Division II Chairs Meeting
September 20, 2000, 12:30, Reamer Campus Center 204

Present:   Ilene Kaplan, Doug Klein, Steve Leavitt, Sue Lehrman, Eshi Motahar, Tom Smith, Terry Weiner, Lek Yaisawarng

Thanks for agreeing to meet to discuss the Division's technology plans and needs, and thanks to Eshi for setting this up.  My primary goal in this meeting is to listen to you, and help convey your ideas to Christie for her strategic planning, and to the budget process for next year and beyond.
- Doug Klein

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Budget issues:  
- In the budgets due September 29, be sure to indicate all anticipated technology needs, even if you have not historically done so.  We need to get in the habit of trying to anticipate and coordinate needs so that we can better prioritize, and make the case to better fund technology.

- In the current budget year, be sure to use the new budget codes.  Note specifically the eight object codes set aside for technology purchases.

8417  Software purchases and licenses
8418  Computer and printer supplies
8551  Computer training & conference expense
8553  Computer memberships and subscriptions
8567  Computer repairs
8569  Computer equipment & software maintenance contracts
8655  Computer and technology equipment (> $1,000)
8685  Computer and technology equipment (< $1,000)

 - Please make sure that OCS is aware of any computer hardware that your Department purchases so that they can keep an accurate technology inventory. 

Advising:  
OCS is currently helping the administration with a major upgrade in the student records database system (converting from version 13 to version 16 of Colleague).  That conversion will be completed by January, and beginning in February, OCS will begin the work to implement campus-wide online advising.  The tentative schedule is as follows:

There now exists an online collection of useful advising materials for Union faculty and students at the Advisor’s Advisor: http://www.advising.union.edu . 

Distance learning and remote collaboration projects:  
- GMI will begin its online Masters program in Bioethics in the Fall of 2001.  In support of this program, the College is acquiring a distance learning software package called Blackboard 5.  This software package will be available for any faculty member to use to supplement their regular classroom courses.  In addition to providing a convenient way to create and maintain web pages, Blackboard also enables the use of threaded discussion lists, creating discussion lists for subsets of a class (groups), convenient ways to put multimedia content into a web  site, online grade books, online practice quizzes, among other features.  Blackboard 5 will be installed by December, and training will begin during Winter term.

- The College owns a video conferencing system, located on the first floor of the Olin Building.  This system provides broadcast-quality two-way video conferencing with a remote site similarly equipped.  The system can be used to host remote visiting speakers, and may be used in some collaborative classes that the Modern Languages Department will be conducting in conjunction with our joint term abroad program with Hobart and William Smith.

- Under a grant from the Keck Foundation, the College will be creating a number of small group remote-collaboration rooms, modeled after the Engineering division’s IVDS rooms (International Virtual Design Studios).  These rooms will accommodate 4-6 students, and provide work space for students to carry out collaborative projects with other students at a remote (ideally, foreign) site.  Any faculty with ideas of how to incorporate this kind of collaboration into existing courses, new courses, or as part of full or mini-terms abroad should contact Doug Klein.

- As we get more and more involved in teaching and learning with technology, the College faces the need to develop a comprehensive policy on intellectual property rights.  The Academic Computing Steering Committee will be examining this issue this year.

- President Hull mentioned the article “Useful Devils” by Mark C. Taylor of Williams College at a faculty meeting earlier this term.  Whether we want to or not, we all need to think hard about the consequences of the internet and distance education for liberal arts colleges in general, and Union College in particular.  In considering the consequences, we should be thinking both of threats and opportunities.  This may be a passing fad, but it may not be. 

U*STAR program
Technical support is a growing challenge.  The U*STAR (Union Student Technical Assistant Resource) program is being established to help.  U*STAR represents a dramatic extension of traditional work study students.  U*STAR will be a student managed team of students who will assist faculty, students, and staff with common technology questions.  For example, faculty who want to make assignments requiring technology – creating a PowerPoint presentation; building a web site; using a statistical package – could rely on U*STAR students to help students in the class get up to speed on the particular software package.  U*STAR students could help Departments keep their websites current, or could help faculty build course websites.  OCS will employ some U*STAR students to help with hardware and network support. 

The U*STAR program is funded in part by a grant from AT&T. 

Role of the Steering Committees
Academic Computing Steering Committee and the Administrative Computing Steering Committee were established last Winter to oversee campus information technology policy.  The Division II representative on the AcCSC is Fuat Sener from Economics.  The two groups are a forum to discuss general policy issues (intellectual property rights; campus computing ethical and legal guidelines; budget priorities), as well as more specific concerns such as the adequacy of the College’s internet connection, and exchanging information about ongoing activities.

One area of immediate concern to the AcCSC is the current shortage of electronic classrooms.  Because of faculty scheduling constraints, there appears to be a severe excess demand for classrooms at the 9:40 and 10:55 time slots.  We will work to both expand the number of rooms, and to develop policies for allocating existing rooms. 

Technical Literacy
The Academic group has set up a working group on Technical Literacy, to decide if and how Union should ensure the technical literacy of its students.  The initial plan of this group is to try to infuse more technology (on a purely voluntary basis) into General Education courses.  Note that this dovetails with the growing U*STAR program which could provide faculty and students with the support needed to implement more technology-related work in Gen Ed courses.

It is not the intention of this group to create any requirement, or any minimum set of standards.  Specifically, we will not be suggesting a TAC program modeled after the WAC program.

Our starting point is a recognition of what most of our students already know – the concept of literacy is expanding rapidly.  As we learn to read and write, the specific mechanics of spelling, syntax, and grammar become second nature to us.  We barely think about the mechanics of reading, writing, and speaking, but rather devote ourselves to content, and critical analysis.

We want to help students (and faculty) achieve a similar transparency of mechanics when it comes to using technology -- whether for research, scholarship, or communication.  And just as learning to read and write without getting bogged down in mechanics takes lots of practice, we feel that making the mechanics of technology become transparent is both important for our students, and something which requires repeated practice. 

Web redesign:
Tom Smith, campus webmaster, presented the new and improved Union College web site.  It features a newer more attractive look, more and better navigation tools, and much faster load times.  Tom will be creating a set of templates, and will offer training to people and offices wanting to upgrade their pages to incorporate some of these new features.

Tom also talked about pooling information about faculty and staff into one central place on the campus web, and about tailoring an on-campus home page to be used by faculty, staff, students with links directly to the most frequently used parts of the web.  One objective we have is to enable online access to the information faculty need to carry out their day-to-day responsibilities. 

Page created and maintained by J. Douglass Klein
Associate Dean for Information Technology, Union College.
Page last modified 09/20/00 .