UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
December 21, 2004
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP TURNER, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JONEEL HARRIS, CENGIZ CAPAN, JON NELSON, RAMU MUTHIAH, DON GROSE, BRENDA RITZ (for PATRICK PLUSCHT), JON NELSON, JUDITH ADKISON, WIL CLARK (for JOHN PRICE)
NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP BACZEWSKI (for MAURICE LEATHERBURY), RICHARD HARRIS, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: JIM CURRY, ROBERT NIMOCKS, BRUCE HUNTER, LOU ANN BRADLEY, COY HOGGARD, SANDRA TERRELL, JOE ADAMO, MARGARET AMBUEHL, KATHY SWIGGER, MAX KAZEMZADEH, ABRAHAM JOHN, KENN MOFFITT, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER, DOUG MAINS, BOBBY CARTER, CHUCK FULLER
GUESTS: JENNIFER LAFLEUR
The minutes from the November meeting were not approved due to lack of a quorum at the meeting.
The Chair announced that Richard Harris has been named 2004 Chief Executive Officer of the Year by the Society for Information Management.
The Chair reported that the Information Resources Steering Committee met but although the issue was on their agenda, they did not address the Electronic Records Retention Policy.
Philip Baczewski reported for Maurice Leatherbury that the Distributed Computing Support Management Team met on December 3 when they discussed the move to strong passwords for EUID accounts; and the schedule was set for student compliance. At their December 17 meeting they discussed the merging of Netware and EUID space to take a single password, which is of most importance to the Health Science Center, and are working on technical issues for netware login at HSC. The committee began working with E-policy Orchestrator, which is a tool to allow Network Managers to roll out patches and virus protection updates in order to respond to and control some vulnerabilities and to get patches out quicker. The security group is leading that effort.
Regarding LEARN, the State of Texas has released $5 million dollars to develop the network infrastructure. The LEARN Board is having a retreat in El Paso to work out the details of developing the statewide network.
Philip reported that 75 % of the faculty and staffs’ passwords have been changed to strong passwords; and 20% of students have changed to strong passwords. On December 31st all passwords which have not been changed to strong passwords will expire. Students have been notified in a number of ways.
Philip announced that as the new Director of Academic Computing he will be taking over the Chairmanship of the DCSMT.
Brenda Ritz reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that CDL has obtained an annual site license for TurnItIn. UNT faculty are urged to use this product during this first year of licensing and at the end of the term, if there is enough interest in continuing it, funding will have to come from sources other than CDL. Dr. Turner asked IRC members to help get the word out about this product. A UNT TurnItIn.com website is currently under development and will be introduced to the University community in early Spring.
Brenda also reported that there were a total of 18 proposals submitted for the Learning Enhancement Grant Program, requesting $383,784.00. A 6-person evaluation committee reviewed and scored the proposals. In order to stretch the $150,000 funding as far as possible, the committee recommended funding only two proposals at 100%; 9 other proposals were awarded funding at some level with 7 proposals not recommended for funding at this time. Dr. Turner added that anyone interested can view the proposals on the CDL website.
Further, Brenda announced that an award has been established to recognize excellence both in the instructional design of Web-based courseware and the facilitation of the instructional experience using this courseware. The recipient of the award will receive a plaque and a check for $500, and their course will be identified as an award winner in UNT eCampus.
There was no report from the Communications Planning Group.
Joneel Harris reported that the loaner equipment Sun Microsystems provided for Fall registration has been replaced with equipment purchased by UNT. UNT owes a debt of gratitude to Sun for the loan of the equipment, and to CITC for their support in getting the equipment installed and operating. Joneel stated that grade reporting has gone well and that registration numbers for Spring are up 1% over Fall semester. There still are major issues to be dealt with but due to functional and and technical staff limitations they are not proceeding as quickly as they would like to. Data warehousing is the most crucial issue in the coming year; and they are developing reports as fast as they can. They have already submitted an FY'06 budget request to Phil Diebel for additional hardware and other resources in support of data warehousing and constituent relationship management (CRM) which will ultimately replace the student prospecting systems and aid fund raising efforts. The Cypress product is being tested now, and will be extremely important in the production of reports that can be distributed electronically. She commented that grades from WebCT will eventually transfer to the EIS grading system.
Cengiz Capan commented that some of his faculty with very large classes complained about the time involved in entering grades. He asked if eventually the grades would automatically be transferred by WebCT. Joneel replied that it is the long-term goal to have the grades automatically transferred through WebCT. Capan also asked if capacity planning is being done. Joneel replied that the Mercury product they used to test capacity was purchased so that this can be done on a regular basis. They want to add more monitoring tools to make sure they have adequate support. They have already submitted a request to the Vice President for additions to hardware components for support of contributor relations. They are aware, also, that more Storage Area Network is needed.
Wil Clark asked if uploading grades from other sources has been considered and Joneel replied that they would rather transfer grades using WebCT than develop to much with other sources.
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported that the Student Computing Planning Group has not met; however, they have had a very successful orientation of 150 new students, compared to only 10 last year. Also, they have ordered new General Access Lab brochures printed for Spring semester since lab hours have changed. The Adaptive Lab has purchased a Sorensen Video Relay phone for use by deaf students. The deaf student can speak in sign language and the phone translates the conversation over internet phone service.
Elizabeth also reported that she has finished putting August theses and dissertations on line and she is ready to begin working on the December ones.
Dr. Turner reported that information has been sent out to all concerned that on March 31st a decision will be made of whether to stay with the WebCT product, Vista, or go back to using the Campus Edition version of the product. Tests have been done on Chat, and it seems to be working. There are a number of unsolved problems with the Vista product, but WebCT has a high level group of people working with UNT to resolve them. A SWAT team has been formed of representatives of various universities who are using the Vista product, to try and work out the problems. WebCT has pulled people off of their development team and put them on the product assurance team to help make the product work for UNT.
Cengiz Capan reported that for the past 15 years he has headed the GALC group, and that Philip Baczewski will be taking over that responsibility now. Cengiz will be working on the committee for Responsibility Center Management in future. He commented that GALC is a good example of Responsibility Center management that has been going on for a long time.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned at 2:45 p.m.