USA Faculty Senate Technology Utilization Committee

Technology Utilization Report

April 12, 2007

Steve Brick, Arts & Sciences
Kristy Britt, Chair, Arts & Sciences
Barbara Burckhartt, College of Medicine
Elliot Lauderdale, Continuing Education
Jie Li , University Libraries
Ehab Molokhia, College of Medicine

ACTIVITIES:

• In the interest of facilitating usage/support and student costs, the committee recommended that the University unify the technology of Personal Response Systems (often known as “clickers”) across campus. A Task Force was assembled and the Technology Utilization Chair served as one of its members. The Task Force researched the technology and, in April, submitted its findings and recommendation to the Vice President of Academic Affairs.
• In a meeting with the President and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, we recommended that the University’s faculty homepage add an additional link to centralize information about faculty development opportunities. (Under consideration by the University.)
• In the same meeting with the President and the Executive Committee of the Faculty Senate, we recommended that faculty be allowed to keep their university email privileges upon retirement. (Under consideration by the University.)
• The committee researched the concerns raised about disjointed email within the University . The two main email systems used within the University do openly communicate with each other, but we discovered the following:

• not all faculty are electing to use University email (GroupWise nor Jaguar1); faculty must request an account-- the accounts are not automatically issued;
• often faculty have blocked group messages and often they are not aware they have their settings as such;
• faculty electing to not use the University email are unsuccessfully forwarding their emails to their preferred email addresses;
• some faculty still simply do not use email.

RECOMMENDATIONS:

• We recommend that the Faculty Senate representative to the Academic Computing Committee always be the chair of the Technology Utilization Committee. This will provide more open communication between the two committees.

ONGOING:

• Working with the Academic Computing Committee in recommending that the University investigate and mitigate web inaccessibility problems on University webpages and institute training and guidelines for departments and other webmasters related to accessibility issues on locally controlled pages.
• Looking into I-Tunes University .
• Investigating the interests and needs of a faculty t echnology fair.
• Suggesting that the paper document of the annual faculty/staff directory be made accessible online.

Respectfully Submitted,

Kristy Britt
Chair, Technology Utilization Committee
University of South Alabama Faculty Senate

April 12, 2007