[edtech] Ed Tech Partners meeting notes - 10/4/2004

[Jean Foster]

(Please let me know if I got any of the details wrong)
Present: Jean Foster(IS&T Academic Computing), Katie Vale(IS&T AC), 
DeeDee Kane(SloanSpace), Peter Hess(SMA), Molly Ruggles(SMA), Marsha 
Sanders (Provost's Office/MITCET) Margret 
Branschofsky(DSpace-Libraries), John Dennett(OCW), William 
Reilly(Libraries), John Dvorak(MIT Auditors Office)

Roundtable:
SloanSpace:
Major server upgrade the week before the class of 2006 arrived. Entire 
summer devoted to the upgrade. No new functionality but this opens the 
path for future enhancements.  They conducted feedback interviews with 
faculty and TAs, and will be doing students next.  They had a 
consultant help with the protocol and interviews. Presented a report to 
the dean. They are going to prioritize a list of new features from 
this.  The results confirmed what they already knew.

Libraries Digital Archiving: Archving from OCW to DSpace. When a new 
OCW class is put up the old version would be archived in DSpace.  They 
are writing metadata, so that faculty can pull out reusable learning 
objects.  Also pulling in entire OCW site. Using IMS-cp (content 
package) & METS metadata encoding and transmitting standard) Planning 
and specing  prototypes at this point.

OCW: They just met their latest publishing milestone. As of Sept 17 
there are 900 MIT subjects published!  They believe they are at the 
halfway point and so are  having a celebration today for the MIT 
community - 4:00 in 10-250 and then the Bush Room for cocktails.  
Future plans: an OCW conference in 2005; working with other schools who 
want to have their own OCW.  There are many foreign language 
translations, spanish, chinese, taiwanese.  Partners in Utah University 
of Utah(?) is stating a set of 7 forums with faculty who will work on 
discussion boards with people who are trying to learn from the course.  
Learning communities - partnering with university in Utah, they are 
starting a set of 7 forums, which will have faculty participating 
through discussion boards,.

- OCW Organization changes: 2 FLs from other cycles Farnaz (was 
EECS,Civil, & Aero) is now the outreach liaison to institutions outside 
MIT.  Sandy M. (was SHASS, HST liaison) is now the production manager & 
is doing faculty video interviews).  More staged video lectures & lab 
demos in future.  Millions of people are visiting the OCW site and 
their are lots of regular repeat visitors.   New assessment surveys 
will be conducted this fall.  Next big effort is recruiting faculty for 
the next cycle. Helping faculty transcribe notes. These can then be put 
on the current Stellar site.  They are hiring students to take notes 
for OCW at the discretion of the instructor.   Some of the OCW 
Department Liaisons are auditing courses and taking their own notes.  
They have until 2007 for the next 900. They are still giving some funds 
to each course. ($2k)  After that they will be in "steady state", 
adding as needed & maintaining.

Academic Computing:
Katie is now the group leader of Educational Technology Consultants.  
ETCs are doing more project-based consulting. Phil is 50% director of 
iCampus outreach.  Jean is the Academic Computing communications person 
reporting to Vijay.  New group for Installations and Spaces led by Bill 
Fitzgerald.  Another Software Tools group led by Jeff Merriman.
- Katie and Carter Snowden working on an Ed Tech Projects Inventory 
pilot - collecting information about all of the ed tech projects at 
MIT.  They have started wtih the School of Science, SHASS, They have 
set up a database.  Surprising amount of projects going on and some 
surprising findings about which depts are doing what.  The report will 
be out soon. Katie and Carter will present at a future Ed Tech Partners 
about this. They are hoping the report will be reviewed by the end of 
the semester.  The pilot is successful enough and there is enough 
interest in the data for the project to continue.
* John Dennett suggested that the OCW micro teams might be of use by 
the end of October after they have made all of the contacts for the 
current semester. Katie should call John at the end of October.
This inventory is of interest to DSpace as well.

DSpace:
Version 1.2 with new features is running. DSpace is running on 150 
sites worldwide. Several countries have translated the interface into 
Chinese, Portugese, French, etc.  They are using SourceForge for 
outside developers to add source code.  More than HP and MIT are 
working on the code now.  They are also doing an early adopters study. 
They are also interviewing faculty, submitters, and administrators.  
They are working with MArsha Sanders on marketing plan. DSpace was 
originally open to communities but now they are open to individual 
faculty because some faculty belonged to more than one community.  They 
are sending out postcards inviting faculty. Has been since Nov 2002 as 
a service. It is now sustained by grant money.They have a 2-tiered 
service level. One level for free. 2nd tier (premium) for more space. 
If they want someone to create the metadata for them they can buy that 
service. SMA has used this.  This will be available on their site. 
Servers are moving over to Libraries computer room in bldg 14. 
Libraires systems office is going to be running the hardware for MIT 
DSpace. STS?

Ed Tech Events:
- TWT first major updates happening this week
- Ed Tech Times - won a SIGUCCS award.  Newly enhanced site will be 
released within the next two weeks.
- New Learning Spaces initiatives (and promotion for this) - Student 
Learning Spaces Redesign event - October 18 to celebrate the work done 
over the summer in N20-575, E51, and bldg 56 clusters.

MITCET:
  (Bob Brown is staying on for 1 year as Provost).  Reconstituted MITCET 
has identified 3 areas of interest for ed tech initiatives for the 
coming year:
1. Sustainability - how to move successful projects into supported 
services (funding)
2. Digital content and the infrastructure needed for the sharing of 
digital content
3. Dissemination at MIT (Some of the ways IS&T AC is supporting this: 
Ed Tech Inventory, Ed Tech Fair)
iCampus is not funding as many projects at MIT. Some funding will be 
going to the sharing of previous iCampus projects to other areas of the 
world. (5 projects: TEAL, 6.001, iLab, ?,?)

- Marsha has been asking for old records about ed tech projects and has 
gotten all of the material to do a timeline of how we started out 5 
years ago to where we are now.

Auditor's Office: Looking to support worthy long term initiatives.

Misc:
- Ed Media conference next year (June 2005?) will be in Montreal.
- Ed Tech Fair: * Jean will send out the invitation to the ed tech 
partners list for ed Tech services to present.
- Future Ed Tech Partners events:  If you have suggestions for 
presentations or topics you would like to discuss, let Jean know.
*Marsha suggested we invite Laurie Breslow to talk about assessments of 
projects.

***No meeting in November because of the Ed Tech Fair. Next meeting 
will be Mon December 6 in the Bush Room (10-105).