Present: Mary Ellen Birkett, Eric Brewer, John Davis, Chris Gole, Nicholas Howe, Sam Intrator, Thomas Laughner, Gary Lehring, Eric Loehr, Katwiwa Mule, Herb Nickles
Student Representative: Megan Gallo
Guest: Ben Marsden
Minutes of September 19, 2007
The minutes of the September 19th meeting were approved as written. Between meetings the committee communicated via email and agreed that CET would fund Don Siegel’s request for additional licenses for Dartfish with the understanding that his department would prepare to fund upgrades in the future.
Discuss encryption of passwords on all network transactions – Ben Marsden
Ben Marsden, Director of Systems and Network in ITS, explained encryption to the committee members and provided a handout describing what is currently encrypted here at Smith. He said that his department is hoping to be rid of all non-secure http by January. The certificates are about $500/each and there are approximately 20 servers that will require certificates. Message screen is a high priority to fix and another goal is to discontinue use of ftp’s early next year. John Crowley and Caroline Moore are working toward a January date for Moodle security, certificates, and authentications. Tom Laughner noted that currently there are some faculty members who won’t use Moodle because it isn’t secure. The committee asked Ben if there was something that CET could do to move this process forward as a priority and what the changes will mean for end users. Ben said that getting rid of ftp will mean changes for users and that faculty needs to understand that accessing Moodle wirelessly and/or from home computers is much less secure. The committee agreed to endorse Ben’s efforts on this issue and thanked him for the updates.
Schedule subcommittee meetings – Tom Laughner
Tom said that he will schedule meetings for the subcommittees next week.
Review CET grant document – Tom Laughner
Tom provided the committee with a revised copy of the grant document. The committee continued to express a concern about where ongoing funds for upgrades of initiative equipment and software will come from. Sam suggested that CET should send a recommendation to the Provost’s office to increase department budgets for this purpose. John Davis said that they are thinking about making more flexible resources available to department chairs. Herb suggested that the recommendation from CET also go to the faculty council that is looking into this matter. Nick will write a recommendation and send it along to the committee members for review before sending it on to the Provost’s office.
Moodle survey preliminary results Tom Laughner
Tom said that he has been using Survey Monkey for the preliminary Moodle survey. Gary Lehring noted that some faculty members miss announcements that used to come from Blackboard. Also when data is brought down, names must be changed each time. Tom said that his group is currently looking at new management modules. Mary Ellen asked about Moodle’s ability to manage portfolios and Tom said that Moodle is expected to come out with an eportfolio module next year. File management security is the top issue being worked on at this time and Tom said that all of these issues will be brought to the Moodle subcommittee for discussion.
Report: ITCC meeting – Nick Howe
Nick said that at the last ITCC meeting the main topics for discussion that relate to CET were computers in the classrooms, the formation of a door access committee for which Mary Ellen will represent CET, and the security issues of Smith accounts for students, staff, and faculty.
Since the next meeting is scheduled for the day Thanksgiving break begins, the committee agreed to cancel that meeting and hold the next meeting as scheduled in December. Any issues that arise in the meantime will be handled by email.
The next meeting will be December 19th at 11:00 AM in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room.
Respectfully submitted,
Constance McGinn, recorder