ACET Meeting June 26, 2008
Dwayne Harapnuk, David Hinger, Kim Winger, Russ Wilde, Theresa Matus, John
Kent, Eleanor Frandsen, Barb Pearce, Gord Preston, Anna Gills, Glenn Mitchell.
Election of the ACET Co-Chair representing Universities
David Hinger of the University of Lethbridge was nominated and for the Co-Chair of
ACET representing Universities.
Discussion of response by SAO & VPA to the funding request and
discussion of what ACET does now.
ACET had approached the SAO & VPA’s requesting official funding to continue the
activities of ACET as a more formal organization. Funds would provide money for part
time administrative support. When the request was discussed the response was negative,
many VPA’s and SAO’s did not know who we are or what we did.
Responses Included:
One response from VPA’s of representatives of ACET present was that supporting this
group financially would set a precedent they were not willing to establish within their
institutions.
Another issue could be that the established role of ACET may have been lost. Are
representatives of ACET reporting to their VPA’s the activities of ACET.
What about the future of AHEIT?
Community of practice started by Red Dear College.
Dwayne asked Tony
What does Advanced Education Need from ACET? There is a lot to be gained by
working collaboratively, at a provincial level. An example of a collaborative project
supported by the Alberta Government. Tony suggests Advanced Education is here to
help, so if we can identify the issues or needs within the institutions, we can identify
opportunities for Advanced Education to help.
The SAO’s suggested that if we were to be successful at collaborating on a project that
was successful, ACET may be able to resubmit.
Who attended the last community of practice started by Red Dear College.
Will we lose the benefits of being able to liaise with all the intuitions and individuals who
are represented at ACET.
The larger group focusing on education in general and not just educational technology
might loose some of the focus we have gained from being a part of ACET.
Elenor – Do we need funding, what was the original intent? Admin support and
incidentals for meetings.
As educational technology leaders we often have to work harder to sell our initiatives
then IT does.
Technology Survey Discussed – Dwayne Explains why he feels we need to gather this
data to support why we need educational technology. Having data across institutions
would be more powerful.
The consensus around that we don’t need funding at this point for ACET.
How many people report back to their executives? Mixed response from the group. Some
representatives admitted to not reporting back to their SAO or VPA’s.
The response from the VPA’s and SAO’s could be an opportunity to refocus what we are
doing, and how we are reporting our activities. It may be beneficial to present themes that
are common among all the institutions.
There is consensus that it would be important to look at the issues across the province.
What do our new representatives attending ACET today need from us?
Northern Lakes – It has been interesting to listen to this conversation, when asked to join
ACET no one could tell him what ACET is or what it exactly does.
Anne – Grand Prairie – Felt the AHEIT joint meeting might not be the right place for her.
But now being a part of the ACET meeting, feels there is a fit for her at this table. Grand
Prairie is looking for help, what are other institutions doing, what resources do they have,
where are you moving with Educational Technology?
Do we need to come up with a statement of what do we do?
The original Mission and Objectives listed on the ACET website were reviewed.
Theresa suggested it is valuable to know what the roles and responsibilities of each
member are, and their ability to implement.
Should our ability to liaise with AHEIT be added to our objectives to re-enforce the
strength of our department.
There is consensus that being aware of the issues facing IT and having a strong
relationship with AHEIT is very important.
Barb – Norquest suggests we have some VC or teleconference meetings on a more
regular basis in addition to our joint meetings with AHEIT. There is consensus in the
group that this would be valuable to discuss specific issues. ACET needs more time to
have in-depth conversation.
Dwayne described a visit that Elenor set up for him at NAIT, and suggests we need to
expand upon this. Visiting other institutions and seeing how they are doing things is
valuable.
NAIT’s technology management team does the software and hardware strategy planning
and purchasing decisions. NAIT’s success is built around the idea of focusing on what’s
best for the organization, and not just a specific group. Focus on what is mission critical.
The relationship and conversations with IT is important and must be continued.
Ideas for VC sessions
Educational Technology Management Teams – Such as NAIT
Moodle
NAIT is looking at developing a diploma program in Educational Technology.
Dwayne Blogs all of the activates he is working on at the College and will send out a link
to ACET. learn.lethbridgecollege.net
Bow Valley – Has a subscription newsletter for Faculty about what his department is
doing.
Action Item
Dwayne suggests we need to schedule opportunities to share our lessons learned via VC
or other collaborative technologies.
- Session on our new ACET website.
Respond to SAO & VPA response to funding request. At this time we feel we don’t need
funding. ACET is going back to look at where we are and where we are going.
Individually we will revisit the mission, vision and make suggestions to what end we will
look at. Add a relationship with AHEIT within the ACET charter – there is a mutual
benefit for the conversations we are having with AHEIT.
All ACET members will create a visual describing what areas we are all working in this
would be useful to know who to call when we need to collaborate. Tony suggests using
the CHECIT tool for this communication.
ACET will work closer with AHEIT when developing agendas for joint meetings and cofacilitate.
June 27th
Review of Agenda – Agenda Approved
Round Table
Portage – Major focus this year was shifting from WebCT to Moodle. Complete redesign
of how courses are structured. Being a small institution was advantageous during the
transition. This process started in April. 2007 Hosting for Moddle is being supplied by
OK-Tech. Training was done through an external contractor using Eluminate. Hired a
few more people in the area of instructional media and instructional design.
- Discussion around technical issues with Eluminate – Some people have had issues with
the technology at remote locations, however the majority of the group thought the
product is fairly stable, robust and problem free.
Bow Valley College – Upgraded to blackboard 8, received good support from blackboard
during the upgrade. The upgrade has fixed most of the issues that arose in version 6.
Implementation of Adobe Connect is up and running. Chose Adobe because of trouble
with remote ends when using Elluminate having to upgrade JAVA. Adobe is Flash only
and the majority of users have Flash already installed. The cost of Adobe Connect was
very reasonable.
A discussion around the benefits and ease of use of Adobe Connect ensued among those
institutions who are using the product. Adobe Connect Now is a free version of Adobe
Connect for up to 3 users, Elluninate has a similar free conference room also for up to 3
users. NAIT chose Elluminate over Adobe for a number of reasons ranging from low
bandwidth usability to VOIP integration.
Mount Royal College – Moving to Blackboard 8 this summer. Doing e-portfolios and
online learning logs with Drupal, Using a Cisco Media Server for streaming media.
Faculty Development – developing online faculty development tools, i.e. how to develop
accessible courseware products. Resources will be available in the fall for any institution
in the system to use. Mt Royal has developed a learning community FLPi for new faculty
who are teaching online. It has been a major transition year for Mt. Royal with new
degree offerings, and institutional re-organization.
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Discussion around Drupal and Jumla use for CMS web site development.
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E-Campus Alberta has a best practices course for online delivery, available to all
faculty across the province free of charge.
NAIT –
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It has been a very busy year for staff of Technology and Curriculum Innovation
(TCI) with a great many accomplishments reflective of drivers from both the NAIT
Academic Plan strategies and Business Plan objectives. In addition to our regular
offering of support and services to the NAIT community we have been engaged first
and foremost in the completion of the NAIT e Learning Strategy. We have achieved
of over seventeen outcomes related to the development of a successful online
learning model that incorporates best practice in elearning; a scalable development
model; and appropriate business processes to ensure quality of development and
delivery. TCI has also moved forward with a plan to solidify and contribute to
‘Action Research’ as it connects to teaching practice by supporting our instructional
staff and programs in learning about, and engaging in, the scholarship of teaching
and learning. We have also provided leadership to the Social Software Discussion
Group resulting in a set of Social Media Guidelines for staff who wish to make use
of Web 2.0 social software applications to enhance student activities and/or teaching
delivery. The M4 Task Force (made up of TCI staff and instructional staff from the
School of Electrical and Electronics Technology) has provided recommendations and
a proposed model of curriculum development that increases the functionality of our
content management software and creates a new system for deployment of digital
curriculum at NAIT. This new approach allows for a social constructivist
methodology to be applied to those programs that would benefit from this
instructional design approach and clear direction in the eventual adoption of Moodle
as our Learning Management System. Academic Technology Services in TCI has
completed a strategic plan that will see an alignment of work teams in this group fit
more closely with the goals and future directions of the institution. Photography will
move into the Digital e Solutions group and focus more on digital development and
design that will support our online curriculum development; Audio Visual Services
will concentrate more on the support for web streaming and high quality AV services
related to integration of these technologies to meet the academic community needs.
Work is underway to test the feasibility of a ‘Mobile’ Thin Client as an option to
laptop commuting in our programs. This has been made possible through the ‘HP
Sand Box’ initiative of AMT and the support of our HP Huston Research and
Development group as an extension of the HP Early Evaluation Program. The Centre
for Teaching and Learning continues to provide support to schools doing program
reviews, faculty support and training with enhancements being made to the BMI
program. Finally this fall we will offer an “Aboriginal Awareness’ course to NAIT
staff. The course is the result of two years of development that has sought extensive
input from our Aboriginal community, (First Nations, Métis, and Inuit) with the
course content being written by members of these groups and vetted by First Nations,
Métis and Inuit Elders. To end, TCI has helped to establish a CAP Site for Alberta
North in Spirit River, and are doing the preliminary work on opening a new CAP
Site in Beaverlodge, Alberta this summer.
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NAIT has decided that migration of LMS is inevitable, moving from WebCT 4 to
WebCT 6, etc is still migration, this impacted their decision to migrate to Moodle.
NAIT set up a Moodle server mainly unsupported; faculty would be given
introductory training at the front end. It currently sits on a development server, but it
will be moved over to a supported system in January. Migrating from to WebCT 8
this summer. Using Elluminate with an unlimited seat License, a new version of
Elluminate now has the ability to script the functionality needed prior to live session.
Moving to Flash Media Server 3 this summer. Upgrading Canto Cumulous – Digital
repository system – moving from a complex metatagging to a more tag youtube
google approach searching.
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Eleanor has received a grant to experiment with text-to-speech for ESL students.
Norquest College
The timeline for the Blackboard CE 8 migration from WebCT 4.0 has been extended. We
are currently testing the migration tools, doing prep work with some of the larger courses,
and training developers and support staff. In the fall we’ll migrate one division and then
the rest of the college from Jan – April.
Elluminate Live will be upgraded from 6.0 to 8.0 over the summer.
We’re setting up 13 enhanced classrooms with multimedia equipment this summer and
plan to do 12 more next year.
We engaged in strategic planning activities on the following topics:
* flexible delivery of learning
* mobile technologies
* increasing accessibility in technology-supported environments
* faculty development
Two 20-station mobile laptop carts have are being set up and will be ready to use this fall.
With eCampus funding we conducted research and produced the report: Accessibility to
e-Learning for Persons with Disabilities: Strategies, Guidelines, and Standards. We’re
developing an online workshop for course developers and instructors in collaboration
with Mount Royal College on how to put these strategies into practice.
The PeopleSoft implementation is well underway with Financials going live on July 1,
2008. Work on Campus Solutions began before Christmas with a planned launch in July
2009.
2008/09 Projects
* Conduct a review and produce recommendations for online and campus-based
educational technology support services.
* Investigate Green Campus initiatives to reduce energy and resource consumption.
* Research options for providing learning support services at a distance.
* Deploy mobile assistive technology carts for classroom use.
* Develop a plan for innovation services to support the integration of technology into
teaching and learning.
* Conduct preliminary research into videoconferencing (environmental scan,
institutional readiness).
* Investigate mobile/virtual language labs
Northern Lakes College
NLC is in the process of finalizing its business plan for 2008-2012, with the primary
objective of providing community based access to quality programs and ensuring that
strong student support services are available when and where they are needed, and
identifying values of learning, partnership, respect and success.
The College has started to implement Moodle as the main Learning Management System,
with initial courses running in the Winter semester of 2009, and the the others to be
converted to Moodle for next Fall.
The College is also examining ways to accommodate growth, and has requested
assistance from the Technology Integration Committee in providing strategic direction.
Northern Lakes College is also excited about its new Information Technology Analyst
Program running for the first time in September.
Grand Prairie Regional College
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Developing 10 courses with the help of a part time instructional designer.
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Recently developed a distance education team
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Moving to Moodle from Blackboard
The King's University College
* completed one-year pilot of Moodle and now adopted it as the institutional LMS.
Usage remains voluntary with an adoption rate of approximately half of all course
sectionsin 07-08, and increasing for 08-09. Have developed several Moodle tutorials of
the less intuitive functions using Adobe Captivate. Here's a sample. Tutorials have
reduced support calls and faculty report the one to two minute on-demand format
increases usability and improves productivity.
* Education faculty completed two-year pilot of using on-line professional learning
community in teacher development. Positive response, although seems to be a
statistically significant positive corelation between faculty mentor's comfort level with
the technology and student's satisfaction with on-line support.
* King's Centre for Visualization in Science has developed several new on-line
learning objects for both the high school and post-secondary sectors.
* Faculty are experimenting with various on-line conference/meeting/collaboration
tools for several international projects in which they are involved. Leaning toward Spreed
for presentation style meetings and Adobe Connect for classroom and collaboration.
Would welcome input from other ACET members on what their faculty are using for
similar delivery/collaboration.
Lethbridge College
* LMS
o Angel Learning System was selected as the new LMS for LC
o Planning to outsource the hosting of the LMS to Angel
+ Looking at getting a legal ruling on FOIP issues that need to be address so
that we can host externally
+ Looking at hosting within Canada as an option with Embanet
o Plan to have the the new LMS running in test mode this fall with full course
conversion happening in the winter of 2009
o Full deployment of LMS scheduled for fall 2009
* Lethbridge College Learning Connections
o Primary focus will be on the promotion of learning as the foundation for
technology implementation.
o Developing a web-based resource for faculty to support professional
development and promote learning
o The resource will incorporate our Educational Enhancement Team's SPARC
initiative which is:
+ Significance - who the learner is and what is significant to them
+ Passion/Purpose - personal responsibility and desire to learn
+ Active Learning - engaging learning
+ Reflective/Resources - thinking about the learning process and then finding
resources to support it
+ Connections/Collaboration - create learning through meaningful connections
- learning is a social or collaborative endeavor.
* iTunesU
o Still working on the authenication process
* IT Governance
o Working on a proposal to establish a Technology Management Steering
Committee that will handle all Educational technology decisions and that will focus on
the needs as opposed to the application of technology.
* Video Conferencing
o Six months into the use of our VC system and we can't imagine how we worked
with out it.
o We have a full suite as well as a single stand alone unit and will be considering a
third unit next budget cycle
* Student Survey
o In the process of developing a student survey based on the ECAR student survey
conducted by Educase. Cohere is planning a similar survey for 6 Universities but wasn't
willing to let LC in so we decided to do it ourselves. Will run the survey this fall.
University of Lethbridge
* LMS
o The U of L is currently upgrading from WebCT 6.1 to 6.2. Compatibility issues
between version 8 and our Luminous Banner connection prohibited upgrading fully to
WebCT 8.
o A Moodle 1.9 server is currently running for special case courses in our Faculty
of Education. In Fall 2008 an official Moodle pilot project will begin to assist with long
term LMS strategy planning.
* Podcasting
o A short literature review on the benefits of podcasting in post-secondary
education was completed in May 2008, and can be made available upon request.
o In fall 2008 an official podcasting pilot project will be lauch to investigate the
educational implications of podcasting in U of L courses.
o The final configurations are taking place on a U of L iTunes University channel
which will launch this summer.
* Teaching Development
o CRDC Director David Hinger took over Management of the Centre for the
Advancement of Teaching and Learning (CAETL) in Fall 2007. The recently established
centre provides professional development in teaching and learning for U of L faculty and
sessional instructors. On May 23rd the U of L's first annual teaching appreciation day
was held. This mini-conference included panel discussions and concurrent sessions on
teaching and learning issues ranging from engaging and motivating students to critical
thinking skills for 21st Century Learners.
* Videoconferencing
o Videoconferencing use at the U of L continues to grow. The videoconference
classroom and 2 protable units are being used at capacity, and the U of L is investigating
purchasing an additional High Def unit to meet the growing demand.
Action Items
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Update ACET Membership list –
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Dwayne and Dave will talk to our VPA’s about being representatives of ACET
within the VPA group.
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Discuss in future meetings the common help desk and what does it mean, and would
it work.
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Set up a section on the ACET website of what everyone is using, i.e. LMS,
Videoconferencing, Desktop collaboration,
Others not discussed
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Dave and Dwayne will organize an ACET strategy meeting to discuss meeting
structure, and offline communication strategies to further the collaboration among
ACET members.
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Cross Institutional Student Technology skill and Needs assessment.
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