AcITAC

The UMDNJ Academic Information Technology Advisory Committee

Annual Report 2003-2004

Respectfully submitted by Bruce Byrne (Chair 2003-2004), Riva Touger-Decker (Chair 2004-2005) and AcITAC

Table of Contents

  1. Executive Summary Page 2
  2. Process Page 3
  3. Topics: Issues and HighlightsPage 4-8
  4. ConclusionsPage 9
  5. Recommendations and PlansPage 10

Appendices

  1. AcITAC Charge (2002)Page 11
  2. Draft AcITAC Charge (2004)Page 12
  3. Minigrant Projects 2003-2004Page 13
  4. Membership 2003-2004Page 14

Executive Summary

AcITAC has entered its 14th year. Our 2003-2004 topical meetings focused on exciting technologies championed by some of our most technically savvy faculty. However, we also learned from faculty in need of increased assistance to bring the benefits of technology to their classes. This 2003 -2004 report highlights critical Information Technology (IT) issues that affect the daily challenges of education in an academic health sciences university. We offer here observations on technologies (pages 4-7) and conclusions and recommendations (pages 8-9) with a focus on policy and service delivery models.

The academic IT enterprise is increasingly dependent upon network-connected content as diverse as scientific journals, clinical and educational practice guidelines, and molecular databases. These resources are accessed, analyzed and organized by software applications. Most of our conversations reflected choices made about content, software applications, devices, resource management, the network and training.

Recommendations, in summary.

  1. Keep it simple, make it better: advocate for transparent delivery of technologies and network upgrades.
  2. Create parity for distance and on-campus students: provide both on-campus and distance education students equal access to scholarly and instructional electronic resources.
  3. Innovate, evaluate, re-invent: the wealth of academically-targeted IT projects and products requires regular examination and marketing.
  4. Collaborate and cooperate: foster opportunities that forge relationships across UMDNJ.

In his re-organization of the IST Governance Structure, Mr. Thompson has asked that AcITAC serve as the Educational Services Committee. AcITAC’s new Charge (page 12) reflects that request. Our plans (page 10), build on projects extending from 2003-2004, carry out those responsibilities given us in IAIMS, and can be amended by any new assignments from the Deans or the Office of Academic Affairs.

Plans, in summary.

  1. Work within the new IST governance structure.
  2. Engage in IAIMS activities and accelerate outreach.
  3. Continue the collaboration with Facilities Planning on technology in the classroom
  4. Encourage IT advancement coupled to evaluation and assessment.
  5. Foster collaboration university-wide
  6. Extend our ties to the Master Educator’s Guild (MEG)
    AcITAC Process

AcITAC’s meetings are held on campuses across the University. We met in 2003-2004 in Newark, Scotch Plains, New Brunswick, Camden and Stratford. The current AcITAC charge is displayed in Appendix A. A draft new charge, Appendix B, reflects a re-focused set of priorities in line with changes in the 2004/2005 IST governance structure.

All records, reports, minutes and agenda are held in a private website to which the membership has access. In addition, the Committee receives monthly updates from ACS/IST and the IAIMS/Informatics Institute leadership through reports from the Director of Academic Computing Services, IAIMS representatives, and the Educational Technology Subcommittee. Full summaries of the discussions are available from AcITAC representatives (Appendix D).

AcITAC encourages the formation of partnerships to advance the use of information technology for education and research. The Educational Technology subcommittee of AcITAC has been charged by IAIMS with advancing instructional uses of technology. AcITAC/IAIMS educational technology grants were again extended this year through support from the Foundation of UMDNJ.

Most meetings focused on defined, issue-based discussions. Session leaders (members of AcITAC) developed discussion formats, defined key questions to be addressed in the discussion, identified anticipated outcomes, and invited guest experts in the content area for the day’s discussion

The issues that were addressed during the 2003-2004 academic year included:

  • Messaging: General and new categories of email
  • The Changing Face of Education: New categories of students in distant locations
  • Master Educators: Technology challenges for our best teachers
  • Electronic Media: E-Books and Scholarly Resources
  • Facilities Planning: Toward enhancing conversations between the teams that build electronically-enhanced classrooms and those that teach in them.
  • Public Computer Labs: An examination of their roles and challenges.

Topics: Issues and Highlights

Messaging: General and new categories of email. Issues. AcITAC considered three challenges to this service: unnecessary increases in volume generated by unsolicited commercial mail (SPAM), infrastructure threats associated with viruses and similar malicious code attached to email, and privacy considerations demanding levels of encryption and/or authentication for messages containing data protected by HIPAA. Highlights: Commercial products installed and managed by ACS filter substantial SPAM, and adjusting the breadth of that filter is an art being increasingly accomplished by ACS. Malicious code threats are also successfully managed by standard email gateways, although other simple modes of transmission repeatedly challenge IST staff. A plan (PKI) to ensure secure, authenticated and encrypted email for HIPAA compliance was tested by ACS and found applicable only in limited environments. It required both some customization of individual computers, user training, and continued regular user compliance. The difficulties in delivering the product and ensuring consistent user behavior encouraged IST to look at commercial systems that will provide required assurance. The new approach, which will see delivery in 2004/05, works off the fair presumption that the UMDNJ network is secure, by HIPAA standards, and only messages traveling into the Internet must be encrypted. New applications will scan all Internet-bound email for patterns in the messages that indicate HIPAA-covered materials. Individuals to whom such messages are directed will be notified that a message is available and deliverable through a secure and encrypted pathway run through a web-enabled messaging system.

The outcome of this discussion was the finding that new technologies are often best implemented when they appear passively and universally.

The Changing Face of Education: new categories of students in distant locations. Issues. AcITAC considered the challenges facing students learning from and faculty teaching to distant locations. Inviting two students to participate by conference call, members experienced in WebCT-enabled distance education programs discussed their collective experience. Based on a small sample, AcITAC attests to the creativity of this set of educators and learners, overcoming a number of obstacles that face this environment. An important issue is achieving parity between traditionally-based on-campus students and distance students. Parity is challenged particularly in the area of software available in ACS laboratories on campus but not available to distant students. Highlights: Expedited ACS protocols for distributing account passwords at a distance has smoothed the process of getting privileged services for distance students. These services include access to the WebCT courses, email, and, through University Libraries, authentication to web-enabled, licensed library resources including databases, search services and electronic full text books and journals.

Workstation-based software licensed to the University for educational use in public laboratories continues to challenge the principal of parity for distance students. Software venders have myriad and rigid patterns under which they license or sell their products. Providing equal access to registered students at a distance will either require (1) finding technologies that permit students to work on campus-based workstations from a distance, (2) purchasing different sets of more expensive licenses, or (3) re-negotiating contracts to include a more expansive definition of the educational/campus environment.

Master Educators: Technology challenges for our best teachers

Issues: We met with six representatives of the Master Educators’ Guild (MEG), Drs. Ken Friedman, Linda Boyd, Craig Scanlan, Nagaswami Vasan, and Marjorie Brandriss. The faculty reported that students’ technology literacy is much more advanced than the majority of the faculty. Students seek increased access to online administrative and educational resources (on-line grades, evidenced-based medicine resources, etc.) At the same time, the faculty is asked to employ new technologies in the implementation of a curricular reform wherein (1) the same content areas in the basic and applied sciences must be delivered in fewer contact hours and (2) evidence-based medicine plays an increasing role in clinical education. At issue is the source of support required to integrate those technology-driven elements in courses. Highlights: Strategies for innovative teaching practice, including the application of technologies, may be found in the MEGCenter for Teaching Excellence website, launched as of September, 2004 ( an initiative begun under the support of an AcITAC educational technology minigrant. The committee described models of faculty support delivered at three schools, where unit-supported staff (educational technologists) works with IST/ACS and Library standards and resources to deliver support tailored to the priorities of the individual Unit’s environment. That business model is proving to be most successful in delivering baseline technology support to faculty. In addition, the University-wide, IAIMS-supported faculty development program in support of the sophisticated development of a Web-based diabetes clinical case simulation for training in evidence-based medicine provides a second, University-based model for faculty support and development.

Electronic Media: E-Books and Scholarly Resources

Issues: University Libraries has shepherded a decade-long migration toward Internet available databases, indices, textbooks, and Journals. A number of metrics speak to the increasing frequency of use. Two guest faculty members, Drs. Washington (NJMS) and Fishelberg (NJDS) described two separate, faculty-driven initiatives. Dr. Washington’s project enabled evidence-based medicine and clinical guideline training using PDAs (Palm, iPAQ) and Dr. Fishelberg described endodontics clinical training enhanced by DVD technology in the laboratory. Significant portions of the EBM/guidelines initiative were enhanced by the University Library’s licensed electronic subscriptions.

NJDS students and faculty discussed that school’s technology initiative introduced to in July, 2002: E-curriculum and Vital Book Technology DVD initiative. Highlights: What is the impact of these technologies? Students and faculty told us that the endodontics training DVD technology extended access to their professor’s expertise and enabled self-guided learning and review of procedures. The evidence-based medicine initiative includes technology that monitors student utilization, and these and other factors are due to be analyzed in 2005 as a requirement of her Bureau of Health Professions grant that supported the program. With respect to the E-Curriculum and Vital Book, students expressed concerns about costs and the actual relevance to their courses. Is the Vital Book Technology addressing curriculum?

While overall use of Electronic Resources is increasing, and there are champions and fans for pockets of each of these technologies, we need insight into how the global use of these technologies is changing the way we teach, learn, research, and practice.

Facilities Planning: Establish and enhance the interaction between those teams who build electronically-enhanced classrooms and those who teach in them.

Issues: As opportunities or requirements come to build or renovate classrooms and laboratories inclusive of new technology, time constraints have not often permitted careful and full reflection and planning. A standard renovated room might reasonably have a useful life of 20 years, but few would want to use two-decade old technology Highlights: Facilities planning (headed by Terry Polin), vendors, additional IST staff (headed by Michael Petty) and AcITAC met twice during the year, first in an SHRP-based technologically enriched lecture room. A subset of us then met at a vendor’s showroom in August (Steelcase/Manhattan). Two very different sets of issues were addressed, and we considered the spaces in which we teach and students learn as well as the technologies that enhance (or impede) teaching and learning. We discussed advantages in choosing standard in technologies classroom design as well as creating spaces adaptable to new technologies fitting predictable life cycles. Facilities Planning, IST, and AcITAC agreed to work toward concrete solutions where the academic community could prototype new technologies with Facilities Planning for smoother integration in future projects.

Public Computer Labs: An examination of their roles and challenges.

Issues: A number of organizations host public computer laboratories: Academic Units, University Libraries, and Academic Computing Services. “Public” has slightly different connotations for each of these groups, where the Library has some responsibility to non-UMDNJ patrons and some academic units may rightly confine access to students in a narrow program. Highlights: Several hundred PC’s are available in public facilities. Increasingly, access to these devices requires sign-in by password authentication. Requirements to react to network security needs will necessarily limit open access. All represented parties provide documentation as to the popularity of their resources, but none has a long-term plan for renewal and replacement of computers or peripherals. While seeing an increasing usage of personally-owned laptop (or PDA) devices access network resources at the University via wired and wireless modalities, there seems to be a continuing need for public computer labs.

AcITAC’s Role in IAIMS. Through its Educational Technology Subcommittee, AcITAC requests and evaluates proposals from faculty for innovative uses of technology in education in a Minigrant program. That program is now jointly funded through IAIMS funds (The National Library of Medicine) and the Foundation of UMDNJ. Since the program was begun during the1996/97 academic year, 45 projects have been funded. Titles of currently active projects appear in Appendix B. Following up a request from the Deans at AcITAC’s fall, 2003 presentation, information regarding contact with the authors of all supported mini-grants is now available at

In addition, AcITAC monitors the progress of the IAIMS-sponsored, University-wide faculty development project that engages twenty-three experts in creating an comprehensive, interdisciplinary, diabetes case study.

Conclusions

Technologies. All of the issues AcITAC examined this year are interconnected by one or more of four technologies: 1) electronic content, 2) networks, 3) applications (software) and 4) accessible and sometimes portable devices.

Content. Electronic content is purchased, aggregated or created in a variety of ways. University Libraries secures and organizes databases, journals, texts, clinical guidelines and images. Faculty, students and staff author web content. Content is increasingly automatically generated from institutional databases.

Networks. Last year, AcITAC’s priority recommendation to the Deans was in of support for a universal network upgrade required to make use of the NJEDge.NET and, Internet2. Progress has been made, but we are not at the point we need to be. The universal requirement is unchanged, and AcITAC’s prime recommendation still stands.

Applications. Academically relevant enterprise applications provided by IST include both WebCT and a variety of statistical and scientific packages. Indirectly, but critically, the academic mission also benefits from the best choices for other web products, email, and interfaces to student records.

Devices. Two decades after the introduction of the personal computer, the desktop computing environment retains an important in delivering academic technologies. Increasingly, however, portable computers or handheld devices have made inroads into how we teach and learn. To date, only one school has mandated use of a notebook computer, and the impact of that decision is not yet clear to us. A number of smaller projects show promise for specific or general applications using handheld devices required for the mobile environment facing clinicians.

Service Delivery:

  1. The best technologies are invisible.
  2. Security. Disruptive network attacks enter the university in a variety of forms, frequently associated with email messages. By both filtering messages at the University’s gateway and by aggressively installing virus filtering software on individual workstations, IST and the community have helped contain the threat. The most effective solutions needed will require the fewest service calls to individual computers and/or require individuals to adopt new practices. Security at the gateway and automated local updates are sound practices.
  3. Privacy. An extensive test of a certificate-based encryption and authentication messaging system expected to be compliant with HIPAA regulations satisfied technical requirements but proved to be very difficult to scale. IST has described to AcITAC a second technology which it intends to implement that will actively scan and sequester email messages sent out of UMDNJ’s secure network. This new technology will enable recipients of email containing private information access to those messages through a secure website. To the point, the technology will be invisible to the sender.
  4. Accessibility. While increasing numbers of individuals carry portable devices, public labs continue to serve an important role at the University.
  5. Everything depends on the network
  6. Portable, accessible, and up-to-date networks are in increasing and vital part of teaching and learning
  7. Wireless access will enhance the usability of a variety of new portable devices.
  8. The community awaits the widespread availability of new network-based video conferencing alternatives.
  9. Alliances foster awareness and skill development.
  10. Minigrants encourage savvy faculty to enhance their skills and create a wide variety of resources
  11. The IAIMS Faculty Development Program provides a structured environment in which faculty across the University are collaborating to create a clinical case product, explore the use of one technology, and study didactic issues.
  12. Those schools that have hired their own staff that collaborate with IST while focusing on the particular needs of their own schools and faculty appear to be successful in moving technologies to production and developing faculty skills.

Recommendations