From: Academic Computing Committee

To: Faculty Council

From: Academic Computing Committee

Subject: Final Report from Academic Computing Committee for 2011 - 2012 Date: April 27, 2012

The academic computing committee met six times during the 2011 – 2012 academic year. We began the year with the following four charges:

1.  Examine the issue of computerized testing and make recommendations.

2.  Gather information from faculty in the four schools as to their current usage of computers and information technology and develop a list of needed improvements and a wish list of new technology.

3.  Assess whether there is an adequate level of support for faculty who need technology for teaching and/or research that is outside of normal support for an office machine.

4.  Assess whether the Behrend website, as it is being revised, is meeting the needs of faculty and academic programs in usability, accessibility, and flexibility for teaching and research needs, and monitor the Penn State response to the federal complaint filed by the National Federation of the Blind and its impact on Behrend.

We also added the following charge after the start of the year:

5.  Establish a protocol for updating and upgrading faculty computers.

We spent the majority of our time working on charges 1 and 5. We did not address charges 2 and 3. We recommend that they be combined into one and addressed by next year’s committee.

Computerized Testing (charge #1)

We started our work on computerized testing by sending a brief survey to all Behrend faculty to assess their interest in using a computerized testing center. We asked two questions in the survey: 1) Do you have a need for a computer testing facility, and 2) How would you use the facility (uses, frequency, required number of seats).

We received 19 total responses to the survey, with 4 expressing no need for a computerized testing facility, 7 expressing needs that can be addressed by an instructor scheduled and staffed facility, 5 expressing needs requiring an open, proctored facility (like the University Park block testing model described below), and 3 expressing needs that are not clear from the response.

After reviewing the surveys, we invited Will Kerr (the manager of the computerized testing center at University Park) to participate in one of our meetings by conference call. Information gathered in that meeting is summarized in our March 2012 committee meeting minutes. Will explained that the UP facility offers two models of testing:

Submitted by: Jerod Wilkerson (Spring 2012 Committee Chair)

1.  A classroom model where instructors schedule the facility at a specific time for an entire class and proctor it themselves, and

2.  A block testing model where Instructors pick a day or date range during which a test is to be available and an amount of time students should be given to take the test. Students make a reservation for a specific time to take the test during the instructor specified testing period

We also conducted a focus group meeting where we invited all faculty and staff members who responded positively to the testing center survey to come and discuss their needs for a computerized testing center. Information gathered in the focus group meeting is summarized in our April 2012 committee meeting minutes.

We believe that a computer testing center is needed and that support for the testing center will continue to grow. However, more information is needed on the needs of faculty members before specific recommendations can be made. We recommend that the academic computing committee continue to study this issue in conjunction with the Behrend computer center. The next step should be a more specific faculty survey that will gather information on which model(s) of testing are needed (classroom model or block testing model), how many stations are needed, and the expected usage of the center.

The committee should continue to work with the computer center to assess software and security needs and to explore the possibility of a phased implementation. A phased implementation of a testing center may start with software running in the existing labs and monitored by faculty. This could be followed by a testing center that first supports a classroom model of testing only, followed by a staffed testing center that supports the block testing model.

Behrend Website (Charge #4)

The committee believes that charge number 4 is actually two separate issues and should be addressed as two charges. One issue is to assess whether the Behrend website, as it is being revised, is meeting the needs of faculty and academic programs. We determined that the best way to assess this is to invite Bill Gonda to periodically attend academic computing committee meetings to provide a status update and to receive feedback from the committee members. Bill attended the November committee meeting and should be invited to attend a committee meeting each semester in the future. The committee believes that the website update is meeting faculty and academic program needs, but some committee members feel that the progress has been too slow.

The second issue is to monitor the Penn State response to the federal complaint filed by the National Federation of the Blind and its impact on Behrend. One of the committee members, Mike Rutter, agreed to participate in meetings of the Behrend web site accessibility task force that is addressing this issue for Behrend’s website. He provided the following report:

Carolyn Dudas is Behrend's liaison to University Park's accessibility project. A list of the top visited pages at the Berhend website have been submitted for an audit to determine accessibility. I am unaware of any concerns that have been raised as a result of that audit, but it may not be fully complete at this time. It is important to note that the initial phase of the

accessibility project is to look at pages that are used “...to conduct core University business or academic activities...”. Presently this does not include pages created by faculty or students. It is recommended that faculty make their pages accessible, and it has been suggested that the website http://wave.webaim.org/ can be used to test faculty pages.

Sites related to course management (such as ANGEL and its possible successor) will be brought in to compliance by the appropriate vendors. At some point in the process, all videos used by Penn State for “core business” such as recruitment will be required to have transcripts and captions. It is unclear how this will affect faculty generated content such as on-line videos for classes, as creating transcripts and captions for such material is extremely time consuming.

Currently, faculty created videos are not part of the accessibility audit. Another part of the project is to make sure all downloadable forms and other downloadable pdf and Word files are accessible. Again, the accessibility of scientific documents posted to the internet for a class are not included in the scope of the current audit, but this may be an issue in the future.

We recommend that next year’s committee continue to monitor the progress and impact of this issue by assigning a committee member to continue to attend meetings of the accessibility task force and report on progress.

Protocol for Updating and Upgrading Faculty Computers (Charge #5)

We worked with computer center staff to establish a written protocol for the updating and upgrading of faculty computers and we recommend that this protocol be followed for all future updates and upgrades. This charge is complete unless a future committee believes it needs to be re-visited. The protocol is included as the last page of this document.

Summary of Recommendations

The following are recommendations for next year’s academic computing committee:

1.  Continue to gather information and make recommendations about a computerized testing center by creating a more detailed survey to assess the needs of faculty, the number of stations needed, the testing model(s) that need to be supported, and whether a phased implementation starting with use of the existing labs is feasible.

2.  Work with the computer center to assess security and software needs for a computer testing center.

3.  Combine charges 3 and 4 and assess with a faculty survey.

4.  Invite Bill Gonda to attend at least one committee meeting per year to provide progress updated and receive feedback on the Behrend website revision.

5.  Continue to monitor Behrend’s response to the ADA lawsuit by assigning a committee member to participate in accessibility task force meetings and report on impact to faculty.

Protocol for the Updating and Upgrading of Faculty Computers

The following protocol should be followed for the updating and upgrading of faculty computers at Penn State Erie, The Behrend College:

1.  Whenever possible, the Computer Center will notify all faculty of major upgrades1 at least 30 days in advance. This notification should include a description of what will be upgraded, if an interruption in system use may result, and a mandatory (where applicable) date for which the upgrades will be required to be completed. Users and/or departmental computer committees can submit written requests to the Computer Center to exempt specific computers from updates and upgrades for technical reasons only.

2.  The Computer Center will distribute application updates2 as necessary in accordance with

vendor recommendations and release schedules. The Computer Center will coordinate updates in a regular monthly schedule where possible. Windows based OS updates are made available the second Wednesday of each month for individuals to install at their convenience. A mandatory install is enforced on the second Saturday morning of each month for faculty who have not already installed the updates.

3.  Mac OS updates are handled at the user level. The only updates generally pushed out to users are updates to Identity Finder. Those updates will be pushed on the second Wednesday of the month.

4.  The Computer Center will notify faculty of any changes to monthly update schedules.

5.  Over time, the individual school computer committees should build a list of faculty computers and departmental labs that are sensitive to updates and upgrades. This list will be used for IT staff to determine if updates can be applied or if alternate deployment methods are required.

6.  The Computer Center should continue its current policy of conducting major upgrades during the summer whenever practical.

1 Upgrades: Major version change of an application (example: Office 2007 to Office 2010, Ansys 13 to Ansys 14) 2 Updates: Security patches, hotfixes, performance patches. (example: Office service pack, or monthly security patch)