MELA Meeting Minutes 2003 - 2017

Minutes from the November meeting were reviewed and Tish made a motion to accept as written, seconded by Buffy.

Old business:

When instructors are entering passwords in the enrollment tool, the dropdown box shows every class the instructor has ever offered. The list is not purged, Ive reported. Andrea made a motion to purge the repository, with a second from Tish. Motion passed. The purge should take place today. Password needs to be entered soon. Terry Pollard acknowledged guest Stacey Bryant from Blackboard and Ive Burnett and Dr. Bradberry from the state board. Christian Pruett was introduced as the new Director of Distance Learning at the state board.

Terry then presented a PowerPoint that consisted of the following items:

1. Spring numbers: The number of courses taught 2,572, is up 458 from the fall. 2. Ongoing consultation time with Blackboard is needed to prepare for future growth. 3. Communication stream will be modified between DLCs and the state board. 4. Improve interaction with Presidium.

Additional items in the discussion led by Terry were building blocks for instructors, AT&T grant, and the training brochure. Respondus and Wimba were discussed. The consortium pricing was $42,185.00 for the package. Any college that gets the product now can receive reimbursement if the consortium purchases later. Hubert Yates said that several groups testing need calculators or other software that cannot be accessed when using the lock down browser. The discussion was tabled until next meeting. Wimba is being piloted within the next two weeks. Voice Tools, Live Classroom, and Wimba Podcaster will be piloted by MGCCC in D2L, Holmes and Itawamba in Blackboard this semester to ensure cross-platform viability. We have an AT&T grant awarded to us for three years for ongoing training for $40,000. Sharing best practices, on-site, campus training, and mini-conferences will be held in all areas of the state. Three categories for training were listed: Blackboard learning system, Blackboard Content system, and custom training sessions such as plagiarism, community sites, blogging, and top ten Blackboard tips. Tish praised Terry for dealing with the issues that arose in-between Audra Kimble’s leaving and Christian Pruett’s arriving. All agreed that Terry had done a great job. Stacey Bryant discussed Blackboard issues. Where we are at the end of the Academic Suite implementation has caused the Blackboard team to set priorities. A redo of the identity manager is necessary. Roger will do a sweeping correction of social security numbers and date of birth records to clean it up. Email prioritizing needs to be revisited where students, and especially instructors, are associated with two or more schools. Snapshots from enrollment tool will be available to each school so errors can be corrected. The file will be called ET snapshot. April 3 rd and 4 th were the dates set for training. Training will include tips to make the most of the features available to system administrators, possibly at Holmes. Creating Futures is scheduled for February 6-8.

A no-show date was discussed and there was no change to the February 1 st date.

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