Minutes of the Computing Advisory Committee Meeting

25 October 1999

 

Those attending: Duke Koch, David Blakesley, Al Allen, Michael Wainer, Larry Schilling, Bjorn Kraabol, Jim Duggan, Geoff Nathan (recorder), Dennis Leitner, Carolyn Snyder, Ruth Bernhardt, Pierre Barrette, Margaret Winters (guest).

Margaret Winters reported that her office was now dealing with distance learning, which, she said, involved four areas: a distance learning steering committee, distance learning technology, pedagogy and development of programs. Susan Edgren is now reporting to her in this area, and is working on an RFP to encourage colleges to propose programs involving either complete or partial access at a distance. Other areas that Susan will be working on include the whole question of pedagogy, and the need for pedagogy support. This should include workshops, panels and so on. Over the past two years Margaret’s office has provided grants for individuals to develop courses, and there are three years of teams from SIUC going to the Illinois Workshop on learning technology. Thus there is a considerable amount of expertise available on campus. A number of issues remain to be discussed, including intellectual property rights, the accounting for workload and recognition in general for this kind of work, and the inclusion of distance courses in the cost study. David Blakesley suggested that Susan should meet with the Communication across the Curriculum taskforce. In discussion it was pointed out that although the technology used in distance learning included some interactive classrooms, increasingly the web is the basis. Margaret suggested there would be a technology fair in the spring that would highlight some of the work being done by faculty here at SIUC.

Al Allen distributed several technology plans from other schools and noted that Y2K testing continues at IT.

Discussion turned to implementation of the long-range technology plan. In terms of completing connections of faculty and staff to the Campus network it was suggested that Charlie Campbell could give a report to the committee on the current state of buildings on campus. In addition we should survey faculty and graduate assistants to find out how many are still unconnected (and want to be). It might be useful to survey LAN administrators to see how many B-jacks are as yet unconnected. Further to this topic, some suggested investigating wireless connections, as students are increasingly bringing laptops to class. Ideally we should set up integrated classrooms which permit students to connect during class with their own computers.

Finally, there was a question raised about the Technology Fee. It was suggested that it would be good to publicize the principles on which the funds would be spent and to provide some publicly available site where the money could be accounted for and students could see how it was being spent, and to assure students that it was being spent for the purposes for which it was raised.

The next meeting will be Monday, November 8 at 9 A.M. (note later time) and will be in the Mackinaw Room of the Student Center, where we will meet with representatives from ATS/Comdisco.