Meeting February 6, 2007
Present: James, Susan, Linda
1. Review of the Faculty Survey results
We discussed the survey results and noted that there were no big surprises. We can use some of the responses as a start to conversations with the focus groups.
2. Student input. James reported on his meeting with the Student Technology Group. Their comments seemed to reflect their ideas on what all students want, not just personal experiences. They appreciate the organizational aspects of WebCT and the way it gives them instant access to assignments and handouts â?? for those faculty who use it. Several had used similar systems in high school.
James asked how best to get feedback from students; they thought that surveying either those who currently have classes using WebCT, or the student body more generally would be good. They suggested some incentive as well. Focus groups are not likely to work for students.
Susan is going to draft a student survey form for the next meeting.
3. Pricing. James had preliminary pricing from Desire2Learn. His sales contact was not clear on how the cost elements inter-relate and also said that there is going to be a new price model for small colleges out soon. However, the pricing we did see is very high, and is a multi server system. We will wait for more price information in is due out in a couple weeks.
4. Narrowing down the choices. The group assembled felt that we could eliminate Angel from the group of choices, but we are not yet ready to move down to two choices.
5. Faculty focus groups. We will ask the faculty members who indicated on the survey that they would like more input to participate in focus groups. We will set up two times and let them choose which to attend. These will occur soon and discuss the elements in the survey to get a more nuanced view of the faculty needs. James will set up dates.
We will have another set of focus group sessions in late March or early April. The important activities before that time will be discovering whether we have been accepted for the Sakai trial and possible attendance at the Sakai User Group meeting. At the second set of faculty meetings we would like to have narrowed the choice down to one or two and get their reactions to demos.
6. Sakai pilot. James is working on the proposal.