Notes from May 2009 meeting of the Languages Group

The Languages Advisory Group met on May 14, 2009.

Attending: Co-conveners Bryan Carson (LIS) and Brigitte Humbert (French), Tom Beyer (Russian/FLAC Rep.),  Kyoko Davis, Enrique Garcia (Spanish), Larry Yarbrough (Religion/Arabic), Alex Chapin (LIS).

Topics for this meeting were

  • College Web Makeover information and discussion
  • Future Plans for Course Management Systems (Segue)
  • Follow-up on Previous Action items
    • Web-based recording (Wimba/Clear)
    • Moodle/Measure demo and discussion

Alex Chapin was the guest star of the meeting giving a short presentation and answering questions about Moodle/Measure, our online testing system for languages.

Bryan started of the meeting with a brief explanation about how the web site makeover project is conceived and what the College hopes to achieve.  He touched on the collaborative nature of the project, how the new site is meant to be more participatory, more Web 2.0.  He asked how the language departments envision their web sites and if they could identify people who would be willing to be that contact persons in the departments.  We projected the Web makeover site and talked about the “400 stories”, what that meant and how to submit them to White Whale.  We also discussed the timeline of the project a bit.

The discussion of the sunsetting of Segue followed.  Alex and I explained that Segue was being phased out, but that it would still be fully functional this year and realistically into the next.  Furthermore, Segue would exist as read only for longer than that.  Alex discussed possible migration tools.  We mentioned that support for Segue was not broad-based (Alex and Adam) and that in we would investigate other systems in the future.  In the meantime, new faculty should consult with liaisons to establish what they want to do, and let LIS recommend the best tool for the job (WordPress or other applications.)  We stress that nothing would just disappear during the Segue sunsetting process and that content would not be a complete “do-over.”

They second half of the meeting was Alex’s presentation of Moodle/Measure online testing and Wimba and Clear web-based audio -video capture.  There was general discussion afterwards, especially about how Wimba was expensive, didn’t integrate well, and  as Tom pointed out, was not as easy as YouTube.  Clear represented an easier (and open source) solution.  Tom also encouraged Alex to go to the Dept. of Education about access to application, since in his experience, the Dept of Ed. is more open about open access than are some of its partners.  Alex said he’d check this out.

Action Items

  • Alex will check on getting Clear set up locally.
  • Bryan will find out
    • Upgrade schedules for XP to Vista
    • Policy on PC to Mac switch for faculty
    • faculty equipment replacement schedule going forward in the new fiscal climate

Next Meeting

Fall Semester.  Location and Time: TBD

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