OHLONE COLLEGE
Instructional Technology Advisory Committee
Meeting Notes: April 3, 2007
Present: Bob Bradshaw, Lesley Buehler for Richard Grotegut, Yong Gao, KG Greenstein, Les Hedman, Ralph Kindred, Wendy Lin, Quan Nguyen, Jeff O’Connell, Deb Parziale, Jeff Villano
Wendy reminded everyone that she sent out an Email update on what equipment is in the Student Learning Center.
Jeff O’Connell inquired about using SBC when not connected. Ralph said that you can work offline and when online, then you can reconnect.
Minutes from March 6, 2007, are approved as submitted.
Jeff O’Connell asked about Office in Hyman Hall and Deep Freeze, etc. Jeff Villano mentioned that Wen Kuang figured out the resolution to the problem and took care of it over Spring Break. There was a problem with the installation service. The installation service was turned off on each PC. Jeff Villano will ask his staff to make another pass at the non-Gateway computers to be sure all are working correctly.
Computer Trades: Ralph cannot make trades without checking with deans. Ralph is waiting to hear back from Shirin Maskatia and Mikelyn Stacey. The deans need to make the determination as they know other faculty may need different equipment.
Student Storage in Hyman Hall: Les reported that Pat Lane is working on process as all profiles are mixed together. Initially Pat has had to differentiate between student and faculty accounts. Pat must be very careful when weeding through all the profiles. Shortly, all student accounts will be closed. What storage does faculty now use?? We want to be sure that storage that has not been used for years is reviewed before being closed. We don’t want to transfer this data especially if it isn’t used anymore. We are charged by DTS for the amount of storage we use.
Accreditation: Ralph suggested that he do a first pass. He has spoken with Deanna Walston and Jim Wright and they said that it should be a collaborative process. If Ralph does what he suggested, then maybe some would not get to participate. What does the committee want to do? Invite the campus or only this committee, etc.? We want to be open to collaboration. Will time permit? Do it now? Jim Wright wants a draft before the end of semester. Each standard will be submitted to the College Council—time for Standard C is in May. Each standard’s work needs to be done by May as all will be compiled over the summer. So, we need to work on this before the next meeting. There are a series of questions that are a template. Should we work via Email? This can be done and folks can respond via Email. We have two committees: ITAC and ATAC. Both committees are participating. We have to finalize our portion at our next meeting. Possibly use Google documents—more electronic approach. Can use other
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committees’ models. Need to talk with Mike Bowman about his survey. We may also want to create our own survey. We need to be more specific about technology issues. What questions do we want to include in the survey?
Ralph will Email out documents—either a Wiki or other process.
Course Management System: There is a proposal from WebCT with their application. By the end of June, we have to be off CVC. We have spoken with WebCT about a transfer plan. Faculty are happy with the new 6.0. Ralph wants 4.1 and 6.0 for a period of time from July 1 until January of 2008. Those ready for 6.0 may begin and training will be provided. Those not ready will have Fall Semester 2007 to get ready. William Paoli and Marilena Tamburello will be given time to get ready. WebCT will only charge us for one of their versions. ePortfolio—WebCT has that tool and is in the proposal. The final cost still needs to be negotiated. The current cost is $30,000, The new version will be over $100,000. This fee includes the hosting fee, the licensing fee and the portfolio fee. Preliminary discussions with the president and vice presidents have taken place, and they realize that this is a significant portion of our offerings, and we need to provide this for our students. We are hoping for additional one-time funds. Ralph is working on this. The move to WebCT Blackboard will take place with the least amount of impact on the faculty. WebCT has not given Ralph the data he wants yet—maybe 2009 or 2010. WebCT has two mature products that will have to merge. What do we do once merge has happened? They will be supporting 6.0 for some years, even once merged. Ralph is getting this ready to go to the Board. There is a large amount of work to do to get this ready. Blackboard and Datatel will both charge us. The Datatel portion does not include student education plan.
John Li: John Li, Richard Grotegut, and Jeff O’Connell met after the last meeting. John is in attendance at this meeting today to explain his documents. John passed out his documents and then spoke about them. On page one, the $14,000 figure is a negative figure as was thought at the last meeting. There is not much money from the State in the form of TTIP money. We have no discretionary money. A report at the end of each year needs to be submitted to the State on how the money was spent. TTIP monies can be carried over. We have a $40 Million budget and are spending $2 Million on technology. Salaries and benefits are 85% of state funding. On Page 5 you will find employee-related costs. Thanks to John Li for coming to this meeting.
iTunes update: Is anyone using it? Approximately 5 faculty are using it. Items are being uploaded for Alan Kirshner, the rest of the faculty are uploading their own. Faculty now login in by Department and want to log in individually. Even new departments do to not having enough bandwidth--personnel--personnel constraints. IT has not been able to backfill Scott Scheafer’s role. Other projects are filling IT staff time. A new department wants to get on iTunes. What is the place of iTunes in our portfolio?
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We have WebCT and iTunes. Faculty do not want their work out on line. Dr. Treadway wants all work online as tax dollars paid for this work. World forums and the President’s talks can be posted. There is also a “people” bandwidth. Do we have the resources to work with it? ITAC needs to create a position statement on how iTunes should be used at Ohlone. Where should resources be devoted? Three new faculty want to be added. Podcasting is not what they want. You have to create content with your voice. Faculty have to learn software that has a learning curve, and they don’t understand that IT does not come to the lecture and then they can upload automatically. Berkeley and the University of Michigan push a button and then they are podcasted. We aren’t there. How do peoplefind out about ideas for podcasting? The ITC is a learning lab for faculty. William Paoli demonstrated all equipment. In the early days of WebCT we paid people to develop content for WebCT. Do we want to consider continuing this service? There are Title III sponsors’ stipends for faculty. William Paoli sees people with initial interest and then they fade away. A lot of students don’t have video iPods. William Paoli wants to focus on the audio portion as it can be used almost any time and it is more appropriate than video. ePortfolio—how do we use it and how do we train students?
Server-Based Computing: Phil Zahorsky still needs an instruction sheet. Les will send one to him. Phil Zahorsky mentioned that the cost for DTS seemed to be about 10 times what Ralph Kindred has said. This information is from Pat Lane. We must also consider the entire picture of what infrastructure includes. DTS is still much cheaper than our doing this by ourselves. There are still many new things to do. How to access? Email? Office? Calendar?
DTS does not work well on a Macintosh. Using DTS is far better with Fire Fox than Safari. There is too much work to use Safari. We should say Safari is out. When logging on, you cannot increase the window size. Os 10.4 operating system is on Jeff O'Connell's Mac. There is a Citrix-client issue. Ralph will talk with Citrix. Jeff O’Connell was “playing” today. When he tried to close his laptop, everything was disconnected except outlook. Jeff had to relaunch. If Jeff O’Connell uses different versions of Office, one may not read other. Macs have different needs. Dot Mac issue needs to be further discussed. Bob Bradshaw is considering putting this off for a year. There are too many concerns for Mac users. Citrix Key won’t be a problem. Bob Bradshaw says that faculty won’t want to use the Citrix Key. It was suggested that everyone except faculty be moved to DTS for the next year until bugs are worked out. Jeff O’Connell loves technology but will not use DTS next year as he doesn’t want to use a Citrix Key. This is a transitionary process. Speaking from the UFO president’s point of view, if some faculty want to move over, allow them to move.
The following questions were asked: what is DTS, who made decision, why was it not discussed with UFO and Faculty Senate, this becomes a negotiated issue. Ralph presented DTS information to all employee groups—including Faculty Senate. Bob Bradshaw mentioned that some faculty are considering this a working condition issue. KG Greenstein mentioned that the faculty get to get over themselves. We wouldn’t allow our students to whine, so, why are we whining. Let’s get the system up and running and then we will take on different networking suggestions. Yong Gao wants implementation delayed on the faculty side so that everyone else can find the bugs and then once all is in good shape then bring on faculty to DTS. Jeff Villano is using all different formats and is very used to all issues. Bob Bradshaw and Jeff O’Connell are willing to run parallels.
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Deb wants those in attendance at this meeting to go to Faculty Senate and discuss this. We first need to loot at Outlook. Look at Office applications later. DTS is charging us $2 for Email as we are providing our own software licenses. Also there is a cost for storage.
Computer Replacement Process—draft distributed. Plan and process drafts were also distributed. We have had informal unarticulated process. We are now considering inventory, life-cycle, etc. Please read and send Ralph comments. We want a three- to five-year lifecycle. We need a process for validating needs. Send Ralph feedback now.
Ralph will send out accreditation information.
di/ITAC 04-03-07