Academic Computing Committee

Meeting Minutes

April 7, 2008

Members Present:

University Senate Representative: R. Wolfson, J. Alvares

Faculty Representatives:  C. Du [CSAM Faculty Rep], E. Renfro-Michel [CEHS Faculty Rep.], R. Subramanian [proxy for SBUS Faculty Rep], S. Shapiro [Library Faculty Rep.].

Administrative Representatives (Academic Deans): M. Mallery [Library Administrative Rep.], A.J. Kelton [CHSS Administrative Rep.], R. Salomon [SBUS Administrative Rep.], B. Carter [CART Administrative Rep.], P. Kahn [proxy for Associate Vice President for Information Technology]

Non-voting Members Present: E. Chapel, OIT

Guest:  M. Heller, J. O’Brien

Absent: S. Shappell [Graduate School Administrative Rep.], S. Poger [CEHS Administrative Rep],  S. Sotillo [CHSS Faculty Rep.], A. Pemberton [CART Faculty Rep.], J. Youn [CSAM Administrative Rep.],  T. Devlin [Academic Coordinator of Education Computing Network], D. Stevens [Undergraduate Student Rep], A. Mohiuddin [Graduate Student Rep.], VACANT [Undergrad. Student Rep.]

Presiding: M. Kasner, Chair

Reporting: M. Mallery, Secretary

Distribution: ACC Web at http://frontpage.montclair.edu/acc/

Convened: 3:10 p.m. [Library Special Collections Room]

Adjourned: 4:40 p.m.

1. Call to Order: The meeting was called to order at 3:10 p.m. when there was a quorum.

2. Minutes: Members approved the ACC Meeting Minutes of March 10th with corrections.

3. Announcements: Kahn announced two OIT training sessions for April:

•  "Augmented Reality: New Strategies for Mobile Learning" by Judy Perry, Research Associate, Teacher Education Program at MIT, on Monday, April 14 at 1pm in University Hall Room UN5011; and

• "Teaching with Twitter & Learning to Tweet" by Enza Antenos-Conforti, Department of Spanish and English at MSU, on Thursday, April 17th, from 12-1pm

in University Hall, Room UN5008.

Kelton announced that he will present "Using the 3D Virtual World Second Life in the Higher Ed Classroom" on (*new date*) Monday, April 14th, from 3:00 to 4:30pm in Dickson Hall Room 280.

Mallery announced that the Library invites MSU faculty, students and staff to participate in LibQUAL, a Library Service Quality Survey, which is open until April 28th. You can link directly to the full LibQUAL description from the Library's Web site or online at: http://library.montclair.edu/Dean/LibQual/msu_libqual.htm

There are incentive prizes of bookstore and Cafe Diem gift certificates for anyone who chooses to include their email at the end of the survey.

4. Reports

• Chair's Report:  No report.

• OIT Report:  Chapel reported that the Bell Tower Initiative is moving along at an aggressive pace.  The goal is to have a campus management system contract and recommendation for the MSU Board of Trustees meeting in June and July.  Two comprehensive proposals are being reviewed from Oracle Peoplesoft and SunGard Banner. Representatives will be on campus to demonstrate the systems and answer questions on:

1) Oracle/PeopleSoft Demonstration

        Date: Monday April 14th

        Location: University Hall Room 1030

        Time: 12:00pm-2:00pm

2) SunGard Demonstration

        Date: Monday, April 28th

        Location: University Hall Room 1030

        Time: 12:00pm-2:00pm

OIT encourages all ACC members to attend both demonstrations.

Chapel also reported on the recent New Jersey Broadband Summit, which was held on March 11th at the NJN studios in Trenton with videoconferencing, sponsored by New Jersey Connected, a statewide initiative for broadband services. See http://www.njn.net/community/njconnected/ for more information.

• Ad Hoc Committee Reports:

a) Learning Management Subcommittee (LMS):

Kahn (Chair) reported that the LMS held its March meeting.  OIT installed BlackBoard 7.3, and staff are doing preliminary testing.  Snapshots testing is scheduled for this week, and MSU Summer 2008 courses are scheduled to use Bb 7.3.

Kasner asked how can the ACC encourage BlackBoard participation at MSU?  Chapel responded that the BlackBoard course management system was evaluated and tested before being implemented campuswide; its greatest benefit is ease of use.  Kahn asked how do faculty distribute their syllabi without BlackBoard.  Kasner noted that general Chemistry faculty are using many different methods to distribute information to their students, such as the Web, as well as copying and printing the syllabus and handing it out in class. 

Heller noted that the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, gives statistics every year on BlackBoard usage and hits per course, and maybe MSU could also show these statistics.  Kahn noted that the MSU science faculty have reported that BlackBoard does not handle math functions well, so that may be why they are not using it in the Chemistry department

Du noted that if faculty have handouts for their courses, using BlackBoard cuts the costs of copying for the department. Heller responded that copying costs in departments could be better controlled at MSU through print metering and cost recovery.  Wolfson noted that the ACC has been having this discussion about printing costs for a while, and it would require that the departments purchase different printers as well as MSU implementing an overall print management system.

Kahn recommended that faculty be encouraged to attend training for the new BlackBoard version 7.3 which will occur over the summer, and maybe they will change their minds about the usefulness of using BlackBoard for their courses. Alvares also recommended that MSU give orientations for part-time faculty in the use of all e-resources available to them, including BlackBoard.

b) EDUCAUSE Representation SubCommittee:

Kelton (Chair) reported that he is still working on getting names of EDUCAUSE representatives from the Deans.  Also, he asked for ACC members to submit nominations and/or volunteer to serve as Chair of the EDUCAUSE Representation SubCommittee next year.

c) Ad Hoc Committee Reports: Digital Repository SubCommittee:

Mallery (Chair) reported that there had been no action taken on the Report.  After discussion on possible next steps, Kasner said that he would forward the Digital Repository SubCommittee's Report to the Faculty Senate to act on the ACC-approved recommendations:

***

Therefore, the Subcommittee recommends that the Faculty Senate and the Office of Information Technology convene a working group that will be responsible for:

1) investigating a repository infrastructure for MSU, including issues of advocacy,

process and ingest, and developments in resource discovery and use.

2) developing a policy environment where digital asset production will flourish. These

policies would manage the creation, supply, access to and preservation of digital

images, multimedia, research papers, etc. for the purposes of education or research.

3) finding and exploiting synergies across MSU and beyond, gathering scenarios and use cases from projects, establishing liaisons with faculty and staff and other national and international institutional repositories.

***

Kasner will draft a cover letter to the Faculty Senate by the end of the week so that the ACC Digital Repository SubCommittee's Report will be on the agenda for the April 23rd Faculty Senate meeting.

d) Responsible Computing Policy Subcommittee: Wolfson (Chair) had no report.

5. Old Business:

a) Election of ACC Officers:

The following slate of candidates for FY09-10 ACC officers was adopted by acclamation of the ACC members:

Chair - AJ Kelton

Deputy Chair - Edina Renfro-Michel

Secretary - Mary Mallery

Web/Listserv Manager - Steve Shapiro

6. New Business:

a) Copyright:

Heller asked that the ACC address at a future meeting the place for leadership at MSU in  copyright permissions.  Kahn said that the MSU iTunes U. site has documentation on MSU copyright policies at: http://itunesu.montclair.edu/ .  Heller noted that copyright is not directly addressed here, and MSU needs someone to manage copyright for all the content and formats that faculty and staff are creating for instruction.  Also, Heller noted that the Library is often the copyright management center for the campus.

b) Next Meeting*

The next meeting of the ACC is scheduled for Monday, May 5th, in the Library's Special Collections Room.

6. Adjournment:

The meeting was adjourned at 4:40 PM