Instructional Support Committee

Attending: Erin Hurley, Jon Chenette, Ian Athanasakis (STAC), David Romano, Shuchi Kapila, Roger Vetter, Bill Francis, Monty Roper, Cecilia Knight, Richard Fyffe, John Kalkbrenner, Terri Phipps

Minutes of 21 November approved with edits. The question of why bandwidth needs increased was raised. The current bandwidth is 40 mbs. There is more demand for video, off-campus databases, etc., that require a higher bandwidth.

No fast track approvals to report.

Curricular Development proposal

Spanish proposal tabled from last meeting: The faculty member has submitted information requested. ISC approves the proposal pending approval from the Spanish Department and the Office of Interdisciplinary Studies. The faculty member should work with the Library to obtain materials related to the exhibit.

Google Apps

Discussion continued from last meeting. Interested students would like to do a public presentation to educate the campus community about collaborative tools such as Google Apps.

• Can calendars be made private? Yes
• Can I still use Microsoft Word? Yes. Google Apps makes it easier to share documents for collaboration.
• Students can save documents in MS Word or PDF format to send to professors.
• ITS would need to work with Google Apps to set up and manage the @grinnell.edu address.
• Students can share calendars in Google Apps, but not Outlook. Outlook can still be used as an e-mail client.
• Privacy issue? What is Google’s privacy policy? They collect aggregate information (percentage of gender using product, for example). Other information can be subpoenaed. Who “owns” the College’s information?
• Google Apps saves each version of a document, tracking who made changes.

Google Apps is hosted remotely. Zimbra is on-site.

Students passed an initiative to pursue supporting a collaborative suite on campus.

What is the goal of this initiative? Why choose a solution without first clarifying a specific problem? What are other options? What tools do we already have that are under-utilized?

• The problem is that it is too hard to collaborate using current technology.
• The main collaborative tool in use now is email. Documents are emailed back and forth, which can overload quotas and be confusing as to which version is the most recent.

List of problems identified by student group:

• Difficult to collaborate
• No off-campus access
• Difficult to organize email

What are the pros and cons at the institutional level?

• Bill will check with peer institutions that are using collaborative suites.

Discussion will continue on this issue.

Spam filter

A new filter is being tested. ITS will send a notice within a week informing the campus of the new tool. Where are all the messages going? There is some concern that non-spam messages are being filtered out and the user has no way to see or retrieve them. This will be addressed in the notice from ITS.

Budget discussion tabled.

Richard was dismissed from the meeting.

Review of Librarian

The Librarian of the College is a faculty member and as such is included in the review process. The process differs somewhat from a regular faculty review as there is less interaction with students (no teaching evaluations or advisees). Richard Fyffe will be undergoing an interim review in spring 2008. The Dean would like a representative from ISC on the review committee. Monty has agreed to serve.

Respectfully submitted,
Terri Phipps