Agenda for UW-ACE Ops (Aesops)
Meeting of 6 April 2006
1. Course and system settings.
a. Email:
i. Subject line sent from UW-ACE - can it be shortened?
Action: Sean will check with ALI on whether this is used anywhere
besides email subject and login banner. We agreed to change it to
“UW-ACE” (from UW-ANGEL Course Environment), assuming
there is nowhere it is used that this would be a problem.
ii. Default is to keep email internal (though user can send external in
their profile). Still reasonable default?
Action: Sean, Liwana: Sean will check what is possible as default
system settings. Liwana will ask Liaisons for option on a
reasonable default.
b. Size of files in a course or total space allotted per course (a request for a
course they would require 20 - 30 gigs a term).
Action: None for the system now, i.e., no need to change system defaults
in general, just as needed.
Action: Andrea and Sean will talk to ESL about changing the format of
their video to something more suitable for the web.
c. Tools_Tab variable.
This variable turns on the MANAGE tab for courses migrated to 7.1 but
students are not able to see anything, by default new courses in 7.1 do not
allow students to see this tab.
Action: Sean will look at how to fix this as courses are migrated.
d. System-wide announcements.
We use the front page of ACE for critical system wide announcements.
Given that most students now use ACE for some of their courses we
should we provide another area on ACE where announcements might go,
and all students see? Who decides what can/should be posted (i.e.,
guidelines so doesn’t evolve into spam)? Maybe ask for/assign one person
per Faculty, and some Admin area reps?
Action: Bring forward to InYourFace meeting (to be set sometime after
the next Aesops). Generally agreed that we would like to keep the same
policy for the login page announcements. Question of whether to hide the
announcement nugget between announcements. To be continued.
2. ANGEL V7.1 upgrade "spin".
UW-ACE SC sends a strong message to make sure we get the word out early and
broadly and provide lots of support for the move to V7.1. Review Jan’s schedule
as a group so we coordinate our efforts on announcements, documentation,
presentations, courses, etc.
Brief summary: April to install and do testing again; DE needs a site on which
they can build fall courses starting in May; also in May need to get the support
team in DE, LT3, and ITS up to speed; early June for a blitz of info (Bulletin,
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
mailout, courses, presentations, documentation, etc.) on upgrade, with focus on
fall courses and gradebook. Discussed having a Preview Site and or a Build Site
(may be one and the same). The Build Site would be for new instructors and new
courses. Need to determine best strategy for majority … leave on V6.2 and have
the upgrade migrate, or make available a V7.1 site for them to do updates. Pros
and cons. Also, need to work on tools to assist migration and “fixes” that we find
are necessary, such as the “hard code” tool Sean wrote, maybe also for Style
Sheets, ActionScript, etc.
Action: IST: New hardware for Build/Preview Site? Get a co-op to help Jan.
ALI visit - Should we have an ALI rep visit Waterloo?
Action: all: Think of topics for which we might benefit from an ALI visit (as we
would have for Replicator months ago, and might yet over ePortfolio).
User's Conference presentations.
Overview of the presentations.
Blue sky-ing
PART I: What are the developments appearing on the [3 year?] horizon that affect
ANGEL and other LMSes? Things like standards, e-portfolios, open/community
source systems (like Sakai), OKI, learning object repositories, mobile devices, but
what are others?
PART II: What are the impacts? How are we preparing, or how do we begin to
prepare?
Moodle is another open example. Accessibility and Web 2.0 (podcasts, wifi,
AJAX) are another areas.
Libraries, resources, master courses, sources courses
Review how we are using these now in ACE/ICE, what is in V7.1, and what we
recommend for use of various structures. (Anyone ready to take a crack at an
overview and a proposal of use?)
Action: Review at a future meeting.
Items added at the meeting
a. Request to add new text about Liaisons in outgoing mail about course
created.
Action: Liwana will send text to Jan and Lorne to modify.
b. Timeouts for displaying dropbox items in courses with many students
(e.g., 600 in AFM, 2300 in CECS’s eManual).
Action: Sean will look at solutions from ALI, both some code mods, or
indexing.