Advising Technology Advisory Committee

Minutes

September 9, 2015 Asmundson 242, 10:30am - noon

Committee Charge & Introductions  Megan discussed the transition of ATTF into ATAC and the goals of the committee, including providing better representation to groups that work with students but who aren’t in a college/major (i.e. Student Disability Center, Registrar, etc)

 Quick introductions of those present

 ~25-30 people in attendance (some trickled in during course of meeting)

Student Announcements Tool  Quick overview of how the idea of needing a tool for student announcements has come up and sample uses:

o New course available to students in Major X

o Welcome session for incoming students in Major Y

o Info session for students interested in Pre-Health

 Demo of AggieFeed by Sarah Robertson and AggieFeed team

o Idea of AggieFeed is that it is an aggregate system for items coming from various sources. It works like social media feeds you would see on Twitter, Facebook, etc.

o There is a public feed, or a logged in (targeted) feed. When a user is logged in they can see feeds specifically targeted to them (such as staff seeing staff items, students seeing student items, students in a specific course seeing that course’s assignments, etc.)

o Currently, logged in users are auto-subscribed to all feed sources, but can opt out. There is a move to an opt in model in the future for sources such as student clubs, etc.

o The logged in feed allows institutional knowledge (i.e. are you staff/student/etc.) integration with social media. So you can have social media but target who sees it based on information about the person in a UC Davis context. i.e. A Microbiology Facebook page could feed into a Microbiology AggieFeed stream and show just to students in Microbiology. o Currently integrates with My UC Davis and UC Davis Mobile app (It is the first “area/tab” in the mobile app). Can integrate (i.e. be displayed on) any other website, so a department could have just their items displayed on their department website. o Data sources are currently manual or any RSS feeds available. Coming soon, this Fall (i.e. in final stages right now), is integration with Facebook, Campus Calendar, Google, etc. Also can import spreadsheets of items or work with other data sources. o Has been used for scheduling such as Stay Day, Picnic Day, etc. o Some units using it are: Mondavi Center, Financial Aid o To sign up as a source (i.e. have your items part of AggieFeed) go to http://aggiefeed.ucdavis.edu, click on the “Get Aggie Feed!” menu, and then click on the “request access” link (or the direct form link is (http://goo.gl/forms/UUHYsU6FPc). When signing up you can provide an icon to be used for your Feed (if you have one). o Once you are a “source” your posts can come from a “stream” (i.e. read in from actual source) or manually entered if you have no other source. Manual entered items have an approval process, streamed items can be auto-approved, or go through the approval process at your discretion. o Discussion of the targeted groups and how it works.

. Currently uses LDAP for targeted groups available

. No manual group management interface available at this time

. Desire to have targeted groups based on department/major. AggieFeed team was going to look at doing that. o Discussion of ideas for features:

. Ability to “re-tweet” an item from another source onto your source. So aggregate certain items from other sources into your own stream.

 Currently could do something like this by using customized Campus Calendar as a source.

. Ability to have an item “re-fresh” at the top so it doesn’t get lost.

 Current options:

o Copy functionality to make several copies of a single item and have set publish dates to have it “re-post” to the top on a pre- set basis. Actual re-publishing coming soon.

o Sticky posts (limited to WarnMe at this time, but could be expanded) . Desire for the ability to filter more granularly. Current filtering is at a very high level. There is the desire to be able to filter to a single feed without having to unsubscribe from that feed.

. Coming Soon: Specialized feed pages so you can use a custom url to direct people to your specific feed.

. Desire for opt-in to a weekly or daily digest email to see items you may have missed.

o Discussion of marketing of AggieFeed to students

. Heavy marketing to students this Fall. Bus ads, Posters, Residence Hall Flyers, dining hall visits, club visits, etc.

 Discussion: The purpose of AggieFeed in relation to the Student Announcements Tool was in a sense a way to “de-clutter” the student’s email. It would be a good way to replace “email blasts” of a more advertising/announcement nature. It would not be a good replacement for all email or the My UC Davis Message Center for important messaging to students (i.e. should not be used to tell a student they are in academic difficulty).

 Discussion of other solutions than AggieFeed for a Student Announcements Tool. An opt-in system in OASIS was suggested and rejected. Ideas for having OASIS serve as a “targeted group source” for AggieFeed was suggested, but not much interest. Suggestion of a full blown email system that could control targeted messages to targeted groups, with opt-out options based on user defining categories was suggested, but no ideas on where to go with that. Overall, AggieFeed seemed to be the best tool for announcement type messages, but not for important student communications.

Holds in OASIS for student view  It was brought up that advisors would like students to be able to see their holds in OASIS. They feel that students would see the hold earlier there than they do in the current other locations such as Schedule Builder. This was a very unanimous desire. Discussion that the way to move forward was to have a proposal written, which could be reviewed at the next month’s meeting for endorsement by ATAC. Kevin Plestring volunteered to write the proposal.

Guidelines for Communications with students  Briefly discussed the need for guidance on when to use which system for communicating with students. When do you use secure messaging? When do you use email? When do you use an announcement system like AggieFeed? Which types of messages go in each system?

 Decided this was a larger topic and that it should be added as a main agenda item for a future meeting. Suggestions for future agenda items  Quick brainstorming of ideas future agenda topics including Academic Plan, Guidelines for Communications With Students (i.e. when to use which system), Notification banners in My UC Davis for important messaging like holds, academic difficulty, etc. Additional ideas for agenda items can be sent to [email protected]