Technology Advisory Board (TAB)
Minutes of Meeting, February 21, 2007
Location: Andy Holt Tower, 4th Floor Conference Room, 2:30PM
Members in Attendance: Jean Derco, Ray Hamilton, Robert Holub, Judy Huddleston,
Tim Kresse, Faye Muly, Grant Patterson, David Ratledge, Stan Pinkleton, Law
Schuelke
Others in Attendance: Robin McNeil, Robert Osborne
Robin McNeil called the meeting to order.
ECAR Student Survey
The University of Tennessee will again participate in The
ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Information Technology. The survey
will run from March 15 through
April 15 and will be given to freshmen and seniors in higher education institutions.
It is a longitudinal extension of the 2004, 2005, and 2006 ECAR studies of
students and their use and understanding of information technology.
As a participant in the ECAR study, the University of Tennessee was given
access to the data specific to its students. Jean Derco was asked to share
some highlights of the 2006 report. She reported that of the UT seniors and
freshmen who participated, 93% of the seniors and 83% of the freshmen prefer
that communication to them from the university be through email. Additionally,
of the participants that had multiple email accounts such as a university account
and at least one other account like Yahoo or Gmail, 68% of the seniors and
37% of the freshmen preferred to use their UT email account.
The full ECAR report is located at http://web.utk.edu/~techfee/documents/ECAR2006.pdf (please
note, this document is large and may take a while to load.)
TAB Student membership
Robin McNeil asked for suggestions on increasing student
participation on the Technology Advisory Board and for assistance in identifying
students that may
want to serve on the TAB in the future. Suggestions included posting information
about TAB on the OIT and SGA webpages, on Circle Park Online and Blackboard,
and on tabletops in the computer labs. Members were urged to send suggestions
to Ms. McNeil.
CTRAX
Law Schuelke asked for information about CTRAX recent withdrawal as a
music provider for the university. Stan Pinkleton explained that CTRAX
had recently
had technical problems and that they had been unable to provide us with a
list of our users before they abruptly ceased service. Had they been able to
do
so, the university would have emailed participants to inform them of the
situation. It was suggested that information be provided about the music service
and future
developments at the utunes.utk.edu website as well as an announcement in
the Beacon.
Funding for Blackboard
Grant Patterson asked for information concerning the
recent outages of Blackboard and its funding source. Judy Huddleston stated
that Technology Fee funds were
not used to fund Blackboard, but rather that it is funded by Facilities Fees.
Ms. Derco explained that Blackboard is hosted off campus and that Blackboard
had been very responsive during the recent outage. Blackboard plans to move
the university’s service to new hardware which will improve performance.
Blackboard will be giving UT a service credit to compensate the university
for the inconvenience associated with the outage.
With no further business, the meeting was adjourned. The next meeting of the
Technology Advisory Board will be Wednesday, March 28, at 2:30 PM, in the
4th Floor Conference Room, Andy Holt Tower.
|
