Date / Tuesday 28thApril 2008
Time / 9:00am – 10:30am
Location / 8.8.23
Attendees / Amgad Louka (Chair) Jim McGovern, Rod Van den Akker, Lyn Atkinson, Craig Anderson, Filiz Ergec, Joyce Kirk, Warren Nageswaran, Garry Allan, Thembi Mason, Morgan Morris, DVC Jim Barber (late), John Benwell, Garry Bradley
Apologies
Item / Discussion/Outcomes / Action
Confirmation of Notes / Notes from previous meeting accepted as true and accurate recording of the meeting.
Business from previous Notes / 3.1Induction Program
Chair is still to speak to Amy Love in regards to adding Lectopia instructions to the Induction Program. He will do so later in the week.
3.2Lectopia
Anthony has not yet provided Morgan with a list of Business Portfolio users to be notified about Lectopia problem fixtures. Chair stated that eTAG should be involved and be kept informed of issues about Lectopia.
It was also requested that when there are Lectopia issues in the Business Portfolio, Rod McCrohan and Phil Quealy be informed of what is going on. Many staff automatically look to them, and they need to be able to provide information.
Joyce suggested that a group be formed that could look at the problems that occurred, to ensure they do not happen again. She also suggested that it could be worth having a list of known problems on the web to provide further information to staff.
It was pointed out that there will soon be an internal review of the project, which will cover the issues that have arisen. However, it was agreed that it would also be a good idea to have an external group review as well.
Volunteers to be part of the external group were Chair, Rod V, and Warren. Lyn and (DSC person – unknown name) also asked to be recorded, but may send someone else to the review.
Chair reiterated the importance of the staff involved in the Lectopia issue being informed of the problem resolution. Chair also pointed out that for the most part, Lectopia is working very well. Problems have unfortunately occurred in some areas that were intended for high usage.
3.4Staff Development Working Party
Another meeting has been held. The prototype website is still being refined, and will hopefully be ready for distribution for people to look at this week. An earlier version of the website had been distributed earlier, but it was not structured. The earlier version received feedback, and is currently being redeveloped.
Business / 3.1LCMS Update (Rob)
Rob reported that the contribution process and the configuration is almost finished. The system has been updated, and is significantly better. For example, a user can now upload an entire folder at a time, not just individual files.
Rob reported that the contribution wizard process has been shortened from seven screens to two. Users now have a simple option, or an extended option with more detailed fields. A lot of processes have also now been automated.
Rob brought up a question about federated search that had been raised at a previous meeting. He said that the federated search is working, but there is a question about particular ports that are open. It was suggested that Rob contact Andrew Coxhill about this.
In terms of integrated federated search results, Rob reported that the system did not work in that way. The system can search several repositories together, but the search results will not be displayed as an integrated list.
Altogether, Rob reported that the project was going well.
Garry asked if the system would be easy to use for someone who had never used it before. Rob answered that the system should be very easy to use, but it depended on what the user wanted to do.
The Chair raised the issue of metadata, and Rob confirmed that the short option was two pages long. He also stated that he needed advice about what copyright information needs to be shown. Chair suggested that Rob speak to Anne Lennox, from Copyright.
When asked if there could be a demonstration at the next meeting, Rob replied that a test collection was currently being developed for demonstrations.
3.2Survey tool for RMIT (Warren)
Warren distributed the paper outlining his proposal. Warren reported that all portfolios are currently using Survey Monkey for surveys, with no defined process. Warren stated that Survey Monkey does not fulfil all the survey requirements for the portfolios, and furthermore stated that there was recently a leak of confidential survey information, which has brought this problem further to light.
Warren proposed that the survey system requirements for all portfolios be looked at, and that an appropriate system should be chosen that can accommodate all needs. Warren reiterated that this was an urgent issue, as demonstrated by the recent leak.
It was pointed out that the leak was caused by a person taking the survey information off the survey server, and moving it to a web server that was open to the world and was not safe for confidential information. It was added that training for staff and students was needed, as well as new software.
(?Unknown) reported that he had met with Peter Burke and security analysts to discuss this issue. He reported that the group organised a list of steps that can be taken to protect data, and further put in a work request to undertake a search for a new survey tool.
It was agreed that this problem had been acknowledged, and steps had been taken to fix it.
It was suggested that RMIT be guided by what other universities have used. The Chair reminded the group that the university is a member of the New Media Consortium (?). He stated that all RMIT staff could register and ask questions about other organisations’ methods, that would be answered by people all over the world.
3.3Blackboard in Vietnam (Jim)
The Jim reported that the recommendations for Vietnam should be available within the next few days. He reported that the preliminary view is that a fairly significant upgrade is needed. He announced that the project is estimated to cost approximately $US160,000, $US90,000 of which will be used for hardware.
Jim reported that the main concern at this point is timing. Everything needs to be in place by September, and past experience has taught them that some processes can take a long time.
The Chair mentioned that the university is still dealing with temporary solutions in Hanoi regarding bandwidth. He suggested that a more permanent solution be a priority.
The DVC asked if sending people from Melbourne to Vietnam to do the work would speed up the process. Jim replied that they are already planning to send people over once the materials have been ordered.
The Chair reiterated that the next step was to finalise requirements and options.
3.4Augmentation of usage reporting capability in RMIT’s Blackboard system
Garry explained that Blackboard records activities and adds information to a database. He reported that RMIT could analyse this information to discover Blackboard usage across the university.
It was pointed out that not all activities are recorded by Blackboard. Particular links are not recognised by Blackboard.
The subject of announcements for students was also brought up. The group agreed that having announcements in Blackboard, Student Portal, and Student Hub was very confusing for students, and could cause them to miss important announcements if they do not check each board regularly. It was agreed that it would be useful to have all announcements in one area. The Chair added that it would still be useful for the announcements to be separated, as they refer to different things.
Other Business / Electronic Communications Policy (John?)
John gave an update on the Electronic Communications Policy, which David Thompson had presented to the group several meetings ago. John reported that he had met with David, and suggested that David write a broad policy that could pass through council, as well as regulations that could be changed without approval of council. John also suggested that David use ‘enabling’ language, instead of ‘disabling’ language. This would mean listing things that the services could be used for, instead of a list of things that were not allowed.
John reported that David was in the process of creating this, and he would report again in future.
The Chair mentioned that last time the group had discussed this item there had been a question about policy ownership. John reported that council had given ownership of this policy to ITS.
Linking from the DOS (Craig)
Craig explained that many staff do not correctly link in Blackboard to articles found on the DOS. Though the library has instructions for correct linking, many staff are unaware, and simply copy and paste the URL into Blackboard. This link does not always work for external computers that are not on the RMIT network.
Craig reported that one possible solution is simply for librarians to create the links for the staff. The librarians already know how to do the links correctly, and it is much harder to try to explain the method to so many teachers.
It was also suggested that the instruction page be incorporated into the DOS sign in, but this would mean that staff would have to go through the page every time they logged on to search for articles.
The point was made that this problem is mainly a staff development issue.
It was also pointed out that staff should be encouraged to put fewer links to articles on Blackboard, so that students are forced to do their own research.
Date, Time & Location of next meeting / Monday 19May 2008 at 9:00am – 10:30 am in room 8.8.23
ETAG Notes - 28 April 2008 - DRAFT.doc
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