ACPAC 2008-11-05 Minutes

In attendance: Balint, Blood, Branthoover, Brzycki, Chiarulli, Dadson, Donley, Gruber, Janosko, McCoy, McElroy, McFerron, O'Neil, Onyett, Pagnucci, Reed, Sherwood, Smith, VanWieren, Woodland, Yuhas.

Excused: Asamoah, Giever, Kemp, Kornfeld, McDevitt, Pankaj.

Absent: Gillham, Yost.

Proceedings:

Approval of Minutes from the October 1, 2008 Meeting.

The minutes were approved as posted on the ACPAC website.

Co-Chairs' Report:

Financial Report

Rick McFerron provided this report:

Membership

Dr. Janet Blood was welcomed to ACPAC as a faculty representative from the College of Health and Human Services. Jason Gruber was welcomed as the graduate student representative. The only vacancy in the ACPAC membership is the faculty representative from Northpointe. As previously discussed, ACPAC will review this vacancy in the spring.

Announcements

Most are aware of the pilot Winter Session being offered by IUP. This is a short term that runs from immediately after the Fall 2008 semester until the beginning of the Spring 2009 semester. All courses are on-line. There are 40 courses currently available for Winter Session. As of this date, 707 students have registered for courses (20 graduate, 687 undergraduate). Over 100 of those students are taking two courses.

There were several ACPAC members (Balint, McFerron, Onyett) who attended the Educause national conference who would be willing to share their experiences with anyone who is interested.

Standing Reports:

Report from the Emerging Technologies Subcommittee (Onyett)

The was a presentation of the DyKnow (http://www.dyknow.com/) lab management system in mid-October and research is continuing into this type of product.

Report from the Student Operations Group (Pankaj)

No report.

Report from the CIO office (Balint)

It was reported that the network bandwidth to Northpointe was increased from 1.5 mb to 6.0 mb on Nov. 5, following the increase from 120 mb to 300 mb at main campus on Oct. 30 and the recent upgrade from 1.5 mb to 100 mb at Punxsutawney. It was noted that a further discussion on potential increases at Monroeville will be conducted. IT Services reported that it contributed some $25,000 in up-front costs to support this initiative. It was also reported that the new anti-spam service has received a very positive response but that only about 180 members of the community have signed up. ACPAC members were strongly encouraged to remind their constituents about the new service.

In other news, it was reported that PASSHE has officially adopted an alternative plan to the proposed SAP SLCM project that will permit IUP to keep its Banner/URSA environment indefinitely. This should permit the opportunity to expanded services which have been kept to a minimum because of the plan to implement SAP. In addition, an extended discussion was held on the Sonic Foundry Mediasite lecture capture technology given the recent contract between the company and PASSHE. IT Services will not drive the adoption of this technology but stands prepared to support ACPAC should it choose to investigate further in the future. Finally, a reminder was provided that faculty support for the winter term will be extended for WebCT and related technologies. Support may not necessarily changed for other faculty services given the other tasks College Technology Managers undertake during the semester break.

Report from Funds Review Subcommittee (McFerron)

A report from the subcommittee was sent to ACPAC electronically and distributed at the meeting. The subcommittee is seeking validation from ACPAC that the ACPAC Technological Exploration and Innovation Fund should continue to be administered as it has been since AY 04-05. After discussion, ACPAC supported continuation of this program. The subcommittee will provide a formal proposal to ACPAC at the December meeting.

Report from the Student Computing Subcommittee (McDevitt)

No report.

Report from the On-line Learning Subcommittee (Brzycki)

An on-line learning report was circulated outlining the final steps of the LMS review. Among the highlights were the pending Nov. 10-11 visit by Moodlerooms, a final reminder about the ability to obtain test accounts for Moodle, Sakai and Blackboard CE8, an upcoming Nov. 11 webinar on CE8 and the reminder that all feedback must be received by Nov. 12. A recommendation on an LMS will tentatively be made to the Provost by the end of the semester after review by ACPAC at the December meeting.

Reports from the Action Teams:

Qualitative Research Tools Team -- Giever, Convener

Research is continuing into which tools should be supported and a survey has gone out to assist in learning which tools are currently being used.

Digital Repository Team -- Sherwood, Convener

A document was circulated outlining the work of the team to date along with the recommendation that DSpace and Fedora Commons be accepted as the two finalists. It was also recommended that test installations of these two products be deployed and that faculty from institutions using these products in production be brought on campus to discuss their experiences and usage. ACPAC endorsed these recommendations and charged the CIO with forwarding the recommendations to the Council of Deans.

Open Source Software Team -- Sherwood, Convener

A document was circulated that outlined the initial proposed standards for open format documents in the areas of text, text (read-only), images, slide presentations, spreadsheets, audio files and video files. ACPAC endorsed the document and future action items will include methods to review the standards and to educate the university community on them.

PRS Team -- McFerron, Convener

A preliminary agreement has been reached with Turning Technologies to provide assurance that the "clicker" system can be implemented at IUP without concern of difficulties with the wireless network. Once the agreement is finalized, the action team will meet to discuss the rollout of software and hardware in the multimedia classrooms.

Training/Professional Development Team -- Smith, Convener

The team will meet on Nov. 25.

Collaboration/Expertise Team -- Yost, Convener

Upon a motion from the floor, this action team was disbanded.

New Business:

Old Business:

Website conversion communications

The report from John Veilleux and Mike Powers at the last ACPAC meeting was informative and optimistic. It was agreed that no further action is required by ACPAC on this matter.

IT Service Levels in Colleges

The request from ACPAC to review IT service levels in the Colleges was transmitted to TOT (Technology Operations Team). ACPAC should expect a response for the December meeting.

Other Business:

Joann Jonosko reported that there will be an introduction to the Web of Science provided in the Library on 14 Nov 08. An e-mail with details was recently sent to all. University of Pittsburgh is sponsoring a conference on ETD (Electronic Theses and Dissertation), June 10-13, 2009. Details are available at: http://www.library.pitt.edu/etd2009/

The meeting was adjourned at 5:11 PM.

Next Meeting: December 3, 2008

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Prepared by Bill Balint with notes from Lynnan Mocek.