Committee on Educational Technology
10:30-12:00 noon, Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Present: Eric Loehr, Thomas Laughner, Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, John Davis, Jefferson Hunter, Gary Felder, Herb Nickles, Eric Brewer, Glenn Ellis, and Helene Visentin
Absent: Marnie Anderson
Introductions and Welcome to new members
All those in attendance introduced themselves and said where they work at Smith and the new members were welcomed to the committee. Herb Nickles briefly explained the history of and purpose for the Committee on Educational Technology. Part of the committee’s responsibility is to review grant requests from faculty for innovative uses of technology in the classroom. Gary asked if the CET grant monies were listed in the faculty Money Book and John Davis said that he thought so but that he would double check.
John Davis nominated Jefferson Hunter to chair the committee this year, Jefferson agreed to the nomination, and the committee unanimously voted to have him chair CET for FY2011.
Approval of May 6, 2010 Minutes
The minutes of the May 6, 2010 were approved as submitted.
I.T.Strategic Planning process – Herb Nickles
Smith College has hired consultants from Goldstein & Associates to interview faculty, staff, administrators, students, Five Colleges IT Directors, and Smith board members and then compile data and priorities that will help us develop an IT Strategic Plan for the next 3-5 years. This plan will go before the Board of Trustees and will become integral in the budget process over the next few years.
Jefferson asked about similar committees at Five Colleges and if there were any groups of CET members that met from area schools. Herb explained about the Five College IT Directors and their charge and schedule and said that he was unaware of a group for faculty dealing with Educational Technology.
The recommendations of the consultant will be brought to CET for review and discussion. Herb told the committee that ITS is currently working on a major upgrade to the campus network, installing wireless on all floors of all residence houses, then wireless will be expanded to all academic buildings and finally all of campus. The Institutional Intelligence project will also be part of the consultant’s report. This could be a multi million-dollar project designed to enhance the management decision-making process. Another project that will require a large expenditure is the computer room expansion and Herb said that this may be a project that is appropriate to collaborate with Five Colleges on as most institutions are coming up against the same real estate constraints and this might save on some redundancies.
Herb also spoke briefly about the need for better external communications for prospective students, parents, and alumnae.
ETS Director’s Report – Tom Laughner
Tom spoke about a pilot project which is underway in four classrooms this fall. Wireless keyboards with built-in track pads are being used to interface with computers in seminar rooms. He expects to start getting feedback on these classrooms shortly. Jefferson and Glenn noted that the humanities and engineering could benefit from a classroom(s) equipped with multiple keyboards so that each student could interact in realtime with the faculty member and class. Tom also said that they were testing Cross Proof software in the incubator classroom.
The second item that Tom wanted to report to the committee was that he had appointed Aisha Gabriel on his staff to act as the communicator for ETS; to get the word out to the Smith community about classroom technologies. This fall the focus will be on “Trends in statistical software” and in the spring a collaborative effort with the libraries on “Info Literacy and Technology”.
Jeff also mentioned that he had been speaking with Joanne Cannon about a video streaming test that she was running in three classrooms. He said he would like to have feedback on this project as well.
SPSS – Tom Laughner
Tom sent the committee a document prior to the meeting that outlined SPSS and its role as statistical analysis software at Smith College for many years. We now face problems because the company was bought out by IBM. IBM has severed ties with NERCOMP and increased their pricing structure, making the cost of this software prohibitive. He spoke about two alternate software packages being used on college campuses, Stata and R, and said that both of these software packages are available to faculty now. ETS can help faculty train on this new software and migrate existing information from SPSS to the new software.
Tom’s recommendation to the committee is to follow the plan used by Reed College: help faculty migrate to another statistical package for classroom use, but retain a handful of licenses for those few faculty who require SPSS for their research.
The committee endorsed the plan that Tom proposed.
HERI Survey – Tom Laughner & John Davis
John Davis told the group that every three years HERI conducts a survey of faculty attitudes about general topics and also makes it possible for schools to add specific questions of their own choosing. Tom suggested that a couple areas could be queried on: 1) media technology literacy and public speaking skills and 2) open courseware and video-conferencing. It might be an opportunity to ask the faculty anonymously what they think about Smith pursuing these topics.
John said that the final draft of questions is due mid-October and suggested that the committee members communicate about possible questions via email before the next CET meeting scheduled for October 19th.
Other Matters
Eric Brewer said that the Science Center is experimenting with virtual desktop software in their research labs. He also said that his group is challenged with the management of client backup; currently they have 30TB storage capacity.
Jefferson asked Tom if he could help him get some more information about Open Office software.
The next meeting will be October 19th at 10:30 AM in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room.
Respectfully submitted,
Connie McGinn, recorder