Academic Computing Policy Advisory Committee

Minutes of March 21, 2012

  • In Attendance:Ali, Blood, Brzycki, Cunningham, Ford, Fortushniak, Hyde, Lenze, Lowery, P. McDevitt, T. McDevitt, McElroy, O'Neil, Onyett, Pagnucci, Powers, J.B. Smith, VanWieren, Yuhas.
  • Excused: Angel, Balint, Branthoover, Giever, Kemp, McGowan, Mocek, Sherwood, Yost, Zimmerman.
  • Absent: Asamoah, Ezekiel, Gruber, Nelson, Papakie.

Proceedings of the Meeting

  • Approval of Minutes
    • The February15, 2012 minutes were approved unanimously with 1 abstention (M/S Hyde/O'Neil).
  • Co-Chairs' Report
    • Financial Report - The ACPAC balance is currently $12,804.92
    • Announcements -
      • ACPAC Technology Exploration and Innovation Fund (McElroy/Onyett) - The call for proposals has a deadline of April 6. The Funds Review Committee will then review the proposals and bring a ranked recommendation list to the April ACPAC meeting for approval. Each college is to set their own procedures and deadlines for receiving and reviewing their college proposals and then submit those to Onyett by April 6.
  • Standing Reports
    • CIO office (Cunningham)
      • Luminis - There is a demonstration on April 5 and April 6 that is open to all at IUP. Luminis is a web-based interface that is a front door to many services at IUP. It doesn't replace URSA, but it is an access portal to get to URSA tools. There will also be demonstrations when the installation of the system begins in mid-summer. Onyett asked if this will be a single login for URSA, email, ESS, and other services. Cunningham said that the idea is to try to create a single signon environment with the implementation. The thing that does make it difficult is ESS, since it is controlled by PASSHE with a different username. Onyett asked if Luminis is for students as well as faculty and staff. Cunningham said it is for students and employees, but each will have a different look, based on the services they need to see. There are certain portions that will be fixed and other portions that can be customized by the user. The system implementation will begin during Summer 2012, and should be functional for new students in Spring 2013, with full implementation by Fall 2013.
      • Guest Wireless - Balint took the proposal for guest wireless access to President's Cabinet and is now waiting for approval for funding, but he is not sure if there will be funding for it.
      • PASSHE Multi University Electronic Admissions Application Initiative - The contract is still being worked on at PASSHE with the vendors.
      • Moodle -BACKGROUND
        • the extended delay in the Moodle to D2L conversion utility has extended the usage of Moodle
        • the fact that Moodle is still fairly widely used, IT Services feels the environment needs to be extended since that's what faculty seem to want
        • MOST IMPORTANT, Moodle 1.9 will be end of support at the end of June 2012 (already extended from December 2011). No security patches will be released after June putting IUP at great risk
        • couple the above with the fact that no vendor will even provide support for the 1.9 environment (as we had hoped). We reached out to several vendors to no avail
        • in addition, our testing to do an "in place" upgrade of our existing 1.9 environment to 2.2 has failed and we feel there will be no way to do this adds to the complexity of the situation.
      • Moodle - TENTATIVE PLAN
        • reach out to faculty ASAP to provide as much advanced communication that we must move to Moodle 2.2 soon and determine those who actually want to teach in Moodle in Summer II and Fall.
        • create an internal test Moodle 2.2 environment for ODLCE/IT Services to configure/adjust the environment. Once comfortable open up to OLC to kick around, then open to select faculty (likely those teaching Summer II first).
        • while the item above is finalized, create a production Moodle 2.2 environment that will essentially be a new setup.
        • create an "on demand" process by which faculty can request a course be setup in Moodle 2.2. This would then kick-off the course creation and course population processes. The course content then would be converted from 1.9 to the course just created in 2.2.
        • because of security issues, Moodle 1.9 environment would not be available for instruction after Summer I, but would still be available for IT Services/ODLCE to access for content conversions, etc. A shutdown date would have to be setup as well. NOTE: Since the March 21 meeting, there has been a lot of discussion and information about the Moodle conversion. These issues will be discussed in detail at the April 18 ACPAC meeting.
    • Student Operations Group Subcommittee (Blood)
      • Advisement and registration is upon us. To help us in that regard, the Registrar's Office now has a nightly update of the class schedule.
      • It is stressed that faculty meet the deadline for D/F midterm grades.
      • Winter 2012 session will be a 4-week session (Dec 17-Jan 15). Spring 2013 will start Jan 28, 2013. Classes in Winter 2012 can be offered as a 4-week class, a 3-week class, or a 1 week at the beginning and a 1 week at the end for courses such as semester abroad. All winter session classes are online only.
    • Student Computing Subcommittee (P. McDevitt)
      • A survey of 3 questions regarding the best way of communicating with students was conducted recently. Almost all students responded that they prefer email as the means for communication.
    • On-Line Learning Subcommittee (Brzycki)
      • Presentation Work Group - The workgroup is looking at four products for presentation systems: Adobe Presenter, Adobe Captivate, OfficePoint, and Camtasia. They are looking at some specific criteria as they review each of the products. They have not made a recommendation yet, but are leaning toward one of the Adobe products, since we should be able to get a better price through Dell for Adobe products. Powers said that the Digital Team has a strong preference for Adobe Captivate. Hyde indicated that the College of Business has been using Camtasia for quite a long time. Brzycki said that all of the products being considered are in use in some locations at IUP. The workgroup hopes to make their recommendation soon.
      • Moodle Conversion - OLC has found that there are quite a few problems with the Moodle to D2L conversion utility. Not all materials are converting properly when using the utility, so there is often quite a bit of work to clean up the conversion.
      • Accessibility - LESC does not feel it is their role to formulate policy regarding accessibility issue policy and procedures. LESC is willing to support it wherever possible. The President wishes to defer to the new president when he arrives.
    • Branch Campuses (O'Neil)
      • With iHelp, we need to have the Dean and Mindy copied with iHelp requests. Cunningham suggested to just forward the iHelp response to those needing to know.
      • The Flash update prevented us from being able to do some of our work when it was done.
  • Action Team Reports
    • Optical Test Scoring Action Team (McElroy)
      • We have had very positive feedback from many users on the new test scoring system. An email has gone out reminding faculty to pick up their bubble sheets because IT does not have the storage capacity to store them for very long. They are looking at some fine tuning of the system, but overall it is working well.
    • Electronic Portfolio Action Team (Onyett)
      • We have ruled out the D2L eportfolio module because D2L was not able to get their system to work for a test, and it did not appear that their module would meet many of our needs. We will continue to look at LiveText and TaskStream, and report back when we have more information.
    • Mobile Applications Action Team (Powers)
      • The action team met on March 8. They discussed various features that they would like to see in the mobile apps product that students will be able to use to access much of their IUP information. They are also looking at development of an app called "My Professor" that would provide information about their professors and their advisor. Another app being considered is "My Advisees" for faculty to be able to have information about their advisees. The mobile apps are being developed for both IOS (iPhone and iPad) and Android platforms. The action team is also looking at ideas for other mobile apps that would be useful to develop for our students and employees.
  • New Business
    • Email support for Alumni and Retirees (Pagnucci)
      • Pagnucci indicated that he has talked with some retirees who are very unhappy with Auxmail. Some of the problems include: the features are limited; they don't get a lot of IUP communications; they don't have an easy way to be contacted because their email address is not listed in a directory. We have a whole group of people who are resources as potential donors and people who could help IUP in many ways, and they would like to be able to respond with an IUP email address and play a role with the university. Cunningham said that there is a project within the university relations team to develop a replacement for the existing alumni forwarder service. The current service allows students, when they apply for graduation, to join into the service that provides an alumni address (username@alum.iup.edu) as long as they provide a forwarding email address that messages will be forwarded to. A replacement for the service would be a true full-blown email system for alumni. The system that we will be subscribing to is a free service provided by Microsoft (through a contract with PASSHE) called live.iup.edu accounts. Students will be able to sign up when they apply for graduation to request an account be set up (username@live.iup.edu) and their iup.edu content can be moved over to their new account. This new system will eventually replace auxmail. The first phase of this new system will be for graduating students. The second phase will be for alumni who would like to be set up on the new system. The third phase will be for alumni who are using the current alumni service. The fourth phase will be for those using auxmail.
      • PASSHE Legal has told us that once an employee retires or leaves, we must delete them from the IUP email server because of potential legal issues. This new system will allow us to still provide email services for former employees.
    • Third Party LMS (Ali)
      • Ali asked about the use of third party LMS systems such as "My Math Lab". Faculty can select third party systems provided by publishers and others to use for their classes.
  • Old Business:
    • None

Meeting adjourned at 4:30

The next meeting will be April 18, 2012.
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