eLearning Advisory Council
Minutes
November 14, 2007
The November 2007 meeting of the E-Learning Advisory Council was held in the Natchitoches Room of Russell Hall at 2:30pm.
Members attending:
Tara Gallien
Debra Shelton
Jennifer Long
Rocky Colavito
Michael Matthews
Emily Perritt
Darlene Williams
Tom Hall
Old Business
Darlene informed the group that the password maintenance online utility for students has been completed and is operational. This should enable students to reset their own passwords.
Results of the 2006 online student services satisfaction survey were passed out to members. Discussion followed regarding some of the results, such as student dissatisfaction with bookstore policies and procedures.
Mike Matthews reported that progress is being made on the library tutorials for students. The library recently started using some new databases, so some of the original storyboarding is currently being redone. He hopes to have the tutorials ready by January.
Rocky Colavito asked if there was any Title III money to purchase a license for Project Muse. Darlene asked Mike Matthews to gather some information about Project Muse and a cost estimate and forward to her. Darlene said that she would ask Hedy Pinkerton, the Title III Project Coordinator, to evaluate the information and possibly propose purchase of the license to the Title III Administrative Task Force.
Emily Perritt reported that Turnitin had been successfully installed, training has taken place, and instructors are currently using the system. Debra Shelton reported that Turnitin is currently being used by instructors in the RN to BSN program. Tara Gallien asked how many instructors were using the system. Emily said that she would get the statistics from Blackboard and report back to the group.
Dr. Colavito suggested that training sessions on topics such as Blackboard, Web for Faculty, and advising be held during faculty on-call week. Darlene suggested that the Council could possibly make a recommendation to Dr. Hanson. Dr. Colavito made a motion, seconded by Debra Shelton, to require that training for new faculty be incorporated during on-call week. Discussion followed regarding the types of training that should be provided. Use of Blackboard, the Blackboard grade book features, Turnitin, Web for Faculty, use of the library web site were proposed topics.
One suggestion was that mandatory training be provided in conjunction with Faculty Institute. Dr. Colavito suggested that it should be done on a different day. Dr. Hall mentioned that Human Resources currently holds a mandatory training session for new faculty each semester and that there is a general information session as well. All departments have faculty meetings during that week.
Debra Shelton expressed concern that adding a day of mandatory training would force new faculty on the Shreveport campus to drive to Natchitoches four days during the on-call week.
Another potential problem was brought up. In some cases, new faculty members do not have their user accounts created prior to the start of the semester. This could potentially impact some of the proposed training, such as Web for Faculty training.
Dr. Colavito withdrew his earlier motion, moving instead to propose that mandatory training in Blackboard and Web for Faculty be scheduled during the month of August. Also, sessions should be provided on the Shreveport campus and on the Fort Polk campus, as necessary. Debra Shelton seconded the motion.
Debra Shelton recalled that in the first year of the E-Learning Advisory Council, a policy was proposed making Blackboard training mandatory for new faculty. She also recalled discussion about online modules being developed for training. Darlene reported that there is an online Blackboard skills assessment that was developed with the intention of measuring the skill level of potential adjuncts. To date, one or two instructors have completed the assessment.
Emily Perritt reported that a license had been purchased for Respondus Lock-Down browser and it had been tested by members of the Radiologic Technology department. Unfortunately, the program does not seem to be working as expected. ECE will continue to work with the program and will continue to provide updates on any progress with it.
In a previous meeting, it was decided that there was a need for a syllabus subcommittee to work on the requirements for a standardized syllabus for online courses to be displayed on the ECE web page in the details for online course offerings. Several committee members had volunteered to be part of the syllabus subcommittee. However the subcommittee never met. It was decided that the names of the volunteers would be sent back out to the committee and they will decide how to follow up with this issue.
New Business
Hedy Pinkerton, the Title III Project Coordinator, had prepared information on the list of innovative academic services currently under consideration for development as part of the Title III project. There are 17 services currently on the list. Darlene explained that the goal is to prioritize the list. Though under Title III, the university is obligated to add two services each year, Dr. McCrory has expressed an interest in developing all of the suggested services.
Mike Matthews had suggestions for items to be included as part of the myNSU Portal, which he passed out to the members of the council.
Dr. Colavito had a comment about one item in the list of recommended student services in the list from the Innovative Student Services Task Force. He said that the proposal to “make attendance data available to students” may cause problems between instructors and students. Students may disagree with instructors about what constitutes excused and unexcused absences. He expressed the opinion that students should be able to keep track of their own absences.
Darlene shared some background on Moodle, an open source course management system that is comparable to Blackboard and currently being adopted in place of Blackboard at several universities in the state. NSU will pilot Moodle in the spring with a very small selection of faculty. ECE will gather feedback throughout the semester and make adjustments to the system as necessary.
Darlene stressed the importance of approaching new technologies with an open mind.
Dr. Colavito asked if there was a way that as a council we could ask that Flash 8 be installed on faculty machines so that they could show video clips to students. Darlene asked if the request had been submitted to Information Systems and denied. Dr. Colavito said that he would check with Dr. Abney to verify whether the request had been formally submitted.
Tara Gallien suggested that as part of the annual faculty training needs assessment, faculty could be asked about what kinds of software they need for designing or showing multimedia presentations to students. Dr. Hall asked if NSU had enough bandwidth to widely promote the use of such tools. Darlene said that at the moment NSU could probably not support widescale downloading of audio and video applications. However, that is going to change soon.
Rocky Colavito asked where faculty could get more information about Moodle. Darlene told the group they could visit www.moodle.org.
Jennifer Long asked if a guest account would be created for the Student Help Desk, so they could support the students who were part of the pilot project. Darlene said that yes, an account will be created for the Help Desk.
Emily Perritt explained that Northwestern would be piloting Tegrity in the spring. Tegrity is a program that will allow instructors to capture their live lectures and easily create podcasts for later student download. Three faculty members will participate in the pilot.
Jennifer Long mentioned that Tegrity sounds very similar to a solution that Tech Fee has recently purchased for John Foster for use in his Communications classes. She suggested that we compare the two products.
Darlene explained that DimDim is an open source product that will allow live synchronous audio chat that Electronic and Continuing Education is currently evaluating. There is a plug-in for Moodle, but not yet for Blackboard.
Darlene also mentioned that Electronic and Continuing Education had located a live text chat application that is being implemented by the Student Help Desk.
Darlene announced that Northwestern was going to become a part of LONI, the Louisiana Optical Network Initiative. This will greatly increase the bandwidth available to NSU at a relatively low cost. LONI may have great application for initiatives such as collaboration with Cyber Command and research.
Due to lack of time, Darlene said that she would email an update on the CALL program to council members later.
Tara suggested that the Council initiate a policy of rotating membership, where members were periodically replaced. There was some discussion about the process of establishing the initial membership of the Council. Dr. Hall suggested that we set up a staggered rotation, where a certain number of members rotated off every three years.
The meeting adjourned at 3:55 pm.