IFO MnSCU Meet and Confer
Unofficial Notes
January 25, 2008
IFO Present: Nancy Black, Cindy Phillips, David Bouchard, Elizabeth Dunn, Cathy Summa, Cindy Finch, Don Larsson, Bruce Svingen, Jan Loft, Patrice Arseneault
IFO Absent: Judy Kilborn
MnSCU Present: Chancellor McCormick, Becky Sobolewski, Tim Price, Bill Tschida, Lynda Milne, Gary Janikowski, George Warner, Craig Schoenecker, Linda Baer, Becky Wodiak, Mary Leary, Leslie Mercer, Gail Olson, Gary Langer, Pat Opatz, Al Essa, Laura King, Sieglinde Bier, Jim Dillemuth
Also Present: Jon Quistgaard, BSU President
Called to order 8:04 a.m.
Request for State University and OOC Professional Services (MN Government Data Practices Act Request) – CTL Professional Services Consultant Contract to Staff the Board of Trustees’ Teacher Award and Outcomes Assessment for the Faculty Awards for Excellence
IFO: I want to thank Kevin Marsh who gave us quite an education. He’s been very helpful and we’ll be getting back to him after we review the materials. We asked at the last meet and confer about the professional services consulting contract for the Board of Trustees Teaching Award. Again, what is the consultant being paid for this?
IFO: Is there some reason you can’t give it to us?
MnSCU: It’s not a full time position. I can write you a memo with that information.
Intellectual Property
IFO: We had been asking about this in terms of the Board Policy five year review because it’s on your schedule. It has been brought before the Academic Affairs Policy Council but it has been deferred, and we want to deal with it. The last review of this policy was in 1992. It’s time to review it again. We didn’t offer much online then [14 years ago].
MnSCU: You and I met in the fall with Greg Mulcahy and I relayed to you our decision to hire a full time intellectual property manager since I have not been able to contribute to that issue. That is our plan; we are drafting a position description. In response to reviewing the policy, we can continue to talk about that. Since we are in the process of hiring for this, we should delay the review until we have a new manager on our side. We have another issue on the need to develop an internal dispute resolution process, and we can pull that issue to the front of the work plan. I don’t have strong feelings about this, but that’s my initial thinking. We’ll leave it to the lawyers to fine tune the issues. Were always considering alternative approaches. This is a full time to job to deal with this education training and guidance to our campuses.
IFO: It’s my understanding that you were meeting with a consultant in St. Cloud. I reviewed the material and said I wanted to attend.
MnSCU: You may have misheard me; I don’t know.
IFO: The system hasn’t met with a consultant on this?
MnSCU: Not to my knowledge.
IFO: The crux of the problem is we are concerned with the faculty knowing their rights as well as the policy. Gary Langer told me (and you were there) that the system would not be moving ahead with Learning Object Repositories, but you are moving ahead; we have very serious concerns for our faculty. They are not informed about their rights. There is no procedure in place. Now I heard you saying you are writing a position description. We want you to consider stopping from moving ahead on Learning Object Repositories until we all have our ducks in a row, otherwise it will be messy.
MnSCU: In terms of mixing apples and oranges in the Learning Object Repositories that doesn’t fall within my responsibility. My responsibility is to implement 3.26 and 3.27 by Senior Vice Chancellor and the Chancellor in term of how we better manage the policy. In managing IP policy we want to provide our faculty and students with good information, that’s why I suggest we have a person full time who is dedicated. I have been going to faculty in-services from time to time around our system, and I agree we need to do a better job with our administrators and faculty around these issues.
IFO: What is your project timeline for that process?
MnSCU: I’m drafting it this week. It will probably take several months to have a person in place.
IFO: Stepping forward, if we engage with this new hire in working on the issues that are mutually important, when can we do that?
Chancellor: ….fiscal conditions, I think we have are experiencing challenging times….. I don’t’ want to be…
MnSCU: In terms of IP, I would be willing to engage now. We wouldn’t delay that conversation.
IFO: I think I’m hearing a lot of different things. The Chancellor hasn’t even approved this position.
MnSCU: It’s in the early stages.
Chancellor: I’ve been in this business a long time and I’m seeing signs and hearing “our friends” worrying about how we’ll approve this budget. I have to say, I’m not my usual self because I’m worried about the next few months ahead.
IFO: In policy 3.26 if you look at part 4 sec 2-3, on encoded works, our concern is the policy is heading in one direction and sometimes the actions (Learning Object Repositories/LOR) in an independent direction. LOR has significant implications here. It’s important to make sure these are coordinate in some way.
MnSCU: I would be willing to sit down with David Bouchard and Cathy Summa and talk about these issues.
IFO: I think we need to follow-up on this issue and do this quickly because this is the IFO’s current hot issue and in a lot of other national circles - particularly as it applies to online.
IFO: I’m still confused. This was a policy that was up for review?
MnSCU: Yes.
IFO: But there was a decision in your office not to engage in this discussion?
MnSCU: The decision was aligning both a new hire with the review of the policy I thought..
IFO: I want to make sure. It sounds to me that this manager will carry out the policy. The person you are hiring to carry out the policy should not be at the table creating the policy. I would look at that order a little differently. This can explode, I mean, blow-up - not just expand. We’ve been asking to dialogue with you in a policy review process. The apparent hesitance to go ahead with a policy review seems as if you either don’t know what you’re doing or don’t want to talk to us about this.
MnSCU: I appreciated your contextualizing this. I would be offended if you said we didn’t know what we were doing.
Chancellor: We don’t just want to look at Minnesota, but the nation. This is changing rapidly with the loss of literature.
MnSCU: The Chancellor is absolutely right. This is the underpinning of the policy - working with our faculty from the get-go to establish win-wins to better serve students on the campus. As we look to develop procedures, I don’t have any hesitation.
IFO: In what venue are we going to do that? The last Academic & Student Affairs Policy Council meeting was cancelled because there wasn’t anything to do. In our view there is plenty to do.
MnSCU: We can commit to a meeting regarding the policy as it stands today and the issue you want to discuss. Our problem is this is so critical and so specialized; we need the right kind of people to help us do this right. We need the right person to inform the best policy change.
IFO: It would seem to me that the information you’d want might be different expertise.
MnSCU: We have a policy and procedure in place therefore the need would be to review it and articulate where it may be strengthened and enhanced. Secondarily we don’t want to overly build-out a policy, but rather procedures and guidance to implement the policy.
IFO: I would like some clarification, Tim. When you were talking about campus in-service, what in-service has been done?
MnSCU: I’m invited to campuses for in-service with faculty on intellectual property issues. I’ve only been to one state university and that is Mankato.
IFO: One of our issues is there are seven state university campuses, and we have such a hard time with communication in the system. Our faculty don’t know what the policy and procedures are currently and yet you are moving ahead. It might be at this point as easy as getting the information out there to them in a systematic way so that we know what we have and everyone knows, then we’ll know what we need to suggest. If you have some material from Mankato or information concerning the procedures that faculty have, I don’t know because I haven’t done anything on-line, but with the print I have, I have never signed anything with intellectual property rights. Is there a form?
MnSCU: We should talk about that, Nancy. I don’t want to take the time here.
IFO: Yes, get the information together. We do have a venue for this. We don’t want this to explode in a mess; we’ve been saying this to you for several months. We need to do something constructive.
Accountability Update
MnSCU: Current handout of the implantation plan was distributed. I’ll just hit the highlights of the handout. On January 15 we rolled it out for a pilot test in a password protected environment. We’re working on the details to provide an opportunity for students and faculty to access the tool, and we’ll send out a communication in the next week to inform you of this opportunity. We’ll be looking for feedback on issues. With regard to the accountability system, our goal is reporting back to the BOT in the March meeting and in the Academic and Student Affairs Policy Council. In addition to collecting feedback, we’re testing the software tool for when we do a public launch to build additional content.
IFO: We’ve talked about that in the committee and some of the possible ramification of the actual presentation of the data. The IFO and students continue to express some trepidation about how the results are viewed, by what audience, and how there will be different perspectives for each audience. In March when they get this information, how will it be presented in terms of talking points? Are you planning on a preview of the data for the Board so they’ll run through some of the problems?
MnSCU: Yes.
IFO: It’s an aggressive time schedule.
MnSCU: One of the tasks we’re working on is working with the public affairs department to develop a public relations plan, media response, and talking points. We’ll share that with college and university administration as well. We will also provide that opportunity for the Trustees to use the tool and review it. Then we’ll do a presentation to the Academic and Student Affairs Policy Council and at the March Board meeting.
IFO: The last time we met, the Academic and Student Affairs Policy Council was cancelled. Why?
MnSCU: We try to ensure we have sufficient agenda items, we did not have a change to do…we develop sufficient material for a full agenda for that group. We’ll try to reschedule in February and get some advice on the next steps.
IFO: It seemed we didn’t have some of the criteria or indicators at the last meeting. I was wondering, have those been dealt with and in what way?
MnSCU: There are a total of ten (10) measures that the Board has selected, six (6) are existing and loaded. For the seventh measure, we are collecting data, and we will not have data on that until 2009, whenever the institutions have had a chance to participate in a national survey. The other two measures are not yet defined. We’ve been working with a number of groups to develop those measures. We’ve been working with the Academic and Student Affairs Advisory Council to refine the definition of the measures. In March we will provide information to the Board. For the other two we’ll report back on our progress. We have a process underway to develop those.
Chancellor: The Board understands this is complicated, this is still a success.
MnSCU: It took us three years to get to where we are and we’ve created it that way. The university Provosts and Chief Academic Officers are very supportive of the voluntary system for accountability. We’ll consider aligning to that for one of the measures.
Chancellor: This is a work in progress and we don’t apologize. We’ve been saying to the Board all along that this ought to be viewed as a real effort to be transparent and accountable. These are public meetings, it may not get any coverage, but you have to be prepared for that. Even though we say this is a trial run, there could be something in the Fargo paper.
IFO: Faculty morale on this issue is sensitive. The same is true for university administrators. A report card and accountability are important. We believe we do demonstrate that through the Higher Learning Commission (HLC). The tone of this Accountability Taskforce is unfortunate; a report card can be perceived in a negative way. There is a big issue of how we had the measurements. I’m afraid someone will come in and not realize it’s a pilot. It has to be emphasized it’s a work in progress. Faculty are feeling pretty beat up these days, and they want acknowledgement that they are doing quality work.
IFO: I’m glad to hear that the VSA is something you’re doing too. I’ve been looking at it and I think it’s great for several reasons. You get three years to look at your data before it goes public - it’s nice because you can figure some of these things Nancy is talking about. I want to reinforce that the VSA is something the faculty will like at the university.
IFO: Has there been any discussion about the VSA instead of what we’ve been doing?
MnSCU: As part of that work we’ve reviewed efforts nationally I think the concern is the VSA university accountability system, and we need to address the whole range of institutions.
IFO: Aren’t others coming in a year?
MnSCU: The VSA is developed… and land grant is really designed for universities not two year colleges.
IFO: I want to echo the comments. For us I think first of all the VSA will serve our students better. The system we’re developing is in terms of developing one MnSCU school to another and I don’ think we need to be there.
MnSCU: For all the measures we’ve defined, we are using national or statewide data to set performance. It’s not just our own institutions for the basis of this measurement.
MnSCU: It was not apparent that all universities are moving forward with the VSA so we can’t say everyone is in this yet. We are building on this.
Quistgaard: I’m encouraged that we’re having a conversation about VSA. When we do peer group conversations, we have three different peer groups so this is important. There are some national instruments that are being used out there on comparative data. I am pleased to hear there is a public relations plan and we need to be so careful about that and not have it somehow misconstrued - it’s difficult to overcome that type of press.
Chancellor: This transparency accountability is always my view. If we do it ourselves, it is tied into the Office of Higher Education (OHE) and still has someone do something like the number of credits. One of the Board members was quite sympathetic that it takes time and we need to be thoughtful. There is some sensitivity on the Board.
IFO: On the national data comparison, is that being broken down between institution types?
MnSCU: Yes, we’re using similar institutions.
IFO: In regard to the student satisfaction survey, are you using NESSIE?
MnSCU: Yes.
IFO: On the public relations piece, I heard you say you were intending to preview it. Are you intending to use the union leadership?
MnSCU: That certainly is the plan, see the handout where it lists late January 2008.
IFO: Would you include us to that list for late January 2008?
MnSCU: Yes.
IFO: Thank you.
IFO: We appreciate being included in this whole process. Good stamina, Craig! We’ll see what happens in March.
Code of Conduct
IFO: We received a draft in February 2007, and we got the new November 30, 2007 draft. Can you tell us what changes were made?
MnSCU: I can try to do that and ask Gail to help me go through that tool. This is a long ongoing process. We took feedback from everyone and tried to incorporate some of that into this. I think if you go to page two, in subpart a. under conflicts to interest that was originally written in a negative context, and we tried to put that in a positive context. Now it’s more generalized. I think the major change came out of our discussion on page three with the addition of number 4 on IFO’s consulting and reference on problematic activity. We did a lot of reorganization where we used to have sub parts. We deleted and reorganized on subpart d. and e. reordered those. Gail, did we make any other major changes?
MnSCU: No, that’s it.
MnSCU: I don’t know. Do we have the language in there before that talked about if there was anything inconsistent with the statute or policy?
MnSCU: Yes, I tweaked the language.
MnSCU: Our goal is to compile a FAQ that would go along with this. It doesn’t get to real work questions people face. We’ve called the HR directors to ask what issues come up and we’re almost done with the FAQ. We’ll provide you with a copy when it is finished.
Chancellor: If a faculty member had a concern, who would they go to? Who on the campuses could they call? I know for myself we check things pretty carefully and sometimes I ask Gail. Is there someone they would ask because the average dean wouldn’t be the right person?
MnSCU: I think they could be the right person. In the code we suggest three contacts for people with questions: supervisor, HR director or the Office of the Chancellor. Part of the problem that lead to the development of this is that all of the things that cover us are scattered in terms of law or policy and the idea was to put an instrument together with all of the citations and links to them to give people the knowledge of what‘s out there.
Chancellor: I sense that Minnesota is a little tighter than most states.
MnSCU: No, I think this is consistent with what other higher education systems do.
IFO: It might be fruitful to point out the bargaining unit representative could also be a point of contact on these issues - local or state office.
MnSCU: Sure.
IFO: Something we talked about on our first pass, it was obvious some of these things are paraphrased. That this document should be a central point of hyperlinks to the statutes.
MnSCU: Those links are already built in, but this document was scanned.
IFO: The version I received did not have hyperlinks. This is language that helps us see the interpretation, but the statute overrides.
MnSCU: Absolutely.
MnSCU: On the black and white copy you have, underlining indicates a hyperlink.
MnSCU: The document you had was a scan.
MnSCU: We did link every policy that’s mentioned and every mission, but I don’t know if we’ve linked to the bargaining agreement, we’ll add that. One problem to link specific parts of the statue is if you’ve looked at it recently they are not in a clean order to link so we had to link the whole statue in one place. The goal is to get people to the document.
IFO: This is guidance to the interpretations, but not the statute.
MnSCU: At the bottom of page one, we say the statute governs.
IFO: I noticed the shifting to a positive tone; I thought that was good. We wanted to talk about the university faculty consulting work. We appreciate this, and we thank for you accommodating those unique needs. I’m looking for some assurance that this will be liberally construed – consulting work. Cathy had an example on NSF review teams and their manner of compensation. We’re assuming that that compensation is okay.
IFO: I thought about this. I wonder if on the subheading for 4. you might consider not just consulting but consulting and scholarly work. What they pay me is not a consulting fee but a pittance.
IFO: On page two on the top where we reference the bottom of page one consistent with statute, I wonder if it would be appropriate to reference contracts?
MnSCU: I will take a look at that. It doesn’t seem to be problematic to me.
IFO: I applaud you for pulling all these other statutes rules and policies together – that’s very helpful. Then finally, I would appreciate hearing the rationale with regard to the course materials not being sold for personal gain.
MnSCU: It’s not a blanket prohibition on course material for personal gain. So a person who authors the materials, the statute allows faculty to accept those. I think, generally speaking when publishers provide those free books they are not for resale, that’s one element. It would allow others to take advantage of their position to gain that is not available to the general public. That’s a consistent interpretation from the administration.
IFO: We do have a concern - we don’t think the law goes that far to prohibit resale. I have a hard time understanding if when I retire I can take the book with me, or if I throw the book in the garbage (I don’t want to break a law), that would mean I own it. Those materials are then owned by the faculty member and we would discourage sales for personal benefit - we don’t think the statute precludes that.
MnSCU: I think you’re right 1543 doesn’t address that. The purpose is so that faculty aren’t precluded by 43a38, ethics statute, for accepting those free materials, that’s to allow the faculty the ability to access those materials to figure out. It’s not there so that the faculty member can profit from the sale, then we go to 43a38.
IFO: We don’t think that conclusion is required or accurate. The faculty member is the owner and is free to do with it as personal property not thinking except resale. We want to make our point clear that we don’t agree.
IFO: It might be appropriate to the statute or ethical interpretation discussion of the fact that some publishers will stamp free copies “not for resale.” What if a department decided to pool its resources of unused resources and give them to a broker for resale to fund student travel or to benefit the educational needs of the department?
MnSCU: If that’s what the college or university says, it’s appropriate, then it’s not for personal gain. What’s your thought about putting more context in there?
IFO: I think so, or tying to separate out the legal matter or the ethical matter.
MnSCU: This is system procedure. It would cement the policy.
Chancellor: Do some libraries do that?
MnSCU: Those kinds of actions remove it from the personal gain category.
IFO: The mechanism would be more time consuming. A low blow comment I’ve heard goes to the effect that I’m going to sell my books because the salary I’m getting isn’t enough to pay me well and this is another way to make me money for my profession. I’m hearing it more and more.
MnSCU: That’s one of things I talk about on the ethics statute. When we are employed by any employer, we make a bargain and the rules apply so that’s just the type of anarchy then - not something we can endorse. That’s not to say there isn’t a legitimate concern about salary.
IFO: If we believe we own it, then the system should not impose a policy on ownership. My point is there are occasions when people do sell them and put the money in their pocket. I don’t think they violate law or policy.
MnSCU: We might have some examples where you might agree with us.
IFO: If it is the intention to prohibit faculty from selling books, salespeople who are obnoxious should be barred from the campus. But when it benefits the student groups for the department pooling resources… I’ve given my books to low income students or teachers; I could conceive that may be my personal benefit because suddenly the person or student has a different disposition of me. How would you respond to that kind of thing?
Chancellor: Good idea!
IFO: In the context to that discussion in terms of personal gain, it’s not just about monetary gain.
MnSCU: It’s not just about monetary gain, the ethics statute isn’t just about monetary gain. That could be problematic under the statute. On the other hand if someone is in need of a text book it’s one of the hazards of the ethics statute; nuances may change the resolution. Motive may be a factor.
IFO: The textbook industry doesn’t give away free books as much as in the past, and we don’t solicit these books.
IFO: Travel and meals that are work related, but it’s not my normal pay.
MnSCU: I will look at that to make it clearer to see on the term of compensation and consulting. This is not intended to signal some new interpretation.
Academic Innovations & MnOnline – Academic Services Taskforce (Draft Charter for Discussion) & Degree Audit Reporting System (DARS) Implementation Update
IFO: I understand you were going to mail something about the academic workgroups structure?
MnSCU: Handout given.
IFO: This is something new; it’s marked draft. This is a new document we are seeing and we welcome because we’ve had serious concerns with IFO representation on MnOnline.
MnSCU: We looked at your concerns in terms of adding more faculty and decided to make it a formal committee and solicit endorsement in the membership.
IFO: We would like to review it and get back to you. Is this going through the executive committee on MnOnline?
MnSCU: The Senior Vice Chancellor. There is an absence of a technology focus now, this group could take on that role.
IFO: Under membership representatives, it lists five members of IFO. Nancy did you want to say something about that?
IFO: We need to review this first before we are able to have a discussion.
IFO: Give us your rational for your statement under committee members are those who teach online.
MnSCU: We want faculty who have actually taught online.
IFO: With the emphasis on IT, people who are heavily engaged who are the most knowledgeable are presently serving on IT committees. We are trying to extend it to the whole faculty community. There is also is a need to have classroom components to online. We don’t want to restrict it. We want to hear all of the voices. That’s the case with a lot of our faculty and those faculty have needs as well. Yes we do need those people like Rhonda Ficek, but we also need the Nancy Blacks who’ve never taught online.
MnSCU: The blended approach… there are components in all classrooms.
IFO: We’ll come back with language.
IFO: I’m a little confused. Before we move off this because there are several other work groups, does this one academic service taskforce encompass the work of all the work groups?
MnSCU: There still are the student services and fiscal workgroup and marketing that still exist.
IFO: How do the workgroups fit in working with MnOnline?
MnSCU: All the workgroups feed into the MnOnline Council.
IFO: Will they be reconfigured into system level standing committees?
MnSCU: One is.
IFO: With MnOnline one request we have made is for an inventory of the programs you’re working on and where we’re going with them. We have a hard time following this MnOnline and what’s going on, if we have a question, etc.
IFO: One thing that is a concern is we hear about new projects when they are far along and some in their infancy; we don’t have the comprehensive view of what is going on. To have a single source to see what all the initiatives are and their status possibly a website, an inventory to see what people are working on is what is needed. Some people want to get more involved, and in many cases we can’t be as helpful or cooperative as we cold be.
MnSCU: We finalized a master project list for all IT projects and we’ll share that with you. It includes all the EIC and operating projects and all IT related is on that list. That will be on the website. We’ll talk about this on the governance EIMS. We’ve done an inventory and that will be made available and maintained on an ongoing basis. It’s now a matter of disseminating.
IFO: MnOnline has had consultants in the past, are you hiring consultants?
MnSCU: There’s a need. We don’t want to add positions for the short term.
IFO: Some consultants we say are MnOnline, why is the practice of hiring consultants and…..
MnSCU: None of the positions are being added to the academic side; right now we don’t have anyone except for short term web development.
IFO: Degree audit reporting system implementation date…
Chancellor: Everyone is pushing to get them done.
IFO: We’ve been told different things as to when they really need to be done. It’s taking a lot of employee time because it’s a lot of work and that people are not being replaced. It’s an add-on. In some cases it’s pretty serious. We’re hearing, different universities are at different stages of DARS completion, then we heard the deadline is June 30.
MnSCU: Yes, it was a decision made that we are sending out letters out to each campus. All campuses need to be in compliance by June 30. The Board expects this.
MnSCU: We’re on track.
IFO: This is a tremendous effort and has to be maintained. What will happen if they aren’t done by June 30?
Chancellor: If people can’t get this done then we need to help them. I would want to offer.
IFO: I hear those comments. In fairness when you design software, it’s designed for a particular model. Different universities have different models, on specific edits there are different interpretations. One thing that happens with software - if you build one size fits all, it doesn’t fit everyone. You’re not finding an unwillingness, but problems with adaptation to the software. But to find the tool to be useful…
IFO: I want to say we’ve had a couple of times where we pointed out significant faculty implications and faculty are the advisors who have to work with DARS. They are not sure of the target of DARS. I’ve got many emails from faculty who are upset because they didn’t know what was coming and didn’t understand the implication. For most of us it has meant the loss of some functions in our own system that was very helpful in advising. They are gone. I wanted to reiterate that there are many things for which the faculty and students are bearing the brunt.
Break
IFO: We’ve been asked how are the presidential searches are going?
Chancellor: Honestly, I do not think I should ever have two bites of the apple. Once we get the committees going, I stay out of it unless someone has a problem. My sense is that we’re moving along and John Quistgaard is chairing one of them. I feel that’s where I get into it with the central office staff. It’s tough all around the country. I get a lot of calls for references, I think getting good presidents is always difficult. I think this is doing well, there are some people who don’t see that as very exciting, when you get to I think we’re moving ahead.
Quistgaard: (Gave a summary of his search.) Twenty applicants for presidency at Moorhead and they seem to be good.
Chancellor: We’d like to get them appointed in March or April.
IFO: On the Moorhead search, a few of us met with the consultants, and we were all favorably impressed with them.
Travel Procedures
IFO: When we last spoke about this Bob Donahue was going to address our concerns.
IFO: We had two things; delineation of those items in the policy mandated by statute so that we understood, the second was he would contact us to hear our concerns on our copy of the proposal. We didn’t want to take time to do that during the last meet and confer.
MnSCU: Bob worked for me, and within two days of the last meet and confer with you, he left. What I’ve got here is a draft a brief note on how some of this was started. To respond to your first question, at this point, it’s not in statute, otherwise there wouldn’t be a need for procedures, it would only be state law. This is being discussed for all statewide agencies and is not MnSCU only. There are options for exemptions for some of these points to accommodate some of the missions of agencies. We’ve applied and requested an exemption to allow under 21 drivers out of state, and this is where MnSCU is one of the few agencies that drives out of state during the normal business period. It’s a very large issue. When you cross the state line, the same rules don’t apply. The van accident in Michigan with the Mankato students, three students are dead and one is paraplegic. We’ve had many severe accidents; the biggest issue of risk management is that we have young and inexperienced drivers driving vans. They are responsible for other passengers. The State of MN has never required that driver’s licenses are checked. Those are the biggest changes that would affect us in MnSCU and are being implemented throughout the state. It’s starting with MNDOT who has always checked 100% of the licenses of their employees. The DNR is also doing this. There is no deadline for implementation of the travel procedures. Agencies will begin the process and will have procedures in place over the next year or two but the committee in charge of this of which I am a member to impose strict deadline without being too onerous. The primary changes are establishing minimum qualifications, checking license, age limitations for out of state. We may have a compromise and we are willing to say any student driving out of state would have to complete a driver’s program before and possibly instate as well. There are two options for doing that. A program being developed at South Central who have been working with us to develop the van driving program and also the trailer towing program recommended that they have a two hour safe driving online course available to those people before they start behind the wheel. We are seeing if that is applicable for the under 21 drivers. South Central is working with established sites around the state. This would be developed by customized training - the end result would be available. The other agencies are very interested in this training.
IFO: Will the multiple sites be convenient to the campus location? Will they have to go off campus for this training?
MnSCU: Yes, those schools with motorcycle or truck driving facilities, any school with a training facility can do this. This is for vans or towing. St. Cloud Tech, Brainerd, etc.
IFO: While I understand the driving force behind this, the implementation and the hassle factor for faculty working with students will be humungous particularly because the fleet process of how the business office manages the university vehicles is unreliable to state universities. We may reserve a set of vehicles at the start of the semester, and if that went smoothly, we could get our student drivers trained. However, there have been numerous occasions when we have gone to pick up the keys and they said the two vans we reserved were not available and they give us three cars. Suddenly we have to scramble for another (trained) driver.
IFO: You don’t address that problem through this policy; you address it on your campus.
MnSCU: We are not going to dictate how this is implemented on the campus. This is handled through local decision making.
MnSCU: The concern you raise is something we need to think about - how do we make sure this happens as part of local decision making?
Quistgaard: I’m assuming if training is required that it will be available throughout the year?
MnSCU: Yes, that’s the expectation.
IFO: I guess I am concerned about a few things. Is the training only required for the ten passenger vans or if they are towing?
MnSCU: Yes, and if they are under 21.
IFO: So anyone under 21 driving a vehicle.
MnSCU: I’d like to differentiate, the under 21 training will be online, whereas the van and trailer towing will be behind the wheel.
IFO: I’m concerned about the cost implications. If it’s a state requirement, then the state should pay for it.
IFO: It is onerous in some ways, and I don’t favor online for any of this.
IFO: I really would like to sit down and address our specific concerns.
MnSCU: We can do that today. Let me know.
Chancellor: Is there going to be problems with faculty driving their own cars?
IFO: Or say the cost of the training times are prohibited if you have a field trip. Safety is a primary consideration, but also the amount of time for faculty and/or students who are involved in the training and the cost to the department. If we could have some sort of…the key points from the current policies could be outlined, or items for discussion of the possible changes, we could take that back to our own executive committees to get feedback from them. Right now we haven’t had that discussion on our campus. A number of people are worried about it.
IFO: I think, Don, if you funnel your comments to Cathy Summa she can talk to Sieglinde Bier, and we can see where we are at the next meet and confer.
St. Cloud State University Distributed Learning
IFO: At the MnOnline Council meeting, there was a wonderful presentation that addressed many faculty concerns about online global courses. This is a new term “distributed learning.” Patty Aceves is doing her dissertation on this topic. She described successful programs with online learning in China. She used three different US public institutions who have successful programs and there were many lessons that came from this. It’s done successfully by programs not course by course. It’s a great model for us. In all cases the initial contact was personal relationships. Somebody from the US institution knew someone from China, to develop the global program. She said they are all Higher Learning Commission; globalization was tied to the mission of the institution. It just was not a one-way, students were exchanged. The most successful was a hybrid program: US professors had three face-to-face meetings and met the students and then came back to the US and did the program online. She said one thing people don’t realize is that these online programs don’t make money. You’re lucky if you break even unless you have large numbers like 2,400 students a year. With this hybrid model, she talked about the culture and pedagogy going hand in hand. You have to look at their ethics and style. She said they are predominantly women in these courses. In China, online is the lowest wrung in terms of reputation. One of the three institutions that have been successful required a US residency in which Chinese students came to the US. They wanted them to have that cultural background. This is the kind of program that has a better chance of succeeding than other international online courses or programs. She said there are many failures because it’s hard to successfully do.
Chancellor: What is she learning about the need for student support services?
IFO: Her dissertation has a lot of dimensions. I was impressed. I think it raises a lot of questions, but is a good model. Our concern is programs with the Viet Nam.
Chancellor: I’d like to see it come back when she’s finished.
D2L Update
Al Essa gave a handout.
MnSCU: In IT we have a failing infrastructure that needs a lot of attention. IT also supports D2L. I think we made quite a bit of headway in terms of shoring up our infrastructure – not just technical, but also processes of organization and budgets. That’s the context for the ten goals we’ve outlined in the handout. One of the things the new investment has allowed us to do is instead of looking at systems in isolation we are examining how does IMS relate to other applications and processes? I’m not going to go through all ten goals. Goal one is the most important for this year from a faculty perspective. By mid February we’ll be launching our website. If faculty have any questions about D2L – not just when it’s down – that info will be on the website in achieving transparency. On goal five we’re developing a set of metrics. We should be able to measure that in some way. That’s what the Advisory Council is putting it’s arms around - to develop a report card of IT effectiveness for the IMS system. I’ll stop there. We’re chipping away at each of the ten goals for the IMS Advisory Council.
Chancellor: When do the faculty and students see the results?
MnSCU: When there is no news, that’s good news. There was a relatively successful start up on the spring semester; load on D2L is at an all time high. Also, I should mention that there was an extensive survey council meeting of online environments in student satisfaction in the online environments. The data we’ve seen is a high level of satisfaction of students. It could always be better, but benchmarking against national systems, students are very satisfied with D2L.
IFO: It’s my understanding, we have concerns, I heard that the first week of registration that D2L was down, is that true?
IFO: I was told we can’t do class shells until the week after. It was my first experience.
IFO: A faculty member said it was so slow she can’t revise her syllabus.
IFO: We looked at three incidents. There are issues that I want Al to address. One thing in the performance program, we have not got the archiving and purging tools. Because we have a central structure it’s growing, and D2L is not known for its scalability. The bucket analysis comes to mind. When we look into these performance issues, we found in each case back-ups are taking so long now that in some cases they are rolling into the production date. It is important to get all of this old data out of there, we need to get these files down so they are more manageable, new releases will have significant impact, we do have some news on that. Version 8.2 and 8.3.
MnSCU: I should mention the scalability issues and performance are a challenge for us on the infrastructure side on every system we maintain and support. With D2L, it’s a challenge because every piece of data in D2L has been there from the beginning whether or not faculty or students use that data, D2L has not had a purge archive capability. That’s our number one issue to solve with D2L.
IFO: There is a significant coordination that has to take place. Arizona has done a full revision of Version 8.2 and 8.3 and has had success. Their subsequent upgrade was only a few hours vs. a few days. We have to focus on getting our time shortened (from 66 hours when it’s backing up, D2L is not available). This is our number one priority in the IMS Council. One of the reasons this is so much of a problem is because we don’t have basic performance standards. We have to say this is the level of performance we expect and that D2L needs to be responsive to our needs.
IFO: I told Gary Langer we need non-technical people serving on the work groups. There is no time in the year that you will not inconvenience someone when you take D2L down. The whole thing is the communication. You’ve got to tell the faculty in advance that it will be down – we need a lot of lead time.
IFO: We will have less problems with the purging and archiving. We will be coming up with a policy driven standard with the archiving function. By the time the tool is there the policy should be there as well. That’s in process right now.
IFO: The other issue is the scalability. Is there any talk about this?
MnSCU: Those are future issues, we are thinking about it. Those are active discussions.
IFO: Relative to what David Bouchard said, it is important to be clear with faculty with your proposed plan and provide faculty with options. Some faculty research looks at how students progress through the use of these online learning tools. It may take us years to collect and analyze the full scope of the data. There are other ways to use these technologies than just to manage classes – scholarly projects.
IFO: On this online survey there are questions related to faculty performance such as “does the professor respond in a timely manner dealing with faculty assessment and performance.” I have a student who calls me when I am in class and is upset if I don’t respond right away.
MnSCU: The disaster recovery business plan we are developing is not adequate. We are taking D2L as the critical system we need to address first and make sure we are focus in on that.
IFO: There is a human element in terms of succession. What plan do you have?
MnSCU: Excellent point, it is one of our people organization infrastructure challenges. Currently there are a handful of critical people who are supporting or have the knowledge of many of our key systems, but we don’t have a lot of depth in terms of critical support. On the archiving issues, faculty and student are uploading all kinds of media assets and content into D2L. They are including videos and D2L is not the right place to do that. One of our goals is to develop a digital media system. This is what it would look like – let’s say you are developing content, and you want to make it available to your students. You would go into this system, and you would have control to make this content available for this period of time and make it available for research through a different software. You’re controlling the asset and making it available to different applications, that technology is beginning to be available. The exciting thing is going to give the user complete control about who sees what under what circumstances. That also is a side effect to relieve pressure on the D2L system. You’re making the choices as to what applications and services you use.
IFO: As a faculty member suppose I want to link to a video. I need to deal with the IP issue; that’s going to be a big one, if it isn’t already.
MnSCU: Some of the IP things we are all struggling with we are now seeing a set of technology to make it easy for faculty items of content that you want to share.
IFO: If you’re even thinking about May or June now you need to be telling people that with regard to the notice. Scalability is an issue that is particularly bad right now. Going to the next version will allow us to reduce the baggage but it’s an inherent D2L problem. We had these problems WITHOUT a common start date.
MnSCU: We have a scalability challenge to solve that we can break it up in three pieces. It may be a good solution however you may introduce another set of challenges when you do that. Having to support 3 separate systems introduces a different level of complexity. There are trade-offs we have to consider.
IFO: Conceptually it’s a good idea. The last time we went to Version 8.1.3 in terms of getting the word out, we did it four times in four months. We had a smooth change, but clearly there was a gap. We learned there is a model we apply for all subsequent changes. We’re pushing this hard – anytime you can plan for down time we have a whole semester schedule for this. There is no substitute for good communication. We are working on a survey.
IFO: I’m a transgressor on the media files, but we do it because it’s simple. I hope in the future I can open one program and everything is transparent.
IFO: Next fall we have a common start date…
Enterprise Investment Management Structure
Handout given on IT Governance.
IFO: The handout you’re giving us does not have a date on it. Let’s put dates on these.
MnSCU: One thing we are proposing is this cross function advisory to the Enterprise Investment process that all the different groups (each vice chancellor) are identifying. This group can look at all the proposals going to the EIC to understand how they are interrelated. There’s a total understanding of these projects, and we’ll compile this information and take it to the Enterprise Investment Committee.
Chancellor: I can’t resist raising this question with David, I try to think every day about what do students think about this, I believe that some of our graduates in computer science are going to be working for the Glen Taylor Organization and facing these same issues. Is there any opportunity for some of our students to have an internship? This would give them an edge on their resume.
MnSCU: There are some amazing students coming out of IT.
IFO: Ken Brumbaugh is also working with us. We’ll get that out to all of the campuses and let them know about the opportunities.
MnSCU: Post implementation reviews from an outside group.
IFO: How will you work with Glen Taylor to help the Wolves? We need to be careful with internships if they are being paid, they can’t be for credit.
IFO: I hope technical communication is also a part. It’s very important.
MnSCU: As part of this process I want to show you slide 7 which addresses the confusion about what technologies we are using, who evaluates that, what is the process, and the new IT governance that would be one committee called academic systems on page 7 whether it’s IMS, D2L or eFolio – there will be a single committee and take the IMS Advisory Council with a new greater change and all academic technologies would be assessed evaluated by this one committee. Faculty would have a dominant voice.
IFO: There’s a difference in the involvement of the Cross Functional Committee that are not involved in projects under 100k?
MnSCU: Right, the larger ones is what they look at.
MnSCU: They would be informed and get data whenever they meet so they know what projects were approved and are running. There is a master project list that it is running as well as operational projects a comprehensive list.
MnSCU: On February 20. Invitations were sent out and everyone should know about –Dr. Mark Milliorn. A morning event starting at 9 a.m. to our constituents and stake holders formers president league of innovation also involved by the higher ed committees on protocol, we are working with all of them.
IFO: Please send me some information then I can send it out.
MnSCU: Okay.
IFO: Can you participate via ITV?
MnSCU: Absolutely, I need to talk about the mechanics of that.
IFO: How about a video breeze?
IFO: Thank you, everyone!
The next meet and confer is February 22.