Minutes of Tech Comm meeting on 11/13/2012
Members present: Norman Buchwald, Rachael Ugale, Gordon Watt, Jeannine Methe,
Minta Winsor, Lisa Ulibarri, Carlos Enriquez, Kurt Shadbolt, Chasity Whiteside,
Des Chun, Katherine Tollefson, Ken Grace, Zarir Marawala (chair).
The meeting was called to order at 12:05pm. The items on the agenda were
addressed in order.
1. PRBC report /update by Gordon –
Program review, unit plan reviews were done at the last meeting.
The need to incorporate request for new tech form was brought up.
Curricunet issue – Governet—3 components:
Course outline and programs.
Post –accreditation, look at program review and assessment.
Program review—assessment section — works with data collection but does not
replace eLumen. Jan Novak from PBRC will work with the vendor and District ITS to
conduct demonstrations and develop an implementation timeline.
2. Groupwise/Novell OS--do we need it? Is it cost efficient? Is there not a better
system we can use.
Points that a discussion revealed was that the full time GW technician John McHugh
retired and was not replaced so other ITS staff is filling in part-time and still doing
their other duties.
There are 3 steps to get rid of Novell which includes converting the Operating
System to Active Directory like the college OS which needs to be coordinated with
the college IT, archiving of the historical emails which is a large volume and is
currently in progress, and lastly transition to a better email system that provides the
needed security since many users email confidential student and employee data.
District ITS will update Chabot Tech Committee as each phase occurs.
3. What is the Zone and why do we need it? What does it do for us? Is anyone using
it?
Points that were revealed in discussion were as follows:
--The infrastructure of Banner requires the presence of the portal we call Zone.
--Zone does not get updated by users and yet is designed to allow updates by
responsible groups. Norm continues to update the Chabot Library tab on the Zone.
--To make it more attractive and useful, maybe we can introduce Zone for different
things—posting announcements on Zone, group studio feature to share information
and documents, etc. Maybe work with the ASCC REP for future group discussions,
live chat for students, ability to email users.
--Campus email needed with.edu identifier through zone mail to prevent spam and
give proof that you are a student or a faculty member etc.
A Zone Renovation Task Force was created to address the above issue in #3 item:
Jeannine, Lisa, Chasity, Minta, Ken, Rachel, Norman, Katherine.
4. Project for doing poll in class in real time. This is something we can work on as
part of an improved web service or look into a grant for bringing that service to our
web.
5. Discussion on content for webpages update with the new system being going
online, i..e December 19: it was agreed that webpage content is up to the content
manager—faculty for their website, or the Dean.
This also means that soon after Thanksgiving, there will be a memo sent out to the
campus re: when posting new items on the Web may not be saved i.e. if the system is
being transitioned by Progent from our current Cold Fusion platform to Microsoft
platform.
Early December we will be freezing content changes on Web This has been
coordinated between college IT and A & R, financial aid, academic services.
6. Tech Comm recognizes the continued need for a webmaster fulltime and will
continue to emphasize this point to where a fulltime webmaster position is
established for a college our size.
The meeting was adjourned at 12:59 pm.