Faculty Senate University Computer and Electronic Communications Committee Tuesday, May 11, 10:00 - 11:30 Room 805-9, Campus Center DRAFT MINUTES Attendees: Scott Bradley (Engineering ECS), Marilyn Billings (Library, secretary), Steve Brewer (Biology), Joe Kunkel (Biology, chair), Rovert Levin (Food Science), Nikki Stoia (Music & Dance, Academic Dean, HFA), Donna Zucker (Nursing) I. Minutes A. Minutes of May 11, 2004 and March 9, 2004 are posted at URL: http://people.umass.edu/fsucecc/ II. Announcements and Question period. A. FSUCECC Chair (Joe Kunkel). 1. Learning Commons: The last FSUCECC meeting was cancelled so that members could attend a workshop on the concept of a Learning Commons for some of the main level of the W.E.B. Du Bois Library after the deck replacement project is completed this year. 2. Meeting with Jack Wilson, president UMass System. A Faculty Senate group met last week with Jack Wilson about PeopleSoft. There seems to be a disconnect between the SIS PeopleSoft group and the HR/Fiancials PeopleSoft group. There are two separate PeopleSoft contracts. The HR/Financials piece is the only piece that was mandated by the Trustees to be one product for the entire UMass System. The SIS (Student Information System) piece is a new PeopleSoft product and was not part of the mandate. There is a sense that we are in for a rough ride with PeopleSoft SIS with upgrades every 2 years, difficulty getting problems resolved, and multiple cycles of problems. The discussion of problems and then subsequently putting them on a list is not what we envisioned as Level 1 functions. We wanted problems to be solved John Dubach attends Users Group meetings. UNC has developed its own SIS product which is reported to be flawless. Should we investigate this? Jack Wilson commented that there are better products out there for SIS software. SPIRE: one of the best sources to check out is the National Academic Advising Association (NACADA) site http://www.nacada.ksu.edu/. Spire is on a every 2 year development cycle. Students have much more access to their schedules. There are 2 brief training sessions for students. What students will be looking at will be much better. On the first page will be their schedule, holds on their record, their address. It is much more user friendly to students. For faculty, all grades have to be submitted electronically. However the training session was for the new system, not the current one so there will be problems this semester. There is not currently a way to batch load grades from large courses. It would make sense to build an excel PeopleSoft interface. The PeopleSoft system is not intuitive. All options should be readily available. Our compliments to the OIT helpdesk staff who doing training. B. OIT (Rosio Alvarez). C. LIAISON (Howard Stidham) in absentia Liaison Committee meeting: Presented 20-30 problems that need to solve. They were added to the list of department problems needing to be solved. Attention has been to students, not faculty. For example, it takes 4-5 screens to change students schedules. Need faster computers for faculty. Class search page is information intensive so it opens more slowly. Minors in any department need to be overridden to get into any courses for majors. Have to determine whether it is an OIT or Registrar problem. There are very difficult problems to solve and they are understaffed. Retention of good staff is an issue. They need a trouble-ticket system that has subscription features such as Bugzilla http://www.bugzilla.org/, where one can submit a problem, see others that are similar, and connect them. We want a grades submission process that is not hard, similar to using Amazon. It is clear that Level 1 does not yet exist. It is supposed to be a decision-making body. Level 3 is supposed to be changing - Help Desk. III. Old business A. Review of SIS Liaison Group 1) Level 1 2) Level 2 and 3. See above comments. 3) Report to the Faculty Senate Make a major section of our annual report be PeopleSoft SIS. Will submit report to Faculty Senate in the fall. Action items: Joe will be sending out email to the membership to get issues, problems. He will draft a report, send via email for review and comment. This will be an agenda item for first fall meeting. Action item: Get a leader of the overseeing liaison group here for the first meeting in the fall. Who is on Level 1? There should be representatives from a variety of levels. We need to know the structure of the different levels. Nikki Stoia could represent Humanities and Fine Arts, Music faculty, and the Deans. She also does scheduling, audits, lots of first-hand experience. B. Email Lists 1) Subcommittee progress Action item: Steve Brewer has received the materials from Murray but has to schedule a meeting of the subcommittee. IV. New business A. Sasser Windows 2000/XP worm The perpetrator, an 18 year old German student, has been caught. Larger issue: Why continue with Windows? What about the options of Windows 98 or Linux? A Linux solution: Depends on hardware and software. WalMart sells a PC with Linux pre-installed with Word, etc. Possible solution: require automatic updates. OIT's response: They can shut down infected machines, require students to go to OIT to get ìdetergentî CD. This solution does not work for distance learning students. What about changing to a Mac environment? OIT needs to provide more information than we have received this semester. In the past, OIT has provided graphs and charts of resources, such as SIS programming group. New version will have lots of customization by users, ability to set user preferences. Action item: First meeting in fall, elect new chair and secretary. Action item: Find out how the SIS programmers in Registrar's Office, OIT are being used and what they do. Next meeting: Thu, Sep 9, 2004, 12:00 - 1:30. Campus Center, Room tba.