Committee on Educational Technology
10:30-12:00 noon, Thursday, January 28, 2010
Present: Jamie Hubbard, Eric Loehr, Thomas Laughner, Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, John Davis, Jefferson Hunter, Eric Brewer, Gary Felder, Herb Nickles, Sara Pruss, Roisin O’Sullivan, and Elisa Lanzi
Absent: Melissa Choyce
Approval of October 8, 2009 Minutes
The minutes of the October 8th meeting were approved, following a correction to the date in the heading (from September 10th to October 8th).
Discussion concerning policies for personal collections on LUNA– Elisa Lanzi, Imaging Center
Elisa led a discussion about faculty uses/potential uses of LUNA based around four questions:
1. Who should be allowed to create personal collections? faculty, students, staff?
2. How are faculty creating digital collections and where do they go for help?
3. How does storing personal content on LUNA relate to other storage options?
4. How long should the College retain personal collections in LUNA?
Elisa informed the committee that the imaging center aims to increase the functionality of LUNA for personal collections of faculty for use in teaching. Potential advantages of using LUNA include the development of a central institutional repository based on faculty needs where materials could be shared effectively. In response to committee member questions, Elisa noted that LUNA is accessible from off-campus with a log-in, can handle very large files and interacts with other tools such as Moodle. Access to posted materials can be limited to individual faculty members or shared via media groups. Jamie suggested that a teaching arts or tech lunch be held at some point to demonstrate the features of LUNA. In anticipation of adding moving images to LUNA, Elisa asked about current storage limits, in terms of size and timing, for H:\ drives and Moodle. Herb said that faculty and staff had unlimited storage with no time limit on their H:\ drives and Tom said that there was no explicit policy for Moodle as it hadn’t become an issue yet. Copyright issues relating to posted materials were also discussed. Tom informed the committee about the TEACH Act, which covers copyright issues for materials shown in classrooms. John asked Tom and Eric to discuss guidelines for faculty on copyright issues that would be consistent across campus. Elisa informed the committee about a NERCOMP workshop at UMass on May 5th on intellectual property issues for all media and thanked them for their comments.
Funding Proposal from Judith Woperies
A request for $1,359 to fund a computer as part of a microscope projection system was approved by the committee. Connie will inform Judith of the committee’s decision.
ETS Proposal for Faculty Workshops– Tom Laughner
Tom reported to the committee that discussions in ETS regarding changes to the May workshops led to a more general discussion of faculty training. There will be four elements to this training – redesign of some of the current workshops that faculty and students both attend to be for faculty only, as much one-to-one training as possible, 90-minute sessions that would provide broad overviews of topics of general interest and “Kahn-Model” symposia that may give rise to faculty learning communities. A symposium under this model might be proposed by a single department on a technology of interest or be a campus wide initiative. It might look at the impact of a particular technology on pedagogy. It may last a semester or a year or be on-going. Proposals would be brought to CET. ETS would see if it were in a position to provide support. The faculty involved would determine how things would proceed. There would be a requirement for some output from the project in the form of a paper or presentation, where the outcome of would be shared with the wider community (perhaps through a teaching arts lunch). Tom said he didn’t see any problem with these symposia involving the five-college community. He planned to send out a call for proposals this semester with a view to getting started in the summer or fall.
Computers in Seminar Rooms- Tom Laughner
Tom discussed some design ideas for adding computers to seminar rooms and raised some practical concerns. Some possibilities included mounting the computer under a desk and using wireless mouse and keyboards. Gary suggested that Smart boards might be a better solution given the space constraints in some seminar rooms. Jefferson mentioned that students invariably use power point when making class presentations, underscoring the need for computers in seminar rooms. Eric suggested experimenting with some designs to start out.
Jamie asked the committee to be pro-active in bring agenda items for future meetings. Eric mentioned a desire to discuss the back-up of workstations in office at some point in the future.
The next meeting will be March 4th in Seelye B4
Respectfully submitted,
Roisin O’Sullivan, recorder