Technology Task Force Notes

Wednesday December 06, 2006
ADM 109
Time: 3:00 – 4:30

Item 3) Tech Plan Final Draft was moved to the end of the agenda

1) Approval of Notes from November 15,  2006    
The notes were approved.

2) Quick Updates    
Required District email:  The item was discussed and various points were made including forwarding of mail to preferred email address; junk mail; should be required by all employees; requirement should come through the Deans and/or the Senates; late issue of part-time faculty addresses; if it is a requirement, enforcement is necessary; practicalities of requirement/enforcement; student access to faculty. The item would be brought back for further discussion. 

4) Technology Task Force Charge Draft     
W. Chenoweth asked the team to review the document. The Principle section was taken from the De Anza technology plan. A communications bullet would be added under Principles.  The wording would be amended under Activities/Charge item 3). It was agreed to make more of a tie-in with the District to ensure open communication e.g. with ETAC. Number 6) would be amended to reflect this proposal. Further language would be added to include the idea of ensuring/reflecting the interests of the campus are represented.

5) Catalyst Migration Update     
K. Metcalf explained that he would give a full update on the project. He presented a PowerPoint and explained the methodologies, timeline, changes, migration schedule, etc. WebCT content migration to Catalyst is complete. Fall pilot is nearing completion and the schedule is 5% ahead. The next steps are to form a catalyst advisory committee and develop a maintenance plan. 

In the Q&A the following points were made:
	•	A training component would be a part of the maintenance plan.
	•	Have any Distance Learning faculty backed out due to the switch? Not so far.
	•	Are the deans aware of any faculty backing-out? There are some issues to resolve but no faculty have backed-out so far.
	•	There are 2000 student accounts so far. A large portion was for Distance Learning’s video streams. There was clarification on video streams.
	•	What was the feed back from students? Tech support requests from students have been cut by half.
	•	Faculty using Page-Out/Publishers can still use these systems but are encouraged to switch to Catalyst.
	•	What is the timeframe for campus-wide faculty to apply for a shell? Training is important before rolling Catalyst to the whole College. Emails would be sent out in Spring.
	•	If all faculty are going to have a Catalyst shell might the need for Manila be diminished?
	•	What would be the continuing demand for Manila?
	•	Current use and future analysis is needed.
	•	The formation of a committee would move forward. Academic Senate already have reps to serve on the advisory committee.

6) Web Content Management System (WCMS)     
M. Kahn drew attention to the handout, which explained the Benefits, Key Features, Criteria and Options of a WCMS.

The next step was to form a committee to work on the project. A mixture of representation was important. 

D. Mitchell could not attend the meeting but sent an email to the co-chairs for consideration by the team. J. Hawk passed around the email. D. Mitchell’s main point concerned the process the Technology Task Force was following regarding the WCMS project. He stated that he thought a task force should respond to a request ‘from a person or group with oversight authority’ rather than to ‘assign itself the task of (and authority for) of making decisions about content management systems on campus’. He had previously suggested that more research was needed on Manila before investigating other systems. The team reviewed the email.

The College web team among other interested parties, such as administrators, classified staff and faculty have been reporting that some areas of the College’s Web site are out of date (e.g. faculty Web sites) and that many departments/programs are not represented.  Currently, there are not enough resources on campus to address this problem. Before the recent budget crises, the College and ETS performed an analysis of various WCMS and were ready to make recommendations, however, the budget was cut and this project was cancelled. M. Kahn reported that the web team were being asked to do things that cannot be done with the present staff and systems. With a WCMS, the College would be able to overcome many of the obstacles that they currently face. 

The comment was made that CMS is primarily an instructional tool, but WCMS is more overarching and would be a tool for non-instructional areas as well. The question was then raised if /how CMS and WCMS are similar or different.

It was recommended that the College keep in mind the allocation of resources and scalability when considering various WCMS.

WCMS will not necessarily make Manila obsolete but would be a tool to assist employees update their own Web sites. Most WCMS systems have a report that identifies when sites were updated. 

A campus wide request should be made for representation. A deadline for signing up would be important. A specific invitation to areas that have no or have out–of-date Web sites should be considered.

Formation of the group would be finalized in Winter. 

3) Tech Plan Final Draft    
W. Chenoweth presented the final draft of the DA technology plan. The plan is posted on the Technology Task Force Web site. He reported that D. Nickel, C. Castillo and he had worked on the plan and incorporated the changes from the last meeting. There were no major changes, but language was incorporated to reflect the students’ point of view. 

The plan would be reviewed one more time in January 2007 and then go through the Governance groups. The draft would be named version 1. There could be some re-alignment once the CTAs had been reviewed. 

Present: E. Breault, C. Bruins, C. Castillo, W. Chenoweth. M. Cheung, B. Creamer, T. Dolen, L. Elvin, J. Hawk, S. Heffner, L. Jeanpierre, M. Kahn, S. Keegan, K. Metcalf, D. Mitchell, J. Mowrey, D. Nickel, W. Pritchard, J. Swensson, K Von Ahnen. B. Grobman.