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Present: David Phillips (Chair), John Alexander (ITC/guest), Scott Crittenden (ITC/guest), Jim Campbell, Rick Fore, John Lloyd, Bill Pearson, Bob Rood, Tim Sigmon, George Williams, Alice Howard Next Meeting: April 17, 11:15am-12:30pm, ITC-Forestry Conference room (NOTE: This meeting rescheduled to May 1, 11:15am-12:30pm) Departmental Computing Support Update ===================================== Scott Crittenden (Manager, Departmental Computing, ITC) used his handout (coming in Messenger Mail to those unable to attend this meeting) to review the current status of this program: 1. Departmental Technology Makeovers -- for the Economics department, the assessment is complete and the resulting Assessment and Technology Plan will be finalized and presented within a week -- some items that are being recommended for the implementation phase include a server cleanup and standardized lab environment; for the Nursing School, the assessment interviews are underway -- preliminary recommendations include configuration/performance assistance for their RS6000 and a server upgrade. Council members hoped that these assessments also include making the department/school aware of the larger scheme (i.e. computing environment) and how they fit into it. 2. Local Support Partner (LSP) program -- to be eligible, UVa computing support staff need to spend at least 50% of their time in this way -- about 90 such staff have been identified so far -- for starters, the LSPs have been divided into 4 area groupings (which have regular bi-monthly meetings) with a representative Steering Committee. Two special interest groups (NT servers , Access databases) have also been started. The LSPs are using several email lists for communication and collective problem solving -- Council members discussed the effectiveness and efficiencies of newsgroups vs. mailing lists and suggested that the mailing-list and/or newsgroup be archived to an FAQ. Other services provided to LSPs include: training opportunities, free subscriptions to Microsoft and Apple tech support, a web-site with resource links, and inclusion in ITC planning and rollout groups. There was discussion about how staff who do lesser amounts of computing support (i.e. less than 50% of their job description) might find out about some of these same resources. Teaching Technology Initiative (TTI) Update =========================================== John Alexander (Manager, Instructional Technology, ITC) led a discussion about this program which has been funded out of the Classroom Technology Initiative (CTI) starting in 1995 -- the CTI also funded classroom technology "makeovers" and the Multimedia Resource Center (MRC). In this 3rd/last year of the TTI program, the focus is on assessment and evaluation -- is this the right model? how to accomplish a balance between in-depth support for a few Fellows and more general support? how can the work of the TTI Fellows be archived and become a shared resource? what other options are there (e.g. the Toolkit, collegial mentoring programs for faculty)? and what others might there be ( e.g. create a program for graduate student support)? Council members discussed the archival and resource-sharing issues which have been highlighted by this program -- the media base concept, the need for disk space, a cataloguing system, information "standards", intellectual property rights, etc. -- the Library and ITC are currently working on some of these issues (disk and standards). The TTI program (with about 12 annual Fellow awards based on merit, not on a geographical distribution among departments) is a collaborative one with the Teaching Resource Center (TRC) and has also benefited by the experience gained and shared by IATH in a somewhat similar endeavor. The question of how to assess the impact of TTI, not only on the Fellows, but in a more diffuse and dispersed way (i.e. the trickle-down effect) was considered and discussed. Looking Ahead/Future Directions =============================== A particular imminent change (the evolution of faraday to a cluster of CPUs and a file-server) prompted discussion about how faculty could participate in debates, decisions, and strategic planning about ITC's future directions. Should this be a UCIT role (i.e. that they would review ITC's planning cycle)? David is willing to take Council's feedback to UCIT. Discussion of some current and recent back-to-school changes (e.g. will ITC's labs go to Windows95 or NT over this summer? the introduction of Simeon email in Fall '96) highlighted the fact that ITC's changes have consequences for faculty and that faculty would like to participate in a dialogue about proposed changes and asked for their commentary -- it also highlighted the fact that faculty need to know now (in the Spring semester preceding the back-to-school changes) in order to adequately plan and prepare for their Fall courses. In response to "where can we find information about UVa's Year 2000 efforts?", the URL is: http://www.virginia.edu/year2000/.[an error occurred while processing this directive] [an error occurred while processing this directive]