University Technology Committee
MINUTES
January 9, 2012
Members Present: Lance Taylor (Chair), Len Roberson (Vice Chair), Scott Bennett, Cathy Christie, Bruce Kavan, Gerald Merckel, Jeff Michelman, Julie Milich, Deb Miller, Lauren Newton, Jim Owen, Diana Tanner, Nicholas Eastham
Others Present: Kathy Hughes, Dmitriy Bond, James George, Pat Plumlee, Bill
McSherry, John Sharp
1. October Minutes
Ø No corrections or additions to the October minutes, and they will stand as submitted.
2. Announcements
Ø New Members: Lance introduced Bruce Kavan, Associate Dean, Coggin College of Business, Michael Kennedy (out sick today), Division of Student and International Affairs representative, and Jeff Michelman, welcoming him back to the UTC.
Ø Network Operations Center Power Upgrade Update: Kathy Hughes
reported that the power upgrade went very well; it was completed early (Dec. 29th), and IA was able to get their gift agreements. Kudos to the teams and the planning and effort that went into this upgrade. Lance stated that this will significantly increase the capacity to add devices in the operations center and helps with growth potential. The equipment was also over 20 years old and needed to be replaced.
Ø Student Email: John Sharp reported that the transition to Live.edu was wrapped up in December. The existing system for students still exists, and will remain there for a few months so they can pull historic email from it. We will be removing services from it over the next month.
Ø Digital Asset Management System: Len reported that the committee has chosen two finalists: Kaltura and Sharestream. Kaltura will be here on January 19th, and Sharestream will be here on February 2nd (moved because of the presidential debate on campus). There will be morning open campus meetings with demos and an afternoon meeting with IT folks. They will follow-up soon after with a committee meeting, and hopefully by the end of February will have selected and started the negotiation process. Len will forward the information to Lance, and he will then forward it to the group.
3. Report: Distance Learning Committee – Len Roberson
Ø Len announced that the y did not meet in December, but will meet on January 20th. Their current project is working on finishing up the initial draft of the strategic plan for the university campus which is the main focus for the next couple of months.
4. Report: Campus Technology Committee - Lauren Newton
Ø Lauren reported that they did not meet in December but will meet next Wednesday (January 18th). They had a representative from Turnitin come. This used to be strictly plagiarism detection, but they now offer other things. It is a little pricey, but they will talk about whether they should recommend a pilot which is a process that will take some time. They should have more information next month. Any questions or comments from faculty can be directed to Lauren.
5. Report: Blackboard – Deb Miller
Ø Deb announced that CIRT has hired for two new positions: Yentl Dunbar is their new Program Assistant focusing on DL and Jen Urbano is the new Coordinator for Distance Learning Training and Support. They are also recruiting for two additional designers as well.
Ø They did not have a maintenance window in December but did do some maintenance during the Sunday windows in December.
Ø Elluminate was upgraded to Collaborate which is a newer version of the tool. Feedback from faculty so far is very good. There is a workshop/webinar on Tuesday, January 17th if anyone is interested.
Ø They are piloting LO4 this spring with five faculty members. This is the tool that is used for blogs, wikis and podcasts in Bb. With their upgrade from 3 to 4, it moves to a total Cloud-based service. Tentative plans are to upgrade in the summer if all goes well.
Ø A couple of new features in Bb that were turned on: Rubric builder and Paste from Word tool.
Ø The Bb build out is progressing and currently on track for Spring term completion.
Ø McGraw Hill Connect block is working and currently in security review. They hope to be able to turn this on later this month. This will provide a seamless integration into the Bb grade center for services the publisher offers on its site. With this integration, students can essentially access those sites, complete the exercises, and have that all feed into the Bb grade book.
6. Report: IT Security Action Team – Jeff Durfee
Ø Jeff was not present at the meeting so there is no report.
7. Report: Internet Presence Committee – Scott Bennett
Ø Scott reported that the IPC met in early December, and from a CMS perspective, they have pretty much gone through the entire campus except for a few sites. All major sites have gone live. Future meetings will address the issues regarding the leftover sites. Upcoming work for IPC is to look at portal issues that have been on the backburner in addition to mobile.
8. Report: IT Organizational Task Force – Scott Bennett
Ø Scott reported that they have been conducting conference calls starting in December with peer institutions (College of New Jersey, UMBC and Univ. of NC-this week). The group will get together later this month as well. They will also begin discussions with EAB to see if they can provide assistance from a consulting perspective. A conference call with the EAB is scheduled for later this month.
9. New Business
Ø Jeff Michelman stated that there was a complaint from a faculty member regarding the outage on myWings before grades were due. The faculty member was concerned that it not happen again in the future. He had brought it to the attention of ITS that it was out and was angry about that. Since it was out during winter break hours, on Monday night he could not call the help desk when it was not working. This is one of the most intense times for faculty in the entire semester in terms for support. Bill stated that they are working on the problem with both the vendor and the service provider. They have made some changes to prevent this from happening. There are some odd messages on the channels which is a result of the repair that has taken care of the more serious problem of not having myWings available.
Ø Deb Miller asked about gaining administrative rights; Lance said he was aware of this and would have talk to Jeff. They will see what can be done about the process issues and how to improve the process and communication part of this.
Meeting adjourned at 10:30 a.m. The next meeting will be held on February 13, 2012 at 10:00 a.m. in the Student Union 58W/Room 3703D.