CIT Advisory Board Notes August 28, 2007
1. Welcome, introductions
Attending: Wayne Miller (Law), Martin Brooke (Engineering), Molly Tamarkin (A&SIST), Jean Ferguson (Library), Roger Loyd (Divinity), Owen Astrachan (Comp. Sci., A&S), Julian Lombardi (OIT), Joe Harris (Univ. Writing Program, English, A&S), Lynne O’Brien (CIT), Nevin Fouts (Business), Patricia Pawlak (CIT), Trey Turner (Nursing), Lee Willard (A&S Dean) 2. CIT annual update [20 min.]
2. CIT Update
• Current projects and activities
CIT CONSULTING:
Molly-Regarding the increase in consulting, has there been an increase in any one certain area? Lynne-not really. Diverse requests, for example: how to convert VHS tape to DVD; how to convert audio cassettes to CD; recommendations for assessment strategies for new Ph.D. program; how to create website that links class activities to local businesses in which students are doing interviews or projects; how to capture screen shots to make a movie of a technique; recording class performance in one class for use in another class; evaluation of virtual world software; request for Blackboard training at the Marine lab; how to animate flash cards on an iPod; how to use Blackboard for accreditation evaluation requirements
The consulting request about whether there is a way to use Blackboard for looking at course goals or student accomplishment of goals across the curriculum prompted much discussion. Lynne mentioned that in a number of cases where CIT got requests of this nature, the lack of consistency in how technology is used made it not possible to use the technology for data gathering across courses. For example, if faculty do not all have a syllabus in the same system, and a list of course goals, there is no technology that makes it easy for a department chair to see how whether the courses as a whole cover the curriculum goals. This could be done via Blackboard, or the Faculty Database, but it depends on how those tools are used. Some faculty representatives mentioned that they are not comfortable with the idea of their course materials being reviewed in this way; course materials are a more private kind of thing.
Joe mentioned that the e-portfolio tool in A&S initially had two purposes – for students to put files they wanted in there, and for faculty doing evaluation of writing to look at writing samples across students.
Molly mentioned that the e-portfolio software had not been very well utilized.
Julian mentioned that the new Duke web file space could be a place where students or faculty put information and set permissions to allow some things to be viewed across a group. Trey mentioned that the current web files shows a list of files; it may not be clear to someone looking at the file list what different things are. Julian mentioned that it is possible to build an interface that worked with the Duke web file space to show things in a consistent way, if that is what a department or group wanted to do.
• New CIT website, fall newsletter (mentioned)
• Upcoming events (mentioned)
Project grants & Project Support
At next meeting, CIT will present results of a summary review of supported projects over the last 3 – 4 years, and what seem to be the factors that lead to projects having an impact. We will look at how funding and project support have changed over time and re-visit whether we should offer “large” grants again (which stopped about two years ago).
Academic Tools
- This past year there was considerable interest in new tools such as Google earth, Second Life. CIT is considering how we can best help people explore these tools. There are some special issues related to the fact that most of these tools are hosted externally to Duke (see agenda item #3 below).
Training & Events
- We offered a mix of hands on, presentation and brown bag discussion sessions. 180 faculty and 200 staff attended at least one event.
- Trey-He would have been interested in hearing more of the distance ed brown bags, but had a schedule conflict. He’d like to see events recorded so people who can not attend can listen to the sessions later on.
3. Discussion topic – new tools and their use in education
- Trey: Some people are experimenting with Snoodle, a tool combining Moodle and Second Life. They are creating a virtual nursing home in Second Life so health practitioners can visit that space.
- Molly: Army ROTC group at Duke has created a simulation environment and set limits on who could be part of that community. They deliberately chose not to have high ranking officers able to be part of the virtual community because it might stifle discussion by others in it. ISIS program will work with MilSci instructor to set up an Army simulation event; others at Duke could participate and provide feedback.
Action item: Molly will let Lynne know when game night date is set so Lynne can share that info with the whole group and encourage participation.
- Martin-Not so much interest in virtual worlds, but there is interest in collaboration, technology for supporting group projects. Wikis becoming more popular, GoogleDocs works okay but requires a Gmail acct. Martin has found the Blackboard wiki to be useful. Owen has not found the Blackboard blog tool useful; he’s using an independent blog for class work this semester. Molly pointed out that Duke now has an enterprise supported wiki, and faculty can request one for course use (http://www.oit.duke.edu/web-multimedia/web/wiki/).
- Joe-people interested in wikis, GoogleDocs, not really Second Life. Online communities, not really comfortable with this. Cultural issues to consider. Providing more information and support around collaborative writing tools, document sharing tools, would be useful to many faculty.
- Lynne- It is important to discuss with faculty that use of the “web 2.0” tools raises new issues about student information being shared with external companies. Students may not want to have a pic online or share their personal info.
- Julian-concerns with Google that data that is placed there will be “mine-able”. Arizona State decided to utilize Google for all services.
- Several faculty raised questions about it what it means to be FERPA compliant, and how faculty would know what they should or shouldn’t do with classlist, student photos, etc. Nevin-should be considering the ramifications of these new tools and not just following the crowd.
- Owen: Has noticed that students don’t respond quickly to e-mail. He’s considering using Facebook to communicate with students, but not all students are on Facebook. And, students may not want their personal information on Facebook to be shared with a professor. Could students have an anonymous profile for these purposes? Would not use a “footprint”.
- Lynne: Many classes using Flickr, Snapfish, etc. for image sharing. Heard presentation by an instructor at another school teaching course entirely on Facebook, but he also made some course data public at a speech. Might not be a good idea to do that. One option might be for students to create an external account which does not utilize their Duke email and does not use Duke NetID password. CIT currently discusses these kinds of issues with faculty during consulting. Is there a communication push we can do and articulate best practices when using external tools?
• What best practices might we want to recommend to instructors related to privacy, institutional data, etc.?
Action item: Lynne will have CIT draft possible guidelines that we can share with faculty about using external tools with classes.
- Nevin: maybe we should not post these guidelines publicly because it may give companies more info that we want to share with them; better to keep this internally shared by Duke faculty.
4. Determine future agenda items
Owen: Would be useful if Bb allowed better variation in access control. Some parts of course should be fully viewable by anyone at Duke or out of Duke; other parts need to be kept private.
Action item : Molly- Need input from a larger group of faculty about their interests and needs. We should invite a broader cross section of faculty to a CIT Advisory Board meeting, or have some open events to get ideas from people with varied interests, skills and needs.
5. Reminder: Remaining CIT Advisory Board meetings for 2007-08 (Perkins Tower Room 201)
Action item: Can we move our meetings to a different day of the week to accommodate everyone's schedule?
- No, not really because any change results in someone not able to attend. We will keep this schedule:
September 25, 2007
October 23, 2007
November 27, 2007
January 22, 2008
February 26, 2008
March 25, 2008
April 22, 2008
