|
|
|
Minutes provided by Sue Ellen
Richey, Recording Secretary*
|
 |
February 20, 2007
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:
MAURICE LEATHERBURY (for PHILIP TURNER), CHAIR, PATRICK PLUSCHT,
TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JOHN HOOPER, SCOTT
WINDHAM, GINNY ANDERSON, SARA WILSON MCKAY, JIM CURRY, JENNIFER
LAFLEUR (for GUILLERMO OYARCE), STEVEN KING, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER,
DON GROSE, UWE ROSSBACH NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:
CHARLIE ANDREWS, MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE
ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT: JOE
ADAMO, CENGIZ CAPAN, MARGARET AMBUEHL, LOU ANN BRADLEY, JUDITH
ADKISON, BRUCE HUNTER, JON NELSON, ROBERT NIMOCKS, RAY BANKS,
BOBBY CARTER, ABRAHAM JOHN, RAMU MUTHIAH, JOHN PRICE GUESTS
PRESENT: JIM BYFORD, CHARLOTTE RUSSELL, TROY JOHNSON
The
minutes of the January 16, 2007 meeting were approved with the
following correction: Page 2, remove the word “that” from the
sentence that reads: Tim Christian reported that the Standards
& Policy Planning Group is still looking at the Computer Use Policy.
Horizon Wimba Live Classroom product demonstration
Patrick Pluscht presented a demonstration of the Horizon Wimba Live
Classroom product. There was some discussion following the demo
in which it was stated that Horizon Wimba is capable of hosting many
classes at the same time, and that UNT has contracted for 1999
simultaneous users. A question was raised about the company’s
arrangements for back-up of their system, and their disaster recovery
plan. It was pointed out that the product was purchased for use
not only by faculty, but by researchers and administrators. It
was recommended that for best results a headset or stand-up
microphone should be used, rather than use the built-in microphone on
a laptop. There was a question raised about whether or not
classroom support would be required, and Patrick stated that he
didn’t think that would be involved in the use of this product, since
professors will use it from their home or office. It was
pointed out that there are tutorials available for learning how to
use the product, but that for the most part it is quite intuitive.
It was also noted that the Wimba product does not meet the
University’s internet delivered course delivery guidelines for
providing access to deaf students. Patrick asked those who are
interested in trying it out to send him their EUID and a password
that would be used only for this product and he would set them up to
try it out. Maurice Leatherbury reported that he used the
product for a tele-conference meeting recently and it worked quite
well. Patrick showed how to run through the “set-up” of the
product in order to demonstrate the various security measures that
are used by Horizon Wimba. In response to a question about ownership
of the class content, Patrick replied that the content of any class
belongs to the participant in the class, and the faculty presenter.
There was a suggestion that a privacy statement be automatically
added to each presentation.
Patrick announced that there will be another demo of Horizon
Wimba Live Classroom on Thursday, Feb. 22, in Chilton Hall, Room
245, at Noon. A representative of Horizon Wimba will be there.
Distributed Computing Support Management Team***
Philip Baczewski reported for the
Distributed Computing Support Management Team that this committee
met on February 2 and 16. On the 2nd, Steve Vocelka reported
that electricity will be down for 12 hrs on 2/24/07 in GAB 5th floor
for scheduled power maintenance. This will affect the CITC 5th floor
machine room areas and the CAS server room. All Central IT services
will be down with a few exceptions. The work is in preparation
for installation of a backup power generator for Central IT
resources. Also at that meeting, Chris Strauss and Don
McClure, assisted by Richard Sanzone, provided an overview of the
proposed organization of the new Remedy/ITSM 7 call tracking system
and demonstrated ticket creation and routing under the proposed
organizational scheme. Additionally, the group discussed plans for
implementing Office 2007 and Windows Vista. Some areas indicated
they might roll out Office 2007 as soon as the Fall 2007 semester.
The Outlook 2007 client may also be required to support the
migration to the Exchange 2007 mail system.
At the February 16 meeting of DCSMT,
Jason Myre discussed the effect of the implementation of the earlier
daylight savings time on GroupWise calendar appointments. After the
time change, appointments may be off by an hour if they were created
before the application of the patch supporting the new daylight
savings schedule (last November). Charlotte Russell presented
an overview of CITC pandemic planning, and the group received
updates on the 2/24 scheduled power outage (including the fact that
mail routing will be up during the outage), the Remedy upgrade
project, Office 2007 and Windows Vista issues, and Horizon Wimba
live classroom security issues. The next meeting of
DCSMT is scheduled for March 2.
Maurice Leatherbury announced that he would be sending out a
message to UNT staff about the new date for the start of Daylight
Savings Time, and the possible ramifications of that change to
computerized calendaring. He suggested that everyone watch
their calendars and make sure they are correct after March 11th
, and suggested that when people send appointments that they
send a note along with it warning the recipient to check for the
daylight savings time change.
Maurice also announced that on February 24th from 7pm
to February 25th at 7am, all central computing systems
will be taken down for the purpose of upgrades in the power supply
for them. He noted that there is a Benchmarks article
that gives all the details of this.
Learning Enhancement Group
Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Group that
they are concerned with how to go about selecting the path for UNT’s
learning systems beyond Vista 3, which is the version now being
used. Everyone is very unhappy about WebCT not attending to
problems that are brought to them. The committee has been
looking at where they will be 18 months from now, and he estimates
that to select a new product and migrate everyone to it will take at
least that long. At the present time they are developing a
plan for choosing the new product, and they have asked the Learning
Enhancement steering group to assist; they also plan to include
faculty, staff, students and administrators in this process.
Patrick brought a proposed charge to his committee before the
Council, as follows:
- The Information Resources Council charges the Learning
Enhancement Planning Group to evaluate Learning Management
System (LMS) options to replace WebCT Vista 3.0 and make a
recommendation to the IRC by the end of 2007 with final approval
of the selected LMS to be sought from the Office of the Provost.
Patrick moved that the IRC grant this planning
group the charge as stated above. Uwe Rossbach seconded the
motion. There will be a vote on this motion at the March 13
IRC meeting. It was suggested that Patrick work with
Purchasing from the very beginning of the acquisition of the new
product, in order to make sure they are in compliance with
Purchasing rules of procedure.
EIS Planning Group
John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group that they have
had their kick-off meeting of staff from HSC and UNT who will be
involved in the upgrade of EIS Learning Solutions, Oracle and
Solaris, as well as a hardware refreshment. John assured
everyone that there would not be a lot of dramatic changes to the
system. They are continuing to work on the CRM module
implementation. For status of the upgrade process, anyone can
go to
www.EIS.unt.edu and see timelines and information about the
upgrades. There is also a calendar on that site that will show
planned downtimes in the production environment.
Standards & Policy Planning Group
Tim Christian reported for the Standards & Policy Planning Group
that they are revising the Computer Use Policy and plan to bring it
to the IRC at its March 13th meeting.
Student Computing Planning Group
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing
Planning Group that the planned Ruckus presentation to the SGA was
cancelled when UNT was closed for inclement weather. To date,
that presentation has not been rescheduled. Elizabeth reported
that she attended the IT Peer Review meeting and noted that there
were a lot of students present. She made notes of their
comments and as a result, she has had some informal discussions in
the General Access Labs and with Philip Baczewski.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at
3:30 pm.
March 13, 2007
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT:
PHILIP TURNER, CHAIR, PATRICK PLUSCHT, TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH
HINKLE-TURNER, ROBERT JONES (for JOHN HOOPER), RHONDA ACKER (for
SCOTT WINDHAM), JIM CURRY, GUILLERMO OYARCE, STEVEN KING, ERIN
MURRELL (for CHRISTY CRUTSINGER), UWE ROSSBACH, CENGIZ CAPAN,
MARGARET AMBUEHL, LOU ANN BRADLEY, PAUL HONS (for JUDITH ADKISON),
BRUCE HUNTER, ROBERT NIMOCKS, RAMU MUTHIAH, WIL CLARK (for JOHN
PRICE) NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: JOE ADAMO,
CHARLIE ANDREWS, MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE
ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary) MEMBERS ABSENT:
DON GROSE, GINNY ANDERSON, SARA WILSON MCKAY, JON NELSON, RAY
BANKS, BOBBY CARTER, ABRAHAM JOHN GUESTS PRESENT:
JIM BYFORD, SCOTT POWERS
The
minutes of the February 20, 2007 meeting were approved with a note
that in the designation, Daylight Saving Time, there is no “s” on the
word Saving.
Distributed Computing Support Management Team***
Philip Baczewski reported
for the Distributed Computing
Support Management Team that at their March 2 meeting, Tom
Anderson and Keith Cullum of Dell, Inc. were in attendance
to provide a current overview of Dell's printing products.
Also discussed at that meeting were a review of the GAB
power outage, GroupWise Daylight Saving Time issues, a
GroupWise Instant Messenger bug, Course Management System
issues, CBT software availability, and security incident
reporting. Additionally, it was requested that DCSMT
investigate deployment of MS Office 2007. A working
group was appointed, with Uwe Rossbach as its chair, to
identify issues involved with rolling out Office 2007, and
develop one or more scenarios outlining how a rollout
could be accomplished in a coordinated and efficient way.
The next meeting is scheduled for March 16.
Patrick Pluscht presented the
proposed charge to the Learning Enhancement Planning
Group, which had its first reading at the February
meeting, and called for discussion and vote. Discussion
followed during which Patrick stated that he hopes to have
a decision made on what product to use by July or early
August and move forward with implementation as soon as the
purchase has been negotiated. The current version of
WebCT Vista that is being used is not the latest version,
and WebCT is not willing to fix anything in this version.
For users who do not move to their later version, support
will diminish. Patrick stated that it is hoped that
conversion to a new product or later version of Vista be
accomplished by December of 2007. In answer to a
question from Robert Nimocks, it was stated that the
system that replaces WebCT Vista will be a real course
management system. Patrick reported that a survey
has been sent out to the planning group members asking
them to weight the criteria to be used in deciding on a
product; and a separate features survey will be sent out
to faculty and students to see what features they would
like to have in the new product. Robert Nimocks
commented that the Health Science Center has not been able
to get people interested in the current system.
Patrick invited HSC to appoint a representative from their
school to serve on the Learning Enhancement Planning
Group. Dr. Turner noted that there are 50,000
enrollments on Vista this semester, and also added that
they are trying to be very conservative about changing and
are waiting until the latest possible time to do so.
Following the discussion, the proposed new charge was
approved.
Communications Planning Group
Lou Ann Bradley stated that the
Communications Planning Group has not met, therefore, she
had no report.
EIS Planning Group
Robert Jones reported for the
EIS Planning Group that the teams have worked very hard to
make the needed changes to the computer system to adapt to
the early change to Daylight Saving Time. Projects
the EIS group is currently working on are: 1)
beginning the implementation of the Cognos performance and
planning software that the Budget Office will primarily be
using in order to streamline the budgeting process for the
university. They anticipate that they will be
working with consultants to kick-off that implementation
during this budget year so that it will be ready for full
use by the next budget year; 2) Learning Solutions upgrade
is underway; the first week in April resources will
be devoted to that implementation; and 3) CRM project, as
it relates to Graduate Admissions is on track to begin at
the end of April. In response to a question from Uwe
Rossbach about EIS compatibility with IE7, Robert stated
that PeopleSoft has certified IE7, and he has been using
it to test it and has discovered no issues or problems
with the new version. He said he would work on
getting an official notification of this out to the
campus. Patrick noted that WebCT has not yet
certified IE7. Cengiz Capan asked if student
advising tracking is included in the CRM project.
Robert stated that the initial implementation would be for
applicant and prospect tracking in the Admissions office.
Cengiz stressed that graduate student advising tracking is
a huge need by academic departments and he urged the
development of this in EIS.
Student Computing Planning Group
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported
for the Student Computing Planning Group that the
SkillSoft CBT courseware has been loaded, and it is
believed that it interfaces with PeopleSoft. Tim
Christian reported for the Standards & Policy Planning
Group that the Office of Internal Audit has made some
recommendations for changes to the Computer Use Policy and
his group is working on those revisions.
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner
expressed concern over the move to Office 2007 because of
questions she will be asked at new student orientation
sessions regarding what type of computer and software need
to be purchased by parents for their students.
Some questions were raised about
the Office 2007 product, and concerns expressed about its
feature changes. Elizabeth said she would distribute
a list of all the training courses that are available
through SkillSoft for Office 2007. There will be
training on Sharepoint, a new feature of Office 2007, in
October of 2007.
Migration from GroupWise
to Microsoft Exchange
Maurice Leatherbury reported that he
and his staff had met with Dell regarding the planned
migration from GroupWise to Microsoft Exchange, as well as
a change from Novell Directory to Microsoft Active
Directory. It is now clear that there is a need to
accelerate the plan to tighten up the campus network by
setting up the firewall so that the default is to deny
everything instead of accepting everything. CITC
will be asking the Communications Planning Group to help
with establishing a different way of managing the access
to UNT’s network from off campus. The Intrusion
Detection system will be used and network managers will be
asked to identify what protocols they are using, so that
plans can be made to allow that kind of use to go through
the firewall. Long term, CITC wants to have a dmz
(area outside of the firewall) which will allow anybody to
put anything up; which will require a lot of extra
planning. In addition, they will be putting up vpn
to allow access into the campus for those protocols and
ports that are known to need protection from
outside. Maurice explained that there is a lot yet
to be done.
Cengiz Capan expressed his concern
over the rising cost of all of the technological
improvements that have to be done.
Joe Adamo further explained that
there have been recent problems with the firewall going
down due to a software bug within the Juniper firewalls.
Datacom is working with Juniper, at their highest
technical level, to resolve the issues.
Staying within the law
Maurice further reported that CITC is
testing a CopySense device that supports the blocks of the
transmission of copyrighted materials from campus.
There will be some changes to the network and it looks
like the device could be turned on within the next month.
The RIAA is stepping up pressure on college campuses and
is sending out a new wave of subpoenas against students
who use campus networks to distribute copyrighted
materials. There are some policy issues to deal with
in regard to enforcement methods. The device will be
used primarily in RESNET but could be used across campus
later. The device will be able to discern the
difference between legal and illegal downloads.
Joe Adamo added that Datacom is
running a device that is actively detecting rogue wireless
access points and will be sending out notices of shut-down
through Housing. Rogue access is considered a
security incident. Joe clarified that if a student
in a dorm is using a laptop with a MAC airport and is
wirelessly accessing the network it is considered rogue
access. The computer must be attached to a wall
outlet in the dorm room. Wireless access is,
however, available in common areas of dorms.
It was noted that there is a new Cell
phone Policy in effect, due to a significant amount of
cell phone use abuse.
There being no further business, the
meeting was adjourned at 3:00 pm.
* For a
list of IRC Regular and Ex-officio
Members click here.
***DCSMT Minutes can be found
here.
IRC
Meeting Schedule
The
IRC generally meets
on the third Tuesday of each month, from 2-4
p.m., in the Administration Building Board Room.
From time to time there are planned exceptions to
this schedule.
The schedule can be found
here. All meetings of the IRC, its program groups, and
other committees, are open to all faculty, staff,
and students.
|
Return to top
|
