Learning with Technology Committee 15 April 2016 Meeting
11:00am
Minutes
Learning With Technology Committee Members (2015-2016)
Chair: Chris Woodall, LIBR Designated Senator: Doug DeWitt
Rebecca Anthony, SOWK, 15-18, At-large - PRESENT Regina Royer, EDSP, 13-16, At-large - PRESENT David Burns, CMAT, 14-17, FULTON - PRESENT Jose Juncosa, CHEM, 15-18, HENSON - PRESENT Chris Woodall, LIBR, 14-17, LIBRARY - PRESENT Hoon Cha, INFO, 13-16, PERDUE - PRESENT Yoojin Choi, HSS, 14-17, SEIDEL - PRESENT Melissa Thomas, ID&D - PRESENT Duke Darrigo, Interim CIO – ABSENT Doug Goodyear, IT – Standing in for Duke Darrigo
Old Business
Approved Minutes from March 11, 2016 Meeting Status of TurningPoint transition (Melissa) o A TurningPoint mini-conference will be held on May 11th from 9 AM to 12 PM o A TurningPoint representative will attend to talk about upcoming features and to answer questions o During the conference, attendees will hear about the Spring pilot of the new version and the things they need to know to prepare for using TurningPoint in their summer and fall classes, as well as an overview of our TurningPoint implementation o A survey of student use of the TurningPoint Cloud pilot finished up today, and Melissa will present the findings of this survey at the next meeting. Adobe Connect/Synchronous Tools Discussion Follow Up (Melissa) o Adobe Connect was purchased in previous years to support synchronous meetings for online courses, including the capabilities of recording the meetings for instructors and student projects. o With Canvas and the use of the Conferences tool, there has been a reduction in faculty using Adobe Connect this academic year. o A few problems have arisen due to the fact that recordings of Conferences within Canvas expire after 14 days. . If a student wants to contest a grade at some point past the 14-day window, the conference is no longer available for the faculty member or student to reference. . Some faculty may not be able to view all recordings within the 14-day window. This happened to a Social Work faculty member who was only able to grade half the recordings before they expired. They were unaware of the 14-day limit. o Blindside Networks, the company that licenses Big Blue Button (the software behind Conferences in Canvas), does offer a paid tier that would allow recordings to be kept indefinitely. . The cost is $2400/year per concurrent session. The price quoted was $4800/year for 2 concurrent sessions, and Melissa is unsure if a license for a single concurrent session is available. . If we purchase a paid license, the free version that we currently have would no longer be available. That is, we would no longer have the option of running some sessions on the “free” tier where recordings expire after 14 days to keep the paid slots open for those that need it. . In contrast, SU’s license with Adobe Connect works differently. Adobe charges by “named host”, and our current license allows us 25 named hosts for $3400/year. o Adobe Connect is being used for business meetings across campus more and more. For example, Social Work has been using it for administrative meetings, and the Writing Center is also starting to use it. o A third option is Zoom, which Social Work has been testing. . Zoom licenses in a similar way to Adobe Connect, at a cost of $90 per user with a minimum of 20 users. . Zoom can integrate with Canvas in a similar way to Conferences. . Melissa has not had much time to investigate Zoom, so she isn’t prepared yet to make any recommendations with this tool one way or the other. o Several possible solutions were discussed, but they all had issues: . Jose suggested using Panopto to screen capture the conferences for recording rather than using the built-in recording feature in Conferences. However, this would be an extra step that faculty might not want to do. In addition, it is common for students to initiate a Conference in Canvas on their own, and recording with Panopto would be impractical in those situations. . It was also suggested that faculty could export all the videos manually in cases where they would need to be graded. However, that would be a time consuming process and it would be difficult to find a place to store the large amount of data that would require. o Melissa distributed a question that will be included in the annual IT survey about synchronous discussion tools: “What features of a synchronous virtual meeting tool would you want and use in support of your courses/work at Salisbury University?” . Jose suggested adding an answer option about recordings being available for some kind of extended time period. . Ultimately it was decided that the time period in the answer should be “6-12 months”. o Our Adobe Connect license expires on May 6, so some kind of decision needs to be made before that point. o Melissa’s tentative plans for now are: . Reduce our Adobe Connect license to 5-10 hosts . Investigate buying concurrent licenses for Conferences . Discuss with departments whether they would be interested in paying a la cart for Zoom o There are still questions about how the paid licenses for Conferences work. . What happens if more users try to access Conferences than we pay for? Are uses stopped from continuing with their conference, or is the university simply notified that we are using too many concurrent sessions and need to renegotiate our license? . If we license more than 2 concurrent sessions, does the price per session go down? o This discussion will be continued at the next meeting.
New Business
Microsoft Excel Add-in Issues (per J. Craig Clarke) o Discussion postponed until next meeting.
Next Meeting – April 29, 2016, 11:00 AM Section 16. Learning With Technology Committee The purposes of the committee shall be to: A. Review and make recommendations to the University administration concerning the use of technology in face-to-face and online teaching and learning, including but not limited to planning and policies; B. Serve as a liaison between the Faculty and Information Technology Services regarding learning technology issues; and C. Serve in an advisory capacity to the Director of the Teaching and Learning Resources about issues regarding technology and learning. The Committee shall have seven voting members: seven members of the Faculty serving three-year terms: four elected from and by their respective schools, one elected from the library faculty, two elected at-large , two to three retiring annually. The Chief Information Officer or his/her designee, and the Director of the Teaching and Learning Resources or his/her designee shall be ex officio non-voting members. Should an elected faculty member not be the Designated Senator a non-voting Designated Senator shall also serve on the committee. The committee shall elect its chairperson annually.
The purpose of the committee shall also include reviewing and making recommendations for online teaching and learning. In September 2004, the provost created an ad hoc Online Learning Committee to develop a policy and guidelines for online learning at Salisbury University. While the work of the ad hoc committee has been completed, we foresee many continuing issues regarding the implementation of online learning at SU. The members of the Learning Technology Committee believe that this committee is the appropriate venue to assist in addressing online learning at SU.
As more and more information is available in electronic format, access for online and face to face students and faculty is an ongoing concern. The committee believes that a representative from the library on the Learning Technology Committee is warranted.