CCFIT > Calendar & Minutes > 2003-04 Minutes > March 15, 2004 Minutes

1. APPROVAL OF DECEMBER MINUTES - CHAIR BLEDSOE
2. REVIEW OF ANSWERS TO COUNCIL'S QUESTIONS - CHAIR BLEDSOE
3. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING FOR UC DAVIS - JOHN BRUNO
4. NEW TOOLS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Attendees: Caroline Bledsoe (Chair), Mike Allred, Gil Apaka, John Bruno, James Chalfant, Lynne Chronister, Jack Farrell, Andy Jones, Rob Kerner, Bill Lacy, John Meyer, Stan Nosek, Bob Ono, Celeste Rose, Steve Roth, Brenda Ruth, Judy Sakaki, Marilyn Sharrow, and Ellen Sutter.

Excused: Jeff Gibeling, Barry Klein, Kathleen Moore, Bob Murta, Ann Orel, Dave Shelby, Pam Thomas, Mani Tripathi, Pat Turner, and Neal van Alfen.

Guests: Tor Cross, Doug Hartline, Connie Melendy, and Keith Young.

Staff: Babette Schmitt.

Chair Bledsoe took a few minutes to review the diagram in the minutes from the January meeting. The diagram illustrates the process for Council deliberations and recommendations to Provost Hinshaw. The minutes were approved as submitted.

II. REVIEW OF ANSWERS TO COUNCIL’S QUESTIONS – CHAIR BLEDSOE

ERA: Answers to questions raised by AC4/AdC3 members (pdf)
FMP: Answers to questions raised by AC4/AdC3 members (pdf)

Caroline Bledsoe introduced the two documents distributed electronically in advance of the meeting. These documents were developed by the project leads for the Faculty Merit and Promotion Project and the Electronic Research Administration Project. They feature answers to the questions raised during past Council deliberations.

Faculty Merit and Promotion Project: Connie Melendy (Academic Personnel) fielded a few follow-up questions about the document she and Dave Shelby (Information and Educational Technology) submitted to Council members. (Melendy and Shelby co-chair the implementation workgroup for this project.) During the discussion, she indicated that online voting would not be part of the first phase of this project but would be considered at a later date. The initial focus of the implementation approach will be on non-confidential data that needs to be stored in the online repository. Caroline Bledsoe, a member of the implementation workgroup, noted that the group is working to collect additional feedback from users. MSOs have already been consulted and have commented on the various ways in which they expect such an online system to benefit staff and campus units. Melendy also addressed the need for the online system to be connected to other campus systems and resources. These types of connections would make it possible to extract data and generate reports and lists. In addition, there was some discussion about data entry (InfoVault, the program in use at the School of Medicine, does not work well with Microsoft Word document uploads), the degree of flexibility the system should accommodate in response to department-specific needs and processes, and the proposed timeline (IET is developing one predicated on a phased roll-out). Caroline Bledsoe noted that, based on Educause and other meetings she’s attended, UC Davis seems to be farther along than other campuses.

Caroline Bledsoe asked for a show of hands in support of recommending the project to Provost Hinshaw. Council members voted unanimously in support of this project. Connie Melendy thanked Council members for their ‘rigorous’ review and helpful feedback.

Electronic Research Administration Project: John Bruno introduced this topic by noting that interest in this project has been increasing in intensity over the years, and in particular over the last few months. He reminded Council members that last year this Electronic Research Administration proposal was studied by members of the AC4 Subcommittee on Research. The project team has since met with a number of vendors, they have identified one product (InfoEd), and they are preparing a proposal to Provost Hinshaw to move forward with its implementation. An oversight committee co-chaired by John Bruno and John Meyer, and a workgroup led by Lynne Chronister (Office of Research) and Doug Hartline (Information and Educational Technology) have been formed.

Three modules are under consideration: proposal tracking (most important), proposal development, and project management. John Bruno indicated that the project team will work closely with InfoEd to ensure the product meets the needs of the Office of Research. They will also work with departments interested in participating in a pilot to learn more about the proposal development module.

Based on other campuses’ experiences and the team’s preliminary analysis, the implementation of this project is expected to take some time. UCLA, for example, is making the transition from COEUS to InfoEd. They estimate the implementation will take 2-3 years and cost between $2M and $3M. John Bruno commented that given its large research program, UC Davis has no choice but to implement a tool that can support this program more effectively. Lynne Chronister added that these discussions are not unique to this campus and that in fact, UC Davis is behind the curve in this area.

There was some discussion of security and authentication concerns (integration with campus middleware, level of redundancy and fault tolerance, compatibility with our technology environment, etc.), anticipated costs (approximately $1M-$2M for the implementation part), and the need to map data to integrate with the financial system.

Caroline Bledsoe noted that faculty will need to be given some assurance that the same data will not need to be entered more than once, first in the campus system and then in the granting agency’s system (e.g., NSF or NIH). Perhaps a pilot could be established to test the integration of the campus system with other major off-campus systems.

Other topics discussed included: plans for getting feedback and buy-in from staff and faculty (expected to be a gradual approach and to include a training program), the importance of coordinating with the Faculty Merit and Promotion Project Team (these two systems will be designed so they can ‘talk’ to each other), and the need to avoid having multiple systems of record for the same data (the Institutional Data Workgroup chaired by John Meyer is looking into those issues).

Caroline Bledsoe asked for a show of hands in support of recommending this project to Provost Hinshaw. Council members voted unanimously in support of this project.

III. INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY PLANNING FOR UC DAVIS – JOHN BRUNO

Handout: UC Davis IT Projects: Summary of Results (second round of review)

John Bruno provided an update on the process to identify information technology project priorities for the campus. He handed out a document listing the twenty-nine proposed projects and their respective rankings (based on the second round of review in January and February). The two projects discussed by Council members (the Faculty Merit and Promotion Project, and the Electronic Research Administration Project) are ranked fifth and eighth, respectively, which suggests a fairly high level of interest on campus for both. John Bruno will be discussing these preliminary results with the Council of Deans and Vice Chancellors at their April 13th meeting. This item will also be discussed at the next Council meeting (April 12th). See http://itstrategicplan.ucdavis.edu for more information about this planning effort.

IV. NEW TOOLS FOR TEACHING AND LEARNING

Handout: Handheld PDAs for Educators (PowerPoint)

Tor Cross, from the Teaching Resources Center, provided an overview of the features available to educators in Personal Digital Assistants. She presented a number of basic PDA features (e.g., calendar, address book, synchronization with computers) as well as more advanced features (e.g., wireless access to the Internet and email, ability to store and read various types of documents, proofing tools) and classroom applications (e.g., PowerPoint presentations, use with projectors, remote control capabilities, etc.). She handed out CDs with a few PDA utilities. For more information, see the presentation or contact Tor at vlcross@ucdavis.edu.

The meeting adjourned at 4:35 p.m.