CCFIT > Calendar & Minutes > March 17, 2006 Minutes

Present: Tor C, Andy J, Aram Y, Liz G, Lori L, Jan I, Tim L

1. Faculty survey - how to put our recommendations into practice

We need to convince department chairs to set up teaching/instruction faculty committees. Then IET could communicate with those committees regarding instructional technology issues and faculty in the department would have local contacts who can help. Some departments are doing this, for example Physics is starting a instructional technology committee.

It might be better to do "teaching" or "instructional" committees since "instructional technology" might send the wrong message. The committee would need to be distinguished from existing committees such as teaching evaluations, curriculum, etc. It might end up being different for each department.

We could recommend that the chair of CCFIT (and perhaps the director of the TRC) send a letter to department chairs encouraging the formation of teaching committees. The letter could list the help and resources provided that would help adoption. Another alternative would be to have CCFIT forward the recommendation to the provost and perhaps have the letter sent from there.

It might be possible for departments to sponsor grad students who would act as an "ET partner". The department would have to fund (via money, class credit, TA credit) the position. IET/Mediaworks could be willing to provide training and ongoing support if the department provides the student. It would sort of be like the TSP program but focused on instruction. Grad students would likely be better that undergrad students since they would have a better grasp of the content and more aware of pedagogical issues. However, some faculty might be more comfortable with undergrads.

2. Davis Honors Challenge
The 3rd year students in Davis Honors Challenge are split into groups of five to so work on issues. They gather data, analyze, and prepare a report. Tor was contacted by the coordinator looking for projects.

There were several ideas. The first was to evaluate the ET partners program. Liz & Andy were interested, but think it might be good to wait a year to do it. Others were online evaluations and does podcasting cause students to skip class.

3. Undergraduate report to CCFIT

Two undergrads reported concerns to CCFIT. One of the major items was printing costs and quota. The students feel that the printing costs were being transfered from departments to students since they are not expected to print out what used to be handouts.

Can we encourage faculty to reduce students printing load? Accepting rough drafts electronically was suggested, but many faculty don't like reading a lot of paper on the screen.

We discussed the numbers a bit, but I didn't remember them exactly.
(So I went and got the data from Fall 2005. We charged 4,779 students at total of $22,414.45. So of the students billed the average bill was $4.69. But there were 17,183 users who printed. The vast majority were students, so we only charged about 27% of the students who printed.)