DRAFT
ITC MEETING
2/23/04
Present: Jan Fox, Allen
Taylor, Frances Hensley, Gary Anderson, Karen McComas,
Matt Christian, Don Combs, Monica Brooks, Arnold Miller, Donna Spindel,
REVIEW OF MINUTES: Approved As Amended
Jan
Fox: Updates: We are submitting the NSF Grant
tomorrow. The grants focus is to provide
a statewide repository of online dual credit courses in math and science and
would be available all institutions and K12.
It would have public domain learning objects and tagged metadata; all
meeting the state standards. It is a 4
million dollar proposal.
I will send each of
you an invitation to the State Technology Conference. Historically, we had WVNet and the State IT Expo, however, due to financial issues there will be a
single conference this summer. I
encourage all of you to present and attend.
The conference is in August. I would like to see Marshall to have a good
showing both from a presentation perspective as well as attendance.
There is strange
legislation in the state. Evidentially,
we had a student who created Bill as a class project. The bill was designed to block universities
from selling email lists. The problem isn’t
us selling the lists; the problem is students selling lists. I think we may want to look at creating a
policy against anyone selling lists.
There is a lot of
privacy legislation out there right now.
The legislation would make all IT workers non-classified in the state. House Bill 4072 would create a Planning
Technology Committee that includes all aspects of K12, higher education,
community, and business. As funds become
available, it will be collaborative planning.
I have been reporting
on the State turning on QOS that would influence our video networks and voice
over IP. The State has been having
problem doing that and it has not happened.
We are still concerned about the affects it will have on us when it is
turned on.
Monica
Brooks: We were disappointed that The Copyright
seminars were not well
attended. David and
I now plan to take the show on the road and have offered to do seminars for
various departmental meetings.
Arnold
Miller : We
are well underway for the Disaster Recovery Plan. Because we
will be
fitting it inside a graduate student's Capstone project, we have
tailored it as a pilot program focusing on Banner and not the
entire business process. We expect to be
able to have that done by the May time frame.
This will give us a good idea of how long will take to do a full
business resumption plan for the entire campus.
We are in the process
of evaluating the MUinfo machine that houses the
principal part of Banner, for any possibilities to upgrade it this year. The machine is now 5 years old so we need to
look at the replacement cycle for that particular machine.
There are various
upgrades to take place this Spring. I will keep you informed of what those are.
MASS VOICE MAIL
DISTRIBUTION POLICY
FIRST READING
Jan
Fox: Layton feels we
should have a formal policy dealing with mass voice mail messages.
Arnold
Miller: This has been an issue
since we installed the phone system in the late 1980s. We have used the system to get out urgent
messages to the entire campus. We find
that we now need a policy that gives us some guidelines to say yes or no to
distribution of mass messages via Audix.
We need to know what constitutes the group that could request that it be
done.
Jan
Fox: In the past we’ve
had two types of broadcasts: One was a University
broadcast and the other was a broadcast list that people could sign up for to
get general information. There is
concern that there are too many broadcasts now and we are afraid people will
automatically delete the message without listening to it. Do we need something on the front of the
message that indicates that it is an emergency?
Should we only do emergency broadcasts?
If we really have an emergency, we don’t want people to be in the habit
of automatically deleting it.
The other issue we
need to address is that when the Medical School pulled out from our phone
system and set up their own phone system, they no longer receive our broadcast
messages. We have the same problem with
the other remote campuses. We need a
formal process and procedure. What we
have is the first draft from Mike Adkins for review. We will open the floor for comments.
Number 4 is
vague. It is felt that general
broadcasts for tickets, meetings, etc. take away from the purpose of
announcements.
Frances Hensley feels
that the actual announcement should say “emergency” or “informational”.
It is the current policy
is that any message should be cleared through the Communications Office.
Allen
Taylor: There is another
issue with a new product in the standard faculty/staff PC interface to the
voice mail system. Under this system a faculty
member could create and maintain their own voice mail
list. It will make it much easier for
faculty to do mass broadcasts which will create more broadcast messages. We need to be able to limit who can do
messages. The policy needs to address the
issue of misuse of service. Gary Anderson
recommends a limit on the number of members in a voice mail list.
It is recommended that
Emergency messages say “emergency” and cover items 1, 2, and 3 of the
policy. Number 4 would be moved to the
list serve of voluntary “information list members” for general announcements. We need to avoid “voice spam”. We need to revisit this to discuss “general”
announcements once Allen has had time to look into the limitations that can be
placed on the new software.
It is recommended that
we should remove the terminology referring to “Audix” in the policy because we
may change systems on the main campus and Audix is not used on the remote
campuses.
We
need to determine what constitutes an emergency.
Jan
Fox: We want to make
sure we don't leave out groups or sub-phone systems at the remote sites. It is suggested that there be two people at
each site that would get message and forward on to that site.
WEBCT/VISTA UPDATE
Allen
Taylor: Handout – This is a
duplicate of the update I did to the Vista implementation planning group. It gives an overall idea of the scope of the
project. The project timeline gives an
overview of the project.
We wanted to convert online courses from WebCT to
Vista. We are on target
with our original goal of Fall 2004. We are now looking at whether it makes sense to
create presence for all university courses in Vista for Fall
semester of 2004. It would be easier to
create a presence to allow faculty to have access if they want it. It would provide communication for students
and faculty, bulletin boards, grades, etc.
The grade book in Vista is easier for faculty to report and for students
to obtain grades. Overall undergraduate
level information would be immediately available to students. The presence would be an available option
whether the faculty chooses to use it or not.
One of the things listed is an Academic Affairs issue is Vista offers
opportunities for collecting things like syllabi and other class
information.
The myMU portal does
offer us an overlapping function with Vista.
The portal will allow us to integrate to Banner and provide certain
content available in the portal. The
portal provides a back up communication stream if the Vista system is down for
some reason. Vista allows the sharing
of content modules and other content that can be shared among courses.
Jan worked with the
Chancellor's Office for funding through the HEPC. We have a 5 year agreement with the
HEPC. They used money, which was money reverted
to Higher Education after the dissolution of SATNET, to purchase equipment in
year one. In addition, they paid for the
software and at the end of the 5 years, we can make a decision
about the product.
We started with a
pilot faculty last summer offering a small handful of courses this Fall. We have now
extended beyond the initial pilot faculty and are now open to any faculty
member who wants to put courses in Vista.
This has lessened the load on the CE server and provides an opportunity
for a larger sampling of problems with Vista.
We now have 376
courses in Vista with over 6000 students using Vista Courses. We have 285 students in WebCT Campus Edition.
In March, 2004 we will
implement Vista in preproduction. We will
put it into production in August.
WebCT has committed to
making releases and changes in March for release in August to be considerate to
the academic calendar. Hot fixes come
along as needed. They are committed to come out with service packs every two
months to make changes needed from hot fixes or other problems found. 3.0.1 (.1 is service pack)
Another major thing we
have to accomplish is the integration of Vista with SCT Banner. In April we will be working with SCT and
WebCT on a new automatic interface called Luminus
Message Broker (LMB). There will be significant changes, including a
huge improvement in the myMU portal.
Right now CIT and the
Database Group are manually batch integrating both the CE and the Vista
product. We want to move to back to full
integration. We will have to look at how
solid it is in April and May before moving forward with Version 3.
We will have continual
training and ongoing sessions for faculty on the Vista product.
In some of the
feedback from the pilot faculty, we are seeing a huge increase in the amount of
Malwear, (malicious software, spyware). This something the user puts on their
computer as a free download.
Some of the figures I
will be presenting to the IT Strat Committee this
Friday are that in 1998 there were zero
known spyware products; in 1999 and 2000 there were
10 products; in 2002 the number went to almost 600; and in 2003 there were 1300
products identified as malware. The
latest update is checking for 12,900+ known sources.
The first place we
really saw this as a problem was with a number of users in Old Main using
Banner, typically on older machines, who had
downloaded these things and suddenly Banner would not work for them. We are now seeing it mostly in student use
machines. In the faculty/staff images
and the UCF images we have implemented products like Spybox,
and Adaware as products that check for and eliminate malware.
We are trying to work
with WebCT to identify these things and are working with help the desk to identify
malware and assist students in removing them. We are trying to come up with a list of those
products that take up space on machines.
We are finding that
WebCT is leading market in doctoral and masters level institution. Blackboard is leading the market in Community
Colleges and undergraduate degrees.
Overall feedback has
been generally that the product is easier to use and easier to learn.
There is a project
underway to change the student I.D. over from the Social Security Number to a
university generated number. Hopefully
the switchover to the new number will occur in the May service window to coincide
with the switchover to Vista.
One of the things that
has become a real issue and I think this group needs to look at, is the use of
commercial hosting services for course content.
These services require students to register to an outside website. Textbook publishers are offering registration
as a service; students are paying for it with the cost of the textbook,
etc. Many times students are required to
go out to the website and “register”.
Often times the registration will require the student to supply personal
information that is covered under FERPA. There probably ought to be someone in the
academic community who is looking at textbook adoption that involves web
hosting to make sure we are in compliance with standards. There are also issues in terms of
standards. One advantage of moving to Vista, is a common interface to content.
Gary
Anderson: For e-course approval,
we have insisted that if faculty members want to use publisher material, it has
to be on our server so that we have control and accessibility for the students
during the semester.
Allen
Taylor: The English
Department had adopted a hosted service for their English 101 courses. English faulty were trained on it over the
summer. Use of the service eventually
fell apart due to poor service.
Another question we
need to ask is: Should there be a requirement for course syllabi for online
courses in Vista?
We have requirements
under policy right now that official university e-mail to delivered
to a student should go to the Marshall e-mail addresses only. Should that extend to course related e-mail? We are seeing an increase in abuses of the e-mail
services. It is not that hard to falsify an e-mail from a professor to a
student. It is harder to do on an authenticated
source, such as within Vista. We need to
look at the policies.
We need a review of
the funding model. We have a 5 year
reprieve of costs. Over the next four
years we need to look at our funding model.
Since Marshall, WVU and Fairmont will become a hosting service for
smaller schools, we need to make some decisions on rates and priorities.
More personnel will be
needed to support Vista for MU alone, plus the hosting for other schools. We are in a pilot program with Southern
Community College to help us answer some of our financial and support
questions. We have agreed to do the pilot
for 10 faculty members in the fall to determine costs. There is an issue in that they have no money
and there is no funding agreement in place.
The HEPC is handling it for them for a period of time. We need to look at the costs for bandwidth,
support, and be sure to charge them back.
STATE IT PLANNING
Allen
Taylor: The handout is an
extract from my report to the Governor’s Office of Technology. We began reporting this information in
1997. We are now up to 130 pages. There is a pdf on
the ITC website if you want to look at the entire document. I have listed our goals in the first few
pages. The list of accomplishments is
centered on IT accomplishments done by year.
Most of the information is from general reports to Sarah or the President. The project information is also from within
IT.
We were asked special
questions this year that were specific to financials. The CTO’s office
was set up with the power to move any IT personnel from any state agency to any
other state agency.
Imaging (scanning)
systems are big in the State. The School
of Medicine and the Graduate College Admissions Office are doing imaging. Academic Affairs is working on a project
using a product called Sharepoint Portal Services document
management system. There is interest
from the CTO's Office in identifying what people are
doing around the state.
Another interest is in
Voiceover IP. We have been doing this
longer than any other agency in the state.
They are also looking at lifecycle replacement of servers.
Please look over this
document. The survey tends to be focused
on state agencies. We are only reporting
IT staff that are Computing and Telecommunications based. Other institutions do not include Libraries
and other IT staff. We also did not
give details of financials because of our use of mixed dollars.
Jan: The three
policies we approved at the last meeting have been approved by the President.
ADJOURNED.