Committee on Educational Technology
10:30-12:00 noon, Tuesday, December 14, 2010
Present: Eric Loehr, Thomas Laughner, John Davis, Jefferson Hunter, Fernando Armstrong-Fumero, Herb Nickles, Eric Brewer, Glenn Ellis, and Marnie Anderson
Absent: Helene Visentin, Gary Felder
Approval of November 16, 2010 Minutes
The minutes of the November 16, 2010 meeting were approved as submitted.
SPSS follow-up
John Davis met with Fletcher Blanchard and they agreed to a 50/50 split of the $10,000 cost for 2 years for SPSS. During the second year there will be an examination of the Psychology department needs and what should be done going forward. Meanwhile, Tom Laughner has notified other faculty that Smith is looking at closing out SPSS in 2 years.
C.E.T. Grant Proposals
Sam Intrator submitted a request for $7,500.00 to purchase NVivo analytic software. Tom said that this type of analytic software was currently unavailable on Smith campus. The committee agreed to fully fund this purchase. Tom
will research all software being paid by CET and present a summary of that information to the committee in February.
Robert Newton submitted a request for a cost-sharing proposal with CET and Geoscience to purchase 20 mapping grade GPS receivers. The anticipated cost to CET would be $5030.00 and this request was approved.
Spring ETS Seminar – Tom Laughner
Tom told the committee that his department was planning a TechKnow Lunchtime Series in April for faculty on mobile devices and requested an $1800.00 commitment. This request was approved by the committee.
Jefferson said that he is planning to meet with the faculty from the Sherrerd Center in January.
Draft of the IT Strategic Planning document – Herb Nickles
Herb had provided the committee with the draft summary of the IT Strategic Plan in advance of the meeting. He said that the costs to implement this plan would be developed over the next month. He spoke with trustees yesterday and though they are in favor of funding this plan, they want to know what would have to be cut to fund it.
Jeff said that he was fine with the CET being appointed rather than elected; thought it might help with recruiting faculty. He also felt that having a faculty co-chair with the Director of ETS was a good idea. The committee agreed that they were OK with the CET being appointed, thought that the Director of the Sherrerd Center should be a member, and felt that if the Associate Provost was no longer on CET it was important for that person to meet with the Director of ETS once a month to stay in touch with CET issues.
John said that the trustees were concerned about Smith underfunding IT; this could have long term ramifications. The question of whether Smith wants to be on the leading edge in IT among peer colleges was discussed. The committee felt that it was OK for Smith to participate in IT early adoption with regard to academic technology; this is less risky that being leading edge on the administrative side of IT.
Herb asked Jeff to prepare a summary statement for the Provost on the committee’s response to this document. Glenn asked whether the document suggested that IT drives teaching or if teaching is supported by technology. Tom said that hiring Instructional Designers was meant to speak to this very issue; they would provide support to faculty with curricular development.
Jeff asked Herb if he could give any further information about the section on online course commitment. Herb said that Chemistry and Engineering students could participate more fully in JYA if online courses were available to them. John said that the library master plan envisions new spaces for technology –enabled learning. Tom agreed and said that there should be more incubator classrooms on campus. The committee suggested that this IT Strategic Planning document should be coordinated with the Library Master Plan.
In summary, Herb said that more money would need to be spent on security and infrastructure, there would need to be more staff in Systems & Networking area, and that there would be new positions developed for Instructional Designers.
Marnie had a question about the Smith course catalog going exclusively online. She said that cross listing doesn’t happen with the online catalog and this causes under-enrollment in some courses. Jeff asked if there will be a link anywhere online to get more enhanced information. Herb & Tom will try to get some information about this for the next meeting.
Other Matters
There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 11:45 AM
The next meeting will be in February 8, 2011 at 1:00 PM in Stoddard Hall G4 conference room. Future meetings will be at the same time on March 8th, April 5th, and May 10th.
Respectfully submitted,
Connie McGinn, recorder