Ed Tech Committee Meeting

January 30, 1996 Meeting

The meeting begin by featuring the latest in computer projection technology. The low resolution LCD projector made by 3M is lightweight and portable. It has a zoom lens feature with a maximum picture size of 25x25 feet. Due to energy conservation, the reflected energy density decreases as the image size increase and so it will dim. The amount of dimming is not serious, however, and the unit can be effectively used in normal room light. The unit can accept up to two different computer RGB inputs and two video inputs. Home trials involving the NFL playoffs demonstrated that video playback through the LCD projector is very good. The nominal bulb life is 700 hours.

It is anticipated that sometime this summer, higher resolution LCD projectors will be on the market. It is likely that such units will be the best solution for large classrooms as the unit can be located in the back in the projector both. Of course, communicate with the front podium will be required for this system to function optimally.

Following the scintillating demo of the new projection unit nuts@moo2 briefly summarized some sucess and failure points from last term:

Success Points:

• Increased faculty participation in this enterprises. For instance, all Astronomy courses taught in the Physics department are now Web courses. This seemed to have happened naturally.
• There is greater increase of student participation and web-authoring as part of assignments.
• There are enhanced computer projection capabilities in some lecture rooms which are being used
• Projection of Mathematica results in some math classes is now routine
• Classes are now available over the Internet for official UO credit. This are being run out of the Continuing Ed Center and this effort is being coordianted by Lynn Black

Failure Points

• There is still no formal faculty incentive program nor any language from the adminstration to the faculty on who electronic teaching methods can be considered as a form of teaching scholarship. This continues to be a significant obstacle to greater faculty participation.
• Gladstone has been quite unrealiable. As a result, the process has alienated many students and professors. The 4-day crash during finals week did not help things much. While the problem with gladstone was finally identified in early February to be caused by an "experimental" network interface which was put on the machine in mid-October, the failure(s) underscore the important point that courseware and/or student assigments for a particular class should use gladstone as the principal resource. YOu are just asking for trouble (although things appear stable now). If at all possible, dedicated departmental machines should really be used for specific courses. This requires facilities improvement for most departments.

• news.uoregon.edu has been overloaded lately meaning that access to classroom newsgroups has been difficult. Several professors are using this medium for electronic discussions and are experiencing frustration. joe@oregon readily acknowledges the problem and a new secondary news server, for purposes of serving uo.classes and other mainstream groups, is being acquired.

Student Apprenticeship Program

heerema@oregon Announced that the 6 students had been selected and training will commence. Assignment will be made for spring term. A needs assessment will be sent out to department heads and together with input from the CC and the Deans, we will determine unit placement for these students at the next meeting. Look for some email on the mailing list prior to this.

Computer Conferencing

jqj@darkwing Gave a brief report on the kinds of computer conferencing tools which are available. While there is general enthusiam for the prospects of a more full engagement between professors and students, the available tools remain cumbersome and quite network intensive.

A Visit from the Provost

Provost Moseley attended the first half of the meeting and addressed the committee. The salient points of this address are the following:

• He thanked the committee for looking into possible new initiatives (see more below) aimed at increasing faculty and student participation as well as overall reliability of service. He pointed out that unless this can happen, we will be in a position of having to surpress demand to avoid overload

• He announced the formation of a subcommittee of ed tech members and deans who will work together to produce a white paper for the legislature aimed at generating 2 million dollars of extra funding for instructional technology. This would essentially match what the students are putting in.

• He reminded the entire committee that the major outcome of the UO's investment in Instructional Technology has to be lower unit cost of education per student. This represents the boundary conditions in the current funding climate and its a serious limitation forcing this kind of outcome. kevan@oregon Thanked the Provost for his clarifying remarks.

Possible New Initiatives

nuts@moo2 then briefly discussed some possible new initiatives that could be funded under a modest increase in the student resource fee. The committee was asked to think about the priority of some of these initiatives, which can be found here .

Open Discussion

Following the presentation of the initiatives an open discussion involving various perspectives was initiated until hunger set in and the meeting was dissipated at 12:20. Some of the highlights of this discussion were:

• artc@cs Seriously challenged the idea that lower unit cost was actually an acheivable goal and that perhaps is one message this committee should deliver.
• matthews@aaa Strongly suggested that de-centralized services improves efficiency and might provide the most cost-effective solution. These sentiments were also echoed by melone@oregon . nuts@moo2 Remarked that the centralized-vs-decentralized issue should frame the discussion of priorities on new initiatives. Several people then declared themselves to be de-centralists.
• matthews@aaa Questioned some of the cost estimates for new student labs or departmental servers. dsmith@phloem reminded the group that there are also support costs, maintenance costs, costs for backup of materials, etc that can be significantly larger than the initial hardware purchase.