Information Technology Planning Board (ITPB) Meeting Summary
Friday – October 5, 2007
2:00 p.m. to 4:00 p.m.
11348 Young Research Library

 

ITPB Attendees:  Kathryn Atchison, Jackson Beatty, Christine Borgman, Russel Caflisch, Alfonso Cardenas, Jim Davis, Bob Frank (for Michael Goldstein), Xua Hue (via teleconference), Bill Jepson, David Kaplan, Warren Mori, Michael Schill, David Snow (for Alan Robinson), Gary Strong

Guests:  Julie Austin, Ross Bollens, Nick Reddingius (via teleconference), Rose Rocchio, Terry Ryan, Mike Schilling, Don Worth

The meeting was called to order at 2:07 by ITPB Chair, Alfonso Cardenas.

 

Agenda Item 1:  ITPB Membership

Alfonso Cardenas welcomed Warren Mori to the ITPB.  He also announced that the ITPB is still seeking one additional faculty member and an undergraduate representative.  Xue Hua, the graduate representative, will be returning for a second term.

 

Agenda Item 2:  June 2007 Meeting Summary & 2007 Retreat Summary

The meeting summary for the June 5, 2007 meeting was approved.  The 2007 Retreat Summary for July 16, 2007 was also approved.

 

Agenda Item 3:  Common Collaborative Learning Environment (CCLE)

Jim Davis introduced the CCLE Planning Team, Terry Ryan, Julie Austin and Rose Rocchio. The CCLE plan has been vetted throughout the campus (with CCC, FCET, ITPB Oversight Committee, deans), and the CCLE had been presented to the ITPB during earlier stages of development.  The purpose of the meeting presentation was to review the strategic aspects of the CCLE plan, particularly in terms of governance, with the ITPB for final endorsement.

Terry Ryan provided an overview of the strategic model that has been developed to implement CCLE.  The CCLE plan presents the opportunity for groups, including those using the University’s 26 different course management systems, to choose to converge with Moodle as a common platform.   The CCLE Moodle environment is a campus-wide, shared system with a common infrastructure that encourages broad adoption by allowing any unit that wants to participate to do so. 

The CCLE was designed to:

• Recognize school / division staff and support as the CCLE foundation.
• Encourage broad adoption. The greatest opportunity to leverage the commonality is when there are many campus groups participating.
• Make planning and governance open and participatory.
• Ensure that academic priorities and faculty / student experience drive decisions.
• Support innovation, creativity, and flexibility.
• Allow for more than one Moodle installation if needed.
• Choose a CCLE administrative home with strong academic values (OID).

The plan would provide units with flexibility within a commonality that would allow each unit to participate in the sharing, collaboration, common practices and integration under the CCLE umbrella and as part of the cooperative campus environment.  The proposed CCLE structure would allow participation by interested traditional academic units as well as those units which on the surface may not seem to be good candidates because of their inherent differences.  An example is Extension with its different student and faculty bases, varying length of classes, and use of diverse teaching methods including distance learning. 
 
One of the greatest concerns in the discussions with various campus organizations has been the issue of who will run the CCLE and where it will be housed.  The CCLE will require some permanent staff, but due to the distributive nature of CCLE in which most of the staff and support for CCLE is located in the participating units, it will not be a stand-alone administrative unit.  The administrative responsibility for CCLE will be with OID.
 
A new, strategic governance/planning structure was crafted to support CCLE.  The goal was to develop a model that addressed the requirements of a shared academic system, not a modification of an administrative system.  The result is a model that can be replicated for other shared academic systems in which:

• The people who are key stakeholders have strong roles in the governance and planning;
• Academic priorities and faculty and student experiences drive the decision-making process;
• The structure is not static, but rather allows for innovation, growth and change.

The governance model developed for CCLE includes three components: oversight, governance and operations.  Formal oversight of CCLE will be the responsibility of the FCET, ITPB and the Executive Sponsors who are the deans of the schools/divisions opting in.   The inclusion of the Executive Sponsors in the oversight of CCLE formalizes the relationship and the role of the deans of the schools/divisions opting in.

The CCLE Standards and Practices Group is the core of the governance model.  It is responsible for deciding what is the common good, as well as the distribution and use of the common resources.  This group is comprised of:

• One member appointed by the dean of each school/division that has opted in;
• One member from each key central academic unit that provides services and data that feed into the CCLE, but have not opted in;
• Other academic units that have not yet opted in but that are making major contributions of resources, will each be allowed one representative (i.e. Engineering).

Each member would have one vote in deciding commonality goals for CCLE.  A leader would be elected from the members of the CCLE Standards and Practices Group.  The Standards and Practices Group is charged with the responsibility of conducting an annual review based on faculty and student experiences.   A formal faculty and student user group structure is part of the governance structure.   It is self-selecting, where faculty and students are able to provide direct feedback regarding their experiences.  All of these factors would help drive the decisions going forward.

The model requires a formal operations group for every shared system, with the operations driven by the stakeholders.  The operations group would include one representative from each stakeholders group.  They would be responsible for the operational decisions such as deciding when and what upgrades would be implemented.

As background information, Terry Ryan, gave an overview of the presentation of the funding request made to CITI.  The requested funding would be used to support CCLE collaboration and to significantly leverage the monies that the opt-in units have already included in their budgets for IT at the local level.  It has been estimated that the five-year cost that the participating units are already planning to spend locally on IT is $20.5 million.

CCLE’s funding request to CITI was for $3.5 million over a five-year period.  These monies would be used to build collaborative tools to establish the infrastructure and support the collaborative/common goals of the CCLE.  Specifically, it would fund:

• Central staff that includes:
• CCLE coordinator to pull all elements together
• Lead developer to do integration programming
• FTE to coordinate support and collaborative testing for all units
• FTE to advise on intellectual property
• Leader of Standards & Practices Group buy-out:  reimbursement of 25 percent time
• Reimbursement for school and division staff time (5 hours per unit) for planning and coordination is an incentive for divisions to collaborate and invest additional time on the proposed committees.  Monies are base-level and will not cover the full costs.  Demonstrated support of faculty and students is important to make this collaboration happen.
• Extra hardware for shared systems.
• Grants for innovation and enhancements of the CCLE.  This funding pool would provide incentives to collaborate by funding requests from faculty or projects deemed necessary for the CCLE.

 

To opt in for a school or division, the dean will:

• Indicate whether the school/division will participate in the shared campus-wide system or run a separate Moodle installation within the CCLE structure.
• Indicate a desired “start date” when courses or collaboration sites should be live.
• Confirm and identify local staff who will provide support, training, and technical assistance to faculty and students as needed.
• Confirm support for CCLE guidelines and practices agreed upon by the CCLE S&PG.
• Designate a voting representative to the CCLE Standards and Practices Group (S&PG).
• If participating in the campus-wide system, designate a representative to the Shared Systems Operations Group (SSOG)

Discussion Points:

• The question was raised as to whether central funding is larger at other institutions.
• The main thrust of the ITPB and its predecessors is the decentralization of IT funding.
• There was the question of whether the deans are planning for their contribution to continue or if they view it as an opportunity to reduce costs.
• The issue is not to reduce costs but to get more for the same investment.  The idea is not that costs would be reduced, but that monies spent would be leveraged.
• The question was asked who would decide whether (and how much) central funds would be used for areas that have special needs.  The question was also asked who would decide what is the common good
• Much of the development will be distributed.  The Standards & Practices Group will not decide what is to be programmed.
• Concern was expressed about the validity of the $3.5 million in the CCLE request for Chancellor’s funds. 

Action:
The ITPB supports the suggested approach, including central funding, for common infrastructure to launch the CCLE.

Agenda Item 4:  Prioritization of the 2007-2008 ITPB Agenda

Alfonso Cardenas requested that the ITPB review the Prioritization Items for the 2007-2008 ITPB agenda using the following criteria:

• Strategic impact
• Campus wide benefit
• Campus wide impact
• Complexity
• Risk
• Demand for the resource, process or standard

This was distributed by email and in printed form in the meeting documentation.
The ITPB members were asked to rank the five most important items out of seven (resulting from the ITPB Planning retreat in July) to be addressed by the ITPB for 2007-2008.  Responses are to be sent to governance@oit.ucla.edu by October 12, 2007.  The results will be tabulated and reviewed to establish the ITPB agenda for the coming year.  Sub-groups will be established as needed to discuss and prepare for presentation to ITPB.

In addition to the items listed on the distributed Prioritization Items list, other items may be reviewed for consideration.

 

Agenda Item 5:  Reports

Ross Bollens gave a security update on the IT audit process.

Jim Davis gave a brief overview of the CITI Investment Funding Prioritization process.  Over a period of four days during the past month, CITI has met for over 15 hours to hear presentations and score thirteen projects seeking a portion of the $15 million available in Chancellor funding over the next five years.  Projects have been assessed using six established criteria.  The rationalization of the scoring is to be able to make a recommendation of priority for funding.  This new process is different in that it is weighing infrastructure projects against management systems as well as business vs. academic requests. 

The meeting was adjourned at 4:13 p.m.