Robert Harris, harrisr@wpunj.edu

November 2003

 

Notes, EduCAUSE

  

 

  I. Plenary: Shirley Jackson - President, Renasslaer University

  •  Attaches great importance to "text mining" as a means of engaging in research.

  •  Suggests that the "demise of the lecture" can be seen by faculty as either a threat or a challenge, and should be taken as the latter -- can be "an incredible opportunity to become gatekeepers of the electronic university."

  •  Faculty can have more intimate interactions with undergrads in online courses than they do in the lecture format.

  •  The lecture format encourages passive learning while online classes encourage engagement.

  •  She questions the continued existence of the brick-and-mortar university, suggesting that students in the not so distant future might be "picking and choosing from a smorgasbord of educational opportunities."

  •  She points to the new EMPAC center, an arts facility at Renasslaer that will be offering realtime performances online and in NYC.

  •  "Technology is disruptive; information technology is really disruptive."

  •  Reflection: Unfortunately most of this comprises a re-packaging of 80s-style platitudes; I don't think anyone here hasn't heard (and probably said) this stuff over and over. She was introduced as having 18 honorary doctorates -- I guess picking them all up keeps her busy --

  II. Open Knowledge Initiative - Phil Long, Director for Strategic Planning, MIT

  • Stresses that the most important aspect of the OKI is full and complete integration of all university services

  •  Corporate partners include: IMS Global Learning (most important); Sun, MS, WebCT, Bb, the Learning Objects Network; uPortal.

  •  University partners include Stanford (Coursework -- an open source project that is live now) & the University of Michigan (Chef); Univ. Indiana also involved

  •  The MIT project is known as Stellar, but they are moving away from that and towards SAKAI, the new inter-university project (for which this talk is the initial unveiling).

  •  SAKAI deliverables include tool portability based on the JSR-168 Portlet standards; a pre-integrated and modular course management system (CMS)- and services-based portal; a common (inter-university) implementation timeline; open/open source licensing (see http://web.mit.edu/oki/license/index.html for details on what this means).

  •  Univ. of Indiana has 85,000 users (and we think we have problems!)

  •  See Visual Understanding Environment (VUE), a Tufts project to build a sophisticated content map GUI; will organize everything from local files to W3 content.: http://at.tccs.tufts.edu/projects/current-projects/27/

  •  See the OpenCourseWare site: http://ocw.mit.edu/index.html

  •  Reflection: although this is all very interesting it doesn't make the slightest bit of difference to most of us. OKI, if it comes off at all, will only affect the very uppermost level of the nation's top universities./p>

  III. Peer-to-Peer Networking: - Plenary, Moderated by Mara Liasson, with 2 academics and two industry-types

  •  Jack Valenti's primary strategy is based on labeling file-sharing as un-patriotic., un-American -- he repeats these allegations in numerous formats, over and over.

  •  Both Valenti and the RIAA guy want university officials to be their policemen, using university resources to protect intellectual property. Both university officials suggest they have more important educational objectives.

  •  The official from Penn State unveils a new program to making a 500,000 song directory available for "free" (ie, from the Tech or university fees) to all UP students

  •  Liasson suggests that all industries adapt to technological realities, and points out the VCR as an example; Valenti himself used pretty much the same apocalyptic language he is using for online movies to despair of the VCR. Both the industry and copyright laws will have to evolve.

  IV. Low Threshold Applications (LTAs) - Featuring three librarians from Penn Sate and Lehigh

  •  Resources include:

  •  Folders for students; a shared virtual desktop that reduces the access threshold.

  •  The guy from Penn State suggests that instead of (or perhaps in addition to) bringing the students to the library they are trying to "bring the library to the students."

    •  Subject guide tool (link, really) placed within the CMS. Subject-oriented modules to which the students can connect without having to go searching. Wagner has a start to this, but their system a) has narrower subject areas and b) includes the CMS-based link.

    •  Reserves tool -- strikes me as something we are already doing

    •  Virtual Reference (which they don't have up yet) will allow students to email questions for reference librarians for realtime (or close to it) answers. Have a feeling they are still working up to this.

  •   One of Bell's ideas of a resource for Journal ToCs.

  V. Student Consultants: Unleash the Power - Karalee Woody, David Cox, University of Washington

  •  UW has 40,000 FTE & their SCs handle: 3 public access labs, 5 computer classrooms, 4 libraries, 1 digital station (not lab, but station, from what I can tell), 1 website for a total of about 900 workstations

  •  Seven full-time staff work with a total of about 100 students (65 on campus). They also have some graduate students, seems like about five.

  •  They handle student leadership much the same way we do, with teams, promotions, and supervisors.

  •  They have a very good idea of lab use because students have to log on every time they sit down.

  •  UW library stations are halfway between dummy and full workstations: they have the OPAC, email and the MS Office suite.

  •  Income is built into the department budget (ie. from the State of Washington, tech fee) but they also get some funding from the university library and their (academic) department of computer science. I didn't see the entire breakdown but their largest expense, by far and away, was the FT staff.

  •  Their student tech fee pulls in $4 million per annum, which is controlled 100% by students. The students elect a committee which uses a set of guidelines to allocate funds (note: this was Phil Long's original intention for the STC program at WPUNJ). About a quarter of it goes into the SC program, and the rest goes into the modem pool and various projects (not unlike the provost grants here). Although the fee does not fund infrastructure a good deal of it goes for buying computer storage. The fee does not pay for software straight out, but does pay for software that is rolled into other projects.

  •   Training occurs for five days preceeeding the Fall semester. Students each pick a track (unlike our program, in which they are assigned a team). Each track is assigned tasks, and the tracks compete against each other to complete the tasks. Their digital media track did a short film, for example.

  •  The project concept is continued throughout the semester.

  •  Every student comes to the training, no matter how long they have been in the program. Some conduct various parts of the training, but all participate in being trained as well.

  •   As with out program the SCs offer free workshops to the university community, and SCs are encouraged to attend them. They also pay up to $125 /student for outside training (Note: at a max expenditure of $1,250 that's a pretty good investment. Ours would be closer to $1500 but wouldn't even come to half of that, and would be a nice advertisement for the program).

  •  They have partnerships with local schools; students run the school district networks, etc.

  •  They hire across the curriculum, as we do. Criteria for hiring includes: experience with technology, attitude; willingness to work unpopular shifts. First year students do not work more than 10 hours a week, and all students work between 10 and 20 hpw.

  •  Students Access to Computing Group -- http://depts.washington.edu/sacg/

  •  Educational Partnerships and Learning and Technologies -- http://www.washington.edu/eplt/

  VI. STC-related ideas - from throughout the conference, including my own session.

  •  We need to set up an email option for students; students can email questions and the STCs will answer them -- give it a 24 or 48 hour turnaround. Break the questions into subject areas and encode the mailtos with the specific subject area. In time we'll be able to work up a "book" (online, hypertext) of answers.

  •  Assign projects to each team during training -- each team presents their team project at the end of the training period, and trainees (not the team leaders or FT staff) vote on the winner. Winners get something? Note that the project concept can be continued throughout the semester, with semester winners being presented at the Xmas party, etc.

  •  Offer students up to $125 per-head/per-semester for outside training; specify very clearly what training qualifies for re-imbursement.

  •   Have regular STCs vote for the STC of the semester, and give that individual a $25 gift certificate to the campus store (or whatever).

  •  Require all applications be completed online, and keep track of them (and all future employment records) with a database. Records which are currently kept on paper and in folders in the back can be all electronic and online in the future.

  •  Every semester have the coordinator (me) and a team leader interview every student who was evaluated in the previous semester in order to go over what they are doing right and in what areas they can improve. Would also give me a chance to talk to every student.

  •  Place a profile (picture, background, and personality) of each student on the STC website. Kind of like a mini-website -- ask each student a silly question like: "if you had to be a vegetable, what vegetable would you be?" Etc.

  •   Have all STC training invitees come to campus sometime during the summer for a one-on-one (or one-on-two-or-three) training with the coordinator and some TLM.

  •  Train more people than we need right off, specifying that some are on a waiting list. Draw people from the waiting list as needed throughout the semester.