Information Technology Planning Board (ITPB)
February 22, 2007
Meeting Summary
www.itpb.ucla.edu

ITPB Attendees: Elizabeth Bjork, Christine Borgman, Alfonso Cardenas, Mitch Creem, James Davis, Daniel Fabbri, Xue Hua, Bill Jepson, Kathleen Komar, Sam Morabito, Alan Robinson, Michael Schill, Gary Strong, Charles Taylor

Guests: Lavinia Boykin, Pat Keating, Larry Loeher, Nick Reddingius, Terry Ryan, Ruth Sabean, Mike Schilling, Judi Smith, Marsha Smith, Greg Spotts, Carol Stogsdill, Kent Wada, Don Worth

Meeting Called to order at 3:00 pm.

Agenda Item 1: Meeting Notes

Action: Meeting Notes from January 17, 2007 were approved without amendment.

Agenda Item 2: CCLE Status

Vice Provost, Judi Smith presented a recap of CCLE developments since the selection of the Moodle platform in December 2006.  The executive sponsors group has been meeting to develop a planning and discussion document for various groups including the Chancellor and Executive Vice Chancellor. The briefing document proposed seed money based upon other comparable University implementations. However, in the light of input and suggested approaches from various stakeholders, the size and scope of the initial seed funding request is still being determined.

Ruth Sabean presented a progress report for the CCLE Project Oversight Group (POG) which is developing an “Alpha Test” of Moodle with approximately 15 faculty members.  The Alpha Test is tentatively scheduled to launch April 1, in time for Spring Quarter.  POG is working independently from the executive sponsors group, and has divided the workload among five teams: systems operation, systems integration, functionality, migration and support.

Bill Jepson represented the “CCC resolution on the CCLE” document, prepared by the CCC in response to the circulated CCLE briefing document, which includes the following statement of support:

“The CCC supports the concept of the collaborative common learning environment and is willing to take a central role in its development at UCLA. Given our extensive experience with course management systems and related technologies, we believe that this project would greatly benefit by having greater CCC involvement in its management, including decisions on resource allocations and the hiring and supervision of project personnel.”

The document detailed several areas of concern, including the representation of costs that will be born by local units and the involvement of these units in the implementation design.

Jepson also represented the opinion of several members of the CCC who would like to work with the POG, OIT and a yet to be organized management group on a distributed Moodle design, which he called a “Muddle of Moodles”. In this design, Moodle would be the campus standard but academic departments or groups of departments would operate and support their own individual Moodle servers, with interfaces and functionality that would meet the requirements of the FCET for a consistent and uniform experience to enable interdisciplinary work.

 

Jim Davis responded by providing arguments for provisioning a single to few implementations of Moodle on campus to ensure a set of common campus layers of the environment from which schools and departments can select modules and or on which build necessary functional modules necessary for the local needs.  Local capabilities include the ability to customize the local interface to meet local needs.  Jim further argued that the CCLE should build out first under the premise of a single campus environment and then increase the number of distinct environments based on need. Jim supported the need for a phased in approach allowing the campus to learn how best to implement a campus system. Jim further supported the standard notions of distinct development and production environments.

From a process standpoint, Jim Davis described how campus initiatives have typically moved forward with the formation of a functional oversight committee, that would develop a budget plan for seed money and explore technical issues that includes an implementation design.

Discussion Points:

• The idea of having a “Muddle of Moodles” or a distributed environment was challenged. This has been the typical implementation model at UCLA, leading to a number of systems that faculty and student must navigate. The idea of having a single system implementation in a distributed development environment that allowed local customizations is an alternative that needs exploration.
• Students, particularly undergraduates, may prefer a single system implementation that would enable an “academic dashboard” with all current and past courses in one location with one interface. This design could open up new possibilities for interdisciplinary collaboration.
•  ITPB members felt that these design and operational details should be explored outside of the ITPB, but that the design, even if a hybrid, must meet the vision and functional requirements stated in the FCET report - Building Infrastructure and Community.
• Certain departments have contributed money and staff time to the Moodle effort and, at some point, the work performed by these departments may need to be funded in a more formal manner.

Action: By Unanimous Vote, the ITPB passed this recommendation:

The ITPB endorsed the recommendation to move forward with CCLE implementation planning by putting together a functional oversight group to complement a technical planning group that together would recommend the technical and architectural options for achieving a common student and faculty CCLE environment based on the vision of the FCET. The ITPB further endorsed the development of a seed funding proposal scaled for the early adopters and reviewed by the functional oversight group. It is understood that the seed funding proposal would be funded either at the EVC’s discretion or if large enough reviewed in the current CITI process.

Agenda Item 3: TIF Status and Plans

Alfonso Cardenas presented a brief report on the February 7, 2007 Academic Senate Legislative Assembly meeting.  The Legislative Assembly has asked ITPB to “reexamine the current TIF policy and propose and implement a new cost distribution formula and billing process.”

Cardenas and Davis reported on a meeting with EVC Scott Waugh (given that ITPB reports to the EVC and to the Academic Senate Executive Committee) and other administration leadership on this resolution, and concluded to consider variations to the FTE- based model and estimate financial impact, enable mitigation means for those impacted significantly, improve communications to the UCLA campus on all this, and designate Jim Davis to lead these communications.

Cardenas and Davis indicated several different FTE-based funding models : 

(i) reallocate costs borne by contracts and grant to departments,

(ii) remove all graduate students and undergraduate students from the FTE base and

(iii) include all graduate  and undergraduate students in the FTE base

Discussion Points:

• Under the current or any new model, it would be helpful to articulate principles for the methodology without running the numbers on each model, so that members are voting based on long term policy concerns rather than immediate financial impacts to their particular unit.
• The question of including students was raised. The number of enrolled students can be used as a metric to assess TIF charges to departments.  Using such a metric does not necessitate a direct charge to students.
• Any change to the funding model will redistribute costs, saving money for certain departments and raising costs for other departments.

Action: By Acclamation, the ITPB passed this resolution:

The ITPB endorses  that the EVC examine various FTE-based TIF allocation models, clarify potential mitigation measures, and enable better communication to campus. The ITPB will also revisit the TIF principles when the outcomes of the analysis are discussed and will then respond to the Academic Senate resolution.

Agenda Item 4: ITPB Vision and Long Range Planning

Alfonso Cardenas recommended that members review the “Top Ten IT Challenges” which is a draft from the UC-wide Academic Senate Information Technology and Telecommunications Policy committee that continues to be revised. Marsha Smith, reporting for Professor Jack Beatty, said that Professor Beatty has received detailed input on the IT challenges from the FCET. These will be incorporated and a new draft sent back to the ITPB for further comment.

ITPB expects the Scholarly Interaction and the Wireless subgroups focusing on the vision and future in these areas to lead part of the agenda on long range planning in near term ITPB meetings.

Meeting Adjourned at 5:03 pm.