CCFIT > Calendar & Minutes > 2006-07 Minutes > March 12, 2007 Minutes

Excused: John Berg, Caroline Bledsoe (Chair), Rick Catalano, Tom Kaiser, Niels Jensen, Bill Lacy, John Meyer, Kathleen Moore, Dennis Pendleton, Esther Pun, John Stachowicz, Jon Wagner, and Fred Wood.

Absent: Tor Cross, Michael Hogarth, Karim Salem, Wes Wallender, and Keith Widaman.

Guests: Liz Gibson, Mikaela Huntzinger, Leslie Madsen-Brooks

Support: Laura Molander, Babette Schmitt

I. Announcements and Approval of Minutes – Acting Chair Jan Ilkiw

Jan Ilkiw, Associate Dean of Veterinary Medicine, opened the meeting by asking for any
announcements.

As a follow-up to the demo and discussion of Google Earth last month, Julie Saylor, Office of Resource Management and Planning (ORMP), made new campus maps available to all members. The maps are produced through the GIS unit within ORMP.

Ilkiw invited comments on the minutes from the February meeting. The minutes were
approved as submitted.

II. Projects Update – Mike Allred

Effort Reporting System Roll-Out
Mike Allred, Associate Vice Chancellor for Accounting and Financial Services, provided an update on the Effort Reporting System (see Effort Reporting System Roll-out). UC Davis is the second UC campus going live with the Effort Reporting system, which is currently being piloted in 15 departments. Allred noted that Vice Chancellor Barry Klein will soon be sending an email to the campus principal investigators (PIs) inviting them to sign onto an effort reporting briefing. 6,000 effort reports need to be certified over the next six to eight weeks, with one to four coordinators in each department working with the PIs to go through the certification process. The process is currently a quarterly certification, but will transition into an annual process over the next fiscal year. The effort certification applies to federal grants only.

Jan Ilkiw inquired as to how the word is getting out to departments. Allred responded that effort coordinators who provide support to PIs have been identified in every department as a contact point. 

Bruno Nachtergaele, Academic Senate representative, asked about the time investment required for the certification. Allred stated the time investment depends on the number of projects and awards a PI has.  It may take up to 30-40 minutes, but, he noted, the time is well spent as the paper-based method has little value when compared to the electronic system.

MyTravel Update
Allred reported that they are still pilot testing MyTravel, the new Web-based travel and entertainment expense reimbursement and reporting system that is being implemented on the UC Davis campus and at the Health System. The project team has completed 4,000 expense reports so far, and is still making changes in order to extend routing functionality and allow for breakdown based on dollar amount or percentage (see My Travel Update). Over the next three months, 18 departments in the College of Agricultural & Environmental Science will start using MyTravel, as will several units within the Office of Administration (e.g., Architects & Engineers, Business Services, Human Resources, Police and Fire departments, Safety Services). Allred reported the goal is to have all departments using MyTravel by the end of fiscal year 2007-08. In the meantime, they are still collecting feedback as each department is added. 

Marilyn Sharrow, University Librarian, reports that My Travel saves times and that she has had great success with it so far. Allred notes that once one learns the program, it is much easier and faster than current methods. Additionally, MyTravel will become the system of record for travel-related information, and each department will no longer need to keep its own records. Jan Ilkiw commented that as a Mac user she has experienced some difficulty with
viewing receipts in the MyTravel system. Allred said they will look into this issue.

III. Report of Undergraduate Students’ IT Concerns and Suggestions – Ravi Deepak

Ravi Deepak, ASUCD representative, distributed the survey he passed out to undergraduates and the report he drafted based on the survey results. He noted that the trend of student response was towards general dissatisfaction with the current UC Davis Web-based email program, and a preference for other email providers who offer more space, a search feature, and a calendar option, like GMail. Deepak also discussed student response to proposed online course evaluations, reporting that most students don’t believe the evaluations are taken seriously or used because they do not see the results from their feedback. He sees a campus online evaluation system as a way to balance out Web sites such as ratemyprofessor.com, offering the chance to even out extreme student responses.

Deepak also noted undergraduate interest in eco-friendly printers and paper, inquiring as to whether paper on campus, including in campus computer rooms, was recycled. Liz Gibson, Director of IET-Mediaworks and Classroom Technology Services, will find out and report back to the committee. (Note: Printers in campus computer rooms use 35% recycled paper.)

Pete Siegel, Vice Provost for IET, asked whether respondents expressed any concern over privacy when considering an alternative email provider such as GMail. Siegel commented that other email providers often will not guarantee that spam based on email content will not reach a user’s inbox. He also mentioned a general concern over the content of the agreement between campus and email providers. Typically, the email provider will include a clause allowing them to reserve the right to allow spam based on email content. Siegel inquired as to whether students would be willing to trade off all the pluses of a GMail account, for example, with the receipt of spam based on their email content. Siegel noted that a fallback email plan (i.e. back to a campus provided email) would be time consuming and costly. 

Deepak mentioned that he is working with the Vice Provost-IET’s Office to publicize the upcoming discussion with UC Davis students of Web-based email alternatives. He noted that students will be interested in helping identify features and comment on alternatives.

IV. Online Teaching Evaluations: Report from the CCFIT Subcommittee – Roger McDonald

Roger McDonald, Chair of the CCFIT subcommittee on online teaching evaluations, summarized the findings of the subcommittee’s year-long investigation into online course evaluations (see March 2007 Report from Online Teaching Evaluations Subcommittee). The two primary reasons the subcommittee has found for moving to online evaluations are to decrease staff workload and to allow campus control of the process. McDonald reports that the technology for this already exists – the School of Veterinary Medicine uses its version of Sakai to host its online evaluation system, and the School of Education also has its own online evaluation system. UC San Diego has a campus-wide student-run evaluation system, while other UC campuses are actively working on developing their own online evaluation system. 

At this point, there is no answer to a number of key questions – such as who ‘owns’ the campus evaluation process, how to maintain a high level of compliance among students, or what an acceptable level of compliance is.

McDonald notes the subcommittee must expand to include students, the registrar, and administration for a more comprehensive look at planning and implementing such a system. The other next step would be to draft a proposal to send to the provost.

At this point, the priority is to map out what this program would look like as a whole. Liz Gibson cautioned that while the technology exists and SmartSite could be used to host an evaluation system for the campus, once the decision is made to move forward, a technical implementation plan will need to be developed, including technical and functional specifications.

McDonald finds no reason to involve the Senate as of now, beyond the discussions he has had with the current Senate Chair.

V. Demo of Veterinary Medicine’s Online Teaching Evaluations System – Jan Ilkiw

Jan Ilkiw, associate dean in the School of Veterinary Medicine, demonstrated an updated version of their online evaluation system, which has been rewritten to function within CERE, the school’s instance of Smartsite.  (SmartSite is the new online collaboration and course management system that will be officially offered to the campus in Fall 2007.) The school’s online evaluation system uses a tool called “My evals” that allows students to work on an evaluation throughout the quarter. Results from the evaluation system are uploaded into the MyInfoVault for reference in professor merit and promotion packets. 

VI. Tech Innovation: A New Opportunity for Feedback: Midquarter Interviews on SmartSite – Leslie Madsen-Brooks, Mikaela Huntzinger

Liz Gibson introduced Leslie Madsen-Brooks, one of the SmartSite trainers, and Mikaela Huntzinger, from the Teaching Resources Center. Huntzinger explained that the TRC offers different sources of information for teaching on campus. One service the TRC offers is mid-quarter interviews with students. These interviews comprise of three questions designed to collect feedback on what students appreciate the most and the least about their class and instructor, and what suggestions they have for improvement.

The first two questions are answered independently while the final question is discussed as a class. Following the evaluation, Huntzinger reviews the responses with the instructor. But this process is limited by the availability of TRC staff during the two-week midterm window each quarter. 

As an alternative, Huntzinger and Madsen-Brooks have developed a prototype of an online version of the midquarter interview, which they demonstrated. The prototype makes use of the message center in SmartSite, the collaboration and course management system that will be officially rolled out in the fall. Student evaluations and comments are anonymous, and instructors are not able to view the online site. The data is reported quantitatively and qualitatively to instructors.

Huntzinger and Madsen-Brooks report that students generally tend to appreciate the midquarter interview, and end of the quarter evaluations seem to be higher when professors use the midquarter evaluation.

To learn more about this prototype and use of SmartSite, contact Madsen-Brooks at ljmadsen@ucdavis.edu. To access SmartSite, see http://smartsite.ucdavis.edu.

Meeting adjourned at 4:30pm.