Friday, May 18, 2007

UF Distance Learning Committee minutes

DLC MEETING, 10 May 2007-05-18

10:05: Fedro called the meeting to order and distributed a signup sheet and agenda. After reviewing the agenda, Fedro indicated he wanted to drill-down into the future agenda items topic and planned to use the Turning Point classroom response system to use its polling capabilities to prioritize future items.

TurningPoint Demo

TurningPoint is an audience response system installed in 150 of the main campus auditoria and classrooms as well as in some HSC facilities. Students are presented questions via PowerPoint and use “clickers” to respond. Responses are recorded, and can be graphed and published “on the fly” at the instructor’s discretion. Instructors use TurningPoint for presentations, polling, quizzing (not recommended), and attendance taking. The AT classroom support website [http://www.at.ufl.edu/classrooms/] has more information.

Students buy a clicker ($30-$40) which can be used for any classes using this technology; so this is a buy-once tool. Instructors can download the TurningPoint software free. RF devices are purchased by AT and installed on computers in classrooms.

Instructors create a PPT using the installed software (it’s a PowerPoint plug-in accessed directly within the software interface) and then simply run the presentation in the classroom. Creating interactive slides is remarkably easy, as Fedro demonstrated.

Fedro demonstrated the “Ranking Wizard” function that allows an instructor to identify items (e.g. WebCT, Holiday party) and characteristics (e.g. cost, urgency) and showed how the technology will automatically collect audience feedback and generate grids plotting the items as they rank in audience assessment of those characteristics and generating a prioritization matrix. This function was used for the Future Agenda Items discussion.

Future Agenda Items


Presented for Consideration

Rank

Vendor demonstration

9

Future of WebCT

8

Individual reports

7

Governance discussions

6

Strategic discussions

2

Administrative discussions

6

Operational discussions

5

New technology adoption process

1

Local expert presentations on technology topics

3

DETF updates

2

Develop standards of best practice in DE

4

Updates
Kristian Serrano will be attending a regional job fair at Fort Benning, GA and will be glad to represent UF Distance Learning programs.

Doug Johnson was asked to speak about the anxieties surrounding the Blackboard/WebCT merger. Many people perceive Blackboard functioning more as a corporation and less as a “colleague,” resulting in increasing interest in open source CMS alternatives, especially Sakai.

Fedro talked about the DETF. Subcommittee reports have been submitted. Another subcommittee has been established to draft the final report and should produce that document within 2 weeks. That report will go to the Provost to suggest edits. When the report meets here approval, it will be published.

Next meeting: 7 June 2007

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