Category Archives: Extended Team

ACTT Notes: Student Engagement/Studio Learning Model

Agenda

We will be using this time to follow up on a Student engagement/Employment conversation with folks from DLINQ and ITS that occurred a while ago. DLINQ would also like to introduce Studio Learning as a way to immerse our student staff in meaningful work.

To help guide the discussion here is a website representing what a specific studio could be- http://act.middcreate.net/studios/

Also, here is the start of a proposal for this studio –

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1Ss3XWKyTl_NPiohhMwoyyaZBHCJnxsPMHTVbcEEocQ4/edit

 

Notes

  • This meeting is a follow up from a previous meeting that included Bob, Heather, Joe A., Joe D., and Mack P.
  • Joe A. introduced the idea of Studio Learning as a strategy that DLINQ will be piloting in the fall.
  • Q: What technology will the Studios need?
    • Each Studio will have different needs. Some will need physical space and equipment, others will be able to operate in digital spaces.
  • Long-term storage and maintenance plans need to be a consideration for Studio projects.
  • Student staff supervisors in both DLINQ and ITS are seeing fewer students apply for jobs, and there is an interest in making these positions more appealing.
  • Studio Learning offers students the chance to participate in transformational activities, contributing to academic research while developing desirable skills for their careers.
  • Q: Is Studio Learning a way to connect student workers based on interest?
    • A: Students can engage in a Studio from an interest in the technologies being used or the topics that are being explored. Whether this could become part of a student staff job description would need further discussion.
  • Could Studio Learning engagement be an optional activity within a job description?
    • A: Possibly, needs further discussion.
  • ITS student staff do valuable work There is an expectation that the student workforce will continue to grow.
  • We need to recognize that there is a cost to management students. Web Development has learned that it takes a long time to get people up to speed on the complexities of the systems before they can make meaningful contributions. This is true for new staff hires, as well.
  • Q: Can students gain experience with the Studio Learning model that would prepare them for more complex student staff positions?
    • A: Possible, needs further discussion.
  • Current student staff are being “poached” by other programs. We are giving them valuable training and expertise that is desired by other departments. This has an effect on the development of our programs, senior student staff regularly become role models and supervisors of new student staff hires.
  • Q: What needs would not be met by the Studio model?
    • A: There is a tension when trying to meet a diverse set of needs and expectations with our various cultures and communities. Needs to be discussed more, may depend on the Studio. A shared Basic orientation may provide an opportunity for cross-training.
  • Q: Is there a desire to continue this discussion?
    • A: Yes. Needs to include others.
  • Q: Who else should be invited to future meetings?
    • A: Joe Durante, Charlotte Pratt. Who else?

ACTT Notes: Canvas Evaluation

ACTT Extended Team Meeting August 29, 2017

Agenda

Instructure, the company that hosts Canvas, will be presenting an Executive Business Review, sharing data pertaining to Middlebury’s use of Canvas in the first year. This presentation will provide us with insights into how Canvas is being used and supported, and lay the groundwork for future evaluations.

 

Notes

Kelly Jerome, our Customer Success Manager from Instructure presented.

  • Stats are per-month, due to rolling on and off of terms, the data isn’t always reflective of a particular term.
  • Can get details on sub-accounts.
  • Includes support details, SLA compliance, support mechanism (phone, chat, email), and user-type.
  • For real-time reporting, the Canvas data-API would need to be used. For much custom reporting this would require our own developer time to leverage. Instructure has several pre-built reports that could be purchased that wouldn’t require local resources.

EBR

A copy of the report can be seen here. Please log in with your Middlebury username and password to view.

ACTT Notes: Canvas LTIs

LTI Review

 

Zoom LTI

  • Was convenient with Adobe Connect
  • Is there a cost?
  • Will there be challenges for SSO? Canvas uses CAS, Zoom uses ADFS.
  • Will bring it up with the Web Conferencing Team

 

GoogleApps and O365 Canvas LTI Evaluations

  • Both LTIs offer enhanced functionality and integration in Canvas
    • Slides and spreadsheets can be used in Collaborations, as well as docs.
    • Files from both services can be submitted for assignments, and evaluated using the SpeedGrader.
    • Access to both services is included in the Rich Text editor (similar to Panopto) in the “external tool” menu
  • Adam and Joe attended a brainstorming meeting for the Course Hub and O365
    • Discussing what a course space in O365 looks like
    • Discussing how to manage the course group
  • LTIs need to be added at the account level, cannot be added to a sub-account or course
  • Will test in https://middlebury.test.instructure.com this week
  • Assuming testing goes well we will pilot in the production instance in the fall, then evaluate.

 

Other Topics

  • Instructure will present a review of Middlebury’s use of Canvas in the first year. This will happen at the ACTT meeting on Aug. 22nd.
  • Joe is working on a launch roadmap for Panopto. Dates have been shared, please send feedback.
  • ACTT Core Group notes will be published to the site.

ACTT Notes: One-year Evaluation

Presentation Slides

 

The proposal for the ACTT called for an evaluation at the one-year and two-year marks. The one-year evaluation was designed to assess the Team’s activities so that changes could be made. The evaluation was also designed to have as few survey questions as possible, some of the evaluations questions are designed to be answered with collected data. A brief survey was shared with Core members, Extended Team members, and members of the Project Teams.

 

Slide 3: Academic Cyberinfrastructure Inventory

We now have a searchable database of the web-based services that support academic work, with infrastructure dependencies. Now that budget decisions are being made, services are moving from pilot to production and enterprise phases, the information in the database needs to be updated.

 

Slide 4: Canvas

When Moodle was launched we saw a decrease in use from Fall to Spring. This year we saw an increase in Canvas use.

 

Slide 5: Canvas

Some faculty used Canvas in the Fall but did not use it in the Spring, and vice versa. Also, faculty did not use Canvas for all of their courses. This may mean that faculty are thinking critically about whether Canvas supports their teaching on a course by course basis. The CTLR-sponsored a number of Canvas-based workshops.

 

Slide 6: Panopto

Panopto is not just a streaming media service, it also offers expanded functionality for screen capturing, broadcasting, and media discussion. A CTLR-sponsored workshop used Panopto for flipping the classroom activities.

 

Slide 7: Zoom

The videoconferencing evaluation used an interesting method. 4 services were used in one hour in a round-robin style. The Team was able to quickly determine the top choices. The pilot of Zoom was so successful, and the platform so popular, that we needed to expand to a campus-wide license before the end.

 

Slide 8: RStudio

A handful of classes used RStudio Server this year. DLA-sponsored workshops on DATA were delivered, and a Data Study group was created.

The company has let us know that they will be launching a cloud-based version of RSTudio Server.

 

Slide 9: Who Took the Survey

We had a 75% return rate for the survey. All of the Core Team and most of the Extended Team took the survey. Some may have mis-identified themselves.

 

Slide 10: Other Roles

Many members of the ACTT serve on multiple teams. There are four members that serve on the Core, Extended, and Project Teams.

 

Slide 11: Usefulness of Information

Most members find the published information useful for their jobs.

 

Slide 12: Usefulness of Meetings

The majority of members in all roles believe that the information shared at meetings is useful for their jobs. 25% are Not Sure, which seems high. Some more investigation is needed.

Note from Discussion: Some may be feeling unsure about the usefulness because of their own participation in some of the discussions. We should look for ways to craft the discussions so that everyone feels they are able to participate.

Some feel that the multiple points of view are very valuable, otherwise they would be receiving one point of view, or a filtered point of view, from individuals. The Team has done well at being inclusive in its information gathering and sharing.

 

Slide 13: Meetings

This question is flawed, since members were not asked if they had a role on the CTT. It is expected that Core members that served on the CTT would see no change, new Core members would see an increase. Extended Team members that served on the CTT would see a decrease, new members would see an increase. Some follow up questions will need to be asked.

The projected number of Extended Team meetings was one per month. The average is very close, however it is noted that most of these meetings occurred in the fall as recommendations were crafted for budget proposals.

Note from Discussion: Some noted that the weekly meeting creates efficiencies, they are meeting collectively with people that they would meet with individually anyways.

 

Slides 14-17: Additional Notes

Some comments were broken up, with an attempt to group ideas based on content.

Notes from Discussion: There are outstanding questions about the relationship of the ACTT and ITS Governance/Priority Setting. We also identified future projects: WordPress sites and MiddCreate; Moodle Archiving; Panopto Rollout; Canvas LTIs.

 

Slide 18: Next Steps?

  • Joe will post the notes from this meeting.
  • The ACTT Core will discuss.
  • We will have follow-up conversations with members and others.

ACTT Notes: April 4, 2017

Language School Orientations

It is that time of year again! In this meeting we will be going over the orientation sessions for Language Schools and Bread Loaf.

Language pledge.

  • Each school interprets the pledge slightly differently. Hospital, Helpdesk, and Reference Desk usually “English Safe Zones”. (Chinese School more strict)

Campus changes over. Some undergrad dorms become administrative & faculty offices. People who miss arrival center on Friday are often challenged by not having assistance other than Public Safety over the weekend.

Bilinguals: Traditionally, these support staff have assisted with technology help by translating tech questions to students.

  • Also usually in charge of each school’s web presence during the summer.
  • Also sort of RAs.

Send requests related to the orientation spreadsheet to Joe A.

DMTs: Unclear how much DMT support will be available.

2 separate start dates. “Hard” languages get extra weeks.

 

General Tech Training

Every Curricular Tech & Library training will ideally be preceded by a General Tech Training as it can be hard to focus on other info if you can’t log in.

Often run by Pij & Zach (and their colleagues).

Banner, wireless, printing, email, authentication

  • Suggestion: Have someone who can reset accounts in room.
  • Alternate suggestion: Get people to set up their accounts before they come to campus.

 

Library Orientation

Challenge running orientation for different student levels (undergrad – masters – doctoral).

Library resources, ILL, purchasing.

 

Curricular Technology Orientation

1st half:

  • Course Hub intro (dashboard, resources, roster)
  • Canvas
  • WordPress
  • **Moodle will NOT be available for ANY language school courses**

2nd half:

Help instructors set up their class resources.

Challenge: different ways each school schedule their classes/sections.

Academic Tech staff available for consultations for those who need more in-depth help.

Notes for Extended Team Meeting: Panopto Training

Presenter: Rebecca Lessem, Director of Training

Training & support resources under training tab of homepage

    • Webinars (basic and advanced) plus Friday Q+A with Rebecca at noon eastern time

Overview of how recordings move through the Panopto system

  • All videos are “deeply searchable” via automatic speech recognition + OCR software
    • Special plugin to powerpoint makes slide text searchable, too!
    • Title, keywords, metadata
    • Searchability is only English language-based? (Petar)
      • Yes
      • For other languages, uploading captions is recommended for searchability.
  • Recording
    • You can record from any device (downloadable app)
    • Remote recorder functionality – start and stop times can be pre-set (not available for Macs, PC only)
    • You can also record outside of Panopto and upload to the platform
      • Will be processed and searchable the same as other videos
    • Quality of OCR? (Shel)
      • it depends – usually works well for printed text and/or stuff that’s on-screen for a while; handwriting is obviously trickier
    • Creators can add PDFs to their recordings as well as slides
  • Viewing Panopto content
    • Interactive web viewer
    • Accessible via any browser
    • Android and iOS apps
    • Display is automatically optimized for the device you are viewing from
    • Mp4, mp3, tablet, android, and iOS viewing formats are available for every recording made or uploaded to Panopto
    • Admins have brand customization options
    • Are there multiple quality versions for adaptive streaming, or just one encoding per device type? (Zach)
      • Panopto should adjust automatically as long as you are accessing via the web viewer; mobile apps have just one encoding each, but creators can specify

Roles in Panopto and their permissions (creator, viewer, administrator)

Folders

  • Course folder – shared with instructor and students
  • My folder – personal to every user
  • Assignment folder – allow for student recording
    • Everyone who is a viewer in the course would be able to record via this folder without technically being a creator
    • Can students easily download any videos they make for portfolio reasons? (Zach)
      • Yes – multiple output options can be selected and processed into a single mp4
  • Shared with me
    • Any content you’ve been added to
  • Bookmarked
  • Browse
  • Each folder has its own permissions which can be adjusted
    • Share – Google-esque options (specific people, organization wide, groups, public on the web, etc.)
      • Groups are not auto-synced from AD (too many); course groups synced on demand from the Hub, others must be (re-)created manually.
    • When you share a folder, you can assign read only, edit, or publish permissions
      • If enabled, “publisher” would have to give approval for content to become visible to viewers
  • Our folders are set up by Program -> Year -> Semester -> Course (Joe)
    • We could structure our Panopto folders to reflect this
  • Parent folder settings can be set to to apply to subfolders, or not
  • Is there a master file? (Petar)
    • Each file is a master file
      • A copy of a file would be it’s own master file and would have to be deleted/adjusted separately from the original

Panopto from the viewer perspective

  • Can adjust video speed
    • Fastforward
    • Slow motion
  • Can annotate videos
  • Can take notes
    • Private by default, can be adjusted
    • Notes can be taken in a group channel so everyone in the group can see/search each other’s notes
    • Saved as metadata so student can see/search later
    • Creator can delete notes
  • Can participate in discussion
    • Like a group chat, more public than notes
    • Saved as metadata so student can see/search later
    • Creator can delete discussions (if content is problematic or creator uses same video from semester to semester)
    • Cannot be exported, we can submit feature request

Canvas Integration

  • We don’t have it, but maybe we want it
  • When enabled, Panopto shows up as a tab in the course menu
    • Embedded, searchable Panopto iframe within Canvas
  • Instructor can make new recordings, adjust video settings, edit videos, share videos within Canvas via the integration
  • Panopto button will show up in Canvas rich text editor
    • Content can be directly embedded into discussions, assignments, etc
    • Recordings will live in Panopto
  • Permissions for Panopto files would carry over from semester to semester without having to copy the video. This can currently be done using the Course Hub.

Statistics

  • Counts live stream watching? (Petar)
    • Yes

Can a live webcast be embedded? (Mack)

  • When you prepare the link in advance, you can embed it, but it won’t show anything until the session begins.
    • Does it embed the live webcast or just the recording? Didn’t seem to work when we tested. (Mack)
      • Rebecca will follow up

ACTT Extended Team Meeting Agenda for October 25, 2016

The new ACT Team process includes Extended Team meetings. These closed meetings allow the Team to work with expert staff and focus on evaluating solutions that inform recommendations.

Agenda

We will be participating in a vendor led training on Panopto, the video management service we are piloting this fall. Proposed topics include:

  • Overview of how recordings move through the Panopto system
  • Logging in to Panopto from Blackboard/Canvas or directly
  • How Panopto appears in Blackboard/Canvas
  • How folders work in Panopto (hierarchy, subfolders, sharing)
  • Roles in Panopto and their permissions (creator, viewer, administrator)
  • Managing the Panopto Video Library: sharing, moving, copying videos and folders
  • Viewership analytics

Notes for Adobe Connect Replacement, LTI Governance

Housekeeping

  • Google Apps for Edu allows for up to 15 participants on hangouts (as opposed to 10).
  • Storage project is now underway (Zach)
    • Goal: reduce dependency on local storage infrastructure and improve access across devices and locations.
    • Email migration was first step, second step will be migration of home directories on Midd/MIIS files to the cloud.
    • Strong sense that we will be recommending One Drive as default best option, but Google Drive will continue to be supported.
  • Checking in on how Hangouts is working for our team communication/meetings
    • Have presenters join individually via Hangouts so that they aren’t just presenting “to the room”?
    • Would be helpful to provide docs/resources referenced in the meeting via the Hangout chat (Jamie)
    • Lower thirds have been super helpful
    • Core team has been meeting exclusively via Hangouts (everyone joins separately), would be great if we could practice this for extended team meetings, as well

Adobe Connect Replacement

    • Features for Web Conferencing Platform (adobe connect replacement)
    • Mack and Petar presented  to us on the status of this project in July
    • 80 host licenses on our current Adobe Connect contract – we’ve hit capacity and purchase 10 or more licenses a year
    • Adobe got rid of edu discount, so next fiscal year we’ll be using an alternative
      • 4 alternative platforms are being considered:
      • Related to another IT driven project – phone system replacement at the College
        • Most of the systems being considered have a UC (unified communications) component.
        • Webex and Vidyo are being considered as alternatives to AC as part of the phone replacement project
      • Zoom and Blue Jeans are two additional web conferencing platforms being considered (independent of phone replacement)

 

  • If there is a clear front runner after rigorous testing of different options, we will proceed with a pilot (Mack)

 

    • Zoom Webex and Blue Jeans meet our needs as a replacement for Adobe Connect, according to the criteria we set in above form
    • Options that have been ruled out for various administrative/functionality-related reasons
      • Skype for business
      • Gotomeeting
    • How AC is currently being used
      • School of Hebrew hybrid program
      • Language School pre-immersion (Russian + Korean)
      • Administrative working groups at College
      • MIIS: probably 20 active users per semester
        • IEM program relies heavily on web conferencing each semester
          • Symposium, synchronous practicum course throughout the semester, guest speakers
        • Recruiting: virtual recruiting series each semester
        • Annual Nonproliferation teacher training – virtual workshops

 

  • For now, how do we test these different tools?

 

      • Our group will test out the 4 different platforms during our meetings
        • Musical chairs, 15 minutes?
      • Our group will try to identify the one tool that stands out and then pilot that group with the various academic/administrative groups reliant AC

 

  • During those 15 minutes, we’ll be evaluating

 

  • Project team: Mack, Petar, Joe, Bob, ODL (Sean or Amy C)
    • Project team will share meeting links with us to attend via the different platforms, a member of the project team will lead each test.

LTI Governance

    • Learning Technology Integration (LTI)
    • Canvas has the ability to link to other services internally
    • LTIs can be linked at
      • Course level (by faculty)
      • Subaccount level (MIIS, Breadloaf, etc.)
      • Uber admin level (available for all courses across the board)
    • Eduapps
      • Right now, faculty can find direct links to services and add them directly
    • Governance questions and next steps

 

  • Next steps: Joe has drafted a recommendation and will be sharing for feedback, then we’ll decide how to move forward

 

  • Additional questions from the group
    • What was the process for Moodle/LTI? (Petar)
      • College only had one LTI request ever – no precedent
    • Replace “student data” with “protected data” in flowchart?
      • Comply with FERPA
      • Health data?
    • WordPress parallel – how do plugin requests get vetted? Do we need to be talking about governance processes more broadly? (Bob)
    • If we do approve the request, at what level does that take place? Subaccount? Everyone?
    • If the LTI has a cost, which budget would it come out of? (Mack)
      • Cost will be addressed on a case by case basis
    • Streamlining the faculty experience – should we try to ensure that this request process is similar to requesting WordPress plugins or Google Apps integrations (Zach)?
      • Joe’s gut reaction: we should stick to focusing on Canvas, the governance question is new to us. Let’s focus on success with Canvas governance and then think about how it could be a model for future platforms. We can have the conversation about Google Apps at a later date.
      • Currently no governing body that approves or denies WordPress plugin requests. There has never been a formal system for vetting requests beyond whether adding them will break anything. (Adam)