some stress. But our customers are very invested in this. They had six people in a videoconference that was very late, and will do that every week. The delivery will be easier than the planning part.

Robert Wolpert – A typical obstacle is the enormous effort that gets put into the original taping and building of materials. Then they get stagnant and it takes significant resources to keep them fresh. Do you have plans to keep money going into the program two or three years down the road and resist thinking of it as a cash cow?
Nevin – The faculty are thinking of how to work on the content, so maybe a modular setup would be best. Some pieces would need to be changed and others wouldn’t. We don’t know what the shelf life of that will be. Let’s think of the pieces separately, so we don’t have to do the whole thing over.

Mike Pickett – One of things that always pops up is, how do we know the pedagogical impact of these multimodal approaches? Is there any data that’s started to emerge about the uses of podcasts and such?
Nevin – I think there are some simple ideas that are good ideas. When we watch people’s reactions to them, it’s been very compelling. People see it and say, Wow, I could gain from that. We have a lot of confidence that it will achieve objectives. The variables might be the length of pieces, what you put on video as opposed to do live, and the speed of the course. Do they have enough time or too much time to absorb the content. We’re hoping the basic premise will be applicable and productive.
What are the things that need to be live and what can be MML?

Daron Gunn – Has there been any discussion to scale this for undergrads or non b-school people?
Nevin – No.

II. Duke Med Global Technology – Duke NUS Singapore, Kevin Lee

Kevin Lee – (starts slide show) The Graduate Medical School in Singapore came up in Fall 2005. We’ve been finding out more as we go along. The first challenge is that we didn’t know what the place looked like. GMS is in a temporary facility on the campus of Singapore General Hospital. It’s five or six buildings. They’ll be there for two years. In the third year they will have a permanent facility there. Everything we’re doing is temporary, so that’s been an interesting infrastructure challenge.
As we began identifying the tasks associated with starting a brand-new medical school, it’s been interesting. The Duke School of Medicine Office of Curriculum, they’ve been doing it for 60 years so they haven’t really stopped to think about how they do it, how the day-to-day operation works. You quickly discover what you don’t know about how you do it when you try to import it somewhere else.
For the infrastructure – the network and computing, facilities – we had to find out why Singapore couldn’t get the necessary technology. Connections were good all the way through Australia, but then got worse.
Applications – curriculum management system, admissions, Web services.

Rafael Rodriguez – Politics are big there. The hospital is under the Ministry of Health, the school is under another governmental group. They don’t like each other.

Kevin – We thought we were taking the Duke program and importing it to Singapore. They want a different model called team-based learning. So they have to do all the same things, but they will do it differently. Our large classes will be distributed throughout many smaller ones. So that requires different infrastructure.
Curriculum management system – like Duke Bluedocs; in Singapore it will be GMS Bluedocs, but the curriculum has to be adapted to their way of doing it.
What’s really cool is that the classes in Singapore are being taught in a three-week offset from Duke. So Duke’s are being captured and sent to Singapore for the students to use as streaming video.
All of the plain infrastructure, the student Web portal and Web services have to be duplicated but adapted for there. GMS is partnered with the Graduate University of Singapore, so all these systems have to be thought through. The degree is a dual degree, a GMS/Duke degree. It’s a pretty powerful piece of paper.

John Board – You’re duplicating Web services but with a difference. Are you finding the effort involved, is there really an economy in the duplication or is it just like starting over again?
Kevin – There is economy, they have to do the same thing, but they have to figure out the right pointers to get there.

Robert Wolpert – Is it done so if the master changes, the slaves have to changed, too.
Rafael – One area where we’ve seen trouble was around duplicating the admissions process and trying to make some of the changes for the way Singapore has to do it and the people who are doing that are within the School of Medicine. Trying to make that work across 12-hour differences was a management challenge.
Robert – The changes will be important because it gets local buy-in.

Rafael – This was done with the intent that it will be done under Frank Starmer. The admissions process started in December and January. We’re requiring the MCAT, but it’s not offered everywhere over there and the time frame for the MCAT wasn’t there.
Kevin – There wasn’t a team who had experience building this before, so this is being discovered.

Robert – Is there any language issue?
Kevin – No, not at all. Everybody speaks English.
Raf ael – English is a requirement to enter the program.

Kevin – Singapore is growing and it’s been hard to fill vacancies there.
In conclusion, the project roadmap is becoming clearer as we go. Planning is reliant on a collaborative, ongoing discovery process. Proof of concept is planned for March18-April 1. The GMS go-live date is August.
We’re on the home stretch and we’re moving fast and furious. There are 25 students in the first class, so even if it’s almost done with a few loose ends, I believe it will be a nice experience.
At the same time they’re developing the school, they’re also building a new building.

Rafael – I was concerned with how many students would apply, but it’s OK.

Nevin – Usually in Singapore, students go from high school to medical school. They want to find a way to differentiate these students. They also want to have more team-oriented leaders. Business leaders in Singapore are working with Fuqua so graduates will have the right leadership skills. We’re helping them develop coursework to achieve these projects.

Rafael – They basically decided, since it’s government, they want to create biomedical science. They’re not going to get into the chips, manufacturing, etc.

Robert – Are there any lessons learned there that can come back here to improve the medical school at Duke?
Rafael – There’s a high penetration of broadband access to homes, single medical records, and an awful lot of research activities that we’re trying to learn how to collaborate on.

End time : 4:50