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University of California, Berkeley
MINUTES OF THE E-BERKELEY STEERING COMMITTEE
Meeting of March
24, 2003
Chancellor’s Conference Room, California Hall
Members
present:
EVC and Provost Paul Gray, Chair, AVC Greg Brown, AVC Ron Coley, Director
Jon Conhaim, VC Ed Denton, Professor Ken Goldberg, Dean Ralph Hexter, Director
Chris Hoffman for Dean Mary Ann Mason, Director Phyllis Hoffman, VC Jim Hyatt,
Assoc. Dean George Johnson, Director Helen Kelly, Director Rosemary Kim for
VC Donald McQuade, University Librarian Tom Leonard, AVC Jack McCredie, Chief
Technology Officer Tessa Michaels, VC Horace Mitchell, AVC David Moers, Director
Ralph Moon, Director Barbara Morgan, AVC Robert Price for VC Beth Burnside,
Professor Philip Stark, and AVC George Strait.
Also
attending: JR Schulden, Student Information Systems, and Mara Hancock,
Educational Technology Services.
1.
Welcome
and Approval of Minutes from February 27, 2003, Meeting
During
the brief absence of Chair Gray, VC Jim Hyatt opened the meeting with a call
for approval of the minutes from the meeting of February 27, which were approved
as presented.
2.
Recent Successes
Horace
Mitchell presented information on the new Cal in the Community web site, a
guide to over 200 public service programs offered by UC Berkeley to the Bay
Area community. This project was not funded last year in the e-Berkeley
budget process, but BAS decided to fund the site and go forward. The
site was developed in collaboration with the Administrative Systems Department;
it was designed for ease of use by featuring several different search methods
for sorting through the available resources. Mary Ann Mason asked that
community service projects in graduate programs be included; BAS will followup.
Hewlett Packard Grant for Expanding Wireless
Network
Philip
Stark announced the award of a grant from Hewlett Packard, in the amount of
$200,000 in funds for hardware for 160 wireless access points to be placed
at locations throughout campus such as public areas, buildings with large
classrooms, and buildings with many classrooms. About 50 access points
will be reserved for departments willing to pay installation costs.
Cards for laptops will be distributed (hopefully by the Library) to students
in three classes mentioned in the proposal (Statistics, Chemistry, Anthropology).
The cost to campus will be approximately $200,000 for installation, with $120,000
coming from IST and $80,000 from Undergraduate Affairs. This will give
the campus about four times as many connections as now exist. Paul Gray
congratulated Philip and others who worked on the proposal to Hewlett Packard.
Reduced Costs for Telephone Services
Jack
McCredie brought the committee up to date on efforts to bring purchasing power
to bear on large volume items such as personal computers (a possibility) and
telecommunications costs. Costs for voice services have been lowered
by a recent renegotiation of our AT&T agreement; projected savings for
the entire campus will be more than $750,000 per year. Reports will
be sent to departments showing past usage for the year and future reductions.
The new rates will be instituted soon, and have been applied to student residence
halls already (5,500 phones). An executive summary of CNS Voice Recharge
facts was included in the meeting packet.
UC Berkeley NewsCenter
Chair
Gray introduced a new member of the Steering Committee, Associate Vice Chancellor
for Public Affairs George Strait, who described the popular new NewsCenter
website focusing on campus news and links to other useful sites. The
NewsCenter aims to be informative, comprehensive, and current for the past
36 hours; it is updated frequently with critical news. Public Affairs
is still experimenting with who should write the articles, and what kinds
of pictures and multimedia to use. They will ask users to assist them in defining
needs and desires for the site. Challenges include the need for a more
rational content management system, and a database of users.
Paul
Gray asked about an HRMS update; Barbara Morgan responded that it is scheduled
for the next meeting.
3.
E-Berkeley Symposium
Jon
Conhaim outlined the latest plans for the Symposium, which takes place at
Clark Kerr Campus on May 2nd. An invitation (included in
the meeting packet) has been sent to all Academic Senate faculty, everyone
who teaches gateway courses, deans, and chairs. About 50 people have
already registered; Jon expects 80-100 faculty, lecturers, GSIs and staff
to attend. A draft agenda was also in the handout; the meeting will
open with introductory remarks by Paul Gray and Christina Maslach on the factors
motivating the campus to re-examine its approach to conducting large undergraduate
lecture courses. The next item will be concurrently held breakout sessions
led by faculty members, addressing the following subjects:
·
Reducing Administrative Workload and
Improving Teaching
·
Changing the Culture of Teaching
·
Using New Course Models to Build Learning
Communities
·
Evaluating Student Learning How do
we know what works?
Following
lunch, there will be demonstrations of learning technology, services, and
resources currently available on campus; the Council of Academic Partners
is helping develop the resource information that will be presented.
A summary of issues and recommendations discussed in the breakout sessions
will close the afternoon session (this section of the program is still being
worked on). A reception will be held at the end of the day.
4.
Learning Systems: Change in Strategy and
Next Steps for CourseWeb
Mara
Hancock gave an update on the new strategy being developed for building a
campus-wide “learning system,” since budget constraints made it necessary
to cancel the RFP that had been issued to outside vendors for a new system.
A
period of study and assessment of student and faculty needs has resulted in
a vision and strategy for designing a system using campus resources.
Surveys of users of the CourseWeb system have shown that they would like to
see that system evolve; efforts are being made to define key features that
will meet faculty needs in a flexible, reliable, easy-to-use system.
As new system modules are implemented, other campus systems will be replaced.
This project will provide an opportunity to work with other groups on campus
and at other universities. The handout for the meeting also included
information on CourseWeb usage, including accolades from users. Mara
said that a “roadmap” needs to be developed for future progress, and that
once that has been done she will report back to the Steering Committee.
JR
Schulden noted that data integration is an important challenge in developing
the architecture for the new system; CourseWeb gets data from many other systems
and some interfaces are very difficult. The departments handling critical
data, such as the Registrar and Human Resources, have been very helpful, but
it will be a demanding task to create a smooth infrastructure for this new
system. She mentioned that the portal projects will also encounter these
data integration issues.
Paul
Gray asked whether building the learning management system using campus resources
presents a bigger support task than using a commercial vendor; Mara replied
that better service (quicker response) on campus may balance the advantages
of using a vendor. Philip Stark commented that CourseWeb is a good,
robust system; it is scaling well and many campus departments have collaborated
on its development, so it is better adapted to our campus than an outside
product.
Jack
McCredie noted the opportunity to work with other UC campuses to create a
learning system. He attended a systemwide meeting at UCOP in Spring
2002 where many other UC campus representatives discussed the need for this
type of system, but Jack said that collaborative efforts had fallen by the
wayside due to the budget situation.
5.
E-Berkeley Innovative Projects
Jon
Conhaim gave a status report on the e-Berkeley Innovative Projects approved
in last year’s budget process. These projects received $10,000 - $20,000
from e-Berkeley, plus matching funds from the sponsoring program or department.
Jon distributed a list of the nine projects, with details on the status of
each; several of the projects have been completed. Jon demonstrated
Web-enabled PowerPoint with Audio Narration, a successful project built on
iCreate software from Wanadu, using a staff training example.
6.
E-Berkeley Budget Process
Helen
Kelly explained that voting for new proposals for e-Berkeley Innovative Projects
will be done at the May 14 Steering Committee meeting; proposals will be available
online for review by April 21 (members need to forward their CalNet ID to
Jon Conhaim in order to see the proposals online). This year’s program
is the same as last year’s ($20,000 max with a matching component for a total
project budget of $40,000). EBITF will forward final recommendations
for all reviewing committees to the e-Berkeley Steering Committee. We
expect 30-45 proposals; EBITF will probably recommend 5 or 6 for funding.
7.
Announcements
UCLink Situation
Jack
McCredie described the problems that occurred on March 7 with the UCLink email
system. The system has run out of capacity several times, having grown 10%
per semester since its inception 10 years ago; IST had hoped to do a major
upgrade last spring but postponed the upgrade because of budget cuts.
The system also needs to be re-architected to be part of a unified message
context. IST had a task force a year ago (chaired by JR Schulden) to
look at email strategies and develop an RFP, but work was delayed due to budget
and timing problems and the RFP was put on hold. After the recent serious
problems, Jack has asked JR Schulden to finish the RFP and issue it so that
a new system can be implemented this summer. Funding will need to be
found for this, perhaps from VCAC in combination with some IST funding already
assigned to email.
The
meeting was adjourned at 3:30 p.m.
Future
Meetings
Wednesday,
May 14, 2003, 10:00 a.m. noon, Chancellor’s Conference Room, California
Hall
Wednesday,
June 18, 2003, 2:00 p.m. 4:00 p.m., Chancellor’s Conference Room, California
Hall
__________________________________________________________________
Email
group: e-berkeley_steering@listlink.berkeley.edu
Please
send corrections and comments to: Sheila Press, avc_asst@uclink.berkeley.edu