ACPAC 2008-10-01 Minutes

In attendance: Asamoah, Branthoover, Brzycki, Chiarulli, Dadson, Donley, Giever, Gillham, Janosko, Kemp, Kornfeld, McCoy, McDevitt, McElroy, McFerron, O'Neil, Pankaj, Reed, Sherwood, Smith, VanWieren, Woodland, Yuhas.

Excused: Balint, Onyett, Pagnucci, Yost.

Guests: Todd Cunningham, Lynnan Mocek, Mike Powers, Ben Rafoth, John Veilleux.

Proceedings:

Approval of Minutes from the September 3, 2008 Meeting.

The minutes were approved as posted on the ACPAC website.

The following guests were introduced: John Veilleux, Mike Powers, Ben Rafoth (representing Pagnucci), Todd Cunningham (representing Balint).

Report from John Vielleux and Mike Powers

A Web Team Report to ACPAC was distributed. It was reported that considerable progress has been made since last meeting in April even though there are a number of steps in the migration process. There is currently a major bottleneck at the "Sites Check out" stage - to complete grammar checking, brand use, broken links, etc. The approval queue is functioning at nearly 100%. Navigation concerns have not yet been addressed as migration is the major concern for now. These and other concerns will be addressed AFTER the migration.

Co-Chairs' Report:

Financial Report

Rick McFerron provided this report:

Membership

Ed Donley has been appointed as the faculty representative from Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Ed served on ACPAC several years ago and was pleased to notice that all the action teams have changed since his last involvement. There are membership vacancies for a faculty member from Health and Human Services and for a Graduate student. Also, the Northpointe faculty position is vacant. Since there appears to be nobody to fill that role, the co-chairs are suggesting we leave that position vacant for the remainder of the semester. If, at the start of the spring semester, a faculty representative from Northpointe cannot be identified, ACPAC may need to review the Constitution and Bylaws in an effort to maintain a full complement of ACPAC faculty.

Standing Reports:

Report from the Student Operations Group (Pankaj)

A meeting of the Student Operations Group was held on 1 Oct 2008. It was reported that the SAP SLCM (Student Lifecycle Management) project is on hiatus, therefore, Banner will become more of a focus of development. There are discussions of moving to Banner version 8 in 2009. It was reported that MarketPlace (part of the TouchNet Suite) will go live 11/17 in at least one area. The Winter Term was discussed, 29 sections available with registration opening 10/15/08, estimating 200 students participating with 2 graduate sections. Advising & Testing reported that appointment times will be on URSA - registration between 10/14-11/17/08. No more appointment time sheets. Alternate pins are available for advisors. There was a discussion that the Reverse911 hold can affect withdrawal from the university - letters will be sent to incoming freshman only from the Registrar's office with details on how to register to prevent from getting a hold on the account. To become compliant with US Postal regulations, NCOA (National Change of Address), a new product was purchased to "cleanse" addresses. The product is called Sartori.

Report from the CIO office (Balint)

An update was provided on the status of the support for the branch campuses. IT Services is in process of addressing outstanding issues, including getting Office 2007 on ALL machines as soon as possible. In addition, steps were taken to improve the connectivity speed with Northpointe. Furthermore, three additional T1 lines are on order to increase the the total T1 lines to Northpointe to four lines. Monroeville connectivity will be reviewed after the Northpointe issues are addressed. It was also communicated that it is IT Services' plan to have each of the desktops for faculty and the labs at each branch campus on a "standard" model to help provide consistent support, including remote control capability.

Report from Funds Review Subcommittee (McFerron)

No report.

Report from the Student Computing Subcommittee (McDevitt)

A meeting of this subcommittee is being scheduled.

Report from the On-line Learning Subcommittee (Brzycki)

The preliminary LMS Qualitative Evaluation document (completed by faculty) was distributed. These results looked at the functionality only. There are other considerations that must be made before the final recommendation by the committee. The faculty testers found all three systems to be adequate with a slight preference towards Moodle. Pending reports that will be available for review are weighted scores, a narrative, synopsis and summary. There is also other feedback pending including accessibility that may potentially impact the final report. Model courses can still be created in each LMS for evaluation. Deadline for feedback is 11/12/08 - a final recommendation will be made at the December ACPAC meeting

Report from the Emerging Technologies Subcommittee (Onyett)

The next meeting of this subcommittee will be 15 Oct 08 at 12 noon in Stouffer 138. There will be a presentation on DyKnow (http://www.dyknow.com/).

Reports from the Action Teams:

Open Source Software Team -- Sherwood, Convener

No report.

PRS Team -- McFerron, Convener

A conference call is scheduled with Turning Technologies to attempt to resolve the technical issues with the system. There is a potential for the personal response system units (clickers) to interfere with the IUP wireless network. If there is not a solution, a more systematic evaluation of PRS systems will be initiated.

Training/Professional Development Team -- Pagnucci, Convener

No report, will report later in the semester.

Collaboration/Expertise Team -- Yost, Convener

No report.

Digital Repository Team -- Sherwood, Convener

The team is in the process of reviewing individual products with a meeting scheduled for the week of 6 Oct 2008.

Survey Team -- Giever, Convener

A motion was passed to disband this action team.

New Business:

Qualitative Research Tools

A motion was made to create an action team to review Qualitative Research Tools, which are mainly used by graduate students. There could be potential funding from Graduate Fees to support this effort. There was unanimous approval for the creation of an action team to review this issue. The new action team will consist of Dennis Giever (convener), Lloyd Onyett, Dawn Woodland, Holly Branthoover, and Lynnan Mocek.

IT Service Levels in Colleges

A suggestion was made to review a concern that there are varying levels of information technology services provided to faculty in the various colleges. For example, one faculty member may be able to install software on his/her laptop, while a faculty member in another college may not be capable of installing that software. As the discussion evolved, there were similar concerns that the PCs in the multimedia classrooms were not standard. A classroom in one college may have different software than a classroom in other colleges. Furthermore, the same concerns were discussed regarding lab PCs and faculty PCs. There was a motion made to refer this issue to the Technology Operations Team (TOT) to provide a response. Rick McFerron will summarize the request and forward it to Todd Cunningham who is the chair of TOT.

Old Business:

Anti-Spam Service Pilot

Although the product that is being used to filter potential spam is called Pollustop, it was agreed that the "brand" of the service would be called the "Anti-Spam Service". The pilot of the service proved to be very successful and therefore a rollout plan was discussed. Because the service is "opt-in", a message will go out during the week of 20 Oct to announce the service availability to faculty, managers and staff. A draft of this message will be sent to the ACPAC list to provide the committee an opportunity for a "sneak-peek" at the production service.

Other Business:

The meeting was adjourned at 5:17 PM.

Next Meeting: November 5, 2008

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

Prepared by Todd Cunningham with notes from Lynnan Mocek.