CCFIT > Calendar & Minutes > November 21, 2006 Minutes

Present:  Tor Cross, Jon Wagner, Lori Lubin, Andy Jones, Gail Yokote, Liz Gibson, Tim Leamy

Guest: Caroline Bledsoe

1. Update from CCFIT

  Caroline Bledsoe, the chair of CCFIT, joined us today.  She told us about current topics being discussed at CCFIT:

·         Wireless – Students really want wireless everywhere.  The big question is how to prioritize and decide the next locations for rollout.  CCFIT is forming a subcommittee to prioritize where the next installations should go.  Matt Bishop will be chairing it.

·         Spam – The campus is switching to a more aggressive spam system.  It will now block high-scoring spam (15+) at the campus border to prevent it from even reaching the email servers.  There is now improved communication and documentation about spam settings at email.ucdavis.edu

·         Printing queues – Students are really concerned about the print quotas.  Wireless printing has just been introduces (wirelessprinting.ucdavis.edu).  The Library and CTS should coordinate on wireless printing.  People do a lot of printing in the library and they would like to align with an campus-wide solution.

·         http://getlegal.ucdavis.edu/ Student Housing demoed the new free and legal service to download music. 

·         The CCFIT steering committee discussed how Mediaworks, the TRC, CTS, and our group fit together.  Caroline would like charge letters or mission statements from each to compare.  Andy mentioned that our subcommittee worked on parts of the IT Strategic plan.  The IT strategic plan is at http://itstrategicplan.ucdavis.edu/ with the link to explanations of the elements of the IETSP: http://itstrategicplan.ucdavis.edu/about.cfm.

The discussion then shifted to ...

2. Mediaworks and CTS Merger

  Mediaworks and CTS are merging effective 12/1/06.  But there is still quite a bit up in the air so don’t expect huge changes 12/1.  Things will basically remain status-quo until the new organizational structure is figured out.

3.  Role of CCFIT Educational Technology

  We then discussed our role.  There are lots of committees, groups, etc. on campus concerned with educational technology.  These include:

·         Instructional Technology Services Group – comprised of staff from Mediaworks, CTS, TRC, and IT-Express

·         Mediaworks advisory board

·         UUIP review committee

·         ETRA review committee

  The big advantage that our group brings to the table is the faculty and staff interaction.  We provide a forum to hear faculty instructional issues and the staff who can do something about it.  We tackle issues – much of the discussion ends up with ‘to do’ items for TRC, MW, CTS, etc.  We allow for faculty input and group problem solving.

  We probably don’t want to get into a too formal and fixed role between all these groups.  Keeping things flexible and collaborative would be a good idea.  In addition, we should wait for the Mediaworks/CTS merger to finish.

4.  Faculty workshop – converting to a digital worklife

  It was suggested that there be a workshop for faculty on converting to a digital worklife (e.g., Reprints digitally rather than paper copies).  There were several suggestions:

·         Increase use of Endnote

·         Encourage faculty to use “track changes” in Word.  Perhaps have a link to documentation on this on the SmartSite DropBox page.

·         Word audio comments

·         Create a top ten list of easy things faculty can do that will make life easier for them.

  How do we get the message out to faculty about the services we provide?  It’s a long standing problem.  The only solution is to be to try every possible method (IT-Times, website, email, FMF program, etc.) and hope the word gets out.  The best method is likely presentations at faculty department meetings.  However, this is much more effective when the presentation is given by a faculty member in that department.

  We should try to shift the focus from the tools to the teaching issue.  For example, a session on “facilitating discussion in large enrollment classes” would most likely be better attended than “Wikis, chat rooms, and more!”.  Possible topics include assessment, small group discussions, large enrollment classes.  The sessions would have to be more about the teaching issue/strategy than the technology tool.

5. Online course evaluations

  There is a group in CCFIT discussing it.  Staff are very enthusiastic about moving this process online. It is a big time sink for admin support.  However, some faculty are worried about it.  Part of the issues is the evaluations really are a good measure of teaching effectiveness.  Pre and post testing would be better.  Physics 7 is designed with pre- and post-tests to assess student learning. One suggestion is to create some templates for pre- and post-tests, for grading rubrics, for identifying learning objectives and outcomes.

I think that’s everything.  Please let me know if I missed anything or recorded something incorrectly.