Present: Arlene Allen, Art Battson, Ken Bowers, Bill Doering, Phil Handley, Rick Johnson, Bill Koseluk, Tom Lawton, Tom Marazita, Ed Mehlschau, Alan Moses, Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Stan Nicholson, Jamie Sonsini, Sean Souther, Bob Sugar, John Vasi
Not Present: Debbie Anglin, Kevin Barron, George Gregg, Sonia Johnston, Pam Lombardo, Bill McTague, Kevin Schmidt, Vince Sefcik, Pamela Webb
Alan Moses noted that UCSB is hosting the UC Computing Services Conference, July 26-28. The conference committee is looking for ideas for discussion topics and opportunities to show off what UCSB does well.
Arlene Allen reported that the Authentication/Directory subcommittee is assembling a master list of services that would benefit from the existence of a campus-wide directory (e.g. authentication for use of the campus modem pool). The group also discussed how UCSB's effort might relate to the UC Common Authentication Project (UCCAP). One issue is that LDAP servers from various vendors do not always exchange information as designed in the LDAP specification.
Bob Sugar noted that Alan Moses has agreed to co-chair the Backbone Engineering Group (BEG) with Larry Murdock. The group applauded to thank Larry for his past work and Alan for stepping up to help. Timing is auspicious because we are about to begin design of the next generation backbone network for the general campus. Larry and Alan reported that the group would begin meeting semiweekly in mid March.
A question arose regarding the use of library resources and restricted web materials from off campus. Doing so successfully requires authentication that is not based on domain name addresses. Arlene responded that a short-term solution might be a proxy server that would authenticate UCSB people and pass them through with a UCSB address. Use of PKI certificates is the longer-term solution envisioned by UCCAP.
Glenn Davis provided notes from Vince Sefcik on the following four items:
- CalREN-2: All fiber needed to connect research labs to switches is in place and tested. Equipment from Cabletron is arriving. John Haskins will inventory and tag it and then it will be ready for installation. Cabletron will make a presentation about the SSR-8, the selected backbone switch, from 10:00 a.m. to noon on March 12 in the sixth floor conference room in Broida Hall (Room 6204). Elise has distributed backbone request forms to the CalREN-2 research groups. They need to submit completed forms to the NOC.
- Broadband migration to FDDI: Still waiting for fiber requests from Military Science and QUEST. NOC to do the configurations of equipment for Snidecor Hall.
- Modem Reconfiguration: No negative feedback on combining modem pools. Three people have either complained or worried about the 30 minutes time limits. Six notes complaining about the quality of GTE ISP service were received. Several members of the ITPG noted that they are using GTE/ISP successfully and that they like the price for unlimited hours, billing to their department and using the service while travelling. Those at the meeting thought that the major drawback to GTE is the problem of not being able to set the "reply to" address to someplace other than GTE. Tom Marazita reported that he had been able to specify a ucsb "reply to" address using Netscape’s mail client. Jamie said that David Alix had made a modification to the Simeon IMAP server that allowed their customers to use the IS&C server from their ISP accounts. Those with differing experiences decided to meet offline to explore. Jamie said that either he or David Alix would send a note to CSF to get people together. The group decided not to recommend pursuing a new RFP until this exploration was complete.
- ISP Peering: No negative comments on the drafts were received, so Communications Services will post the offering on their web site and begin soliciting agreements with four or five ISPs.
Sean Souther asked the group if they would like to see the new GauchoNet service before it is rolled out in April. Response was positive so Sean will schedule the Visitor Center for a presentation. Student Affairs is looking for help in linking course web pages and instructors' office-hour schedules.
Those who attended the ITB meeting conveyed the tenor of the discussion of the recommendations that were forwarded by the ITPG. In general, the ITB members accepted the spirit of the recommendations, but thought that the policy statements should be general propositions with the detailed supporting material and immediate projects moved to a separate section. Glenn circulated a new draft of the statements attempting to implement this separation. The group suggested further changes that were integrated and circulated to the group on Tuesday, March 9. The goal is to forward the new draft to ITB by Friday, March 12.
Elise then moved the discussion to the topic of survey questions for current and incoming students and introduced our guests Stan Nicholson and Rick Johnson from Instructional Consultation. Stan outlined the kinds of help that are provided by Instructional Consultation. Rick and Stan then introduced a few parameters basic to the survey game: 1) content must come from the ITB/ITPG, 2) we need to know what information we want, why we want it and what we are going to do with it, and 3) are we looking for a snap-shot, a baseline or are we planning to track a long-term process?
The group discussed different approaches for conveying survey questions to students. The idea of attaching questions to the regular course evaluations does not look practical because instructors must approve questions to be added to the surveys for each of their courses. Random sampling is the best for purposes of generalizing to a population, but tracking down all of the students selected in the sample can be a daunting task. Mailing surveys to local addresses typically produces response rates of about 10%.
Some target a few of the large classes and ask the instructors to hand out surveys at class meetings. This technique produces a high rate of return (up to 70% of those enrolled), but limits the ability to generalize to the student body.
Doing a pilot test to learn whether the questions are meaningful and the answers are useful was thought to be a good idea. The notion of pre-testing on a computer intensive class such as Biology 5, which utilizes a list-server and videos of lectures, evoked an array of opinions.
If response rates might vary systematically across subpopulations we should probably target specific classes.
Surveys are used to get at how widespread a phenomenon might be, while interviews are better for discovering what a phenomenon means.
It was suggested that graduate students might be more easily accessed through their home departments.
It was noted that we could produce a set of common questions to be included in a variety of vehicles circulated by such units as Housing, Orientation and Institutional Research.
The survey itself would be a medium to inform students of the available services. Also, instructors could look at survey results from previous courses that were similar to courses they were contemplating and review the experiences reported by students ahead of time.
It was suggested that we also collect demographic data such as type of local residence, discipline and class-level to help point to potential trouble spots. We might also want to know if students have access to specific services such as GauchoNet, registration materials and grades.
The following people volunteered to participate in the survey subgroup: Bill Koseluk (group chair), Stan Nicholson, Rick Johnson, John Vasi, Joan Murdoch, and Sean Souther. It was suggested that there might be representatives from Residential Services and the College of Engineering.
As a final note, Bill Koseluk reported that Laurice Kennel (simmonsl@ic.ucsb.edu) had volunteered to help coordinate site-license acquisitions on campus. Glenn noted that she had already been added to the site-license discussion list and invited to join the monthly Technical Acquisition Support (TAS) teleconference.
In closing, the group agreed to move the ITPG recommendations forward via electronic means.
The next ITPG meeting will be held on THURSDAY, March 25, 10:00 a.m-noon in North Hall 1131.
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