Instructional Support Committee

Attending: David Romano, Cecilia Knight, Bill Francis, Monty Roper, Roger Vetter, Laura Lienemann (SGA), Richard Fyffe, Erin Hurley, Ian Athanasakis (STAC), Shuchi Kapila, Terri Phipps

John Stone attended second half of meeting.

Minutes of 13 February approved as distributed.

Two Fast Track approvals:

• Classroom visitor (SOC) … $100
• ART/MUS field trip to Robert Wilson exhibit, University of Iowa … $500

Richard distributed the Libraries’ recommendation to replace Elsevier Journal Subscriptions with By-the-Article Access. This proposal was discussed in division meetings on February 11. Faculty support gathering more information on this proposal. Faculty will be asked to nominate journals that the Libraries should continue to receive in print form. The goal will be to cancel at least $100,000 in subscriptions. Comments and recommendations should be submitted by May 1.

Faculty will receive a password for access. Students will need to contact Library staff to access articles. Night and weekend staff will have passwords to assist students as well. Richard will send email reminders to faculty to submit recommendations. Terri will also include the deadline in the Faculty News Digest.

CTS update: The search committee has met with two candidates; the third will be on campus soon. The general impression is that the pool is much stronger this time.

Summer workshops: Additional workshops have been approved. The final list will go to faculty this week or early next. There may be an additional workshop that has not yet been proposed. If approved, it will be advertised separately.

Curricular development proposal: PHI/PHY: Have they already reached maximum funding for this project? What has ISC already funded? EKI allows up to $3000 per project. It is unclear whether that is for each complete project or for each part of a project if it is carried out over time. If ISC considers this as a stand alone project, it does fall within our guidelines. If this is considered as one project (though carried out over two years), maximum funding may have been reached. Terri will send relevant documents to the committee to give members some background and history of the proposal.

Discussion tabled until the next meeting.

John Stone joined the meeting.

John raised the following points to consider: File formats currently in use on campus will no longer be the default. John suggests that the College move to Open Office/Open Doc software. Why Open Doc? Why now? Why not continue to use Microsoft? How best could the College transition to Open Office?

Why:

• Open Office uses a file format that is more likely to allow long-term access to documents.
• Open Office file format meets international standards, allowing the College to communicate more easily with international colleagues.
• Open Office is not under the control of a single entity.
• Open Office is stable.
• Open Office allows sharing of documents with others in the US who don’t use Microsoft.
• Campus users may no longer wish to use Microsoft products given potential problems caused by an upgrade to Office 2007 and Vista.

John will give more technical details in a talk on March 6 and 4:30. ISC members are encouraged to attend.

Why now:

• The campus is being forced to change anyway (to Office 2007, then to Vista).
• Open Doc format has a two-year history of being the international standard.
• Software is readily available and of high quality.
• Open Office is freeware. (openoffice.org)
• Open Doc Format is emerging as a viable alternative to Microsoft.

• The interface of MS Office 2007 is radically different from what users are accustomed to. Open Office looks more like the current Microsoft than Office 2007 does.
• Microsoft needs a plug-in to read other versions of its own documents.
• New Microsoft formats do not conform to international standards.
• Converters that allow non-Microsoft users to read MS documents are not readily available.
• There is no technological advantage to using Microsoft rather than Open Office.

• Recommendation can be made to use Open Document Format. Open Office is compatible with two versions of Windows, two version of MAC OS, and MathLan.
• Open Office works well with third party applications, such as Google Apps that some students are currently using.
• Open Doc Format opens Microsoft files, though some formatting may be lost.
• Open Doc Format can be used as a converter. Files can be saved as .rtf or .doc but not .docx

The problem is already here. Students and faculty do not always have the same versions of software installed, leading to difficulty sharing documents. What about MOS training? Will that become null? Office 2007 will require retraining. Open Office does not have an email client. MSExchange will not be affected.

Adoption of Open Doc Format:

• Requires a commitment by the faculty
• ISC is charged with computing policy recommendations. John would like ISC to recommend that the College adopt Open Office as the default on new computers.

Respectfully submitted,
Terri Phipps