INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COMMITTEE MEETING

MAY 3, 2002

9:30 a.m. to 11:00 a.m.

Attendance: Jan Fox, Frances Hensley, Stephanie Neal, Tom Hankins, Gary Anderson, Don Combs, Matt Christian, David Johnson, Jim Hooper, Barbara Winters, Arnold Miller, Karen McComas, Dennis Prisk.

Review of Minutes: Approved as amended.

UPDATES:

Jan Fox: The state is in trauma from an IT perspective. WVU has had changes in staffing. WVNet has issued severance plans to its members. In the middle of all of this we are working with WVNet on the Internet2 proposal. It wouldn’t cost us nearly as much; we would have access to Internet2 and not have those incredible costs and still be able to use Internet2 as part of grant applications. The chancellor is working on making WVNet self sustaining. This does impact our contract. WVNet was the central location for telecommunications contract, software contract, vendors, so that was an easement to us.

We are now getting the ATM bills. We need to establish methods for charge backs both for internet service and we are looking at the ATM but it’s not been decided how we will handle it. We have been getting the past two years for free, but now we will have to start to pay.

We do have some cost out for putting fiber to RCBI and fiber to the Rahall Transportation Institute. There’s a big piece of fiber going to the medical school instead of wireless. It is important though, and I can’t stress this enough, if you know anyone who plans to move off campus, we need to know as soon as possible. The earlier we are involved, the easier it will be to make the connections. The MURC/RCBI fiber run has pole issues with the city to run across the street.

Jan is on the public service commission dealing with the state telecom issue. All of the big telecoms are involved. The entire issue is explosive. Senator Rockefeller has a member setting on the committee to get feedback on the issues.

Don Combs: It looks like there may be movement toward a Teay’s Center.

Downtown Logan building being renovated and may be a future site and a possibility for Arnold’s project.

Jan Fox: The big announcement is that the Governor’s Office of Technology Chief Technology Officer resigned 3 weeks ago.

I got a question from the Presidents office this morning regarding the development of a standard campus calendar. We’ve offered that and had it available; however, not everyone uses it. Resource 25 will possibly pull data into the calendar. Resource 25 also covers athletics. Resource25 however, is a purchasing nightmare. Resource25 does not interface with outlook. We will need to find a way to interface. There are currently too many types of calendars on campus

Frances Hensley: No updates at this time.

Jim Hooper: No updates at this time.

Karen McComas: No updates at this time.

Stephanie Neal: Stephanie is joining the committee as a replacement for Gary Weis.

Matt Christian/

David Johnson: The Homer Hickem event was incredibly popular in terms of streaming. There were viewers in over 26 different states plus DC and 13 overseas sites. Hong Kong, Taiwan, Korea, Turkey, Great Britain, India watched the live streams. 220 individual connections live. There were 1100 hits watching the later stream. There was not a lot of publicity notice on our end.

We had some notice through Outreach to the K12 people. It is possible that maybe international students notified those at home to watch. This shows us a tremendous opportunity for alumni, and capital campaigns. We need a method to notify these people to make it part of our community. The opportunities are unlimited. We found that about 86% of viewers had above 56k. 80-85 % had broad band connections.

This is a good way for parents to see what's going on at their child’s college.

The stream genie ordered which will allow everyone will be able to view on real player or windows.

Commencement is being streamed. There are some issues with the cable companies.

We have been filming technology spotlight series. Nine 11 minute spotlights on technology here at Marshall have already been taped. These spotlights on technology will be website when you go to under various sites. These spotlights will also been shown during intermissions on Channel 25.

Don Combs: Nothing to report at this time.

Barbara Winters: Vanderbilt Television News Archive (nightly news broadcasts on ABC, NBC, and CBS since 1968; added Nightline in 1988 and CNN world View in 1995). – 22,000 hours of videotape of all broadcasts, including the commercials; 9,000 hours of specials. Have recorded, abstracted, and indexed each broadcast since 1968. Losing over 260,000/year – LOANED, not sold. Income does not cover cost. Will be looking to see what we can learn that might apply to the preservation/access of our own WSAZ archive.

California Digital Library is opening an online repository for working papers – an “e-scholarship” repository.

CIC “e-publishing venture” -- a cooperative, consortia e-publishing prototype being developed by the libraries and presses at 11 of the CIC member universities. Currently 55 scholarly front-list titles. Is this the beginning of a federation of not-for-profit scholarly e-publishing ventures.

Jan Fox: I have been working with Work Force Development group of K12, Vo-Tech, Verizon, Community Colleges, Chancellor’s Office looking at curriculum and resources that have pathways to success. See IT Pathways handout. We are looking at things at the core that could be shared and then how you go from discipline to discipline. We are trying to develop an integrated web site that pools all our resources. This will benefit the rural students looking for courses. It’s a tough group but it is critical. We are 90% where we want to be.

Dennis Prisk: We can't forget problem that not all students have fast machines. Most students have dialups. These creative courses may have problems for students opening and downloading materials included in courses. Jan states that the work force project will provide financial easement to cable companies and would make digital access more economical for access to public. There are lots of agreements that during evening hours that those k12 facilities open up for public access. That’s the other 10% needed for this work force development project.

Gary Anderson: In our course review process, one of our guidelines is to provide an aggregate total for a given page should be of a reasonable size. We are trying to encourage developers to split pages to make downloads more reasonable. Also encourage developers to provide video in two formats, one big and high quality and one small and faster to download.

Arnold Miller: There are some additional costs coming back to us that we haven’t had to deal with in the past or that were dealt with in the past in a different way. The first thing is the ATM charges that are coming back to us. Some of the things that are being done on the ATM were done in other venues, which is why the ATM bills are now coming in to us regular basis. In addition to that because other grant monies went away from the WVNet level we are also being charged a cost to access the internet. Right now, for our 30 mg pipe through WVNet we are paying $120,000 year. That is a new cost that we have not had to deal with in the past. Obviously that is a cost that is very usage sensitive. This set up is suiting us well. The equipment that monitors traffic has us peaking at short intervals. As usage rises, the cost will rise. We are working with Herb to come up with a methodology to redistribute costs. Currently considering a method based on workstation access to internet amounting to $3.00 to $4.00 a month, per workstation to cover the costs. The client license fee is also an issue to be considered. There a lot of changes that will be happening over the next couple of years in terms of how costs will be distributed. There are arguments on both sides: one says pay out of central funds because service is relevant to MU. Other argument is to give money to departments to decide how to allocate.

Don brought up the business about the grants; the original One Room School 2000 Grant is finally over with. The one site at Spring Valley Vo-technical School, because of issues related to the firewall, did not reach full potential. It is still there and is still functional not being used by our network.

The next branch of the One Room School is the Crossroads 2000 grant, we ran into a little problem in terms of rolling that out because we couldn't get in to school which was where it was planned to go. W have now formed a partnership with Mission West Virginia that was set up by our former governor as a non-profit corporation to get technology out for literacy programs in community centers, churches, etc, so they have the experience doing this. We are going to use a couple of their sites get where we want to be in terms of Marshall’s goals. Most of these sites are stand alone PCs and are not connected with the internet. We have a site selected in Putnam County called CASA, where we can put 10 PCs with a set-up like at Gilbert. There is a site selected at Braxton County, but it doesn’t meet our needs at this time, but we are still trying to negotiate something closer to Flatwoods. These sites can be moved and they can have video capability. In trade for the cooperation by Mission WV, they have an interest in a site in Hinton close to a WV Works Sites. We can share costs of communications facilities. We trying to map all facilities in West Virginia and the hours they are open public.

AGENDA ITEMS:

Policy 13 Up for Discussion.

Gary Anderson: Big problem with the Intellectual Property/Ownership issue. There needs to be a definition regarding the threshold of where we decide propriety rights and university ownership. Especially in terms of the stipends they get from my committee and the grants they get from Carolyn Karr’s committee. Does that buy the university the complete rights?

Proposal: The thousand dollar stipend should buy the university the propriety rights. This needs to be added to the application form.

Intellectual Property Rights - this would prevent someone else from teaching a course using your material. Developer should be given first right of refusal to teach the course or sign off if he/she doesn’t want to teach it. The original developer has the right of first refusal for all changes.

If an instructor is doing something at home, using university resources to develop a course, the general approach on research is that the university owns intellectual property rights.

David Johnson wants to have an intellectual property workshop to look at different models with faculty and staff as well as any developers for E courses and T courses.

Sarah wants the deans to discuss this again. Before the next dean's meeting we need to clarify this issue.

This committee agrees to review this Draft and make suggestions to clean it up and then forward suggestions to David for clean up. The final version will then it will be taken to Faculty Senate in the fall.

We also need to address a course completion time table. Gary Anderson agrees to distribute proposal.

We need more of a legal stance regarding data security issues. Banner cannot release information due to confidentiality. The committee will continue to discuss this at the next meeting.

EPOC COMMITTEE:

Matt Christian: Review of the proposed designs of the new Web Page.

297 people have responded thus far.

Of those respondents 65% access the MU web page more than 5 times a week. 20% are using a dialup; 48% are using university or other network.

The committee agrees to add a calendar to the web page.

The goal is to be anywhere we want to be within 3 clicks.

Committees suggested adding current event or publicity advertisement in the changing photographs as well as the seasonal photos now used. Also may want to use hot news items from communications office or publicity office

My MU needs to include outstanding student or staff photo.

EPOC is planning to conduct focus groups over the summer.

Need to be sure we are Section 508 compliant.

New Design - adopting a content management will change the way we publish to the web site. There are issues regarding what needs to be outside and inside My MU. Communications should be able to update news section.

Barbara Winters suggests that the university address should be on the front page. Also wants a directory of faculty and staff on the front page.

Jan Fox: We need to be deciding what policies and issues we want to address over the next year. There will be no regular meetings this summer unless important issues arise. Contact Jan to add agenda items for needs of the campus.

Meeting Adjourned.