Center for Educational Technologies (CET) Self Study
June 21, 2007
Overview
The Center for Educational Technologies (CET) was established in October, 2004, with
the mission to promote active learning through innovative use of technology. Services
include training, consulting, media production, and project management. In addition to
providing direct services, CET provides reference and referral to other UO units that
may cater to specific instructional needs.
For more information, see the website at http://libweb.uoregon.edu/cet/.
History
Prior to 2004, the services provided by CET were spread through four separate library
units:
• Established in 1994, the Academic Education Coordinator was a staff position focused
on technology-related faculty development and training). Reported to University
Librarian and later, to the Associate University Librarian (AUL) for Instructional
Services.
• Established in 1999, the Faculty Information Technology Training (FITT) Center
provided drop-in training, consulting, and access to production tools. The FITT Center
was managed by a part-time manager who also supervised the oordinator reported to
AUL for Instructional Services.
• Blackboard (course management system). Initially implemented in 1999 and managed
by the Academic Education Coordinator in partnership with Library Systems; expanded
in 2003 in partnership with UO Information Services.
• Interactive Media Group (multimedia production). Formerly UO New Media Center
and became part of the Library system in 2000. Director reported initially to Head of
Media Services and later, to the AUL for Instructional Services.
In summer 2004, in response to concurrent library initiatives and recommendations from
the Educational Technology Coordinating Committee, the Provost’s Office provided
recurring support that established CET as a permanent department. Refer to Appendix
___ for further background on this allocation.
Staffing
Current organizational chart (6.5 FTE plus approximately 6600 hrs/year student labor):
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CET Self Study Notes
JQ Johnson
Director
Kirstin Hierholzer
Assistant Director
Tim Boshart
Blackboard Coordinator, ITC 2
David McCallum
ITC 2
Nargas Oskui
Consulting Manager, .5 FTE ITC 1
Students
5; ~2600 hrs/year
Azle Malinao-Alvarez
ITC 2
Shayne Huddleston
tech lead, ITC 2
Students
4-5; ~4000 hrs/year
Facilities
CET Consulting is located in Knight Library, Room 19. Hours of operation are
9 a.m. to 6 p.m., Monday through Friday.
CET: Interactive Media is located in Knight Library Room 30, with staff available on an
appointment basis
Services overview
To a first approximation, CET services can be seen as divided into 4 components:
1. Technology consulting and training, primarily for faculty
2. Management of the UO Blackboard system
3. Media production
4. Support for faculty technology innovation
Consulting currently provides a reception area for CET and a library service point for
faculty, GTFs, and staff, with a heavy focus on consulting and training in educational
technologies and specific applications to UO courses. The service point is studentstaffed, and open 45 hrs/week throughout the year. Although the staff have a wide range
of software expertise, they are seen as particularly strong in Blackboard and media
production (especially video). In addition, Consulting provide access to hardware for its
customers, organizes campus training events, office visits, symposia, etc., and provides a
few additional production services for instructors such as occasional slide scanning or
video encoding.
The Blackboard system provides coursesite support for all UO courses. It is used in a
typical term by perhaps 1300 courses, 1500 faculty and GTFs, and 17,000 students. For
example, during spring term 2007, approximately 55,000 student credit hours (2/3 of all
hours) had a Blackboard component.
CET:IM (Interactive Media) designs and implements major media intensive projects.
Most CET:IM projects are standalone database driven graphically-intensive websites,
produced using a waterfall and team-based development paradigm. CET:IM typically
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CET Self Study Notes
works on 4 to 6 projects at any given time, with a target of completing at least 2 major
projects each quarter. The primary target is instructional-support projects for CRN
courses, which we internally fund. As capacity exists we also do grant-funded projects
based on an hourly billing rate, and do additional projects, particularly projects with an
internal library component.
Additional CET activities not neatly categorized above range from support for
educational technology workshops taught by other departments, to the hosting of faculty
IT Fellows, to sponsorship of initiatives bringing together faculty and computing staff to
investigate new technologies. CET regularly assists in summer IT courses for faculty
taught by other departments, including a “Basic IT” taught by the Teaching Effectiveness
Program (TEP), “Multimedia for Teaching and Research,” taught by our Yamada
Language Center and Social Science Instructional Lab, and “Course Redesign for Hybrid
Learning,” originally developed by CET and TEP and this summer taught primarily by
TEP. During 2006-07 CET hosted two IT Fellows (fellowships awarded and funded by
the Provost), one to Kathleen Scalise, Educational Leadership, for applying her research
in “Differentiated e-Learning Strategies for Instructional Design” to UO CRN courses,
and one to Jane Ritter, Computer & Information Science, for “Teaching a ‘Plugged-In’
Audience: Podcasts in Intro CIS Classes.” Initiatives during 2006-07 where CET was the
lead organization have included evaluation of podcasting support, antiplagiarism
software, and classroom clicker technology; CET staff have also participated in several
other collaborative initiatives and planning groups including development of the library
Learning Commons, Information Services task forces, an eportfolio group, etc.
Budget notes
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Total recurring budget is about $620K/year, plus ~ $10K income
Expenditures for 2006-07 likely to be $730K
60% of funding is from Technology fee
Media production is about 1/2 of total expense
About 80% of expense is for salaries, 10% Blackboard license, 10% other
ICC 4%
Other 9%
Other
20%
General
Fund 28%
Black
board
16%
Ed Tech
59%
Consult
10%
CET-IM
54%
In addition to recurring budget, CET presently has a non-recurring carryforward of
approximately $250,000, most of which dates from the Library’s absorption of the UO
New Media Center. It manages a fairly large amount of hardware, including the nondatabase components of the UO Blackboard system (including 8 servers), CET
Consulting (6 patron-access workstations plus miscellaneous media production
equipment), and staff workstations. Initial funding for acquisition of the Blackboard
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CET Self Study Notes
system came from a 1-time Ed Tech Committee (Technology fee) allocation in 2003.
Ongoing maintenance and replacement of all of the hardware is currently funded from the
recurring budget or from carryforward.
The average cost of providing drop in consulting service is moderate. We typically have
about 30 hours/week of consulting patron presence, and the cost of the facility including
staffing and equipment amortization is perhaps $900/week, so cost per patron hour is
about $30; since we have some spare capacity marginal cost is near 0.
The total annual cost of providing Blackboard, including direct costs (about $180K/year),
database services provided by Information Services, and equipment amortized over 4
years is about $250K/year. During the 2006-07 academic year, we provided Blackboard
service to about 4500 term-long coursesites and 220K student enrollments. This works
out to about $55 per coursesite or about $1.15 per student enrollment in a course that uses
Blackboard.
The total cost of providing CET:IM services is about $335K/year, perhaps $300K of
which is devoted to projects and overhead. We typically complete about 6 to 8 projects
per year. Although projects differ dramatically in scope, this suggests an average project
cost of about $35K to $40K.
Results of Group Self Study Meetings, May 2007
As part of preparation for this self-study, the seven regular CET employees met for 3
hours of “retreat” to discuss several questions posed by library administration. This
section describes some of the opinions expressed and conclusions.
Alignment with Library Mission and Goals
CET’s stated goal is to be “a one-stop shop for UO instructors who want to make more
effective use of technology in their teaching. CET provides assistance and referrals for
educational technology training, support and production. Our mission is to promote
active learning through innovative use of technology. The Center's professional staff
offers training, consulting and project management as needed to address instructional
goals.”
The CET staff see the department as offering:
 pedagogical tool development, administration (Blackboard, CET:IM projects)
 user experience expertise (even beyond the web)
 training of faculty
 access for instructors to teaching tools (Blackboard, Consulting facilities)
 campus leadership in deployment of new educational technologies
One concern is that since our primary clientele are faculty we are one step removed from
students as we attempt to support the library’s goal of enriching the student learning
experience. Our only significant direct relationship with students is through our use of
student employees.
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CET Self Study Notes
The staff also noted our focus on instruction, including our pricing model for
development projects, which is free for CRN courses but quite expensive for other work,
and our skill set which is strong in website design, graphics, and instructional
applications but is quite limited in research methods and tools. Members of the group
expressed the concern that this focus may lead us to miss opportunities to support
research.
Our self study discussion suggested that we might modify our goal statement to focus
more on:
 Directly promoting active learning
 Providing more support for research rather than instruction
 Offering workshops (we are actually quite active in this area, with “on demand”,
multimedia boot camp, Hybrid course, the April Symposium, etc.)
 Outputs: the impact we have on faculty, other campus orgs. (TEP, etc.), students
Stakeholders
The self-study group attempted to answer the question “Who else on campus cares, or
should care, about what we do?” We see primary stakeholders as:
 Faculty customers
 TEP (Teaching Effectiveness Program)
 Information Services
 Library Admin
 Other library departments
CET Accomplishments in the past year
This list was produced in discussion without much review, so it probably misses several
significant items. For more details about specific projects, visit the CET Portfolio site at
http://libweb.uoregon.edu/cet/portfolio/index.html
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Sports History website
Scribe tutorials
Alaskan Rock Art database
Library website
Course Connector website
Shaping the Way we Teach website
Sports Sponsorship Flash Races
Online English Language Center website
IT Directory website
Peer coaching
Azle's CSS workshops
Multimedia summer workshop participation (tutors, panel)
Workshops on Demand
Hybrid Course summer workshop
In-Office Consultation initial implementation
Collaboration with TEP
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CET Self Study Notes
Marketing materials: Rulers, Brochure
Blackboard upgrades – we tend to be successfully on the leading edge
Improved Blackboard statistics gathering
Improved communication with Information Services
Blackboard high system availability and overall increases in usage
Blackboard Committee as example of successful patron input
Pacific Northwest Blackboard Users Group
WebDev participation
Censorship exhibit
Summit Short Term Usability Group
OLA panel presentation - website redesign
Symposium - Computers in Teaching and Learning
Comparators
Who should we evaluate ourselves against? We observed that different comparators may
be appropriate for different services within CET. For example, Second Story, a Portland
media production firm, was identified by CET:IM staff as appropriate for our production
work but not for Blackboard or Consulting. Microcomputer Support in Information
Services is an appropriate comparator for our consulting services. Princeton is perhaps
appropriate as a well-run Blackboard site, but their funding situation is very different.
On-Campus Comparators
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SSIL
Yamada Language Center
Wired Humanities Program
InfoGraphics
TEP
Creative Publishing
Media Services
Library ITCs
IS Microcomputer Help Desk
External Comparators
CET does not systematically track external comparators. Standard university
comparators include institutional comparators (U C Santa Barbara, U Colorado, Indiana
U, U Iowa, U N Carolina, U Virginia, U Michigan, U Washington), four CAS
comparators (U Maryland, U Mass Amherst, U Pittsburgh, U Wisc Madison), and a range
of computing comparators (e.g. Emory U, Oregon State U). Our perception is that many
of the standard comparator institutions have very different computing organizations from
the UO’s, hence are difficult to use as CET comparators. In brainstorming, we identified:
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Other universities, general
1. MIT
2. Iowa – Instructional Services
3. Duke (similar organization also part of the university library)
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CET Self Study Notes
4. Oregon State U
5. Portland State U
6. U Washington
7. U Colorado
Other universities with comparable Blackboard systems:
1. U North Carolina
2. U of Kansas
3. Emory U
4. U Pittsburgh
5. Oregon State
6. U Chicago
Second Story, http://www.secondstory.com
What Assessment should we be doing?
Our overall perception is that we need more assessment. We want to be able to
determine whether what we are doing is contributing to improved student learning
outcomes. At the moment, we don’t even know which CET:IM website design projects
from previous years are still being actively used.
Current:
 Blackboard is keeping good usage stats, but not assessing outcomes. See for
example http://blackboard.uoregon.edu/local/mrtg
 Consulting stats include identities of patrons, but not any measures of satisfaction or
outcomes.
 CET:IM is currently doing only irregular followup on projects.
Future:
 Overall: we should get more feedback from clients
 Overall: we should look at usage statistics and satisfaction reports to help shape how
development projects are chosen in the future
 Need some web assessment and statistics on main cet site
 Need to reinstate project evaluations (pre and post-?)
 We should look at traditional software engineering metrics
 Measure number of service inquiries, type of inquiry and why service was or was not
provided
 Conduct surveys of (faculty) demand for services
 Conduct surveys of former clients/patrons
 Consider instrumenting all CET:IM delivered projects to measure usage with google
analytics
SWOT
We conducted a SWOT analysis, followed by a partial USED analysis. This analysis
reflects the items mentioned by the group, and does not always reflect JQ’s perceptions.
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CET Self Study Notes
Strengths:
 Team work
 Staff technical knowledge
 Awareness of campus computing
resources
 Process / support (especially
CET:IM intake process)
 Up to date technology
 Competent students
 Variety of services
 Customer service
 Personal relationships with faculty
Weaknesses:
 Integration among parts of CET
 Marketing
 Assessment
 Professional development (too
narrowly tech focused?)
 Funding: recurring funding doesn’t
cover existing expenses, and not
adequate for expansion in FTE
 Lack of connection / coord. with
other library services
Weaknesses specific to cet:im:
 Not enough programmers
 No unified development
environment
 Inadequate centrally supported
delivery environment
Threats:
 Funding at risk if Ed Tech process
changes
 Competition with other service
units (e.g. SSIL, Information
Services)
 Difficulty finding high-quality
programming staff/students
 Dependence on Library Systems
 Staff retention due to wages
Opportunities:
 Campus Trouble ticketing system
 Workshops / presentations
 Can offer set of tools (e.g. timeline)
 Our location in library (relationship
with Library subject specialists)
 Rapid growth in Web 2.0
 Blackboard Scholar
 Learning Commons extension
 Sharing/collaboration with other
campus services, e.g. TEP
 New IS Director of Academic
Technologies
 UO Portland Center
 Ed Tech Committee good/bad
 Student Interns ~ cet:im production
Some Decision Points
We identified a few decision points we expect in the next few months.
Podcasting and Eportfolios?
Each of these are new technologies that we don’t currently have a plan for systematically
supporting:
 We hope to join Apple’s iTunes U. If we do so, how should we integrate that service
into our existing services and how should we leverage it for maximum instructional
benefit? How should CET’s podcasting support relate to the existing streaming
media support services in Media Services?
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CET Self Study Notes
 A group of UO faculty and staff has been meeting for the past year to explore the
potential for eportfolios. Several schools now have eportfolio projects using a
variety of technologies ranging from indexes of student web sites, to blogs and wikis,
to Second Life. Last year CET experimented with Sakai and the Open Source
Portfolio Initiative, and has participated at a fairly low level in the ongoing eportfolio
ad hoc task force. What role should CET have in supporting eportfolio use at UO
over the coming year?
Blackboard upgrade?
The Ed Tech committee has approved funding for a significant upgrade to the database
component of the Blackboard system. We need to develop plans for the timing of the
upgrade, and to explore what it will mean for our overall management of the system.
Additional issues include specifics of software upgrades this summer (Aug 18), and
whether to pursue various add-ons to Blackboard including plagiarism detection
software, secure exam software, blogs and wikis within Blackboard, etc. A second major
issue will be how to open up Blackboard access to a wider range of instructional
personnel, especially visiting lecturers, practicum supervisors, etc.
Servers for CET:IM project delivery?
CET:IM feels constrained by the lack of a coherent delivery platform for its projects.
The most natural such platform, the Information Services shell/www server system, does
not offer adequate programming facilities and has policies that make it difficult to deploy
modern websites. Should we purchase our own server and host such projects in-house?
Alternatively, should we move away from custom DB driven websites?
Change relationship w/ Media Services?
Given strong connections between some of the services offered by CET and Media
Services, and given the changes likely driven by replacing Tom Matney (recently retired
head of Media Services), should we reassess organizational structure?
Balance of Instructional vs Administrative/Research Support?
What should our criteria be for taking on development projects, who should we serve in
CET Consulting, and for what sorts of applications (in addition to CRN courses) should
we encourage Blackboard use?
Balance of CET Services?
Is the balance in expenditure for the various CET services appropriate, and does it
maximize the impact of our funding on teaching and learning?
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