ITS Meeting Minutes - 10-16-2003
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General Announcements
Presented by Eric Nathan

Meetings at first and end of November but may not have one in December.

New IT manager – Jason Yun, Manager of IT Technical services

Distance Education
Presented by Gail Evans

 

12.3% of student body is involved in distance education options. Online courses are expected to increase. Running at 90% capacity for online courses. 7.3% SCH is either off campus or online. This number is up from 6.2%. Victoria is the only other campus with higher distance education enrollment. Our distance education % is much higher than main campus and Clear Lake.
90 to 95% of distance ed courses are actually physically taking other courses in-person.

Teaching center may go into 290/Willowbrook area. Meeting November 21st to discuss the topic. This area is very strategically important to our university. Preliminary discussions talking to Medical Center about delivering classes at that location. Some discussion was also mentioned about UT and A&M delivering through the Medical Center. UH Victoria campus is expected to make a presence in both proposed distance education sites as well as other campuses in the UH System.

Per Hossein Sharoki: UHD needs to look at business models and percentages to determine our involvement level in current and proposed distance education efforts. The support infrastructure is different for various models of distance education. We need to be aware of that and discussing possibilities. Discussions with provosts will commence shortly.

AACSB accreditation is also a topic of discussion especially in regard to distance education. New standards revisions within the AACSB should make maintaining accrededation with distance education easier. A national AACSB conference will be held here at UHD.

Distance education models that encourage more direct faculty to student involvement are encouraged.

Supplemental online course enrollment is an extremely important vehicle for supporting commuter students. Enrollment for courses that utilize online course components is up 30% from last year. Formulas are being developed to analyze support for fully online vs supplemental courses. More and more colleges are requiring faculty to use online delivery methods at least supplemental in their courses. This has a direct impact on server and support needs. Increasing class sizes also drives supplemental online course enrollment up. The university must ultimately decide what the support priority is.

IT Initiatives and Priorities in Institutional Planning
Presented by Erin Mayer

Think about what you think the university should be doing in terms of technology and make sure your unit plan reflects that initiative.

Last year 91 pc upgrades were delayed and some of the sattlite labs were not upgraded because of budget constraints. These items are on top of the priority list this year. Because of this some of the current year budget initiatives may also be affected.

 

W.I. Dykes Library
Presented by Steve Casburn

Nothing to report

ITV / Multimedia Services
Presented by Lloyd Matzner

Process of putting together Spring ITV schedule. 34 have currently been submitted proposals for courses. Several slots still available.

New presentation classrooms added in the Academic Building. These have podiums that have built in computers and ceiling mounted projectors. Surveys will be sent to determine utilization rates.

Developing a plan to support a new building. Bother permaninatly installed and portable equipment is being considered in the plan. If you or your college have specific needs please submit those needs to ITV/MM Services. Registrar office is currently reviewing room assignments for new building.

 

Academic Computing Lab & User Support Services
Presented by Said Fattouh and Lucy Bowen

Forward Electronic classroom needs to ACL.

Software requests and concerns of next semester should be submitted to the ACL as soon as possible.

 

General TTLC / Instructional Technology
Presented by Mark Henderson

IT Grants Awarded
Diversity & assessment in Urban Classrooms with Dr. Chen and Bhattacharjee
General Mathwright Microworld for Freshman and Sophomore level Math Courses with Dr. Bill Waller

OCDP
CJ 4309 – Seminar in Criminal Justice Films with Dr. Jackovich & Dr. Karson

WebCT 4.x Upgrade
Upgrading production server just after grades are due this semester. Should have access to courses for fully online courses over break. Many training opportunities are available during the semester. Please take advantage of that.

Macromedia Contribute
Application piloting and rolling out to UHD population middle to end November. Like Dreamweaver light. Easier interface and uploading to staging server. New content mgt system also being piloted that will put in a workflow process for site updates being pushed from staging server to the live UHD site.

IT Phone system
By Joe Longoria

Phone training sessions are available throughout October.

Mobile Computing and Wireless Network Report:
Presented by Laura Montelongo and John Garza

100% wireless except for student life building

80211B standard will work up to 11mbs. Encryption is being used to standardize security. All 80211B compatible wireless cards should be compatible with the UHD wireless network.

Access information for UHD wireless network can be obtained at http://uhdwireless/

Students are only allowed access to the internet. Faculty and Staff still have access to shared drives that their regular network access account would allow.
Standard username/accounts are used for both wireless and regular network access.