Faculty Technology Advisory Committee
Meeting Minutes: Monday, October 16, 2023, at 2:00 p.m.
All attendees joined remotely, via Zoom.
Attendees (18):
Members (10): Taylor Barnett, Jonathan (Jon) Becker, Amita Chin (Chair), Mark Crosthwaite, Oscar Keyes, Kirk Richardson, Valerie Robnolt, Carmen Rodriguez, Dayanjan (Shanaka) Wijesinghe, Timothy York
Ex officio members (4): Colleen Bishop, Alex Henson, Elaine Reeder, Susan Coombes
Guests (3): Katie Shedden, Connie Whetstine, Barry Lanneau
Scribe (1): Jana Avery
The meeting began at 2:00 p.m., with Amita welcoming everyone.
When available to attend, William Nelson will give FTAC a status of classroom upgrade funding. Due to his absence today, the meeting began with Katie Shedden speaking about the current Möbius pilot.
Möbius Pilot - STEM Instructional Tool Needs at VCU
Katie Shedden, Senior Manager of Learning Systems shared information about the current pilot of Möbius, a cloud-based learning platform designed to create and deploy STEM course materials for all modalities.The platform integrates with Canvas, which provides a consistent student experience.
LonCapa is an open source environment used for courses that require mathematical computations and has been used at the university for many years. Katie’s team reviewed four different tools as possible alternatives for the current LonCapa system that could potentially meet a broader need for the university. With support from CIO, Alex Henson, and Colleen Bishop, Director of Academics Technologies, a one year, enterprise-wide pilot of the Möbius tool was launched this fall. The pilot is scheduled to last throughout the 2023/2024 academic year. The pilot currently has participants from chemistry, physics and engineering. The goal is to get participation campus-wide to all who might see this potentially meeting a need for their courses. Learn more at go.vcu.edu/Möbius
An initial survey has been distributed to those teaching in more STEM-focused areas, to gather general feedback, awareness and interest. This survey will close October 17, 2023, but Katie encouraged everyone who is interested in participating in the pilot, or wants to share feedback, to please contact the Learning Systems team at LSrequest@vcu.edu. Learning Systems staff will be reaching out to participants in November, and during the spring 2024 semester a survey will be sent to all faculty, staff and students who are actively using Möbius.
Questions, answers and discussion:
- It takes a long time to build question databases in LonCapa, so what considerations have been given to how that data will transition to Möbius?
- The importance of content transfer was mentioned in the feedback from existing LonCapa users, as well as robustness of question-type authoring. So this is definitely something that will continue to be discussed with the vendor. Additionally, Möbius has functionality that allows content to be moved internally as well as exported outside the platform for those that want to save a backup copy. Katie and her team will be working closely with faculty throughout the pilot, to ensure system functionality and content migration is working as expected, meets their needs, and to address any concerns.
- Why does the University need to move away from LonCapa?
- LonCapa is an open source solution, and as technologies evolve there are increasing concerns about support continuity and data security. Learning Systems and faculty currently using LonCapa began looking into suitable alternatives, and launched the pilot now, before we're in a situation where we aren't presented with much of a choice.
- Should the decision about LonCapa wait until we see what will transpire with AI and other technologies? GenAI is probably not incorporated into these platforms yet, but maybe they will be in another year.
- AI is a hot topic for most of our vendors, and we are keeping an eye on what they have planned. We are at a place where we need to move forward and make a decision on LonCapa so we can ensure support continuity. But this doesn’t close the door on us looking at instructional tools more broadly and how vendors are incorporating generative AI.
- Do you have any numbers on how many faculty are actively participating in the Möbius pilot right now (compared to how many are using LonCapa)?
- Do not have an exact number right now, but there are approximately 400 active students in 5 Möbius courses, based on utilization of assignments, etc.
Connie Whetstine, Director of Collaboration Services and Barry Lanneau, Director of Central Services shared information about the discontinuation of Google Sites, and changes to Google Drive.
Barry shared a slideshow and spoke about Google Sites:
- The changes related to Google Sites stemmed from an audit of Google Workspace last year, resulting in a board-level decision about Google Sites. The discovery of limited system administrative ability, the need for sites to adhere to university web standards, and copyright issues that could not be monitored led to a decision that Google Sites must be shut down. An extended decommissioning timeline was set, to allow site owners to be notified and prepare for the change. Google Sites will be removed from service by December 2024.
- VCU has less than 3,000 Google Sites, and approximately 1,500 of those have unique owners. Of the 1,500 owners, 118 were faculty and staff. So, the majority of Google Sites are owned by students or potential affiliates.
- Google Sites Decommissioning Timeline:
- May 15, 2023 - creation of new sites halted
- September 20, 2023 - those with Site files in Google Drive were notified
- Existing Google Sites editable until June 2024.
- December 2024 - Google Sites decommissioned
- For additional information, refer to https://collaborate.vcu.edu/apps/sites/
Similar compliance issues were found for Rampages as well, so there was a brief discussion about what other options are available for students that are free. Several in attendance expressed concern and disappointment that VCU has no campus-wide environment or support for students to establish themselves on the web. Connie and Barry shared the link to recommendations prepared by TS Web Services. Some in attendance today shared examples of what their students do with Google Sites for class assignments. One example shared: https://sites.google.com/vcu.edu/therealsquirrelsofnyc2/home. Barry elaborated on some of their research of other areas of VCU and gave the example of how the VCU Brand Center students have external-facing web pages with their portfolios. They have their own branded URLs and the Brand Center helps promote those.
Note: For changes to Rampages, refer to the separate agenda item for this meeting.
Connie shared the following details and slideshow of the changes coming to Google Drive:
Alumni
Google Drive is only going away for the alumni sector. Drive access and the alumni domain will be discontinued and notifications have been distributed for the past six months.
Storage
For years VCU has had unlimited storage in Google Drive. In 2021 Google slowly began to provide tools that allow quotas to be enforced. Because of VCU’s enterprise licensing, we obtained an extension for quota enforcement to May 2024. After extensive investigation and discussions, Barry’s teams launched a campus-wide clean up effort, to avoid quotas and its detrimental impact.
- Individuals exceeding their storage quota would not be able to upload or edit anything in Google Drive, or record new meetings in Google Meet. They would be able to view existing documents in Drive and send/receive mail.
- If the entire VCU domain exceeds the quota, notifications would be received and the domain would experience the behavior mentioned above for individuals. We currently have safeguards in place to ensure that our domain never exceeds the quota.
- Connie shared information about the outlets used to get this information to the campus, and stated that school or department IT staff should be aware and sharing the information.
- Tim York expressed his appreciation for not making quotas the first solution, and instead are trying other less impactful solutions.
- Storage Metrics:
- VCU has more than 20,000 logins per day, which allows us more storage. We currently have 1.24 petabytes of storage (1,240 terabytes). The majority of our usage is Google Drive, including our regular and shared drives. We also have a significant amount of mail. But we do have a significant amount of mail as well.
- Metrics indicate that faculty and staff are consuming the majority of storage, not students. As students graduate or leave the university their accounts are removed. The five highest users consume 158 terabytes of our storage space, with two of the five being affiliates. Barry’s team is working directly with these users to evaluate their usage needs and offer alternative storage solutions.
- Alex mentioned that there are other storage solutions used at VCU for research purposes, and other specific, high-level data.
- Barry shared that Adobe Creative Cloud is an option for students, and that they would need to purchase their own license once they have left VCU.
- Amita asked how long a student’s eid is left in place after graduation. Barry explained that the students are notified at graduation that their accounts will be transferred to an alumni status and will remain in place for 1 year.
Next Steps
After posting notices, meeting with IT departments and leadership, and leading some group sessions, next steps are to review the status again in December 2023, and continue the clean up efforts. As we approach the May 2024 deadline, having a 20% cushion would be ideal.
Amita encouraged everyone to share this information with their colleagues and be mindful of the drive space situation. For more information, visit go.vcu.edu/cleanup.
Elaine Reeder, Director of Curriculum Development for VCU Online and ex-officio member of FTAC, shared the details of the new guidelines related to RamPages. Student use of Rampages for personal sites, raised legal concerns because of the types of content students were posting on their sites. To address these concerns, the new guidelines stipulate that an instructor must initiate the rampages in order for their student(s) to participate and create rampages as part of their class. Once the semester ends, the student will no longer have access to the site. One reason that Rampages is available at all is to allow Faculty to use it for teaching purposes, and VCU Online for creating learning objects for placement in online courses.
VCU Online has talked with Technology Services about options for faculty and students to create something online, but so far no solutions have been found that do not make the University liable.
Because there are several new members, Amita had each attendee introduce themselves. She gave a quick overview of FTAC’s purpose, leadership, and history; and encouraged everyone to bring feedback from their colleagues to FTAC and to share our feedback with them as well.
Impromptu Question and Brief Discussion:
Carmen mentioned that she recently served on two promotion and tenure committees, and was required to communicate with former students who have left the university. Valerie stated that contacting former students is not a requirement and that it should be mentioned in the next Faculty Senate meeting.
The September 11, 2023 meeting minutes were shared, reviewed, and approved.
Amita shared that AI has been a big topic lately and has come up in previous FTAC meetings, so she asked Susan Coombes to speak about what is happening in the Provost’s Office. She mentioned a link on the CTLE website to a document containing faculty resources and viewpoints about AI, which Dr. Mangala Subramaniam and Michael Boeh compiled.
Susan Coombes shared the following information:
- The document Amita mentioned is being referred to as a “draft tool”, which is essentially a resource for VCU faculty about what AI is, and how it could be used in the classroom. Generative Artificial Intelligence (Gen AI) and Teaching & Learning Tool
- On September 26, 2023 an online session was held to discuss the tool. Ninety-six people signed up, and fifty-eight attended. This was not intended to be a question and answer session about GenAI, but more specifically about the tool and finding out what recommendations there are, for tools that have been used. The Provost’s Office also wants to find out what the continuing challenges are that the faculty have with regards to GenAI in the classroom, and what they need from Faculty Affairs, CTLE and the university, in terms of support and resources.
- They have formed a faculty advisory committee for GenAI in teaching and learning, and the first meeting is Wednesday, October 18, 2023. They will decide what the committee wants to accomplish, with regards to the “draft tool”. They will gather feedback at the October session, to determine if there are significant things that should be added to the tool, as well as planning future sessions that might be useful to faculty.
- She asked FTAC members to contact her with ideas for AI events they think would be useful for faculty.
Jon Becker stated the need for a campus-wide perspective rather than only discipline-specific conversations. There are many conversations taking place within units, disciplines, etc. The School of Education and the Humanities Research Center both have groups that meet and discuss AI. Ideally there should be a university-wide eye on this, and an effort to bring people together around the various issues that are surfacing both from a teaching and learning perspective, which obviously would fall into CTLE’s purview, and also include the research perspective.
Susan said the shared repository they are building will be available to faculty on both campuses and will be organized according to the various colleges and schools that they can upload class content they have tried. This is one option for collaborative sharing and may provide some inspiration. This is not exactly what John was talking about, but is one way to bridge the gap between people in different colleges or schools.
Jon said he wasn't sure if Technology Services or someone else should weigh in on AI from a policy perspective.
Amita reminded everyone of the FTAC resources:
- Communication: Google Group, email - ftac@vcu.edu
- File Sharing: Google Shared Drive - Faculty Technology Advisory Committee
- Website - https://ftac.vcu.edu
Amita thanked everyone for attending, encouraged them to send her any issues or concerns they or their colleagues have (for future agenda topics), and the meeting was adjourned at 3:30 pm.
Next Meeting: Monday, November 6, 2023 at 2:00-3:30 p.m. via Zoom