University Technology Committee
MINUTES
February 13, 2012
Members Present:
Len Roberson (Vice Chair), Scott Bennett, Bruce Kavan, Mike
Kennedy, Marsha Lupi, Gerald Merckel, Jeff Michelman, Deb
Miller, Lauren Newton, Jim Owen, Marianne Roberts, Diana
Tanner, Nicholas Eastham
Others Present:
Kathy Hughes, Dmitriy Bond, Bill McSherry, John Sharp
1. January Minutes
 No corrections or additions to the January minutes, and they will stand as
submitted.
2. Announcements
 New Help Desk Manager: Kathy Hughes announced that we have a new
Help Desk Manager, Jeremy Duckworth, who was previously in Student
Affairs as a CTech and was an Administration Support Assistant Tech.
3. Report: Digital Asset Management System – Len Roberson
 Len announced that the y had two presentations from two vendors who were
selected: Sharestream and Kaltura. They have received feedback from those
who attended. The actual committee will begin meeting this week to receive
feedback from IT. The next step would be selection. Hopefully, by the
meeting next month, there will be a recommended product and negotiations
completed.
4. Report: Distance Learning Committee – Len Roberson
 Len announced that they are in the midst of receiving feedback from draft 1 of
the DL Strategic Plan. They have held an open forum, and each of the college
reps have reached out to their faculty and staff to receive feedback. The
second open forum is today at 3:00 in the President’s Conference Room.
After this week, they will begin to take into consideration all the feedback and
come up with a second draft to be circulated. This will come to all UTC
members, deans and chairs. The DLC will meet this Friday.
5. Report: Campus Technology Committee - Lauren Newton
 Lauren stated that they have a proposal recommending a small pilot for
Turnitin. The contact person changed, and they are now asking for $1,000 to
do a pilot for the fall semester. They will work on the funding aspect of this,
but all the other information is the same. This is a viable plagiarism detection
product (software). The faculty are interested in getting this product and think
it is superior to our current plagiarism detection software package. It has a
much larger database of papers that it checks. They also have a component
called grade mark. They are asking for permission to pursue getting faculty
members on board. This would be a campus-wide purchase.
 Jeff Michelman asked what their history is with Blackboard and is it
Blackboard compatible? Lauren answered that it does work with Blackboard.
Right now Blackboard gives us Safe Assign for free, but we can still use
Turnitin. It might only be available if it is turned on for the whole university.
Also, Jeff was surprised that they are charging for a pilot with the chance they
might get a contract for this. Lauren was told that this was for training
materials and set up. She will continue talking to them more about this
charge. There is faculty concern if this pilot does not run for an entire
semester.
 Deb Miller commented that if a pilot moves forward, then it should be looked
at more as a study than a pilot to gather data. It is an expensive product, and
they have developed a reputation around the state for raising the price after a
year or two, as much as 200 or 300%. The DL consortium has tried to get
state-wide pricing (like Blackboard), but has not been able to get it to a
reasonable fee. This is a vendor to be careful with.
 Len remarked that Lance and he spoke that the UTC cannot grant authority to
do this, but it is a good place to get feedback and support. Depending upon
the nature of the pilot, it might have to go to the ISC. Something to consider
is the response during peak time. It would be wise to figure out where the
funding will come from and gather some data from both products.
6. Report: Blackboard – Deb Miller
 Deb reported that she has reviewed the report from last time, and there is
nothing new. All projects are moving on.
7. Report: IT Security Action Team – Jeff Durfee
 Jeff was not present at the meeting so there is no report.
8. Report: Internet Presence Committee – Scott Bennett
 Scott stated that there is not much to report on except that CMS information is
pretty much complete except for two departments in Student Affairs that need to
be done. There are some miscellaneous items left including the Faculty
Association page that is being reviewed.
9. Report: IT Organizational Task Force – Scott Bennett
 Scott indicated that they have met a few times, including a meeting with the entire
committee two weeks ago. They have finished the conference calls with the peer
institutions. There are plans to visit at least two potential sites within the next
couple of months: University of Maryland and UNC-Wilmington. They have
also engaged the Education Advisory Board to look at our situation and how we
are structured and see what recommendations they can provide from the research
they have done.
10. Presentation: Library OneSearch – Michael Kusak
 Michael Kucsak gave a presentation of the Library’s OneSearch function. This
provides one place to go to find everything. It reaches out to 98% of our
electronic content. You are taken to the full-text articles. They implemented this
in mid-October, and the results have been phenomenal; requests for interlibrary
loan articles have dropped around 60% and the usage of some of their most
expensive databases are up over 50%. Students are finding things in other
databases they might not have looked in before. There are a lot of features and
functionality in this system that is delivering nearly the entire universe of the
library into a single search. The provider of this system , EBSCO , is adding
more content weekly. You can store information and create RSS feeds. They are
giving faculty and students the ability to integrate customized search results and
delivering them to where you live academically.
 Jeff commented that he tried searching for a journal and could not find it, and the
response to this was not helpful. Michael answered that they are not doing
specific journal searches within this system. The A-Z system is the recommended
way to search for journals.
 Bruce brought up the fact that he was glad that HBR was in there and wanted to
know if this includes Lexus-Nexus. Michael answered that it is coming possibly
in April.
11. New Business
 Jeff Michelman commented that he checked the minutes under New Business
from the last meeting and from a faculty perspective, break does not start until
they turn in their grades. This is important when setting holiday hours until
grades are turned in. Kathy answered that the help desk is typically open when
grades are due. Bruce also got feedback from Coggin faculty that the help desk
was not available on Monday night when the system was down. Kathy said it
should have been opened until 10:00 that night. If there was a service
interruption, then it should be on that page. This lets the faculty know that we are
aware of this and working on the problem. Jeff reiterated that it is very important
if you could let the faculty know by email that you are aware of the problem.
 Bill asked for recommendations because they struggle with who to communicate
with about this. Grading is very critical for faculty to get grades in. Jim Owen
added that it is important for them to know as well so they can make an
accommodation for this. Grade submission drives everything at the end of the
term. Grades are due at 10:00 a.m. on the Tuesday after exams. Bill apologized
for this and will have to work on getting the word out to faculty. Deb suggested
working together on a plan with Megan to communicate with the faculty.
Meeting adjourned at 10:40 a.m. The next meeting will be held on March 12, 2012 at
10:00 a.m. in the Student Union 58W/Room 3703D.