UNT IRC Meeting Minutes
February 20, 2007
UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.
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.