Ed Tech Committee Meeting

November 20, 1995


Apprenticeship Program

Final Approval of the Apprenticeship Program has been received. We will begin in the Winter Term with 6 students mentored by the Computer Center. The Ed Tech Comm will determine where they go in consultation with the Deans. We should try to advertise for positions and interview prior to end of this term so that training and utilization of the individuals can begin right away nextg term. Ed Tech should begin to actively work on this. Both people and projects reccommendations are needed. Training will take place prior to projects.
Prioritization of projects should be done by the Ed tech comm.

David Weingarten of CIE

I do not want to imply that you are negleting anything, rather to provide a perspective....

We provide students with "services they want." Main concern is for items that are considered frivilous that might have educational value. Especially looking to the future of educational venues that are of interest to students.
IRC - Internet Relay Chat in contrast to Talk (person to person), allows a larger number of individuals to "talk." I did this with German students via the computer. I used IRC to learn German.
Games are banned at the present time. Despite the fact that they do not provide any educational value, it interests students in computers. Game playing should be allowed when the labs are not full. Some actually have values. MUD (multi user dimensions) can be hard on computing resources, but they learned to program by "playing" the MUDS. They did not like the way the game worked, so they learned how to program in order to change the game. This is a marketable skill he would not have learned how to do this if he could not have played the game.
I guess I need to address Network usage. Yes, this is a drain on resources, but the WWW pages take up more space. The WWW take up 26% of the bandwidth, IRC 1%. Having a server for these programs is more intensive that providing terminals. Sante Fe estimated that a T-1 connection could handle 500 IRC connections.
I suggest that one limits the time that one can play the games. Foe example, banned on the modem but can be played when wired. Most policies seem to be based on "common sense." I encourage you to put some thought into the University Policies.

GB - there is a student committee that is going to give us some input. the best venue for your input. We need to determine how can we limit abuse and how much demand is there.
JQ - this tech is already used in many instances at other institutions.
LL - there are many great instances of well thought out MUDS and MOOS
CHL - this should be used when it is found to be appropriate.
DW- perhaps the appropriate nature is not always so evident. it does not have to be so apparent - remeber not all education takes place in the classroom.
GB - students need to push professors.
LL - there really is also a problem of how to "guide" the curricular aspects of the IRC - You can do anything you want.
TG - from a faculty perspective - the tech is invisible and most faculty look at it and sign - I do not have time.... it is up to the students to help show the faculty member how to indeed integrate this into the course.
DU - there is a problem in that these things are at the present time not allowed!
TG- then the Student Policy Committee need to sit down and make some succinct proposals to the Committee. The
JSS - these things are not banned - if a faculty wants the item, we will provide it. The real problem is support issues that we can hardly deal with. We see alot of complaints from other sites . . also addictive behaviour on this. go to ~llynch - interactive communication on the Internet. to read both sides of this.

EDUCOM '95

Reported by JQ Johnson
EDUCOM was large and had alot of material. There were a number of people that were there with whom I need to talk to. There were lots of trees, but not a forest. I observed a number of trends that were forced on the conferenc due to themes. One such was the increased number of library and computer science collaborations
- Ed Tech was VERY hot.... driven by interest in pedagogical things - learner centered and collaborative learning.
- this is very different that using Ed tech to improve a lecture
- In the closing Plenery Center I was sitting . . He was asked to install MOO software in the Provost's Office. He wanted to see what this was...
- growing set of vendors who are offering "add-ons" to WWW- to provide other items that are not readily available.
- I believe that we need to synthesize the information from others.

METRICOM (DS)

We are still waiting for folks to "go" for this. The system seems to be working very successful to date. We are working on getting the range extended to 1 mile. We exptect to be able to provide this service at the beginning of Winter Term. This seems to be very successful at a number of other campuses. If you believe that there is any interest within your department - please let us know.

HARDWARE Survey

863 Teaching Faculty were surveyed. See (XXXXX add http address) for the results. They seem to be very telling and give us an indication where we need to spend our money in order to get our faculty up to speed.

TLTR Paper Discussion

Tabled

BUDGET

Web based courses have increased by 300%. We are indeed scaling up! We MUST come up with some strategies for further development. We clearly cannot be in the same position in five years that we are now when it comes to the budget issues. The black part is the unallocated budget - of which most of it went to the deans.
I have found that the ideal "support" number at a computer lab is 1 support person per 20/25 machines. This cam from Michigan and other a couple of other sources. At the present time we have a ratio of about 1 to 50/60. Currently we have 5.0 FTE and 6 students. There is no doubt that the total funds required will increase. One source for increased revenue is to increase the student fee by 10 - 15% every year. The Library only has 3.5 FTE and 6 students. These low numbers are adequate for the present time, but was demand increases we MUST provide more support. Period! One strategy would be to increase the budget of support people. There is also a lack of $ to increase the WWW access. Another fixed costs is the GTF remission of the fee and the "financial aid" which comes back to the students. All of the "fixed costs" come to $1.5 million. This allows about $1.2 Million.
JQ - there is not any allowance to replace any of the desktops.
The Pie chart shows the allocation of the 1.3 mill - most of it went to the deans. The deans will report to John Mosely. He will then decide what information the information that is passed on to us.
JM - within our total budget of the University, we cannot increase our spending on a per student basis. We are really talking about a re-allocation of existing funds. The deans must be involved in this and this committee cannot make the decisions. Do not assume that the allocation will remain at. John will not allow us to even think that the deans are reporting to this committee as to how they are spending their money.
GB - is very encouraged that the deans ARE spending their $ in Ed tech.
JM - we are trying to resolve the issues of Ed tech. I need for this commitee to keep up with the realiatio nof what these problems are. I recognize that we WILL be spending more money on this. One of the national discussion items is "how are you spending your $ on Ed tech?" We are not at the leading edge, nor are we very farbehind. Everyone is very concerned about how schools are going to be keeping up with tech. The general concesus is that $ per student will be decreasing.... this reallocation will be creating many "tensions" within our system.
GB - We need to know about how the $ is being spent on this campus. Let me finish up 150 k went to modems. We do not know what will happen to this #. We recognize that the students need better servers (ie Gladstone). I believe that we need to consider taking the modem $ and add it to the student server budget - this will make a REAL difference in its use on campus. Joe could you make a plot of WWW pages to Time?
I see a model that the departments should begin to have their own servers. Each one could have a Sparc 20 so that each department can service their students.
MW- was is the cost per seat for Gladstone? compared to a cost per person for smaller machines?
GB - this would be a good number to work up. The bottom line is to determine the bottom line of support.
NM- what is the general plan of the University? What about providing networking and peripherals for the student. The things that they cannot provide for themselves. There needs to be a communication of the VISION from this committee. The deans need this in order to win their support. You need to get sponsorship from the top and ownership from the "bottom." I am perhaps speaking about last year....
CHL - A vision statment will enable to us to "roll with the punches" as technology evolves. With this in hand we will be able acquire more funds.
GB - a five year plan is being verbally conveyed in a fairly clear manner.
DU - we seem to spend alot of time about the big budget picture. We never seemed to be able to make connections between budget and vision.... there is something that is puzzling me at the present time. We are discussing issues that are so disjointed that I am not sure how they relate to the role of the Committee.
What abou the question of what Internet tools would be the most useful to encourageing learning? Is Gladstone a good tool from a pedagogical standpoint? I would like to see this discussion prior to an allocation conversation.
GB - it seems to be fine for me?
JQ - I disagre totally - it reflects a method of learning that is not consistant with current thought.
TG - we cannot discuss everyting! the TLTR will be a good way to figure this out.... the issues need to be worked on by the appropriate committees on campus.
See you in January.
Notes taken by Chris Luebkeman. . . sorry if I forgot any part of the discussions!!!