UNIVERSITY OF NORTH TEXAS
INFORMATION RESOURCES COUNCIL
July 17, 2007
VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: PHILIP TURNER, CHAIR, PATRICK PLUSCHT, TIM CHRISTIAN, ELIZABETH HINKLE-TURNER, JOHN HOOPER, LOU ANN BRADLEY, JUDITH ADKISON, ROBERT NIMOCKS, SCOTT WINDHAM, RAMU MUTHIAH, MARGARET AMBUEHL, CHRISTY CRUTSINGER, GUILLERMO OYARCE, JON NELSON, UWE ROSSBACH
NON-VOTING MEMBERS PRESENT: MAURICE LEATHERBURY, PHILIP BACZEWSKI, SUE ELLEN RICHEY (Recording Secretary)
MEMBERS ABSENT: CHARLES ANDREWS, GINNY ANDERSON, CENGIZ CAPAN, BRUCE HUNTER, DON GROSE , SARA WILSON MCKAY, JOHN PRICE, STEVEN KING, RAY BANKS, BOBBY CARTER, ABRAHAM JOHN
GUESTS PRESENT: JIM BYFORD, CHARLOTTE RUSSELL, TROY JOHNSON
The minutes of the June 19, 2007 meeting were approved with the following correction: Page 3, paragraph 3, last sentence should read:
"She announced that people can view the Student Tour at helpdesk.unt.edu/studenttour."
Philip Baczewski reported for the Distributed Computing Support Management Team that the committee met on July 6 and was chaired by Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner. Jeff Stewart, Craig Robicheaux and Kevin Sullivan of Microsoft, Inc. provided a demonstration of Microsoft System Center Operations Manager 2007, a suite of products which allows management and monitoring of Microsoft servers and workstations. The
GroupWise to Exchange Migration project was discussed and it was mentioned that representatives from Compellent, the Storage Area Network (SAN) supplier would be on site to help configure their device for support of Exchange. There was a brief discussion regarding how departments would support faculty orders of Dell desktop computers and whether faculty would be encouraged to configure their own machines or if configurations would be set by the distributed support areas. The next DCSMT meeting is scheduled for July 20, 2007.
Patrick Pluscht reported for the Learning Enhancement Planning Group that they had come to a consensus to recommend to the Provost that a pilot group be set up to test Vista 4.2 in the Fall. If the upgraded product does not perform well, it will help them in their decision-making process. Likewise, if it does perform well, that will help, also. In either case, , and theytesting of alternatives will continue testing. At the present time it appears that College of Education and the Department of Applied Technology Training and Development will be in the pilot group. Patrick stressed that this does not mean that they have decided to continue with Vista; they continue to look at Desire to Learn, Angel and Sakai. In response to a question by Robert Nimocks, Patrick stated that the group has not considered Moodle in the products they’ve chosen to review. Dr. Turner asked how it was going with the courses they’ve put into Vista 4.2 thus far. Patrick replied that so far everything has remained intact. If there are any problems, they will see them in the pilot groups in the Fall. Patrick commented that if another group wants to be part of the Vista 4.2 pilot group they should let him know.
Patrick also announced that he attended a Blackboard Users’ Group meeting last week where heand learned about the built-in plagiarism prevention system feature called Safe Assign that was released for is to be integrated with the Blackboard product as well as the Vista product, and which should be available immediately. Given the current LMS evaluation underway, there are no plans for UNT to move away from TurnItIn for plagiarism prevention at this point. Turnitin was supposed to be in attendance at that meeting, but Patrick learned that they had been told not to come.
Patrick stated that his production staff had alerted him to the fact that the impending release of Real Player 11 (currently available in beta), when downloaded, allows a person to use a single click to download most right-click download any streaming media format,video files (including streaming video and flash video) whether it be Utube, or Flash Video, and bring down a local copy. . For a long time, Real had the market cornered on the protection of video without DRM via its streaming technology; but now one can watch and record something and make a copy of it locally, which presents a challenge to UNT in its attempt to protect its assets and those it licenses.
Lou Ann Bradley reported for the Communications Planning Group that there had not been a meeting, nor would there be until September.
John Hooper reported for the EIS Planning Group that most of the work for the upgrade of the Student/HR and Contributor Relations modules of PeopleSoft to V. 8.9 has been completed. They are in the process of refreshing the EIS hardware and will complete that, along with doing some load testing, before going live with the upgrade.
Tim Christian stated that he had no report for the Standards & Policy Planning Group.
Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner reported for the Student Computing Planning Group that they have been conducting Freshman Orientation, where they distributed new lanyards with the new student tour helpdesk website printed on them. Elizabeth said the orientation sessions were going well. She gave one of the lanyards to each IRC member.
Maurice Leatherbury reported that CITC is preparing for the Microsoft conversion, and dealing with the issue of hardware compatibility with the SAN. Before the campus-wide conversion is actually done, they are going to make sure that everything is stable, and working well before they convert a few pilot groups (like CITC). It was noted that there is a Benchmarks article telling about the training that is available. There is a course called "Getting Started with Outlook 2007, at www.unt.edu/cbt. To access this cbt course one must contact Elizabeth Hinkle-Turner to have her set up an account first.
There will not be an IRC meeting in August. The next meeting will be on Tuesday, September 18, 2007.
There being no further business, the meeting was adjourned.