www.wmich.edu/facultysenate

WESTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY FACULTY SENATE

ACADEMIC AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY COUNCIL

Tuesday, 28 February 2012, 8:30 to 10:30 a.m. Faculty Lounge, Bernhard Center

Members present: Aiello, Code, Emerson, Falan, Garrison, Glock, Han, Homan

(for Whittaker), Ikonomov, Rea, Ruellot, Steinbach, Walcott, Wolf (for Gilchrist)

Guests: Ed Kluk, Greg Lozeau, Bradley Morgan, and Arnold Taylor, Office of

Information Technology

Procedural Items

Welcome and Introductions

Council Chair Alan Rea called the meeting to order at 8:30 a.m.

Approval of the Minutes of 31 January 2012

Garrison asked council members to review January’s minutes in the briefcase and send him corrections by Friday, 2 March.

Informational Items

Chief Technology Officer Report – Tom Wolf Wolf spoke from documents in the briefcase’s CTO folder. WMU has gone from five to eight MeritMail servers in order to improve performance, and is discussing other improvement possibilities with Merit. Wolf reminded the council about the 19 March Higher Learning Commission strategic plan focused visit, encouraging faculty and staff to attend open forum sessions (more details at http://www.wmich.edu/hlc/). Lozeau and Wolf reminded the council of the Distributed Computing Plan (DCP) fund allocation process that funds student computer labs for the colleges and University Libraries, and provided current figures. Sixty percent of operational funding pays for student lab monitors. DCP funds will be used to refresh UCC lab computers in summer 2012, and Bernhard lab computers in summer 2014. DCP is completely separate from the Faculty Computing Fund (FCF; Wolf will update the council on FY2012-13 FCF funding at a future meeting).

Gartner consultants will be on campus 11-12 April, to review and advise on WMU’s identity and access management software infrastructure, which needs attention. Wolf invited council members to contact him if interested in attending Gartner sessions.

The OIT has assumed administrative responsibilities for Select Survey. WMU units may use Select Survey to build their own surveys for on- and off-campus users. Contact Julie Scott in OIT to establish Bronco NetID-based access.

Wolf noted that WMU has begun doing small mobile initiatives such as checking grades and schedules. Scott Puckett in Admissions is working with some students to create a small mobile development group which will be connected to the E-Communications Change Control group (ECCC) http://www.wmich.edu/web/changecontrol/). The WMU Mobile app began as a College of Engineering and Applied Sciences Senior Design project (co-sponsored by Greg Lozeau, OIT, and Thom Myers, University Relations). Han suggested that units with mobile development capacity should connect with units with mobile development needs, and Wolf expects that the ECCC group will propose standards for things including mobile apps.

Wolf encouraged council members to review the major projects calendar in the briefcase, and invited questions. Brief discussion of the SunGard DegreeWorks project followed. Novell does not support its NetWare network operating system well at this point. A growing number of WMU units are moving to Microsoft Active Directory, which has been available at WMU for a few years.

Legal counsel requires administrative signoff before VHS tapes may be converted to DVD. If a VHS tape has an available DVD version, WMU must buy it to replace the VHS copy. If VHS content is not available in digital format, WMU must request permission from the copyright holder to convert it. If WMU cannot establish holder contact, it may make one copy (and only the digital copy may be made available).

President John M. Dunn covered enrollment and retention challenges at the 2 February Faculty Senate meeting. Wolf emphasized his point that if a student seems lost or to be having difficulty, it is important to help that student. Each WMU faculty and staff member should reach out to a student who needs help, to foster success. Walcott mentioned that the Counseling Center is conducting a resilience workshop to help connect with students.

Discussion/Action Items

Follow-up Discussion on Faculty Technology Request Process Policy and Procedure – Ed Kluk, Greg Lozeau, Brad Morgan, and Arnold Taylor, OIT

Kluk distributed and detailed a revised flowchart, on which the biggest change is a decision point for whether classroom technology is being requested for DCP-funded general purpose (i.e. 200+ across campus), or one or more college-funded classrooms (colleges handle their own non-DCP rooms outside this process). The Ed Tech Committee (ETC) is invoked at more than one point in the general purpose room process, as it can evaluate requests in context. Discussion points included: identifying training needs following a successful proof of concept; how to stop the process if a proof of concept/pilot fails; what information the Faculty Senate Executive Board needs in order to send an AITC-endorsed proposal on to

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the provost and chief information officer; when the funding request and product review processes should begin; how to transition technology from grant support to ongoing support; and how and when ETC and AITC should be notified that requests are coming through this process to their future attention. It may be possible to use Sharepoint to communicate what is in the pipeline. Kluk will bring a further flowchart revision, and needed accompanying narrative, to the March AITC meeting.

Working Groups – Reports / Future Actions

a. Data Security – Scott Garrison and Alan Rea The Campus Information Security Committee last met in January, and will meet in March. b. Educational Technology – Brad Morgan and Alan Rea The ETC has received no comments on its strategic plan, so will proceed to create an action plan. Lecture capture is a current discussion topic on campus. There are many ways to collect and deliver content, which will be evaluated in the fall. The OIT met with English faculty about a more sophisticated system of multiple cameras and microphones to capture both faculty and student discussion. c. Etextbook – Bob Leneway and Brad Morgan Rea continues receiving etext notifications, and more information about how others are doing etextbooks. This working group may bring a recommendation to AITC in April. Steinbach noted that WMU launched a textbook rental program in spring, which seems very successful. Further discussion centered around: whether it is possible or advisable to limit student textbook choice given preferences; doing custom textbooks through McGraw-Hill; and placing book chapters on Libraries electronic reserve. Rea will contact the Office of Faculty Development and ask how to create Web pages with information regarding new approaches to ebooks. Homan also mentioned that some books are mostly available and searchable via Google Books. d. Elearning – David Code and Scott Garrison Code reminded council members to review the phase 2 functionality wish list that Kluk distributed at January’s meeting. Information such as explanatory text about Elearning system roles is being added to http://www.wmich.edu/elearning/. Code described roles in detail, and Garrison urged caution in not creating more finely-grained roles than are really needed, based on Libraries experience in its enterprise library system. Discussion followed regarding ensuring that needed functionality including quizzing and grading works reliably and robustly. Aiello described a master quiz template that he had created. Rea reminded the council that we are in the first semester of full D2L production, and that there are known bugs that need to be resolved. Code reminded council members to submit all bug reports through the Elearning website (students should contact the OIT helpdesk for help). Not all faculty check Elearning system news and the Elearning website. The OIT has been asked to communicate more effectively with the campus community about IT needs, changes, and improvements.

Adjournment

A motion to adjourn passed at 10:21 a.m. (Falan moved, Code seconded).

Scott Garrison, Secretary