Search UW System

UW System Home > Offices > Office of Learning and Information Technology

UW System

CUWL/CWCW/EMTC/ITMC/LAMs/LTDC Joint Meeting

November 11-12, 2002
Green Lake, WI

Joint Sessions Introduction Welcome from UW System e-learning RFP WiscNet and Internet 2 Hot Topics: EMTC CWCW LTDC CUWL/LAMs ITMC

ITMC Sessions More WiscNet Updates Procurement Update: Microsoft ORACLE e-payment UWS IAA Whitepages Pilot e-learning Discussion PeopleSoftVersion 8 UW-Stout Laptop Program Content Management Systems Common Systems Update Spring ITMC Meeting

Introduction - Ron Kraemer

About 175 people are registered for this joint meeting. It meeting was planned by the leaders of the respective groups through a series of conference calls.

• EMTC - Lisa Livingston
• CWCW - Lillian Hillis
• LTDC - Glenda Morgan
• CUWL/LAMs - Robert Rose
• ITMC - Ron Kraemer

---

Welcome from UW System - Cora Marrett, Ed Meachen

At last fall's ITMC conference, Cora Marrett gave her first systemwide address as the UWS Senior Vice President for Academic Affairs. The last year has been exciting, busy and challenging, particularly in the financial realm. The State is facing a deficit of at least $1.2 billion. Every state agency will be confronting cuts, but the magnitude remains to be seen. In some states, there has been a shift from universities being state-supported, to becoming state-assisted, to merely state-located.

There is a need for everyone to understand the nature of the circumstances. We must:

1. formulate and tell our story
2. search for common approaches that are effective and understandable
3. communicate our common approaches to the public and the legislature

1. The story
What is it that brings us together? We are a system made up of 15 institutions, but we are seen as a single entity, and a single target for budgetary purposes. Some state agencies can point to the specific consequences of budget cuts. What can the UWS point to?

Students, parents and the public invest in the UWS because of the success of its students. We have residential, at-home, at-work, at-a-distance and continuing education students. The UWS is about preparing them to meet not only current challenges, but also those over the horizon. We must agree on how to tell this common story in all our contexts.

2. Common approaches
It makes sense to ask how we can do things together that enhance student success.

3 Communication
Everyone in the room should be involved in the communication activities being undertaken on the campuses. The citizens of Wisconsin must not think we are elitist, or that our endeavors are impractical. Everyone on campus must understand what we are all about. Student success depends upon a strong infrastructure of technology and support. Across the nation, one of the knee jerk responses to fiscal challenges is to forget about the infrastructure.

Students pay to come to the UWS. As people who pay, students deserve the chance to have involvement. Students also effectively lobby the legislature. If students are unaware of the importance of the infrastructure, they are not likely to enthusiastically lobby for the technologies that underlie the outcomes they desire.

---

E-learning RFP  Kathy Pletcher and Ed Meachen

http://notes5.uwli.com/cmstaskforce

The e-learning RFP is one of the most important issues currently underway in the OLIT office. The Board of Regents has spoken on the role of e-learning:

"Wisconsin residents and students increasingly expect the University to provide online opportunities as part of its core mission."

In their 21st Century Study, the Board of Regents outlined a coordinated and collaborative approach to online learning that would:

1. extend educational outreach
2. enhance academic program quality
3. enrich on-campus education
4. prepare students, faculty and staff for learning in the future

This vision was reiterated by President Lyall's EGOL committee. Over the years, a UWS e-learning infrastructure has been built:

• 1998 - The UWS "Utility Model" was formed whereby two campus-based centers host courses using Blackboard and WebCT. Most of the costs of running these facilities were underwritten by UWSA to save the individual campuses money by avoiding the duplication of facilities.

• 1999 - A budget initiative enabled all of the UWS campuses to have Learning Technology Development Centers (LTDCs) to support instructional design and training for the use of web based tools.

• 2000 - The ADL Co-Lab was launched to test the interoperability of products built to e-learning standards.

In 1998, the e-learning market was emerging and a number of products, usually conceived at universities, were put on the national marketplace, e.g., Blackboard, LearningSpace, WebCT, Toolbook II, WCB, Top Class, etc. All of these products were in use somewhere within UWS.

Competition began to eliminate the players, and by 2002 the remaining players were Blackboard, WebCT, LearningSpace and Prometheus. Meanwhile, new products have emerged overseas and the global marketplace is still fragmented. The RFP committee has learned that there is still no company that can offer end-to-end service in the higher education marketplace.

In January 2002, the CIOs had a retreat in Green Bay, and asked a number of questions about the growing costs of e-learning systems. The UW System was, and still is, supporting two major systems: WebCT and Blackboard. It was clear that the license costs would be increasing. However, the real costs to the campuses are not the license costs but the support costs. The CIOs asked if there was one product that would meet the campus e-learning needs, for use in both face-to-face classes and fully online courses, and if there were strong vendors that would continue into the future.

In February 2002, a task force was formed to probe the marketplace. The task force initially used the RFI process and subsequently the RFP process. The charge to the task force was to choose:

• a single product, or
• a set of integrated products
• to meet the online learning needs of the UWS
• from blended courses to fully web-based asynchronous courses.

The task force membership includes:

• Judy Brown, OLIT
• Dave Dumke, UW-Stevens Point
• Dirk Herr-Hoyman, UW-Madison
• Margie Ingram, UW-Stout
• Bob Kaleta, UW-Milwaukee
• Glenda Morgan, OLIT
• Kathy Pletcher, UW-Green Bay
• Pam Scheibel, UW-Madison
• Hal Schlais, OLIT
• David Wirth, LI
• Lorna Wong, UW-Whitewater

The overall timeline for the process is:
 

Defining the work Market research RFI Develop RFP Product evaluation Report at IT Summit Final recommendation

February - March 2002 April -June 2002 June - August 2002 October - February 2002 December 12-13, 2002 March 2002

The RFI generated responses from 31 vendors for:

• course management systems
• content management systems
• learning management systems
• authoring and assessment tools
• consultants

The RFI process revealed a marketplace that consists of four types of products and combinations thereof:
 

Content Creation	Storage and Distribution	Interaction	Learning Management
Author content Author tests Create e-labs and simulations Create metadata Assemble and package content Export content Manage workflow	Store content Serve content Store and serve tests Manage a catalog Search and discover content Manage digital rights Versioning	Deliver content to a browser Communicate and collaborate Whiteboards and application sharing Testing and simulation Polls and surveys Tracking	Maintain records Enroll students and assign faculty Manage resources Authenticate and authorize Record grades and credit Recommend courses

In the UWS, most of the learning management functions are handled by our student administrative systems, and aren't needed in a new learning management system.

The scope of the RFP included:

• supplementing traditional classroom instruction
• integrating online and face-to-face teaching
• delivering totally online courses

Not all vendors do all three of the above. In addition, the chosen product must have the following features:

• ease of use
• familiar interface
• promote connections and community
• accommodate diverse learning styles
• encourage active learning
• interoperate with student administration systems and other academic systems
• import and export reusable content
• maintain and update components of the system
• rely on standards

There were some 60 functional requirements. Standards are driven by the need:

• to move a course from one web-based learning system to another
• to reuse course content across different learning management systems
• to create searchable learning content or media repositories for sharing

The RFP also specified an e-learning architecture. The minimum configuration includes a course management system at the core, which interacts with existing student administration systems for registration and grading. It also must interoperate with the campus authentication systems to avoid multiple logins with multiple IDs. Content authoring facilities are also part of the minimum requirement.

The RFP evaluation criteria included 100 points:

• 10% General requirements
• 65% Technical requirements
• 32.5% functional requirements
• 32.5% architectural requirements
• 25% Cost proposal

The cost proposal was kept separate from the other parts. Those who scored the technical and functional aspects were not aware of the cost proposals while they did their work. There were 16 vendor responses. At the evaluation conference in October, the field was first narrowed to eight based upon the general and technical requirements, and then to four when the cost proposals were examined. The remainder of the evaluation timeline is as follows:
 

Demonstrations to task force and invited guests:	November - December
WebCT  Blackboard Granada  Desire2Learn	November 19-20 November 25-26 December 16-17 December 18-19
Campus demos using Placeware technology hosted by the LTDCs for faculty, staff &  students	Mid January through mid February
Final recommendation	March 1

Possible outcomes of the RFP process:

• Short term - keep the status quo through September 2003, even if a new product is chosen
• Long term:
• migrate to a new system, or
• wait for products to mature, and
• push vendors for compliance with standards

Potential benefits of the RFP process:

• influence the directions of vendors through this RFP and other UWS efforts
• establish an architecture for the future
• improve course development
• support wider adoption by faculty
• reuse content across courses and schools
• eliminate the need to migrate (reformat) content
• expand content availability
• integrate with other systems, e.g., student administration, Library, Shared Financial System

Q: How broad is the definition of content? Does it include archives of chats or questions asked by students? A: A lot of the content resides in the course. Some of it is ephemeral and there is no intent to keep it from semester to semester. However, some of it might be moved into a central repository for storage and indexing. There might be copyright issues to consider, as well as items that shouldn't be revealed to some audiences, e.g., test questions.

In student administration or HR systems there is a fixed audience of people who must use them. In this case, faculty do not have to use a course management system. However, there has been increasing acceptance over the last few years, up to perhaps 50%. If the tool changes too quickly, that might negatively impact the adoption rate.

Q: What about the APBS and IAA projects? A: IAA is included under the general heading of authentication. The APBS linkages have not been explored.

Q: How strong is the US presence of two of the vendors? A: They don't have a strong US presence yet, but would probably be excited to have a strong US customer like UWS.

The ITMC breakout group will have a further e-learning discussion.

---

WiscNet and Internet 2 Updates - Dave Lois, Brian Remer

http://www.wiscnet.net

WiscNet connects all of the UWS universities and technical colleges, as well as some 380 K-12 school districts, encompassing some 750,000 education stockholders, most of whom are students. WiscNet connects strategies, such as e-learning and video conferencing, not just networks.

Internet 2

http://www.internet2.edu

The Internet 2 backbone is now running at OC-192, which is 10Gbps. WiscNet was one of the first members to connect to this ultra high bandwidth network at OC-12, 622Mbps.

The newly fashionable term grid generally means wide area distributed computing.

The most common discussion topic at I2 meetings is video, especially H.323 video for collaboration in the form of a video commons or a video conference. The goal is to have a dialing tool that is integrated with LDAP directories so that people don't have to enter numerical IP addresses to connect with each other. VidMid is the term for directories and security in the video conferencing world.

Scientific applications of I2 include being able to access and manipulate scientific instruments across the network, e.g., observatories, electron microscopes (such as the K-12 bug scope, http://bugscope.beckman.uiuc.edu/) and earthquake research equipment.

Given the mass of data from supercolliders, there is renewed interest in reliability because the data is too massive to store, it must be analyzed at once.

Some of the UW System constituencies who are making a mark in the I2 world include: Annie Stunden of UW-Madison, Steve Senger of UW-LaCrosse, Keith Hazelton of UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee's LIGO scientific collaboration, which is a Beowulf cluster of 300 PCs doing gravitational wave analysis, and UW-Stevens Point's videoconferences with a sister campus in Germany (see http://www.uwsa.edu/ttt/articles/internet2.htm).

WiscNet Updates

Dark fiber

Dark fiber is the term for having direct physical access to fiber optic cable, as opposed to buying bandwidth on someone else's cable.

Pros of having dark fiber:

• no circuit costs
• lower lead times
• greater flexibility in technologies

Cons of having dark fiber:

• higher in-house management costs
• additional hardware must be purchased
• can't reroute the path

The DOT has fiber running along the I-94 right of way across the state. DOT and WiscNet are working together to extend the fiber network into Minnesota and Illinois, and also looking for future right-of-way fiber opportunities across the state.

Videoconferencing
WiscNet members are already using IP-based vidoconferencing, mostly H.323. The WiscNet organization has been coming up to speed with video and is:

• providing recommendations for the selection and setup of equipment, especially Polycom
• helping institutions get started, especially K-12s
• ensuring that a bridge for multipoint conferences is available, most likely through UW-Extension ICS

WENCC

The Wisconsin Educational Network Consortium Committee was started in response to the expiring of contracts for the DS/3-based distance education video network in 2005. WENCC is comprised of representatives from:

• education (UWS, Technical Colleges, DPI, CESAs, ECB, private colleges)
• others (DEG and TEACH)

WENCC conducted focus groups and surveys and came back with a multitude of input with few common themes. The focus has coallesced around the notion that an educational network is needed that can support a wide array of applications, including video. It should be a single network for all of education that is based upon standards (IP), offers high bandwidth and includes bridging and scheduling services for video.

WiscNet already has most of the above services and is arguing that it would make more sense to enhance its existing network, rather than build a new one. Nevertheless, there is still general confusion over the status of WiscNet because it is not a private vendor, nor a state agency. Meanwhile, the vendors continue to compete for business while DOA, DEG and TEACH are interested in the perspective of strong central control.

Whatever happens, WENCC will offer a significant change in one form or another, either by bringing everything together or fostering the creation of alternative networks that service different sectors. The latter has the potential for reduced connectivity between the UWS and the K-12s.

It is expected that the results of the election will result in unknown changes to DEG and TEACH. It is important that the UWS institutions lead by example and voice the desire to run their own networks.

The ITMC will also have a WiscNet breakout session.

---

Hot Topics

• EMTC - Lisa Livingston. The EMTC is a group of IT staff from around the state that provide technology and other support for a gambit of learning environments from online learning to maintaining classrooms to curricular redesign. The EMTC is a strong proponent of a high quality network video as faculty embrace conferencing and webcasting. Meanwhile, they support the faculty who are using overhead projectors and older technology. They are also concerned about the provisions of the new federal Teach bill, and the funding of educational technology infrastructure.

• CWCW - Dan Frommelt. The CWCW earnestly desires the participation of all campus webmasters. They meet three times per year, at the fall joint conference as well as in spring and summer. Topics of primary concern are accessibility issues including the w3c standards, content management, news management, portals, search engines and project management for web (re)design.

• LTDC - Glenda Morgan. The LTDC will be focussing on the course management system RFP, the roles and activities of campus LTDCs, shortages of personnel and funding, and the assessment and evaluation of courses. The LTDC would like to maintain the UWS e-learning utility model. On some campuses, the LTDC role is performed by less than one person while the number of web courses continues to grow at an increasing rate. The impact of technology on teaching and learning is difficult to evaluate, and it is difficult to define the role of the LTDC and to provide professional development with respect to this issue.

• CUWL/LAMs - Robert Rose. The "one system, one library concept" is at the core of the strategic directions for the UWS libraries. The Digital Collection Center now resides at the UW-Madison campus and includes submissions from all of the UWS institutions. The strategic direction to investigate commercial software, has resulted in the adoption of the OCLC ILLiad (sic) system for interlibrary lending, borrowing and document delivery, including the mounting of requested documents on a server for the user to access. Reference services have been expanded by using real-time software for "virtual reference". A project is underway with WILS, private libraries, public libraries and ten UWS libraries using QuestionPoint, which was developed by OCLC.

• ITMC - Ron Kraemer. The ITMC hot topics are:
• common systems
• academic systems
• administrative systems
• contracts, such as Microsoft
• services, such as IAA
• networks
• WiscNet
• campus networks
• wireless
• video
• voice
• security
• protecting information
• eliminating viruses
• blocking spam
• content management of digital assets
• libraries
• courses
• web services
• publications
• administrative services
• the synergism of everything around IT

---

More WiscNet Updates - Brian Remer and David Lois

This discussion expands upon the presentation at the joint session.

Network Plans

• Core Ring
• Two new core ring circuits were put in place last summer, from UW-Eau Claire to UW-Madison and UW-Milwaukee to UW-Green Bay.
• The new core ring will be finished next year, and will be ready for Gigabit Ethernet when it becomes available for purchase.
• Dark Fiber
• WiscNet is working with DOT for dark fiber along the I-94 corridor.
• Dark fiber is also being pursued for local loops at the core network supernodes at UW-Eau Claire, UW-Madison, UW-Milwaukee and UW-Green Bay.
• Eventually dark fiber local loops will be pursued for all other UW System campus cities.
• The dark fiber negotiations in each city are unique.
• Chicago connectivity
• There are various entities to work with in Chicago including:
• Illinois Toll Authority
• Illinois Century Network (ICN)
• Direct purchase from vendors
• Great Lakes Light Rail (GLLR)
• GLLR is a loosely knit group of upper Midwest networks that are finding ways to share network infrastructures in OH, MI, IL, IN and WI.
• GLLR started as a dark fiber procurement group, but evolved into general network collaboration group.
• Transit Bid - "Reverse Bid"
• Previous Internet bandwidth contracts were from Quest and Genuity.
• This time, a reverse bid will be used to create a pool of qualified vendors by specifying what WiscNet is willing to pay.
• If one vendor goes out of business, WiscNet can immediately switch to another pre-qualified vendor.
• The bid mechanism has been a significant challenge for Purchasing.
• The results are in, and letters of intent will be mailed soon.
• Lots of options for vendors and connection points were bid.
• Lower prices than expected were bid.

Planning Challenges

• Bandwidth growth is difficult to predict
• It doesn't appear as if WiscNet bandwidth growth is quite doubling every year.
• How much will it grow next year?
• Peering is diminishing
• Lower tier networks have been WiscNet's typical peers.
• Lower tier networks have been going out of business or selling out.
• Top tier networks don't find WiscNet big enough for peering.
• New, promising ideas are being investigated.
• WENCC
• WENCC developments will have a huge effect on WiscNet in early 2004.
• There may be political changes in DEG/TEACH/DOA under the new governor.

Q: Should there be separate rates for instate and Internet traffic running over WiscNet? A: Investigations show that the volume differences between the two types of traffic are not significant. Contrary to expectations, instate networking costs are higher than out-of-state traffic costs.

Q: What strategy should campuses use to budget for their WiscNet bill? A: The WiscNet bill is divided into fixed costs (called membership costs) and usage costs. The fixed cost charged to each campus is on the order of $5,000. The majority of each campus bill is their own usage cost, which will probably continue to grow at an exponential rate for mission critical applications. Per bit costs probably won't go up next year. Membership fees might go up a very small amount.

---

Procurement Update - Ruth Anderson

Microsoft

The current enterprise contract expires in August 2003.  A team was assembled over the summer which included the Wisconsin Technical Colleges.

The current agreement is a four year contract for desktop applications, operating system upgrades and backoffice server licenses. At the end of the contract the UWS will have full ownership of the software on all faculty and staff computers, but not student computers.

Microsoft has put all other universities under nondisclosure agreements and said that they will not offer the old style enterprise agreement based upon FTE counts. The new types of contracts are:

1. Campus Agreement (leasing for three years) - based upon the number of campus FTE and knowledge workers. At the end of three years, the options would be to continue leasing or to buy out by paying for all new software licenses. A student lease option would be available at an extra cost.
2. Select contract (purchasing on a per license basis) - The purchases and installations of each piece of software would have to be tracked. A student option would be available at an extra cost.

It is expected that costs will go up significantly under either agreement. The CIOs have expressed a preference for ownership of the software as opposed to leasing.  Servers would no longer be included in the overall contract, and would be a separate cost item.

Microsoft would prefer to see its customers go to a campus agreement. There are series of choices to be investigated to compare all the tradeoffs, including whether or not a systemwide approach would make the most sense. Ultimately the CIOs and CBOs will make the decisions. If they are not covered under a future contract, letters will have to go out to about 30,000 students telling them that they don't have a license to continue using certain Microsoft products.

Serious discussions with Microsoft will begin in December.

ORACLE

Negotiations are still underway with ORACLE regarding what is included in the maintenance agreement for the ORACLE 9 IAS Application Server.

E-payment

A bid for e-payment products from multiple vendors is under consideration. An award is expected in a few weeks.

---

UWS IAA Whitepages Pilot - Dick Cleek, Gary Smith, et. al.

What is IAA?

• Identification - Who are you?
• Authentication - Prove it!
• Authorization - OK, what do you want to do?

IAA is is an application that users will never see. It will be used by applications that are running the Lightweight Directory Application Protocol, LDAP.

The Whitepages Pilot is a simple application to demonstrate the potential of the IAA. The UW Processing Center has entered every faculty and staff member in the UWS into the IAA whitepages pilot. Students from four pilot institutions have also been entered.

The Whitepages will abide by FERPA constraints. It will be fed by data submitted by the campuses and the UW Processing Center. All of the discrete person instances (which are not the same as people) will be stored in the relational registry. A join engine will match the person instances according to name, gender, date-of-birth and Social Security number. This allows a person to have multiple variations of (for example) their name, for use by different systems, e.g., the student system versus the HR system. The registry will store single person representations via XML in the LDAP directory schema for use by the whitepages application.

Data can only be corrected or edited by having the data elements changed by the authoritative campus or UWPC system. The data is not "corrected" in the registry. Hence a person can have multiple names, email addresses, phone numbers, etc., because of how they are known by different source systems. If person instances are incorrectly matched by the join process, they must be manually tagged as unlinkable. The converse is also true.

The data collection submissions from the campuses can be either batch processes or near real-time transactions. The data is currently sent securely via secure copy protocol, SCP.

The current IAA registry has:

• 131,400 person instances, representing
• 122,400 unique, flesh and blood individuals
• 8.800 people that are cross-represented by multiple systems, and typically linked by the UWPC

The LDAP directory:

• is currently using the iPlanet directory structure for the pilot
• has a flat directory structure which represents a person's multiple roles as multiple attributes
• will soon have replication, failover and load balancing functions
• is rooted in the wisconsin.edu DNS space which is owned by UW Extension so that it can be extended to other Wisconsin institutions

The IAA whitepages application provides a simple view into the IAA directory as a phone book web interface.

The work remaining on the pilot includes:

• finishing the web interface
• testing
• reviewing
• deciding to proceed
• including the remaining UWS institutions

The lessons learned include:

• Secure transport
• SCP works for moving files in the pilot, but it won't work for transaction processing.
• Virtual Private Networks (VPN) with encrypted transport levels are preferable, but this is an issue that needs to be addressed outside of the IAA project.
• Application providers want help with authentication and authorization. The applications are looking for usernames, etc. inside of the LDAP, which are not included in the scope of this project.
• Campus communications
• Good channels of communication at the staff and technical levels are needed.
• A common understanding of scope and strategy is needed.

Future Issues:

• APBS needs to depend upon Kronos which needs to depend upon IAA. Kronos is slated to go live in July.
• Authentication for systemwide applications:
• APBS and Kronos need credentials (e.g., username/password/digital certificates/etc.)
• There is no UW-Systemwide credentialing system (yet.)
• Instead of a systemwide identifier, there needs to be a way to make campus credentials work for UW Systemwide applications, e.g., the I2 Shibboleth project.
• All of this needs to happen soon.
• Staffing to support the IAA functions needs to be defined.
• Governance of the IAA processes needs to be defined.
• Possible loan of MILER consultants to PeopleSoft schools for assistance in writing the data feeds within the next six months (the detailed specs are on the web site and another request will be made to the CIOs.)

---

E-learning Discussion - Kathy Pletcher

After her earlier presentation, Kathy Pletcher met with the LTDC group. Their primary concern is that the faculty will be upset because they have already adapted to several course management systems. The original task force timeline has been lengthened from the anticipated six months, and the question of whether or not a new system will be chosen is still pending. The quickest possible scenario is that there could be pilot courses running in the fall of 2003.

Some of the work that the faculty members have expended to date is the result of the proprietary nature of the products. If standards are taking hold, then maybe one more conversion may be all that is needed. Kathy encouraged the LTDCs to invite all faculty to the demos.

Q: What is the status of the the existing contracts with Blackboard and WebCT? A: The contracts are due for renewal next year, and this RFP process will help with that task. The costs for each are expected to go up roughly fourfold. The LearningSpace courses will be a trickier problem.

Q: How did the task force decide upon the route of a single vendor solution, rather than an integrated, multiple vendor solution? A: A number of vendors submitted partnership proposals. However, bringing in multiple products tended to drive up the costs, which accounted for 25% of the ranking.

Q: How will the UWS pay for a new system, especially given that the current utilities are not fully funded? A: That conversation is going on in parallel to this task force. It has been brought up with the CIOs and will be brought up with the Provosts. It was pointed out that these products are inexpensive compared to the UWS administrative systems. These systems also represent a very small add-on to the current cost of instruction.

Q: Is there a concern with signing a contract today for a system that may have a one or two year rollout in a volatile marketplace? A: The task force is looking at the financial viability of the finalists, their futures and their strategies.

Q: How do we find the holes in the two unfamiliar products? A: The functional subgroup put together a rigorous test by asking the vendors to convert four existing courses, which will be evaluated via a thorough checklist.

Q: What is the value in terms of a reduced learning curve for going with one of the existing systems? A: Some of those issues can be addressed in the general evaluation points. However, even Blackboard and WebCT are offering new products that the UWS hasn't seen, and are significantly different than what people are using now. So, in effect, all four vendors are offering functionally new systems. The technical subgroup is looking at the architecture, server configurations, scalability, integration with external authentication systems, etc.

Q: Will the end result be similar to the current model, where UWS is funding a central utility, but campuses are free to acquire and use whatever they want? A: At least until now it hasn't been decreed that this will be the only learner management system within UWS. The overall issue of the expectations of  campuses vis-à-vis the common systems may be discussed at the upcoming IT Summit in December.

---

PeopleSoft Version 8, the Web Client Model, Pluses and Minuses - David Hart, Mark Anderson and Ilya Yakovlev

PeopleSoft will only support a software environment for a four year period, so there is pressure to move quickly to version 8 and to look ahead to version 9.

UW-Madison and UW-Superior decided to move as quickly as possible to version 8. UW-Superior went live on July 15, 2002 and UW-Madison during the last week of July. The Wisconsin Higher Education PeopleSoft Users Group met on the UW-Superior campus in October. The entire agenda of the meeting focussed around the campus experiences with version 8. Feedback from end users is that version 8 is a more desirable product than earlier versions. It is easier to support, because it only requires a browser not a client. The MILER Core Team has gathered around version 8, and UW-Oshkosh, UW-Whitewater, UW-Platteville, UW-Green Bay and UW-Milwaukee are in the process of moving toward it.

Pluses:

• No more client installs and configuration
• Improved reliability with fewer points of failure
• Works on either PCs or Macs
• Better access
• More web self service applications than version 7.6.
• Protecting student confidentiality is more challenging
• Good development environment for web applications

Minuses:

• Poorer transactional performance for data entry staff
• Can be mitigated with Electronic Application Load and Quick Enroll
• Server configuration issues
• Other issues
• Case sensitive userid and password
• No menu for self service roles
• Too many clicks to gain access to reports
• Blackboard portal interface had to be rebuilt
• DARS interface had to be rebuilt
• Problems with CDR

Timeline:

• February - Collaterals version 8 training
• March - Functional leads decided to go ahead
• April - Visit from the PeopleSoft Upgrade Assistant consultants
• May - First pass at version 8
• May - July - Prototyping and server configuration
• July 15, 2002 - Go live
• August 16 - Challenges as the number of application servers were increased to meet the load

The Upgrade Assistant (UA) PeopleSoft tool was used to accomplish the upgrade in two passes.

Tips and tricks:

• UA has to run on a dedicated workstation.
• UA should have as fast a connection to the database server as possible.
• Set an email address in the preferences to receive messages/pages when each UA step is completed.
• Purge out PS logs (e.g., PS_COMM_SCTN_HDR) to help performance.
• Database indexes may need to be optimized to improve performance.
• Truncating database transaction logs periodically will help performance.
• Application engine programs may need to be modified to improve performance.
• Expect errors (such as Application Engine errors, database structure errors).
• If errors can be corrected in UA templates, subsequent runs will proceed more smoothly.
• Do backups after key steps.
• Print out the UA spreadsheet that lists the sub-steps and times for each run. These serve as benchmarks for subsequent runs. UA sometimes tends to go to sleep.
• Become current with patches right before the upgrade.
• Print out PeopleSoft upgrade documentation.
• Begin with the latest versions and service packs, and don't change during the upgrade cycles.
• Verify that the PeopleSoft audit reports are clean.
• More server resources are needed on the back end because more processing is being done there.

---

UW-Stout Laptop Program - Joe Brown and Doug Wahl

http://www.uwstout.edu/laptop/

UW-Stout is ten weeks into the first semester of their laptop program.

In 1997, the chancellor began considering adopting a laptop program to:

• Improve teaching and learning
• Improve communication on campus
• Insure that students are fully computer literate upon graduation
• Prepare students for the world at work

Other motivations:

• Possible reduction in campus labs
• Realization that UW-Stout cannot afford to provide all the computing power that students will need

Initial fact finding:

• Trip to Winona State revealed:
• Students had great enthusiasm
• Faculty had buy-in
• Enrollment increased
• Parents were happy
• Results from across the nation revealed:
• Increased freshman to sophomore retention
• Increased applications for admission
• Favorable parent satisfaction levels
• Increased instructional effectiveness

The UW-Stout e-Scholar laptop initiative:

• Chancellor's Advisory Committee gave buy-in
• Student Senate gave buy-in
• Provided advance laptops for admission counselors and notified high schools of the pending requirement
• Incorporated a $36 per credit charge into student tuition
• Wanted everyone to have a laptop
• Didn't want to exclude students who were only were taking a couple classes
• Students taking three credits or less only get laptops on a checkout basis
• Laptops are given to new freshman only
• Laptop indicator added to the Datatel student administration system for tuition calculation purposes
• RFP committee decided how to procure the computers (leased from Compaq and Apple by way of Vanguard)

Taking delivery:

• 1,311 students currently have laptops
• Distributed to groups of 30-50 students over two days
• Each student received 3 hours of training on laptop care and use

Staffing:

• Two-year project positions:
• One funded by student technology fee
• One funded by Chancellor
• Two LTEs funded by Technology and Information Services
• Student Technology Assistance and Resource (STAR) students did all of the training

Email:

• Upgraded from: 2 server, 2 web front end Exchange 5.5 environment
• To: 4 server, 6 web front end Exchange 2000 environment
• Web client is a significant load on the server

Network storage:

• Purchased EMC Cellera SAN/NAS system (2.8 TB)
• Storage for all email:
• 100 MB for faculty/staff
• 30 MB for students
• 70MB file web storage for all students

Network enhancements:

• ATM backbone upgraded to 2.4GB
• Upgraded traffic laden building connections to 622MB
• Provided public ports
• Increased Internet bandwidth
• 100 MB port for each residence hall pillow
• Wired 8 large capacity classrooms
• Simplified the DHCP management
• Installed a lot of wireless

Wireless technology:

• 126 access points on campus
• 19 Apple
• 107 Cisco
• Why Cisco?
• access points can be powered through the CAT 5 cable
• adjustable signal
• Three configuration "modes"
• Classrooms
• Buildings
• Outdoors - wireless bridges with directional antennas to keep the signal on campus
• 300-400 balloons were placed proclaiming "WIRELESS HERE"

Using the NetReg DHCP server for public ports, residence halls and wireless to obviate the need for manual MAC address entries:

• Runs on linux
• Subnet independent
• "Freeware" (send the developers a university T-shirt)
• People authenticate with email username/password
• Network acceptable use policy on the authentication page
• http://www.netreg.org

Help Desk:

• New walk up help desk established for the laptop students
• "First responders" carry radios
• immediate response
• doubles the walkup help
• Self service web help established
• authenticate with email username/password

The e-Scholar portal:

• Makes learning, and the learner, the focal points
• Is the default desktop application
• Is customizable
• Is individualized
• Is the single point of access to living and learning at UW-Stout
• Pulls together the Datatel student applications functions with data warehousing, calendaring, advising and email
• Phase 2 will allow students to choose the "widgets" they want

Is the e-Scholar initiative successful?

• Too soon to tell
• Faculty are enthusiastic
• Students are happy
• Better communications to students with the laptops

No laptop campus has realized a reduction in campus labs as the consequence of the laptop program, however UW-Stout is cautiously optimistic that they may be seeing a reduction in lab use.

---

Content Management System Concepts - Paul Trebian

Content Management Systems (CMS) are young in the education marketplace.

A CMS is a tool. A CMS should not:

•  Be confused with Course Management
•  Be perceived as organizing or developing content

People

organize and develop content.

A large CMS has four basic components

1. Collection
2. Management
3. Publication
4. Workflow

Publication and workflow is where the more expensive systems stand out.

1. Collection is about:

• authoring
• aggregating
• converting
• editorial systems

2. Management is about:

• storage management
• selection process for search and retrieval
• managing content for security, roles, user maintenance, status, logging, rollback, I/O processes and bulk automation for pushing global changes for a campus website

3. Publications can be in the form of:

• web
• site management
• page management
• FTP Storage Management
• video
• Intranet Streaming
• Internet Streaming
• Cable TV
• Physical Media
• Tapes
• Multimedia CD
• documents
• Administration
• Legal
• Catalogs
• Marketing

The larger vendors can publish to all three media (~$300-$600K for an enterprise system). The small vendors just focus on web publication (~$60 for an enterprise system).

4. Workflow is about:

• Representing
• the different staff roles on campus (one person may do multiple roles)
• Management staff
• Editorial staff
• Technical staff
• Creative staff
• Architectural staff
• Standards
• Tools and Function Management
• Meta Information Management
• Cycle Management (typically there are no defined workflows for people)
• Sequence
• Someone initiates content
• Someone creates the content
• Someone approves the content
• Someone publishes the content
• Elements
• What gets done?
• Who can perform the task?
• What is required to complete the task?
• What happens when the task is completed?
• What happens if the task fails?

Systems Support:

The content management system support structure is composed of four parts:

1. Selection Process
2. Change Management
3. Technical Architecture
4. Project Management

1. The CMS selection process is composed of:

• Selection committee:
• Leader óthis person could be from a marketing, technical or administrative group
• Marketing ó someone who is thinking about the target audiences of the publications
• Publishing or Web Team ó someone who will be leading the people who will be using the system the most
• Editorial Team ó someone who represents the writers and editors
•  Systems Integration ó someone technical who understands the various other systems in the organization
• Development ó someone who represents the interests of the developers
• To gather requirements, a Software Requirements Specification (SRS) document needs to be created to:
• Explain how a content management system will help to collect, manage, and publish content
• Make clear that it is a software system that interfaces with other software systems and explain what kinds of publications your organization plans to produce using the CMS

2. The CMS technical architecture should be comprised of three separate environments:

• Production Environment
• Web Front End Cluster
• Database Back End
• System Test Environment
• Web Front End Cluster
• Database Back End
• Unit Test Environment
• Web Front End Cluster
• Database Back End

3. Project management is based around project plans, which include::

• What?
• Who?
• How long?
• Start
• Stop
• Dependencies
• Resource management

4. Change management is the management of production system through:

• Meetings to:
• Deconflict changes to the production environment
• Schedule outages
• Create procedures for:
• Change requests
• Work plans
• Change approval
• A liaison who meets with customers and generates agenda items for the change management meetings

References:

• ITpapers.com (look under the web heading), http://www.itpapers.com
• Metatorial Services Inc., Content Management Concepts, http://metatorial.com/Papers/cm_concepts.asp

ptrebian@uwm.edu

---

Common Systems Update - Bob Jokisch, Ron Kraemer, Dick Cleek

The Common Systems Review group was appointed by President Lyall to come to grips with the evolution of the UWS Common Systems, and the $5M projected shortfall in funding. The group consists of two vice chancellors, two CBOs, two CIOs, Debbie Durcan, Ed Meachen, Ron Singer and UWSA staff.

The projects that are currently funded under the Common System rubric are:

• The Blackboard and WebCT course management utilities
• The PeopleSoft Student Administration System and its associated systems like MILER and FASTAR
• SFS
• APBS
• IAA
• several software contracts

The underlying question is the definition of common systems, which has been outlined by the CIOs. The crux of the issue is when a campus might get "forced" to adopt, and/or pay for, a common system.

The Common System Review Group last met in August. The status of the current systems was reviewed, especially the web course hosting utilities, SFS, APBS and PeopleSoft SA. Scenarios were modeled for different levels of project budget cuts.

Schemes were proposed to address the $5M shortfall in the Common Systems budget:

• assess the campuses
• assess campus auxiliaries
• levy a segregated fee to pay for the student administration and course management utilities

A proposal to charge campus auxiliaries $1.7M for the development of SFS, APBS and the Student Administration System was approved last month by the chancellors.

Since there is still a shortfall, the VCs, CBOs and CIOs will discuss the matter further at the IT Summit in December. It is important to discuss these issues on the campuses before then. The final IT Summit agenda will be ready in about a week.

After the IT Summit, the following will be discussed:

• the overall funding of the Common Systems effort
• potential shifts in how individual systems are funded
• possible reductions and efficiencies

---

Spring ITMC Meeting - Ron Kraemer

Since there wasn't a spring meeting this year, ITMC Executive Committee elections were skipped. An ITMC meeting will be tentatively planned for the spring. If a spring meeting isn't held, an Executive Committee election will be held by email.

Not just CIOs should consider running for the chair. Non-CIOs have also held the position. The main responsibility of the chair is organizing the semiannual conferences, which is interesting and not difficult to do, especially at the Heidel House.