CCFIT > Calendar & Minutes > 2004-05 Minutes > April 11, 2005

Excused: David Bunch, James Chalfant, Bella Corbin, Jeff Gibeling, Karen Hull, Stan Nosek, Ning Pan, Celeste Rose, and Dick Walters.

Guests: Dan Cotton, Doug Hartline, Ray Tai, and Michael Wilkes.

Staff: Babette Schmitt.

I. Approval of Minutes - Chair Bledsoe

Chair Bledsoe invited comments on the minutes from the March 14th meeting. The minutes were approved with no changes.

• Chair Bledsoe announced the appointment of Peter Yellowlees as Interim Vice Provost for Information and Educational Technology, effective April 15th. This appointment follows John Bruno's decision to step down and return to research and teaching. Dr. Yellowlees is already a member of CCFIT and will continue to attend these meetings. Dave Shelby, Assistant Vice Provost-IET, announced that a reception is being planned in early May in honor of John Bruno. An invitation will be extended to Council members.
• Chair Bledsoe welcomed Jan Ilkiw, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Programs in the School of Veterinary Medicine. Dr. Ilkiw, who will represent the School on the Council, brings years of experience and involvement in the area of educational technology (see online course evaluations below).
• Chair Bledsoe reminded Council members that Provost Hinshaw will be joining us on June 13th, the last meeting for this academic year. At that meeting, the provost will be presented with the Council's report and recommendations from this year's discussions along with a list of potential discussion items for 2005-06. A preliminary discussion of those recommendations and topics will be on the agenda in May.

Jan Ilkiw, Professor and Associate Dean for Academic Programs, presented an overview and demo of the online course evaluation system in use at the School of Veterinary Medicine for the last few years (see PowerPoint presentation). The system provides students with an anonymous way of evaluating both courses and instructors. In addition, the system includes an information management component that allows instructors and administrators to track the status of the evaluations. To encourage student participation, three email notifications are sent each quarter. In addition, Dr. Ilkiw meets regularly with students to explain the importance of these evaluations and to inform them of the various ways in which the feedback is used. Dr. Ilkiw reported a 97% rate of completion across all three years of the program. Next steps for the School of Veterinary Medicine include the development of standard-based data interchange formats, encouraging collaborative data interchange between existing academic and administrative systems across campus (such as the Faculty Merit and Promotion System that uses the "MyInfoVault" software), and developing an interface for the evaluation of courses based on the Sakai open source course management initiative (see http://www.sakaiproject.org).

Council members reported a range of reactions to online course evaluations across campus. The Academic Senate has expressed concern and the College of Engineering saw only a 35% response rate, while the UC Davis Medical Center reports having offered non-anonymous online course evaluations for years now, with a good acceptance rate both by faculty and students, and by staff who seem to appreciate the reduced administrative workload (no duplicate data entries). Chair Bledsoe reported that the TRC (Teaching Resources Center) has a tremendous workload at the end of each quarter as they process thousands of Scantron forms from the course evaluations. TRC would welcome an online system. Bledsoe also noted that typing of individual comments from the evaluations is a huge workload for staff in most academic departments.

Michael Wilkes, Vice Dean for Medical Education at the UC Davis Medical Center, provided some background information on the decision to develop and implement e-portfolios for UC Davis medical students. He noted that this initiative was triggered in large part by the need to provide life-long learning opportunities for medical students and doctors as well as a tool to assess their competencies and manage their learning over time. Intended outcomes include promoting reflective learning with respect to development of skills and competencies, and encouraging students to own the process of development of skills and competencies. The UCDMC student e-portfolios went live in January 2005. They are the result of a collaborative partnership with the University of Newcastle (U.K.) where e-portfolios have been used by a large number of faculty and students for several years.

Dan Cotton, UCDMC's Information Services Support Group, gave an overview of the e-portfolios' features and modules (see presentation). Modules include a resume builder, a learning diary, a journal review tool, a 'virtual office' advisor meeting log (to facilitate interactions between students and advisors), as well as course management tools based on Sakai modules.

The graduate student representatives commented on the potential applicability of the resume builder module to many students across the campus. This tool enables students to build their resumes in installments over the years. One current limitation involves the termination of email accounts after graduation, which needs to be addressed so students can continue to access their files after they leave. Dave Shelby noted that the recent decision to produce ID cards for staff and faculty has led IET, University Relations, and other campus units to consider providing UC Davis affiliates with limited computing accounts through which they can log on to secure pages. Such an approach could be used to grant access to the students' e-portfolios post graduation.

Andy Jones commented on the merits of journal writing, noting that such writing has been shown to help students connect clear thinking with clear writing. He suggested a meeting with representatives from the Campus Writing Center for further discussion.

• Faculty Needs Assessment Survey: Status Update - Andy Jones
  Andy Jones, Chair of the Educational Technology Subcommittee, reported that the survey to assess UC Davis instructors' information technology needs is ready, and the memo announcing its availability will be distributed as soon as the second signature has been obtained. The Chairs of the Academic Senate and Academic Federation have agreed to issue the memo under their signatures. The deadline for filling out the survey is May 6th.

• Update on Electronic Research Administration (ERA) Project - Doug Hartline
  This discussion was postponed until the May meeting.