Present: Eric Brewer, Robert Buchele, Glenn Ellis, Nicholas Howe, Thomas Laughner, Eric Loehr, Alan Marvelli, Katwiwa Mule, Herb Nickles, Nicholas Russell
Absent: Charles Staelin
Minutes of September 8, 2006
Eric Loehr made note that the web address for the CET site in the minutes should be changed to lower case and that we should look into having either lower or upper case be acceptable so that the site will have easier access. Connie will edit the minutes with this correction. The committee approved the minutes with this correction.
Email Issues on Campus – Herb
Herb provided the committee with handouts on email usage statistics and GroupWise pathway overviews. He said that there are three issues currently challenging ITS:
1) Delay in off campus delivery: there are 700,000 email messages/day being screened and most delays are happening for users of SMTP and POP email. ITS has made changes to the screening parameters, they are looking at diverting the initial process of screening off campus to Message Screen servers, and they have an order in for upgrading hardware but the vendors have a 4-6 month backlog because this is becoming an issue for many customers.
2) Email is being quarantined when the recipient doesn’t think it should be: there is information on the ITS Tara site explaining tag phrases that can be added to email correspondence that will alleviate some of this problem but many people still are unaware of this. Herb will send out notice to the community with updated information.
3) Email is lost or disappears completely: ITS has been looking for “bugs” in the system but has not found any so far. If a message scores high on the screening software, the messages are dumped. Though ITS has investigated several complaints of lost email, they have not found a specific example of dropped email through the quarantine software. Eric said that the GroupWise client for Linux has been installed in the Science Center and is working well.
Report from the Director of ETS – Tom Laughner
Tom said that President Christ had requested strategic planning documents from departments and that several have technology components:
Library: physical learning spaces & virtual learning commons
Educational Technology: student technology and literacy initiatives
Disability Services: adaptive technologies
He said that he is meeting with faculty, departments, and students to get their input regarding technology. ETS currently has one available FTE and this creates an opportunity to look at the entire departmental structure and see how this FTE could be best utilized for the future. He has been looking at the composition of CET with regard to including student representation; reviewing the software acquisition and curricular initiative forms to see if they can be simplified. He said that both should include learning goals, how this technology meets those goals, and an assessment for feedback to the Smith community regarding the successes as a result of this technology. He is working on a proposal to for members of ETS, the Science Center, and Charles Staelin to travel to the University of Puget Sound in March to plan Smith science center renovations. This trip will be funded by NITLE. His department has been looking at the faculty support model and has determined that there should be phones in the classrooms with technology, dedicated dispatchers to answer phone calls, hand held radios for support personnel, beefed up training for student classroom support teams and ID tags for those students, and a tracking system with independent software for ETS to track classroom issues and resolutions.
Tom said that future agenda items include integration of Moodle and Banner grading tools and the costs attendant to this, equipment inventories and life-cycle records of classroom equipment, emerging technologies such as iTunes U and the concerns around ownership, and the impact of Blackboard severing ties with SCT.
By the end of the semester all academic classroom buildings should be wireless; residence halls will be made wireless as they are renovated (Conway and Baldwin were done this summer). ITS is submitting a multi-year plan for this changeover estimated to cost about $800,000.
Tom also said that ETS is looking at the new version of Smart Boards for use in informal learning spaces in the new science building.
Herb told the committee that almost 100% of students are now purchasing laptops. Mule suggested that faculty should be encouraged to switch to laptops when it is time for their FCAP equipment upgrades. He wondered if the FCAP standard could be revised to include an option for tablets.
Glen asked if ETS could provide colorful laminated instructions for use of projectors in the green building. Currently 83% of classrooms have projection and 55% have Extron boxes. Tom said that the proposed changes in ETS support and adding a HEAT tracking system should help with the most common problems.
Tom provided the committee with a handout titled “Teaching Well Using Technology”. He asked them to review this document to determine if this might be of value here for Smith faculty. This could be a topic for review by the subcommittee.
Privacy in Moodle – Glenn Ellis
Glenn asked committee members for their input on whether faculty should have access to student accounts in Moodle. Bob wondered if faculty should have student access that students are unaware of. Tom suggested that this is information that should probably be made public in faculty Moodle training and added to the student guide for using Moodle.
There being no further time for discussion, the meeting adjourned at 12:00 noon. The next meeting of CET will be November 10th in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room.
Respectfully submitted,
Constance McGinn, recorder