Notes from CIT Advisory Board meeting October 23, 2007

Attending: Wayne Miller (Law), Roger Loyd (Divinity), Owen Astrachan (Comp. Sci., A&S), Lynne O’Brien (CIT), Shawn Miller (CIT), Patricia Pawlak (CIT), Trey Turner (Nursing), Lee Willard (A&S Dean), Jackie Gottlieb (visitor; Nursing-Web Tech Solutions), Joe Harris (English), Nevin Fouts (Fuqua)

1. Announcements:

Notes from last meeting – no changes.

- Nevin: Fuqua using Proton Media, a Virtual world tool. Announcement made at the Virtual World Conference

2. CIT Grants - final review for this year’s offerings

A. Demo of Visualizing North Carolina in the Global Economy project (guest: Shawn Miller, CIT Academic Technology Consultant for social sciences)

• Example of Visualization Grant project

• Connected to university strategic plan goals of increased understanding of visual information, undergraduate students doing research, service to the community
Shawn gave an overview of Gary Gereffi’s project with The Center on Globalization, Governance and Competitiveness. CIT provided funding and support to help the team develop new interactive representations of value chains, (supply chains with policy makers and other industries included that influence a particular industry),
using tools such as Flash, and to explore and apply mapping tools like Google Earth and Google Maps to rethink the way industry data is presented in a global context. Several factors made this project unique: Undergrads students were involved, Web 2.0 technologies showcased on site, industries mapped are interactive, a Wiki was created for Gary’s students to exchange info, project had multiple sources of funding, it is sustainable and it involved the community.
The website: www.cggc.duke.edu is available for all to use.

Comments:
- Nevin: Website/project should be marketed to rest of Duke. It contains valuable info.
- Lee: What feedback is being collected? What are students doing with this experience? Suggested putting Shawn in touch with Matt Sera to share this project info.
- Roger: What are the next steps? How will this be a “global” project?

B. Updated program for CIT grants for this year

See document Duke Center for Instructional Technology grants and support programs for 2007-08, which reflects suggestions from our discussion at the last CIT Advisory Board meeting.
Discussion:
• Any final recommendations or comments?
• Best way to advertise and encourage faculty proposals?

Lynne discussed available CIT grants:
1. Jump Start grants - a mini grant, quick turnaround time, easy application process.
2. Invited speaker grants - Dept. may bring in a presenter to discuss instructional technology, $1,000 cap.
3. Faculty Fellows grant - to support a group of faculty (typically 5-8) working together on curriculum change projects involving instructional technology. Theme for the Faculty Fellowship for May 2008-May 2009 is: Teaching in Flexible Classroom Spaces.
4. Grants for Teaching and Learning Initiatives - CIT will provide grant money and project support for developing new teaching and learning experiences connected to University or School strategic plans open ended, larger amounts of grant money available, Look out over 2 year period of time instead of 1 year.

Comments:
- Joe: Good mix of grant opportunities.
- Lee: Important to not exclude people. Divisional Dean should be involved.
- Owen: What’s the definition of school Dean in Trinity? Divisional Deans should sign off on grant proposals.
- Nevin: CIT should make clear that the Jump Start is a “light” proposal and easy to apply for. Emphasize that CIT will connect grantees with other funding/relationships. CIT will coordinate with Sponsored Research Office. They should be involved early on to identify other sources of funding.
- Lynne: CIT will help with proposal development and can act as a broker for locating funding sources for projects.
- Owen: May be a hook to combine Duke Engage and CIT. See CIT as a consultant to help teach.
- Jackie: Do grants apply only to single faculty teaching single course? Grants are of varying types. Some are typically for single faculty in one class (e.g., Jump Start Grants), others are ideally for multiple faculty and multiple courses, or cross-disciplinary efforts (e.g., Strategic Initiative Grants). They all must be related to teaching and learning in some way.

3. Consulting with faculty on Web 2.0 / non-Duke tools

See draft document CIT Support for Web 2.0 Tools which reflects suggestions from our August CIT Advisory Board meeting and our discussion with Bruce Cunningham, registrar. After this meeting, we will ask Bruce to review the documents to make sure they fit with the requirements of his office, edit as needed and post on the regular CIT website.

Discussion:
• Do these tips seem reasonable?
• Are the case studies useful?

- Lynne: Discussed top ten tips for using these Non Duke Tools. Conversations included whether or not students should be able to opt out of sharing information with others in class and that some ‘free’ software may be a scam/spyware.
- Wayne: If the course description is clear…students should have to participate.
- Owen: Faculty must understand that posting in a public space is “traceable”. They may not understand FERPA completely.
- Lynne: Must make faculty aware of the ramifications of sharing student personal info and requiring students to participate
- Lee: We should take these issues to A & S faculty and discuss at DUS meeting.
- Lynne: Please review examples found under the “Top Ten Tips for using Web 2.0 tools in academic work” and bring your comments/suggestions to next month’s meeting.

4. Faculty outreach plans – follow up to discussion item at previous meeting

At our August meeting, we discussed the need to get broad faculty input about instructional technology planning. The document CIT faculty outreach efforts underway as of Fall 2007 lists some of the things CIT is currently doing. We’d like your feedback on ways to make these outreach efforts successful, and also get ideas for other ways we could get more faculty input.
• Faculty discussion groups on image use, related to planning for Visual Studies Initiative
• Faculty focus groups on instructional technology November 2007 – January 2008
• BB Advisory Group monthly meetings
• New faculty reception Dec. 2007
• Faculty Ambassadors program

Discussion:
• What would be the most effective way to get faculty to attend any of these events?
• Would you be willing to host a focus group in your building or area of campus?
• What else could we be doing to make sure we hear from a wide variety of faculty?

5. Future agenda items

November meeting:
Graduate student technology training
• current activities
• future possibilities
Mobile computing
• update on activities at other schools
• brainstorming on what we could be doing at Duke