Committee on Educational Technology
10:30-12:00 noon, Tuesday, November 16, 2010
Present: Eric Loehr, Thomas Laughner, John Davis, Jefferson Hunter, Gary Felder, Herb Nickles, Eric Brewer, Glenn Ellis, and Marnie Anderson
Absent: Helene Visentin, Fernando Armstrong-Fumero
Approval of October 19, 2010 Minutes
The minutes of the October 19, 2010 meeting were approved as submitted.
SPSS follow-up conversation – Tom Laughner
Tom told the committee that he, Gary, and Jeff had met with members of the Psychology department to discuss SPSS. It was difficult to separate teaching from research in their department. There seem to be two camps: 1) keep SPSS forever and 2) a willingness to redesign the curriculum using another program, but over time. Tom said that IBM formalized their take-over of SPSS on 10/1/10 and they have restructured pricing. It will cost $28,400/year the first year and no guarantee of cost in the future. The committee asked about attendance at the statistical seminar and was told that 2-3 faculty members were there. John Davis asked how the Psychology department should participate in the cost of SPSS. He said that he would speak to the provost tomorrow and discuss this. The two year pricing guarantee would allow time for more information gathering. Jeff noted that ETS has $18,000 budgeted for statistical software and he wondered if we could ask the Psychology department to commit $10,000/year for two years to cover the costs. That would mean that a site license of $28,400, less $18,000 from ETS and $10,000 from Psychology would leave $400 which could be covered out of the administrative software capital budget. There is a Five Colleges grant in statistics for post-docs which will be coming to Smith College next year. Michael Levine at UMass is the lead person on this grant. Jeff said that he will have a follow-up conversation with Fletcher Blanchard about this issue.
Discussion of the future/function/role of the CET – Jefferson Hunter
Jeff said that he wondered if members of CET could act as tribunes in the Smith community rather than playing a reactive role. Herb told the committee that we are in the middle of an IT Strategic Planning process and expect a report draft by the end of the month. IT will be looking at many things including the IT governance committees: ITCC, CET, and CATS. Jeff said that he planned to contact like faculty in area colleges and request a meeting in January to discuss what they are doing in governance of Educational Technology.
Eric Brewer said that he felt there should be increased communication efforts and Jeff suggested asking for 5-10 minutes and each department chair’s meeting for discussion. Gary wondered about better coordination with the Sherred Center. Tom Laughner noted that many schools have the Director of Teaching and Learning Centers seated on their CET. John said that Smith has a lot of faculty elected to CET and wondered if that number could be stream-lined. Herb said that he had gotten many positive comments from the consultants regarding Educational Technology on Smith campus and that they should continue to be innovative.
Other Matters
There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 11:15 AM
The next meeting will be December 14th at 10:30 AM in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room.
Respectfully submitted,
Connie McGinn, recorder