UW-ACE: Updates to UCIST (was UW-ACE Steering Committee)

Starting from Spring 2004

See the original UW-ACE project pages at the following URL:http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/project.html

Usage statistics presented to UCIST on 13 June 2008See: http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/communications/ucist_update_20080613.pptx

Summary for 30 May 2008 [Previous update 30 November 2007]

1. Online Learning Environment Review Project (commencing upon approval of UCIST)

a. Intent: Re-evaluate where we are, and where we want to be, for our UW campus online learning environment. Recommend a direction to UCIST by May 2009 (according to tentative deadlines in the project charter).

b. Overview of process: Phase I investigates and reports on a possible short list of candidate environments. Phase II further investigates the short list, if warranted. Comprehensive campus consultation will be undertaken, particularly in Phase I. Participants will be solicited for the evaluations in Phase II.

c. Duration: Commence as soon as UCIST approves the charter. Phase I investigation due January 2009, and final recommendation in May 2009 (again, according to tentative deadlines in the project charter).

d. Project team: The "core" group is comprised of the UW-ACE Operations group so far, and needs a faculty member and student(s). The "resource" group members come from areas such as the Faculty computing offices, the Bookstore, IST security resource, etc., and will likely include additional faculty members.

2. UW-ACE Operations group retreat (20 June 2008)a. Intent: Time to focus efforts of the UW-ACE Operations group for the

next year. We carry a long list of future items that should be prioritized. Identify the "big" items to try to address over that time, and think about our processes for managing UW-ACE.

3. UW-ACE general updatea. Upgrade to V7.2 Smooth upgrade on Tuesday, April 29th b. Authentication problem on Wednesday, April 30th (fixed) c. Top V7.2 issues:

i. Mostly e-mail E-mail marked as spam (local tweak made to our spamassassin, but leaves UW vulnerable to internal e-mail spam attack). Addressing with ALI.

ii. "Scary" error message when an e-mail is sent from ANGEL to joeuser@uwaterloo.ca and joeuser has not specified a forwarding address. 

iii. Encouraged Mac users to upgrade to Firefox 2.0 and that seems to fix Mac-related e-mail issues.

d. Security breaches i. Two students gained privileged access to ANGEL through a

vulnerability hack. Associate Deans of Undergraduate Math handling the cases. AD-U of Arts and Eng apprised because of activity in some of those courses. No mark changes detected except where culprit admitted one (small participation mark change).

ii. While looking at log activities, coincidently uncovered a case of a stolen UWdir and Nexus password. Two culprits changed CS midterm marks in UW-ACE. Students identified (CS) and AD-U Math is handling those cases.

iii. Reviewing for any recommendations regarding process changes (db checking) and "best practise" (maintain another copy of marks outside UW-ACE??).

e. UW-ACE Operations group topicsi. Auditing a course – Policy

Undergrads must register and pay for the course. Thus, they should not be added just on request. Grads may be added to undergrad courses upon the professor's approval.

ii. V7.3 Beta - UW took part. Impressed with new admin tools. Possibly upgrade in April 2009, but depends upon overall benefits and "appetite".

iii. File formats, in particular problems arising with printing in Library - Info sent to CTE Liaisons regarding creating PDFs (margin issues).

f. UW-ACE "Add ons" i. Turnitin pilot into second term and survey of students, faculty,

staff, admin run by Bruce Mitchell (through UW-ACE) ii. Wimba renewal - IST paid for half, DCE other half. Price is high

and usage is low (though vital in some DE courses). Over next 9 months DCE will lead an investigation into other solutions.

g. Growth in UW-ACE use (awaiting slides from Jan)

Summary for 30 November 2007 [Previous update 16 February 2007]

1. Growth: Peaking? Over 24,000 students in UW-ACE in F07 (largest yet) 899 UW-ACE course entities That makes 32% of “total classes” (up about 1.5% from last fall) and 49% of

“total courses”.UW-ACE “courses” UW offerings

Term # Campus # DE Total Total classes

Total courses

% of classes

% ofcourses

Fall 2007 803 96 899 2802 1836 32% 49%Spring 2007 342 83 425 1558 1076 27% 39%Winter 2007 734 81 838 2743 31 %Fall 2006 664 62 726 2784 26 %Spring 2006 256 48 304 1458 21 %Winter 2006 571 59 630 2784 23 %Fall 2005 475 51 526 2795 19 %Spring 2005 128 1516 8 %Winter 2005 318 2821 11 %Fall 2004 222 ~ 2780 8%

Course numbers by Faculty for Fall 2007Faculty # DE courses # Campus courses TotalAHS 8 50 58ARTS 63 345 408ENG 1 146 147ENVS 0 63 63MATH 9 84 93SCI 15 115 130

2. Student email in UW-ACE (discussed at UCIST April 27th, initiated by Robert Park) UCIST wanted to keep student access to Email the Entire Class (including

professors) but to remove student access to All Students. These cannot be restricted individually so must either both be available or not. In that case, UCIST wanted both turned off, i.e., change the default access to disallow.

A complication arose with the return of the class list to the email dropdown list which had disappeared as an unintentional repercussion of restricting student access (in V6.2) to other student profiles (FIPPA concerns). In V7.1 we found a better way to restrict that access (without database changes), and returned the student list to the email dropdown.

This introduced another way that students can send email to the entire class, that is, via a "select all" from this dropdown list.

In late June we realized that we now could not restrict access to "all students". Also, the team felt that flipping the default access was more disruptive than educating instructors on the situation.

For the July Ops meeting we investigated whether the upgrade at the end of April to V7.2 would offer new ways of restricting access which may cause another change. It turns out that we have the same scenario in it.

Instead, Jan worked with the Liaisons on a document to explain how to turn off the All Students and Entire Class, and the repercussions. She sent this to the

Liaisons on August 27th. Some of them have forwarded it to all of their faculty members, but perhaps not all of them have.

See the document in the UW-ACE Help. Use Help's Index, and look under "Info & Help for INSTRUCTORS" for the file called "UW-ACE Course Mail Settings Guide". It shows both how to restrict access, and also talks about the repercussions.

3. Bringing back course data for student grade appeal. Recent request for 2005 (v6.2, archive failed to load in V7.1, had to go to

backups, took 3 days). Questions posed of Associate Deans of Computing:

i. What is the deadline for a student to initiate a grade appeal in your Faculty?

ii. Is that deadline the one that should determine our UW-ACE student data retention duration?

iii. What should be our procedure with regard to communications with the Faculty when we have a request for data for an appeal?

4. UW-ACE Ops topics: Students dropped for non-payment. Faculty survey Policies and communications

5. ANGEL “add ons” under investigation/pilot Turnitin – Bruce Mitchell’s pilot for plagiarism software. The “plug-in” to

ANGEL is installed on the development system. Horizon Wimba Voice Tools – After the DE/IST pilot, DE decided to purchase

the integrated voice tools. At last check, no significant uptake outside of DE.6. What’s ahead?

Upgrade – Tentatively set for Tuesday, April 29th. Need to send feedback to ALI. License renewal in May 2007, for 3 years (until May 2010) LMS review plans

Plan is to stay with ANGEL unless there is a compelling reason to move! However, there are changes afoot in the LMS and online learning space,

including the rise of the social networking tools and the open systems (Moodle and Sakai gaining confidence of market, and making inroads). We want to go into next negotiation with knowledge and an understanding of those spaces.

D2L demo LPS input

Summary for 16 February 2007 [Previous update 2 February 2007]

Notice of the “disbanding” of the UW-ACE Steering CommitteeDuring the January 19th meeting UCIST discussed creating an instructional technologies committee, an idea first proposed in September. UW-ACE is well established, and UCIST had decided that a UW-ACE Steering Committee is no longer needed. Instead, UCIST will provide UW-ACE governance and expand its discussion topics to more general campus instructional technology issues, receiving recommendations and

comments from a new Instructional Technologies Advisory Committee. ITAC held its first meeting on 15 February 2007. It is led by Gail Cuthbert Brandt.

1. For discussion at UCIST:a. ANGEL license renewal – Our three year license agreement ends in May.

We have grown in our FTEs. We requested pricing, and expect follow-up negotiations. Our renewal period will depend upon their stance. Need to remind them of competition, both from Desire2Learn and open source.

b. Removing inactive users from UW-ACE – See the following URL. We changed the inactivity period for professors from 2 years to 3 based on your feedback from February 2nd. Need approval.http://ist/~chappell/projects/angel/infrastructure/no_longer_valid.html

2. Growth: >21,000 students in UW-ACE in F06 and W07, avg >3 courses each.

Term # Campuscourses

# DE courses

Totalcourses

Total courseofferings

Percentage of total course offerings

Winter 2007 734 81 838 2743 31 %Fall 2006 664 62 726 2784 26 %Spring 2006 256 48 304 1458 21 %Winter 2006 571 59 630 2784 23 %Fall 2005 475 51 526 2795 19 %Spring 2005 128 1516 8 %Winter 2005 318 2821 11 %Fall 2004 222 Estimate 2780 8%

3. ANGEL “add ons” under investigation/pilota. Horizon Wimba Voice Tools – DE/IST pilot to evaluate integrated voice

tools. Voice “discussion” similar to adding other content items. Three DE German courses are using it (one professor). Plan a demo with Arts Language Lab. Some usability issues. A big question of how to integrate the Wimba data into the general course archive (separate server).

b. ANGEL Live – ANGEL package with whiteboard, chat, desktop sharing, scheduling and queuing can facilitate online office hours. Investigating with one course (not available generally to all courses). System load is a concern (would spin off to another server if it is popular). Install issues.

4. Infrastructurea. New data source gives student withdrawal data – Now access the “class

list” data from an Oracle table rather than from the file on watserv1. We have the withdrawal status (yeah!) so that we can disable those students in the course; professors have requested since early days. This source also gives the flexibility to request additional Quest data if desired, whereas the watserv1 file could not be changed (too many people depending upon it).

b. Multiple Course List (MCL) tool – The ANGEL “merged course” feature allows us to combine several lectures or courses into one, but difficult to alter those later. Requests for changes create lots of work. Lorne Connell

created a new tool with much more flexibility, saving many days of work. We already use our own course roster tool. Using MCL does not take us further away from a “vanilla” system, or add significant risk on upgrades.

c. System timeout – Investigating lowering the inactivity timeout to 90 minutes. ANGEL Learning has advised us that 120 is high and may be the cause of our web server (IIS) restarts that disconnect people logged onto the server. Looking at what happens with quizzes that take over 1.5 hours.

d. Library e-reserves and upgrade – Apparently e-reserves ‘broke’ during the last upgrade. We need to make sure we keep the Library folks in the loop.

5. Supporta. Still down one LT3 Faculty Liaison (Engineering)b. David Hinton of IST’s Computer Systems and Services group will be

Lorne Connell’s backup. Great comfort, since Lorne is the key architect for the UW-ACE technologies. Welcome Dave!

6. UW-ACE Community Groupsa. WHMIS has been a very successful and well run program in UW-ACE,

with great local support in the Safety Office through Doug Dye. We met with the SO to discuss expanding their use to other courses. This is a beneficial non-academic course use of UW-ACE, and they are a model of how cooperative support works.

b. CECS’s eManual continues to grow, up to 5600 in the roster. This creates performance problems for it and the system. Need a removal plan.

7. UW-ACE survey – Andrea, and Vivian Schoner and Gail Spencer of LRI/CTE on UW-ACE surveys of students and faculty to be run in mid March. Technology and pedagogical questions will overlap between the student and faculty surveys. Andrea will look for professors who can preview the faculty survey. Bryan did a fine job last time and she’s sure he’ll be keen to help again.

Summary for 2 February 2007 [Previous update by email, 14 September 2006]

1. Growth – over 21,000 students in courses in UW-ACE in F06 and W07, averaging over 3 courses each.

Term # Campuscourses

# DE courses

Totalcourses

Total courseofferings

Percentage of total course offerings

Winter 2007 734 81 815 2743 30 %Fall 2006 664 62 726 2784 26 %Spring 2006 256 48 304 1458 21 %Winter 2006 571 59 630 2784 23 %Fall 2005 475 51 526 2795 19 %Spring 2005 128 1516 8 %Winter 2005 318 2821 11 %Fall 2004 222 Estimate 2780 8%

2. Infrastructurea. Removing inactive users from UW-ACE – See discussion at the following

URL. We would like to implement this process, after your feedback.http://ist/~chappell/projects/angel/infrastructure/no_longer_valid.html

Email update 14 September 2006 [Previous update was 23 June 2006]-------- Original Message --------Subject: [UW-ACE] update on UW-ACE for fall 2006Date: Thu, 14 Sep 2006 10:58:36 -0400From: Andrea Chappell <chappell@ist.uwaterloo.ca>To: uw-ace@lists.uwaterloo.ca

Hello everyone,Here we are well into the first week of using the new version (v7.1) of ANGEL on UW-ACE. It has not been without bumps, including a performance problem earlier this week, and there have been lots and lots of calls to our fabulous support team in IST, LT3 (hiring soon into open Liaison positions!), and DE. However, things are going along pretty well.

One thing to recall is that v7.1 is fairly new (released in April) and there are lots of changes, especially since we skipped the interim release, v6.3. Most of the big schools have not moved to v7.1. However, our move to it this fall was necessary. We couldn't move to the interim v6.3 because of our custom "bolt-ons" for the "replicator", yet v6.2 was out of the support window as of June. As a consequence we are probably going to experience the growing pains of a new and significantly changed system, but it was a move we had to make.

Given that, as I said, I think things are going along well.

Another part of this fall's UW-ACE line-up is the new Dell "dual core", dual processor database server, a much faster system than we had in the summer.

Despite this upgraded addition to the hardware, we experienced significant slowness early in the week, and it was our sparkling new database server that was taking the hit! Lorne and Sean worked with ANGEL Learning Inc., and a fix was put in place on Wednesday afternoon (yesterday). This seems to have fixed the problem. We will continue to monitor how well the system performs in general.

Load:We have had peaks of over 2450 simultaneous logins, which is higher than we'd reported in the winter 2006 term.

Courses:We have, as of this morning, 637 courses on UW-ACE, 61 of which are DE courses. For comparison, we had 525 in F05, and 630 in W06. We expect the numbers to grow a bit

over the next week or so. I'll get the total number of offerings in order to determine the percentages, and I'll send that report in a week or so.

That's it for now, except for a huge thanks and appreciation for the support team members who are doing a tremendous job during this stressful first week of the fall term.

Please let me know if you have any questions, concerns, or comments!Thanks,Andrea_______________________________________________UW-ACE mailing listUW-ACE@lists.uwaterloo.cahttps://lists.uwaterloo.ca/mailman/listinfo/uw-ace

Summary for 23 June 2006 [Previous update was 17 March 2006]

1. ANGEL V7.1 upgrade planning http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/upgrades/v62_to_v71.html

2. Common Look and Feel and V7.1 http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/upgrades/v71_clf.html

3. ePortfolios (Liwana Bringelson)

4. Society of Management Accountants - Proposed use of UW-ACE via Continuing Education (Cathy Newell Kelly)

Summary for 17 March 2006 [last summary was 28 October 2005]

1. ANGEL V7.1 upgrade – We will not install ANGEL V7.1 for the Spring (May - August) term. Instead, we will upgrade at the end of August.

Beta received on 6 March. Tested “stock” install on the 10th and 13th. Upgrade of V6.2+ to V6.3 (including a copy of the current course data) successful on 14th. Final release due on 4 April.

A Spring upgrade is preferable because it is a lighter term. However, the timing of this release is not good, especially for DE, and with problems revealed in the Beta testing. All in all, the upgrade is too risky, potentially damaging the trust now established. Upgrading in August gives us the summer to test and provide information, courses, help sessions, and properly prepare for the changes. Also, gives ALI time to fix problems that always occur in a new release.Primary issues for decision to postpone:

Numerous interface changes for students and faculty to learn. Also, significant Gradebook changes that would be used very soon after.

Local “Quest-ready” final grades export no longer works (likely can resolve with ALI, but need time).

Significant bugs revealed in testing the Beta, including problems with DE style sheets.

Difficulty with the upgrade (good exercise, but lowered confidence).

2. Growth – Doubled since last Winter term “UW offerings” count the enrolment or primary sections for courses.

Numbers include potential offerings; up to 10% may be cancelled. Both on-campus and distance education courses offerings are included.

Winter 2006 – 22% (with over 18,000 students) UW-ACE: 627 (568 campus, 59 DE) (22%) UW offerings: 2784 (for 1947 different courses)

Fall 2005 – 18% - 508 of 2795Spring 2005 – 8% - 128 of 1516Winter 2005 – 11% - 318 of 2821

3. UW-ACE systems – capacity and disaster planning Status at last report (October):

i. 3 front end web servers. ii. Data on a shared file server (NetApps).

iii. Database server software upgraded to “Enterprise” to allow more memory allocation, improving performance.

Changes since October: i. Database server was upgraded to as good as can get in its class of

machine, and changes were made to use more memory.ii. Database performance issue prompted us to change “What’s New”

setting to no longer “hide” unhidden files under hidden content directories. (Clear as mud? I’ll explain in person.)

iii. Backup database server machine arrived. Installed as another front end web server, to be switched out as backup if needed.

iv. Now 4 front end web servers. Next stages: Capacity seems fine; disaster planning continues.

i. End of April split of systems across two machine rooms (IST and Physics/SHARCnet).

ii. Move database file to shared file server (NetApps) to allow faster recovery if database server failed.

Spikes of over 2100 concurrent active sessions.

4. Instructor survey – plans for Fall 2006 (mid November) in conjunction with a student survey run by Vivian Schoner of LRI. Feedback on the environment, support, system performance, use of features, etc., and align some with the student survey. Collaborate with DE and LT3 (and Library?) on questions.

5. Other topics

Accessibility – set up a course for Office of Persons with Disabilities in order to look at UW-ACE for accessibility. Will provide them with access to V7.1 once it is stable.

Changes in course proceduresi. End of term disabling of students in courses – by default students

from previous term are disabled in the course on first day of the next term. A tool was created to allow instructors to extend course end date to end of next month after term end. Automated messages Jan after that day to disable students in those courses.

ii. Deleting old courses - removed courses that were 4 terms (and older). Jan sent notices to all instructors; received two requests after the fact to reinstate a course that was removed.

Non-academic course use of ACE.i. Career Services use and issues with alumni.

ii. Optometry pilot use and new request. ANGEL conference in May. UW will present on Replicator (to make

others aware of it so they might use it too).

Past items with not much progress yet:1. Library integration (Liwana Bringelson) – Set up a meeting with

Mark Haslett, including Cathy Newell-Kelly, Andrea Chappell.2. Plagiarism (Liwana Bringelson) – Check with Bruce Mitchell on

some things he is coordinating.3. Math (Sean Warren, IST) – Work with Jan Willwerth (IST), Sean

Scott (Stats), Paul Kates (LT3 Math Liaison), Barb Forrest (Math).

4. Languages and character sets (Andrew Ward, DE) – Define needs, working with Dave Bean (LT3).

Future itemsi. When to begin a review process of use of ANGEL (3 years in May

2007). Fall instructor survey can be part of the input, so should gear some questions to that.

ii. UW-ACE team “meet and greet” with SC? In addition, what might be the work-related theme of the gathering? Perhaps towards the review process (as above).

Summary for 28 October 20056. Upgrade of UW-ACE systems to address performance issues

Moved to 3 front end web servers in two short down times (Oct 4th, 6th). The backend database server machine was not upgraded, though software

was upgraded to “Enterprise” edition (~$5000). Performing well, but larger machine on order.

Performance issues seem to be resolved. New highest spike of 2075 concurrent active sessions on Monday Oct 24th.

More capacity planning and disaster recovery configs in a future meeting.

7. Input to growth planning. What growth might we expect and how well are we equipped to deal with it? One measure of growth potential is the total numbers of courses offered. Thanks to Derek Kirkland for getting the data below. Please note:

“UW offerings” counts the classes that are designated as the enrolment or primary sections for courses. E.g., there may be 8 lecture sections to a course, each taught by a different instructor. These 8 would count as 8 offerings. This is a reasonable measure for UW-ACE as each of those professors may wish to have a different course created.

Both on-campus and distance education courses offerings are included. The total numbers include potential offerings, though some may have

been subsequently cancelled or closed (roughly 10% of offerings).Fall 2005

UW-ACE: 508 (18%) UW offerings: 2795 class offerings for 1812 different courses

i. Undergraduate: 2295 class offerings for 1436 different coursesii. Graduate: 500 class offerings for 385 different courses

Spring 2005 UW-ACE: 128 (8%) UW offerings: 1516

o Undergraduate: 1217 class offeringso Graduate: 299 class offerings

Winter 2005 UW-ACE: 318 (11%) UW offerings: 2821

o Undergraduate: 2279 class offeringso Graduate: 542 class offerings

8. Non-academic course use of ACE. Career Services use and issues. Optometry pilot use and issues. Overall statement and condoned uses.

9. “Considerations for 6 Month Horizon” A list of ACE related items was compiled for the Steering Committee to review for possible directions over the next 6 months.

It was agreed that we would submit to ALI the “General ANGEL Improvements” items. Those have been submitted, but only as of 27 October 2005.

As part of the general items above we provided feedback on fixes and features for our three extensions: CD Export, Replicator, and Team Generator. That was also done 27 October 2005.

As a result of a UW-ACE “ops” team meeting on 11 October 2005, we determined first steps for other items in the horizon list and assigned names. Due to lots of other work on the go, not much progress has been made!

i. Library integration (Liwana Bringelson) – Set up a meeting with Mark Haslett, including Cathy Newell-Kelly, Andrea Chappell.

ii. Plagiarism (Liwana Bringelson) – Check with Bruce Mitchell on some things he is coordinating.

iii. Math (Sean Warren, IST) – Work with Jan Willwerth (IST), Sean Scott (Stats), Paul Kates (LT3 Math Liaison), Barb Forrest (Math) and others on options.

iv. Languages and character sets (Andrew Ward, DE) – Define needs, working with Dave Bean (LT3).

Summary for 30 September 200510. Fall 2005 term stats (as of 28 September 2005)

508 courses in total (50 DE and 458 campus) Distance Education students – 2886 (3421 enrollments) On campus students – 17,820 (46,467 enrollments) Course breakdown:

i. Distance Education courses – 50: AHS – 1, ARTS – 36, MATH – 3, SCI – 10

ii. On campus courses – 458: AHS – 34, ARTS – 186 (7 Grebel, 4 St. J., 21 Renison),

ENG – 72, ENV – 30, MATH – 60, SCI – 74, Other (VPA?) – 2

Past numbers:i. S05: DE – 3, on campus – 125 ; 5573 students

ii. W05: DE – 2, on campus – 316; 12,759 studentsiii. F04: DE – 4, on campus – 218; 12,200 students

11. Performance issues Spikes of active sessions over 1750 (spikes of ~975 at the start of W05). Slowness and restarts. Web server (IIS/ANGEL) restarts kick everyone off

every few hours during peak loads. Suspected memory leak problem; 2G more added on September 20th (to

total of 4G). Problems continue. Plan to move to two front end web servers, with shared disk space.

Requires two short interruptions (first 2-3 hours, other of ½ hour). This configuration was tested before term start.

Keeping DE and the Liaisons in the loop. Announcements will be made on ACE soon. Hope to perform the upgrades in the week of October 3rd.

12. Extensions CD Export used by DE for CD creation this term; Replicator key to DE. Meeting on October 7th to compile issues with Team Generator,

Replicator, and CD Export, for submission to ALI. Concern that ALI is backing away from Replicator being moved into

standard ANGEL codebase.13. Upgrade planning

ALI moving to once per year upgrades; UW pressuring for early release, preferably February for beta (and “good” beta!).

UW will move from current ANGEL V6.2 to spring release (V6.4?) for May1, 2006 (skipping V6.3 which was released in April 2005).

i. DE CD Export concerns. DE creates CDs in March 2006 for use in S06. Those CDs will be cut in our current environment, but will need to work with the new version running by May 1, 2006.

ii. We have stressed to ALI, notifying them that we want an early release as possible, and that testing MUST be done for CD Export between versions V6.2 (our current) and the new version.

ALI indicated in a phone conference that they were backing away from their promise to integrate Replicator fully into their standard codebase. We have impressed upon them that this is a big problem, and have continued to pressure them about our need to have Replicator integrated into the spring release.

14. Some recent local changes: Tool to export final marks from ANGEL in a format for import to

PeopleSoft/Quest’s new upload. Ability for instructor to activate/deactivate all students in a course to

override our default of activation on the first day of classes. Ability for DE to print all uploaded assignments to their department

printer. Ability for DE to provide access through ACE to their “Vera” phone-

based assignment and feedback system.15. Other topics:

1. “Considerations for 6 Month Horizon” (separate information provided to the meeting). A list of ACE related items compiled for the Steering Committee to review for possible directions over the next 6 months.

2. Non-academic course use of ACE (separate information provided to the meeting).

i. Overall statement and condoned uses.ii. Career Services use and issues.

Summary for 6 May 2005E-portfolios presentation and discussion (Liwana and others)

1. Spring term stats (as of 2 May 2005): 123 courses; 4724 students; 8588 enrollments (each student may be enrolled in more than one course). [Note: I emailed IAP on 2 May 2005 to ask for the number of courses offered each term, by Faculty/Department if possible, so that we can use this as a measure of our uptake percentages. I meant to do so ages ago! I’ll bring let you know the answer after they reply to my request.]

2. Upgrade (notes on upgrade sent by email to committee members on 25 April 2005)

3. Extensions Both CD Export and Replicator were installed as “bolt-on” items during

the upgrade. Primarily for testing and CD creation by DE this term.

Some feedback sent to ANGEL Learning about the CD Export which we just received two days before the upgrade.

4. “Data integration” with PeopleSoft applications (ongoing from last report) For student roster information, need to determine what additional fields

we want, and how to get an extract with those fields. For example, withdrawal status.

For export of final marks from ANGEL to PeopleSoft/Quest, need to work with SISP people now that their upgrade is completed.

5. Math notation in ANGEL Sean Warren of IST looked at Respondus, a tool to allow off-line creation

of ANGEL quizzes. It provides some additional math notation capability (for quiz creation only, not for student responses). He has solicited feedback from the Liaisons, Barb Forrest in Math, Sean Scott in Stats, Jane Recoskie of DE, etc.

We plan to hold a session for instructors on math notation and workarounds to share options and elicit more feedback. No specific date set yet, but possibly late May or early June.

Summary for 18 March 20051. Math notation in ANGEL

What is available? Math notation editor in the HTML editor (HTML page creation, discussion areas, quizzes), available to professors and students.

Solicited feedback (Barb Forrest in Math, Sean Scott in Stats, Paul Kates of LT3) – Math notation is suitable for basic requirements. For more advanced needs some use LaTeX converted to postscript or PDF, from which math “images” are cut and pasted. Paul Kates has used LaTeX directly in HTML editor, pulling in a translator (not widely used, complicated).

Next steps: A session for instructors on math notation and shared workarounds, and/or a feedback survey (standalone or part of a general faculty feedback survey) to elicit more feedback.

2. Non-academic Course Use of UW-ACE We have frozen “other” uses until the conclusion of the IST-sponsored

UW Web Collaboration Software Project (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/).

Reasons: We are hitting issues with respect to the number, scope, and unknowns of some requests. We are not ready to support them, and need to more specifically identify the types to take on, under what conditions.

Example requests are CECS’s online activities around their Career Development Manual, and Accountancy and Optometry (at least) would like to have year/stream courses or groups for communications purposes.

Next steps: Meeting within IST on Monday March 21st to discuss support issues and models. I have asked for a meeting with CECS project people to discuss the boundaries of their project and its related use of UW-ACE.

3. ACE Look and Feel (results of meeting and work by the ACE InYourFace group) Current UW-ACE site: http://uwace.uwaterloo.ca Proposed changes:

i. Move menu items from middle of page to left hand side.ii. Remove term image from left hand side (e.g., "Winter 05").

iii. Create new banner image (not done yet) incorporating term (e.g., “Winter 05”) at top of image (because course tabs hide lower part of banner). Note that the banner appears only in courses which have not set their own theme.

iv. Rough take on changes:https://uwangeldev.uwaterloo.ca/uwangeldev61/frameIndex.htm

Non-adherence issues:i. Note: L&F only applies to the UW-ACE login page, no other

“levels” (i.e., not once logged in).ii. UW logo not at top – would be partially hidden by course tabs

after login page (if course doesn’t have own theme).iii. Search – external search does not make much sense in UW-ACE,

and not sure we could change it anyway.iv. Collage – not recommended size as that is not possible in ANGEL

application.v. Campaign Waterloo – We would add this under protest . We do

not feel students are the target of this campaign. Next step: Take to UW Web Steering Committee for discussion of general

issues for L&F embedded in applications.4. Other UW-ACE Activities

Update on current extensionsi. Replicator – final expected delivery arrived. UW testing.

ii. CD Export – next on the list to do, with expectation of it completed by the end of March.

iii. Have asked for a schedule from ANGEL Learning on how and when the Replicator and CD Export will be integrated into their general release.

iv. Timelines are getting tight for planning upgrades to take us to the fall term. Prefer to install in May what we will run in fall so that we can use it first in a lighter term. Also, we need to have Replicator and the CD-export available for DE in the summer to build their courses for the fall delivery.

DE integration planningi. Tied to the Replicator and CD Export.

ii. Cathy Kelly, Andrew Ward, and Andrea met in January to discuss DE support model, including common support areas, and DE specific ones.

iii. Next steps: Meeting within IST to discuss support within Client Services, followed by meetings with DE.

“Data integration” with PeopleSoft applicationsi. For student roster information, need to determine what additional

fields we want, and how to get an extract with those fields. For example, withdrawal status.

ii. For export of final marks from ANGEL to PeopleSoft/Quest, need to work with SISP people now that their upgrade is completed. Also, have passed along to ANGEL comments on ANGEL issues, in particular export fields (no Student ID, inability to select specific fields).

Summary for 25 February 2005

5. Updated stats for Winter 2005 – up 20 courses from January report 313 campus courses, with 12,691 students. 10 DE courses with 548 students. Spikes of active sessions reaching 975.

6. ACE Look and Feel (ACE InYourFace) Need to revisit for new Common Look and Feel guidelines. Plan to present at next Steering Committee.

7. Update on extensions UW team reviewed Replicator to date, and also the Team Generator tool

delivered in the V6.2 release last fall (met Jan. 27th, sent to ANGEL Learning Feb. 15th).

Team Generator feedback will be “added to the list.” Replicator – requested update on Feb. 22nd because of slipping schedule

i. 16-20 hours left on the Replicator, to be finished by March 4th.ii. Replicator will be over the number of hours estimated.

iii. Feedback to go into the current development cycle. CD Export is scheduled for the delivery by the end of March.

8. UW-ACE and Math Asked Jan and Sean to provide information for a report. Plan to present at

next Steering Committee.i. Overview of what is available in ANGEL, feedback from client

groups (Math, CS, Eng, others).ii. What are the shortcomings? Existing workarounds or solutions?

iii. Recommendations?9. UW-ACE activities – planning priorities

Feb 9th meeting to collect all activities and who is working on them. The project web page (see top of this page) will be updated to reflect all.

Next step is to look at priorities and the structure to make sure things move forward. Items will come forward to the Steering Committee from this process.

Summary for 21 January 20051. Stats for Winter 2005

295 campus courses, with 12,532 students; 3 DE courses with 111 students

i. 37% increase in number of courses from Fall 2004 (218 courses)ii. number of students increased by 4% from Fall 2004

iii. major move of DE courses into UW-ACE planned for Fall 20052. Submissions to ANGEL User Conference (June 2, 3 at Indiana University-Purdue

University Indianapolis) Enhancements for University of Waterloo’s ANGEL Backup, Recovery, and Redundancy (a panel session) UW’s instructional design gateway to ANGEL Supporting reuse of instructional designs and Content Dealing with the many forms of feedback in ANGEL

3. ACE Look and Feel (InYourFace items) moved into place for W05

Thanks to the very fun team of Scott Anderson, Dave Bean, Liwana Bringelson, Lorne Connell, Cathy Kelly, Alan Kirker, Leslie Richards, Jan Willwerth.

Special kudos to Alan Kirker for his designs!4. Update on extensions

Replicator 2nd delivery is here. CD Export can’t go ahead until Replicator completed. Upcoming meeting to review Replicator to date, and also the Team

Generator tool delivered in the V6.2 release last fall. 5. Other (added after agenda circulated)

Sean Warren has joined the IST UW-ACE team as the second support person. He will work half time on user support with Jan Willwerth, and the other half on systems support with Lorne Connell. We very much value his skills, especially his knowledge of DE issues!

6. Update on LT3 Exploration (Liwana)

Summary for 10 December 20041. ACE "InYourFace" update

A link showing the group’s proposed login page look and feel, and recommended links, for discussion.http://lt3.uwaterloo.ca/angel_login/scr3d.html

A link to discussion about the group’s decisions:http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/interface_group/meetings.html

2. Redundancy of UW-ACE computer systems - some scenarios under investigation3. User's Group inaugural event - summary

Liwana, Jan, Andrea presentations Joe Sanderson (Biology) James Skidmore (Ger & Slavic) Discussion and issues

4. UW-ACE and final marks submissions - planning 5. Support model - questions for AD,Cs to consider; second IST position 6. UW Web Collaboration Project update - UW-ACE usage recommendations (from

Draft final report) See the first six (6) pages of the project report:

http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/Webcollabreport.pdf

Summary for 12 November 20041. User support

Job description written for 2nd support person is written and will be advertised. Covers assistance to Jan and Lorne.

Faculty consulting offices – contacting AD,Cs to determine current support, and discuss any changes.

2. System support Replicator – Coding by CLL began 1 November, expecting staged

delivery on 15th, 3rd Dec, 17th Dec, and final on 7th January.

CD Export – response to CLL Service Order being handled by Dave Bean (LT3). Expect to finalize soon.

o Checklist for options on export, e.g., what to do with hidden and password protected materials;

o Forcing a link to server for some “dynamic” materials. Backup/recover/redundancy plans – “Gold” coverage for servers; asked

Mike B. for meeting to look at possible paths. Integration with PS/SA data – met with Mark Walker, Dave M., Derek,

Joanne Voisin on Oct. 28th. Investigating integrating Library reserves (Penn State has done, Bill

Oldfield is keen to work with me on it).3. Steering issues

Two meetings of the UW-ACE “Interfaces” Group (informally called “In Your Faces” Group) on Thursday. See issues being discussed at http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/interface_group/issues.html

UW-ACE Student Survey, Faculty Survey – planning for running later in November (Rob Gorbet and Rohan Jayasundera involved in Student, with Vivian Schoner, LT3).

Non-course usage (Web Collaborations project) – identify support needs, and document issue of not interfering with course usage.

4. Other Presentation to Dean’s Advisory Council (Math) on October 28th (Andrea). Presentation to Chairs’ Forum on November 23rd (Alan, Tom, Andrea).

Summary for 15 October 20041. User support

o Need assistance and backup for Jan (UW-ACE Training and Support Coordinator) and Lorne (Computer Systems Integration member).

o Faculty consultants – still need to arrange meetings/calls with AD,Cs.2. System Support

o Total cost for UWone extensions: $29,000 USD Random Team Generator feature ("Team Wizard"): 65 hrs @ $200

USD/hr = $13,000 USD Team "Replicator": 60 hrs @ $200 USD/hr = $12,000 USD "CD export": 20 hrs @ $200 USD/hr = $4000 USD

o Replicator – response to CLL Service Order sent 13 October 2004. Expect delivery end of November.

o CD Export – can no go ahead (dependent on Replicator). No dates yet.o Other issues to resolve for project wrap-up:

Determine and document regular production processes, Plan further integration to student system, Disaster recovery plan (backups, redundancies, recovery, etc.).

3. “Steering” issueso Use for non-academic courses and groups – running 4 or 5 pilots to

determine support issues in using UW-ACE for other uses (candidate in

the UW Web Collaboration Tools project). See http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/support/non_course_use/f2004_pilots.html

o DE integration meetings (Cathy, Liwana, Andrea). Timelines for DE adoption (replicator/CD export, and UWone

migration dependencies), course registration & enrolment and other issues for process, support and documentation models.

o Feedback mechanisms, e.g., surveys –correlating faculty survey with Vivian Schoner’s (LT3) student survey questions.

o Other issues to resolve for project wrap-up: “Interfaces” group report Ongoing leader/driver for UW-ACE arch., extensions, etc.

Summary for 17 September 20041. Fall 2004 updates

a) Course statistics UW-ACE houses 190 courses and over 11,400 unique students for fall 2004

(as of 13 September). There are over 21,700 enrolments (students may be enrolled in more than one course).

In fall 2003 UW had approximately 19,000 students (numbers not yet available for fall 2004), and ?? courses.

Faculty / School

# Courses # Students # Enrolments

Distance Ed. 2 99 99ART 1 30 30SCI 1 69 69

Campus 188 11,381 21,733AHS 19 1292 2019ART 64 3902 4771CGC 2 126 129ENG 10 771 858ENV 23 1159 1625MAT 13 1641 2573REN 3 83 94SCI 42 4835 9306STJ 1 71 71

VPA (CBET) 11 125 287

b) Support updates Jan Willwerth (IST) offered group training sessions for instructors using

UW-ACE, and also for IST and Faculty support staff who may want to learn more about UW-ACE for queries that may come to their help desks

Liwana Bringelson has assigned 40% of Peter Goldsworthy’s time (LT3) as an extra support person for assistance at the start of the fall term.

ANGEL was upgraded from V6.0 to V6.1 on August 16th.

2. Functionality Extensions (Teams and CD Export)a) Team functionality extension

Review of the team extensions that CLL is building: The Random Team Generator (was named Team Wizard) facilitates breaking the class into teams of requested sizes; the Replicator rapidly creates resources for sets of teams (discussion areas, drop boxes, etc.).

Random Team Generator – The first cut of tool was delivered in early August. We gave CLL feedback on the interface (esp. scrolling) and a few bugs; will be rolled into next ANGEL version, V6.2, due end of October.

Team Resource “Replicator”

oConfirmed it will be rolled into standard distribution, but will not be in the V6.2 at the end of October.

oKey functionality issues remain: replicated resource updates will not be reported in the “What’s New” tool, a significant problem for instructors and students.

oThe “CD Export” (critical to DE) depends upon the Replicator.oNew estimate for Replicator is 60 hours (was originally 35 hours; an

improved design brought it to 45 – 50; recent review brought to 60).b) Course “export” to CD extension (for DE and other use)

CD “Export” – confirmed it will be rolled into standard release (April 2005); likely could deliver to UW for mid November; very low risk to tack on between releases. We now have information on the direction and costs (for CLL to build) to bring to the Steering Committee.

c) Timelines for implementing extensions into UW-ACE ANGEL V6.2 release from CLL, including Random Team Generator – end

of October 2004 (CLL timeline). ANGEL V6.2+, including Random Team Generator + Replicator and CD

Export “patches” – run in test mode on the UW-ACE Exploration server (LT3) in W2005.

ANGEL V6.2+ (or the April version release of ANGEL) will run on Enterprise in S2005. DE can export courses to CD for fall courses.

3. Important processes for UW-ACEWe will regularize recurring UW-ACE course administration processes. The following are examples. Others will be documented as we resolve them. See http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/processes.html to track them.

Next term courses As next term courses are created, the students will be created as

“disabled” in the roster. They will not be able to access the course until they are enabled. This is to prevent course materials that are still being developed from being inadvertently revealed to students.

A few days before the start of term the rosters will be enabled. For F2004 this was Friday, 10 September 2004 (for class start on 13 September 2004).

Current term archives The archive captures the course contents and all student data. It is kept

in the event that we need to retrieve the course, for example for a student appeal that required reviewing student submissions to a course.

Process: Disable all accounts in S2004 courses, except Instructors and Liaisons, in advance of archiving S2004 courses. For archiving S2004 courses the accounts were disabled on Tuesday, 7 September 2004. Course extensions may need to be accommodated.

Version changes on the UW-ACE Enterprise system will likely occur in April and or August. December is not suitable due to the limited window between fall and winter terms (considering the one-week UW shutdown).

4. Use of UW-ACE for purposes other than academic coursesCECS, the Engineering student group Formula SAE, and other groups have approached us about using UW-ACE for groups and collaborations which are not academic courses. We have a couple pilots running in UW-ACE to try to better understand the needs of these groups, and also determine support requirements. Populating the courses/groups and maintaining non-UWdir accounts are key support issues to resolve. UW-ACE is considered a candidate for IST support in the recent IST project, UW Web Collaboration Project (http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/cs/webcollaboration/), and the decision to support it now rests in this project. However, we will also look for guidance and input from the Steering Committee on issues to consider.

5. Faculty Survey resultsA survey was created in UW-ACE, and on 8 July 2004 Course Editors within UW-ACE (including the 30 instructors of pilot courses, and other testers) were invited to participate. We were looking for feedback in order to prepare for the fall term, in terms of support and usage. 18 responded. Find the survey results here:http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/support/surveys/s04_instructor_summary.html

6. “Interface” group topicsAn informal group called the Interface Group met to discuss some topics related to the UW-ACE entry page and the system defaults. Issues such as the following were discussed: what links should appear on the entry page, whether Show Map should be set on or off for courses by default, what announcements should go on the entry pages. The group will meet again to collect some recommendations, which will be brought forward to the Steering Committee.

Summary for 22 July 20041. The Fall 2004 UW-ACE Course Registration announcement

The announcement to invite faculty members to register fall 2004 courses in UW-ACE went in the Bulletin on Thursday, 22 July 2004. The Liaisons will also distribute the message within the Faculties.

2. UW-ACE Training sessions – FACCUS and various IST members invited Jan has advertised the UW-ACE sessions to FACCUS (Faculty computing

users group) and various groups and individuals in IST to make sure support people are aware of ANGEL, and to give them an opportunity to see and try it in action.

3. Team functionality extension Team Wizard (random team generator) – On July 9th CLL sent prototype

images for UW to review. UW responded with questions and comments on July 16th. CLL has replied to those. The UW team needs to meet to finalize these last issues. The deadline to “sign off” on the Wizard, the 25th, will be missed by a couple or few days.

Resource Replicator (replicating quizzes, discussion areas, etc., for each of numerous teams) – The Replicator has changed in concept from the initial specification from CLL. It now more closely matches other functionality, which is of benefit. In its previous model, CLL did not see rolling into the base product. In its more recent form, that seems much more likely. However, there are issues to resolve, the question of rolling into the product being one.

4. Survey of Pilot course editors The survey was sent to all course editors in UW-ACE, about 100 people.

However, with 30 courses running, the number of actual instructors using the system is more like 30. We received 15 responses. Results will be sent to the Steering Committee, the UW-ACE Project group, the UW-ACE course editors, and others.

Summary for 9 July 20041. The feedback survey

The feedback survey was (finally) made available on July 8th 2004, later than intended, updated based on comments from the UW-ACE SC, the Liaisons, and others. An end-of-term follow-up survey will not be sent as originally planned. Instead, participants will be invited to give additional feedback when the survey results are provided to them (week of July 19th).

2. UW-ACE training sessions – regularly held by Jan Willwerth May course registrations: Overview (20 participants), Gradebook (13), Quiz

(15) July course registrations (upcoming): Overview (16, waiting list of 6), Quiz

(8), Gradebook (10) August course registrations (upcoming): Overview (8), Quiz (6), Gradebook

(4)3. Preparing for Fall 2004

The proposed announcement for fall course registrationo It was circulated to the Liaisons, the UW-ACE Project team, and IST,

DE and LT3 members involved in UW-ACE. After their feedback it was sent to the UW-ACE SC for discussion today (July 9th).

o Capping was not mentioned directly in the proposal, but there is a “hedge” inserted by saying that the number of courses may need to be limited in fall 2004, as an interim period to the “grand opening” in winter 2005.

o Looking for wording on the participation of “some” Faculty consulting offices!

The course registration form (to request a course for fall 2004)o It will be made available in conjunction with the announcement. The

form requires the professor to simply login using the UWdir/Quest username and password. It shows the courses listed as taught by that professor, and also “held with” courses.

o The existing data for the form is a month old. We hope to have updated data Monday. Subsequently we hope to have it weekly.

o Instructors not finding their courses via the form will be directed to send an email to uwacehelp@ist.uwaterloo.ca

4. Team functionality Contract with CLL to build the Team Wizard was signed and sent on 30 June

2004, on the timeline. The missing component from the previous CLL Service Order, i.e. the

“Replicator,” is now included in a separate Service Order. Including this component in our contract, we are still within the original estimate proposed by CLL. The Replicator was separated so that the Wizard could proceed on schedule while details are worked out for the Replicator.

The UW team will finalize the details on the Replicator with CLL next week (of the 12th).

Summary for 11 June 20041. The pilot

The instructors teaching the 27 courses now hosted in UW-ACE for S2004 will be surveyed for feedback. The survey should be made available later today, or by Monday at the latest. (Survey circulated in hard copy at the UW-ACE Steering Committee meeting.)

More UW-ACE training sessions have been held by Jan Willwerth. Gradebook was very well attended.

2. Preparing for Fall 2004 ANGEL: The current version of ANGEL for UW-ACE is V6.0. Lorne

Connell is planning the upgrade to V6.1 at the end of the S2004 exam period. Course registration: Form is almost ready for release. Capping?: Question of necessity for any course number “capping” has been

discussed with support team, but remains a bit of an unknown. Information: UWone migration courses (to UW-ACE) and courses running in UWone will consume some of the Liaison time. The UW-ACE course support for the pilots does not seem to be overwhelming. Arts may be an area where more support could be applied to prevent support problems.

Campus announcement: May co-ordinate a UW-ACE advertising “splash” around the same time as the UWone/Task Users group meeting on 23rd.

Non-course related use of UW-ACE is becoming a topic of some interest.3. Status of Team functionality extension

Received CLL specifications on 8 June. (Hard copy circulated at SC meeting.) UW group met 9 June. Drafting response to CLL for June 14th.

Issues for response: Spec is missing the “Replicate Team resources,” need to clarify the “balance teams” interface, and check a few other items.

Timelines (some potential to move final delivery earlier):o June 30 – final response from UW (hope to do earlier)o July 12th – prototype from CLLo July 25th – UW finalizes changes to prototypeo Aug 9th – CLL delivers final product to UW

4. Migration planning to June 9th (provided by Liwana) UW-ACE-Exploration server is installed and running Angel 6.1. Two co-op students have been hired for Spring 2004.  They have been

familiarizing themselves with the system and migration process (testing and validating the migration process, and migrating and testing courses).

LT3 Faculty Liaisons were consulted to identify courses (and versions) to be migrated; these selections were verified with the faculty members.

Migration begins Thursday June 10th. Courses will be migrated in the following priority, with the goal to migrate all Level 1 courses by the end of Spring 04:    a)  Level 1 courses to be offered in Fall 2004.   b)  Level 1 courses to be offered in subsequent terms.

Note:  No DCE courses will be migrated until the Export functionality is available in UW-ACE.

Jan Willwerth and the Liaisons are aware of training issues for UW-ACE users who have migrated courses from UWone

5. Disaster recovery planningFirst meeting held with Lorne Connell and Mike Borkowski. Items to pursue: Dell “service level agreements” for various response times, cost and viability of redundant systems, statement of expectation for recovery in cases of “oops” to disaster. Various scenarios to follow in a couple weeks.

6. Other:PDEng program – Andrea met with the new director (Professor Carolyn MacGregor) and group to talk about UW-ACE. More discussion to follow with this group.

Summary for 20 May 2004 (sent as text via email)We proposed May 28th as the next meeting. However, a number of people will be away, and I have heard that another committee, which includes some of you, would like to have a meeting on the 28th. Here is an update by email for now. I think that unless you hear differently by noon Tuesday the 25th we should assume the UW-ACE SC meeting is postponed.

1. The pilot There are now 25 courses with about 2000 students, a good number for a test. http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/pilots.html Next step: survey participants to obtain feedback on experiences (objectives, start-up, training, documentation, etc.). I hope to have something drafted at the first of next week.

2. Preparing for fall 2004 We have 7 courses in UW-ACE for the fall. These are "OKed" by the Liaison and me to ensure we don't overwhelm our support during the pilot. We want to resolve the issue of registering courses automatically before opening up further to the campus. I hope we can do so by mid June. Other issues include a UW-ACE advertising "splash" for campus, upgrading ANGEL to V6.1, finalizing term rollover procedures (especially carrying courses forward to the next term). Next step: begin regular meetings (including IST, DE, LT3 where appropriate).

3. Status of the Team Functionality extension We revised our functionality document to reflect more details on what the team "wizard" should do, the result of our phone meeting with CLL of April 22nd. We sent this to CLL on May 7th. Next step: reponse from CLL with a detailed plan for delivery. (The ANGEL User Conference and the imminent V6.1 release have occupied much of their time in May.) Our preference is to have the extension on LT3's UW-ACE to pilot/test in F2004.

4. Topics for the upcoming meetings: o DE and UW-ACE - directions, needs, and next steps (Cathy) o Update on the pilot, preparations for fall, and the Team extension

(Andrea) o Migration planning (Liwana) o Disaster recovery planning (Andrea, possibly with Lorne Connell)o Reusable content and templates in UW-ACE (Liwana) o Others?

Summary for 5 March 2004 Team meetings Feb 24th and Mar 2nd

March 2nd o Overviewed UW online course memo coming from Tom and Alan

(without showing it to the group). This group is mentioned in the memo.o Discussed the pilot support flowchart. This prompted more discussion

about support after the pilot, and the topic will be taken forward to the Assoc. Deans.

o Liaisons and Faculty computing reps on this project will collaborate to come up with pilot participants.

o Agreed to meet in 2 weeks.February 24th

o Updated group on non-user-support issues Separate installation of ANGEL V6.0 for UW CMS/ANGEL pilot

(technical and “directional” reasons for not sharing with the UWone ANGEL installation);

Memo coming from Tom and Alan; CyberLearning Labs – second call about the UWone extensions.

Expecting a response re: cost and timeline for moving extensions into ANGEL (by CLL).

o Ensuing discussion: Confusion over the “no new courses” text of the UCIST minutes. Discussion on why not use UWone to build ANGEL courses.

o Comments on the LT3 Liaison document re: their evolving role definition for CMS/ANGEL participation (especially issues of pedagogical versus technical support).

o Communication mechanisms to each Faculty discussed and determined. (µ http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/communications.html §)

o Pilot participants need to be identified soon. Asked Faculty reps to work with their Faculty Liaisons.

Summary for 20 February 2004 Minor project charter revisions

o Charter provided to IST management team, with result in minor revisions.o Change wording to clarify participant list, document that the UCIST

ADCs act as faculty member consultants, and to emphasize investigation of role of Faculty computing offices. (See http://ist.uwaterloo.ca/~chappell/projects/angel/project_charter_new.html)

o Will request UCIST review to approve changes. Team began discussions on support (meetings on 10th and 17th of February)

o Overview of what mechanisms Faculties now use for course support; assure ANGEL not meant to supplant, rather to augment and replace if Faculty sees merit.

o Need mechanism to register ANGEL courses, and to get the training and documentation into this loop.

o Make use of existing Faculty TA programs to inform about ANGEL.o Make creating “test” course easy (and yet identifiable so we can remove

them at some point).o Involvement of Faculty computing help desks. Who do people now call

for course support in the Faculty? Varies across Faculties, but generally involves Help Desk/Consulting Offices.

o LT3 Faculty Liaisons and their role in the UW CMS (“blending” of pedagogical and technical support, with expertise in each area).

ANGEL client support in ISTo Andrea began discussions with Paul Snyder, and Bob Hicks (acting

Director for Client Services in Paul’s absence). Need to write role description.

ANGEL system support in ISTo Linked to the support of current UWone, future UWone extensions (who

does what); will involve IST Systems and IST Production Support. Discussions will progress once directions are set.

ANGEL hardware review (input from Penn State experience). New hardware. Two separate ANGEL systems

o One for inaugural UW-CMS (V6.0), one for current UWone (V5.6, to maintain “as is” for course commitments S04)

o Licensing and course population issues to resolve. DE plans to move “traditional” courses to ANGEL

o Convert audio tapes to MP3, import to ANGEL, export for CD.o 6-10 for S04 term as trial, possibly 70 more for next year; track issue of

disk space for so many hours of tape (~250M for each course).

Summary for 6 February 2004 first team meeting 3 Feb. 2004 (3 people couldn't make it)

o question of “why ANGEL” aroseo question of faculty member involvement (told it is through UCIST now)o no negative immediate reactions, but time may tell if they see downsideso plan to meet weekly for the next 3 weeks

next team meeting (10 Feb. 2004) will begin the discussion of a support model, and also discuss their mechanisms for communicating the project to their areas, and how to solicit participants to pilot

need to involve the IST Client Services group now as well issue of two ANGEL installations (one "vanilla" and one modified for UWone)

will be discussed by Lorne, me, others, then taken to the group