All attendees joined remotely, via Zoom.

Attendees (16):

Members (8): Michael Cabral, Amita Chin (Vice Chair), Oscar Keyes, Matthew Vechinski (alternate for Kirk Richardson), Valerie Robnolt (Chair), Debra Shockey, James Smither, Shanaka Wijesinghe
Ex-officio members (4): Colleen Bishop, Alex Henson, Elaine Reeder, Tara Stamm
Guests (3): David Morefield, Katie Shedden, Dan Han
Scribe (1): Jana Avery

Valerie opened the meeting at 2:00pm and introduced Tara Stamm who is new to FTAC and is currently serving as the interim director for the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE).  Tara will serve as the interim CTLE director, and has been contracted for 6 months. Plans are to put the job on a one-year cycle that aligns with the academic year. She may continue more than 6 months to allow them to post and fill the position. Meanwhile she will focus on clarifying and organizing the CTLE details (structures, processes, rules, etc.) to hand off to the new person.

Due to the growing interest in Gen AI, CTLE is hosting a virtual roundtable on March 15 where faculty can discuss, share, and help each other understand how to incorporate this new technology in the classroom. They will continue offering the usual CTLE workshops and events. There were approximately 100 attendees for the ChatGPT panel discussion, and so far there are 70 people registered for the March 15th roundtable. Tara shared the following links:

• recording of the first ChatGPT panel discussion
• registration link for the March 15 virtual roundtable

Communication methods used for faculty include: Faculty Senate, Telegram, and CTLE mailing list subscribers. Tara stated that the weekly CTLE newsletter is being transitioned to the Provost’s office and CTLE will be submitting notices for that newsletter. CTLE still has a Facebook page that provides peer-to-peer support for both the writing and teaching groups, and it has been updated with the standard VCU branding. They also have a Twitter page and are preparing a Linkedin page. 

Katie Shedden, Senior Manager of Learning Systems (LS) in Academic Technologies attended today’s meeting to follow up on her request for faculty feedback on her presentation for Canvas integrated apps. Katie received feedback from two faculty, and after a quick follow-up with them, LS facilitated a training session. She thanked FTAC for reviewing and discussing her presentation slides, and for encouraging the feedback. She is currently in the process of revamping some of her original presentation, and is requesting faculty feedback to highlight some of the challenges that may not be visible from an IT perspective. She wants to make sure that these challenges are on our radar so they can be addressed. Anyone who would still like to share feedback are welcome to review her presentation. She is most interested in faculty feedback on slide #11, which focuses specifically on faculty and staff impacts and the challenges encountered when seeking external tools to integrate into their courses. She elaborated on how this type of information (and requests for feedback) are communicated to faculty. She shared a link to the LS website page that lists all the external apps currently available for integration with VCU’s Canvas environment. Instructors are able to choose tools that they would like to use in their courses that are compatible with the integration tool used in Canvas. There are hundreds of tools out there that instructors may decide they want to use with Canvas, but it requires partnering with the VCU Online team and sharing feedback about these tools. In many cases, these tools must go through IT Governance processes. Generally, there is a vendor partner associated with these tools, including some that are departmentally focused or used by a limited number of faculty. Most larger impact requests and/or those that involve procurement are reviewed by LS and IT Governance. 

Other discussions related to external apps are included in the “IT Governance Process” portion of this document: VCU Libraries, Open office hours, Customized in-house coding.

Following Katie’s discussion about external tools, Valerie started the discussion about the IT Governance process, which is undergoing revisions. 

Alex Henson stated that the governance process is expected to be available in April, and that all requests do not go through IT Governance, especially those that do not require funding.

Katie shared the following information about requesting tools: 

• LS is currently waiting until the IT Governance processes are ready, before making the request form available. 
• Requests will be reviewed with the Information Security and Web Services departments in Technology Services (TS) for security or accessibility concerns.
• Instructors have the option to install tools at the course level (in Canvas) if they are compatible with the integration standard, and not currently subject to any reviews. This is a good option for faculty to leverage tools that they are relying on to facilitate their courses that have not made it to a departmental or institutional level for review.

Oscar Keyes shared his observations of faculty from different disciplines who utilize the VCU libraries, and said they are always surprised by how well some of the Google apps integrate into Canvas. He suggested that having a training or consultation available that explains how to make G-Suite work better with Canvas, might be a way to address some of the questions faculty have. He has also noticed that no matter how many handouts or screenshots are provided, faculty usually prefer a face-to-face consultation. Sometimes it’s just a matter of helping them understand how the tools and Canvas can be configured to work together. They don't always understand the LTI components and how they work, so they are missing out on the opportunity to utilize them. Katie noted that some of the feedback on her external apps presentation was very similar to what Oscar described, and they invited someone from TS Collaboration Services to share some insight. Trying to ease the burden on faculty, and helping them take advantage of all the services offered is something her team will continue to focus on. 

Valerie noted that open office hours are only offered two days each week, at the same time on both days. Some faculty are unable to join either session, and she asked if Katie’s team had gotten any feedback about this. Katie explained that plans are to continue tracking and evaluating attendance for LS open office hours (separate from VCU Online for Faculty hours). Elaine said VCU Online has not received requests about open office hours, and it may be because the faculty who are unable to attend, are meeting with instructional designers one-on-one.

Shanaka Wijesinghe suggested being able to do our own coding, which offers a variety of options, such as pointing to an internal source of documents and then using the natural language expression of API capabilities to summarize internal documents (i.e. point to a Google Drive). It's not very straightforward, but it is a different way of thinking about what we have, and there may be some advantage for us to look into this. Do we have the resources for working on some of these experimental things or do we still have to rely on outside companies? Reaching out to VCU Online is a great next step. Elaine agreed and said that VCU Online has a web development team that pulls together programming and creates things. If they can't make it happen, maybe they can facilitate a pilot with an outside vendor, or bring different faculty together. They may not be able to do everything Shanaka mentioned, but contacting VCU Online is a great place to start. They might also be able to get you in touch with other faculty they have worked with that are doing similar things.

Dan Han reminded everyone that as we explore more options (i.e. ChatGPT), we need to be diligent about not sending sensitive data.

Communication Scams Targeting Students

Dan shared that there has been an increased amount of scammer activities targeting students. The scams are coming in through emails, and now through Canvas messaging. Once a single student account is compromised it can be used to blast out messages to all classes the student is registered in; also, the scammer can register for self-enroll courses and blast out messages to everyone in those courses. There are confirmed cases of student monetary losses of thousands of dollars.

Job Offer Scam

• Student(s) will receive “job offer” emails for short-term tasks with good pay. The email could even state they are another student (or instructor) working on a project and want to pay for research assistance. Example:
• The scammer sends the student a check for $700 and instructs the student to send $400 to another location. 
• The student deposits the $700 check and a few days later, the check bounces, and the student is out “x” amount of money. 

School of the Arts (SOTA) Scam

Oscar mentioned the recent social media scams, where students are offered payment to create artwork. Some ideas mentioned for mitigating were to disable or make these offers opt-in only. Setting capabilities on the backend are unknown, but there is a need for students to use communication tools to collaborate directly with their classmates or for a group activity without having to exchange phone numbers. Dan suggested that the tool not be disabled entirely, but maybe focus on the high-risk areas/courses. Dan was not aware of these specific issues in SOTA but agreed to discuss further.

How Scammers Get In

• Multi-factor Authentication Fatigue - a scammer acquires a username and password, and keeps logging in until the account owner approves the request. 
• When using VCU multi-factor authentication, a notice pops up stating that someone has logged in (or tried to) with your account in “xyz” location. Users should review the notice carefully and should not authorize the notice unless it was a valid location they logged in from.
• Similarly, if a student logs in with their eID (which allows access to many VCU systems) in a public, WiFi location (i.e. Target, Walmart, etc), their account can be compromised on the dark web. 
• Phishing - scammers clone a login page and use the duo factor token to generate a passcode. Unlike the real VCU login page, the cloned page will not have options for you to select--it will only have a place for you to enter the Duo code. Once the code is entered, the scammer has a valid code to go along with the username and password.

Next Steps for Educating and Communicating Risks to Students

• continue distributing notices (by Alex Henson and others)
• collaboration with student affairs, FTAC, and other relevant groups
• seek feedback from faculty and recommend they talk to their students
• collaborate directly with areas that host sensitive data (i.e. clinical, research)
• explaining the risks, even with trusted institutional tools (like Canvas)
• create barriers, but also have options for the needed collaboration and communication tools
• continue discussions about making VCU self-paced, online data integrity and security courses mandatory for students. There is an academic integrity course that is mandatory, why not security too?)
• continue monitoring and exploring changes in multi-factor authentication
• explore options for security protocols for messaging in Canvas

William Nelson was not present to give an update on the hybrid university faculty forums that FTAC has planned for April 4th, 2:30-3:45pm and 4:00pm. Colleen reported that after the February FTAC meeting, when these forums were discussed, William and others met in the Provost’s office. They drafted their ideas and shared them with Colleen, a portion of the Academic Technologies staff, and Alex for feedback before sharing them with all of FTAC. So there is no update at this time.

Valerie opened this topic for discussion again and expressed her concerns about faculty being asked to seriously consider having a hyflex program. The whole issue around classrooms being equipped to do this is very important. She asked if there is anything we can do, as a group, to get this on the budget radar? There needs to be clarification of exactly what needs to be done. 

* Tara Stamm shared the following from core details of conversations from a recent meeting:

• much more needs to be done
• to support a hybrid university environment, they are thinking very far into the future about:
• how to spend the money to make it go the farthest
• how to support the most faculty and get them using and trained on the equipment that is needed
• William will continue to speak about this and make decisions on:
• there is a pot of money to be spent
• they want to handle this in a way that supports faculty far into the future 
• actions will be done with informed faculty contributions
• one faculty forum will not be enough--they want three to five
• prefer smaller focus groups, surveys and more to:
• get a good handle on how these classrooms should work 
• identify who will be able to use the classrooms, under what circumstances and conditions
• ensure faculty are trained and know what is available 
• elevate this and make it bigger than the committee by itself
• will go through the provost's office, get funding, analysts, graduate students, and everything needed to tackle this initiative
• a report will be provided at a later date, with more comprehensive information
• Before moving in a definitive direction, William and other university administrators will make the decisions about: 
• timelines
• faculty forums
• focus groups
• The document that was shared with Colleen, Alex and a few others is one that Tara compiled at the request of the other Provosts. She is still collecting feedback, and right now the document has 2 different timelines--a shortened, condensed one, and a longer one. It’s very skeletal because they want to get their feedback.
• As for the decisions about the forums FTAC has planned for April, she can’t provide those answers, but can reassure us that this is important, and it's on the minds of everyone in the room that we want the right classrooms with the right technology in the right faculty hands to support those students that you're talking about.

* Note: These details align with those William Nelson shared in several previous FTAC meetings.

Alex shared that there is a plan to divert approximately $4 million to this initiative over the next few years. There will probably be another million going into it next year due to other funds received from the state. The provost, president and others are glad to see we have the financial resources to support this.

Alex said the communications are currently being finalized and they should have everything ready in April. The new process will have five committees, instead of one.

1. Technology Procurement Committee (TS Information Security Office)
Requests are immediately routed to this small group, who will conduct security and accessibility reviews, look at procurement issues that arise and triage any issues

A proposal is then sent to one of three committees, depending on the type of request, which should reduce the number of reviews for each committee, and help leverage their expertise more efficiently.

2. Academic Technology Committee
Review and evaluate requests related to instruction, which includes the LTI integrations that Katie mentioned.

3. Research Committee
Focuses on requests that only impact research. This committee will include associate deans, faculty and others who are directly involved with research.

4. Administrative and Operational Committee
Focusing on administrative or financial requests such as those for Facilities, HR, etc.

Once the designated committee approves, the request is then routed to the final committee.

5. Strategic IT Council
Includes senior level leadership for review of any high-impact requests, those that a committee has concerns about or those in dispute.

The above proposal has a PowerPoint, an executive summary, and a communication package ready to go, which will be shared with FTAC once the last few items are ironed out. This will also be communicated to anyone who has ever submitted these types of requests in the past, as well as the others who need to be aware of it. The proposal has been drafted and vetted by many qualified staff and we feel comfortable with it. It’s very similar to procedures followed by other schools, whom we know have had successful results. The procedures may be reviewed and adjusted as needed over time, but overall it should be a substantial, reliable foundation.

The final committee members have not been determined yet, but work on this is in progress. There will be faculty and staff representatives from research, academics, technology, provost, and more. A representative from FTAC will also be asked to participate. Students from the academic front may be included as well. Valerie suggested that at least one faculty member be on each committee.

Meeting minutes from February 6, 2023 were not discussed or reviewed, and will not be posted on the FTAC website until the committee has reviewed and approved them.

The meeting was adjourned at 3:27pm.

Next Meeting: Monday, April 3, 2:00-3:30pm