MEETING MINUTES

Committee on Educational Technology

10:00-11:00 AM, Thursday, September 29, 2011

MEETING MINUTES

Present: Eric Loehr, Thomas Laughner, Jefferson Hunter, Eric Brewer, Marnie Anderson, John Davis, Deborah Hass-Wilson, Nicholas Howe, Sara Pruss, and Fraser Stables

The members introduced themselves and welcome new members to the Committee on Educational Technology. Jefferson Hunter agreed to serve as Chair this year during CET’s transition from an elected faculty committee to an appointed committee. The faculty voted unanimously to elect Jeff and thanked him for agreeing to chair the committee this year. He explained the new charter to the committee and said that going forward the CET would have 3 faculty rather than 6 and that it would also include the director of the Sherrerd Center. Tom will invite Kevin to begin joining the committee meetings this year so that he gets up to speed.

Gregory Brown’s request for $591.99 to purchase an iPad and accessories for use in the Music Department sharing music scores was fully funded with the understanding that it will remain the property of the Music Department when he leaves Smith at the end of this academic year.

Jeff suggested that small requests such as this need not wait until a committee meeting but could be discussed and voted on via email as they come in. Tom said that the new CET charter will include the ability for faculty to submit requests to fund in research as well as academic initiatives.

Tom will send the committee a copy of the draft of the new code and then the committee can have a future conversation about how CFCD and CET will work together on faculty research requests. John noted that CFCD has a $500/year cap on requests. Deborah asked if a faculty member could submit the same request to both CFCD and CET. John responded that clearly the Associate Provost should sit on both committees in the future in case input was required on such a request. Tom said that he would send this change in committee membership to the Faculty Council.

Marnie asked the committee if they had any experience with or information about the use of turnitin.com software used to screen papers for plagiarism and how its use might be viewed with Smith’s honor code. John suggested that the committee seek advice or input from the honor board. Tom will look into the costs and other software that is competitive. He will also see what peer institutions are doing and how they are dealing with their honor boards. Jeff will speak with Maureen Mahoney and ask if she can come to the November CET meeting and discuss this issue.

Tom said that he is beginning to get funding requests from faculty to purchase iPads for use in their classes. The committee discussed the possibility of purchasing iPads for all students and what that would cost initially and ongoing. Nick wondered if a Kindle product like the new Kindle Fire might not be a cheaper alternative for many students. Sara wondered about maintaining a stock that could be used like the laptop loan program. Tom said that ETS currently maintains 10 iPads for loan and that they are all currently signed out for the semester. John Brady is ready to submit a grant request for iPads. The committee said that they would use the requests as a focal point for this issue and perhaps look at increasing the faculty loan pool of iPads going forward. Nick also expressed interest in requesting faculty de-briefing to the campus on their experiences using this mobile technology.

Marnie asked if anyone had an update on the status of cross list ability in the course catalog. John said that Administrative Technology is making some headway with this but all of the bugs have not been worked out yet.

There being no further business to discuss, the meeting was adjourned at 11:00 AM.