UC Office of the President sponsored

1. Course Management System (CMS) Meeting

Oakland Airport Hilton

March 6, 2002

Chair: Jim Dolgonas, UCOP

Organizer: Willi Bokenkamp, UCOP

Notes drafted by Beth Riddle, UCSC (revised August 12, 2002 by David Walker, UCOP)

AGENDA

1. Representatives from each campus describe their course management support environment, including CMS software supported, number of courses, staff support, facilities. Discuss issues, strategies, and future plans for each campus.

2. Determine next steps for cross-campus collaboration to leverage licensing, software development, tool sharing, training, and policy implementation.

SUMMARY OF NEXT STEPS

The following action items were identified by the group during the meeting. They have been reproduced here to summarize the outcomes of the meeting:

1. UCOP will establish a listserv (uccmslms-l at ucop.edu) for UC CMS participants who came today.

2. The following working groups will be established:

   1. Strategy and Policy Group

   2. Developers Group

   3. Technical Task Group

   4. Toolkit and Software Licensing Group

3. The second meeting of this group will have presentations by vendors and campuses that have developed home-grown systems.

4. Gary Matkin, UC Irvine, is organizing a seminar, "The State of Learning Object Repositories Today."

5. We will want to organize a Symposium on the State of Learning Management Systems.

Meeting Notes

PART I: CAMPUS REPRESENTATIVES DESCRIBE THEIR CMS SUPPORT ENVIRONMENT, ISSUES, STRATEGIES, AND FUTURE PLANS.

[Note: I'm including detailed notes here so that anyone who wasn't at the meeting can have a better understanding of what occurred. Because this is the first UC-wide CMS meeting, there was much time spent describing the contextual environment of each campus. - BR]

[Note: I have reordered the campus presentations by name, rather than chronologically. - DW]

UC BERKELEY

Victor Edmonds, Director, Educational Technology Services

Mara Hancock, Web Services Manager, Educational Technology Services

Claudia Morgan, Director, Instructional Development and Technology, University Extension Online

Louise (JR) Schulden, Director, Student Information Systems

Barbara Morgan, Director, Strategic Technology Planning

Ann Dobson, Associate Director, Academic Computing Services

The Educational Technology Services group supports Blackboard and WebCT. The Haas School of Business uses Prometheus. ETS has $723K (one time and ongoing) from the campus-wide "e-Berkeley" initiative to support course management systems, and spends a total of about $1.2M just for course web sites annually. Victor observes that faculty want either very little from a course management system, or a great deal, and there aren't many in between those two extremes. UCB is interested in both OKI and IMS.

Victor has seen a demo of WebCT Vista (the academic enterprise system) and says it is easy to use, and intuitive. Faculty and others on a committee are looking at long-term strategies and short-term solutions. Victor thinks they may decide on WebCT Vista for the short-term (2 years).

They also are building a "CourseWeb" tool with J2EE architecture that connects to the Registrar's database and will have rostering, allow faculty to email all students, email to students on wait lists, email office hours, and syllabus. It will be an extension to the on-line catalog with all 6,000 courses. This could evolve to an OKI-type course management system, or to a portal.

Other items of note:

• JR Schulden reports that pictures of all students are available, and could be put on the web with classes.

• The CMS projects are straining the infra structure because of issues related to who determines roles and permissions.

• Barbara Morgan believes that content management and repository issues are going to be huge and there are only partial answers now.

• UCB has a new policy that requires students to provide an email address.

• They have a successful web casting service for about 15 classes.

• UCB is trying to get outside funding to use technology to improve very large undergraduate courses.

Claudia Morgan, Berkeley Extension, said that distance education isn't discussed much on the main campus, but is important to Extension where they have been doing fully on line courses since 1997. In Extension, some instructors are teaching classes where the on-line materials have already been developed. In Extension, the faculty don't put the materials on line; the staff does it for them. Staff teach the instructors how to teach on-line. They are creating a cyber-faculty lounge, including FAQ's, as well as the ability to have threaded discussions about what works and doesn't work in on-line teaching. Claudia reports they are self-supporting and underfunded, so they need to understand who their audience is to be sure they are financially successful.

UC DAVIS

Harry Matthews, Director, Media Works and Professor of Biochemistry

Brian Alexander, My UC Davis Architect, Information and Educational Technology

Three senior officers are responsible for instructional technology: Librarian, Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education, and Vice Provost for Educational Technology. They have brought together "stakeholder" groups through the Academic Computing Coordinating Council. However, stakeholders aren't necessarily "champions". Last fall, UC Davis held a full-day symposium on course management systems for approximately 100 UC Davis faculty to build support and awareness.

Faculty are interested in continuing to teach the way they do now, with technology to enhance current teaching methods. However, administration wants to replace what they are doing now, and change how faculty teach students so they aren't merely the sage on the stage. For example, there is a shortage of classroom space, and course materials on the web for a large class that that meets 3x per week could be substituted for one of those sessions. Half the class could meet with the professor once per week, the other half meet with the professor for a single session during the week, and the third session would be students studying independently using web-based materials…reducing scheduled classroom time.

Harry thinks we are in the stone age of instructional technology where servers need to interact with students as individuals, and therefore the databases need to exchange much information with each other. They are currently using WebCT, and also have developed the MyUCDavis portal. A sub-committee has recommended that they try to move as many services as possible (including course management system functions) to run under the portal umbrella. MyUCDavis initially was a student-faculty communication tool so the course management system tools and the MyUCDavis portal are tightly integrated. Class rosters, automatic class mailing lists are already incorporated into the portal. The portal also includes a common grading tool, but the course management components of the portal are separate from WebCT. For example, the portal does not include quiz software or a class discussion group function.

"Problem with WebCT is it doesn't want to play second fiddle to the MyUCDavis portal." If they continue to expand the functions of the portal, including building course management functions into the portal, they would stop supporting WebCT centrally, but wouldn't discourage departments from supporting it.

UC IRVINE

Shohreh Bozorgmehri, Network & Academic Computing Services

Steve Franklin, Assistant Director, Network & Academic Computing Services

Larry Cooperman, Director, Instructional Design & Technology, Distance Learning Center

Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, Distance Learning Center

The project at Irvine that other campuses should note in particular is the "Electronic Education Environment" (EEE – http://eee.uci.edu/). EEE is a home grown Irvine course management environment that Irvine staff would like to make available at other campuses. EEE provides course web site hosting, communication tools (web based and Email based), and course administrative tools (such as GradeBook, evaluation, planner, site management, etc.). EEE came about from the strong relationship between email accounts creation and central directory—and the need to automatically generate email student lists for instructors.

We need to look at the components from Course Management Systems and see what components faculty want and use, and then leverage the tools. "We are in the build camp, not the buy camp." (For example, they've tested both WebCT and Blackboard but have held off implementing.) They like University of Washington model which allows different services to plug into the portal infrastructure. Using EEE, the Irvine Distance Learning Center and Irvine Extension can quickly repurpose content by delivering the one content module and plugging into the architecture with the communications tools. EEE uses open source Linux, php, mySQL etc.

EEE system is maintained with 1 manager, 1 system/database administrator; 1 instructional technology designer, who teaches a course on Web design to the faculty; 1 faculty support and quality assurance/tester; 3 student programmers. There is a faculty advisory group for EEE that is chaired by the Dean of Undergraduate Education. EEE works as a collaboration among Library, Registrar, Division of Undergraduate Education and Network and Academic Computing Services. There is an EEE operations group with representatives from each EEE collaborator units that meet once a month. These advisory groups ensure that "we get faculty to think that these tools empower the kind of teaching they want to do."

Irvine has over 600 courses with materials on the web, which represents 30% of lecture type courses. There is an automated linker tool to set up links to the "course web page" listing web sites from all over the campus. Faculty can password protect, ip limit, and delete/move materials when they want. There is no mandate for faculty to use the services, and not much advertising.

Why we use EEE? Our homegrown environment is an inexpensive solution that gives us more control on enhancing our tools; faculty have ownership of their content; EEE gives faculty choices when posting materials on the Web via a more elaborate FTP/Unix account, an easy to use copy/paste to a Web form interface or a course linker that allows hosting any course web site on any Web server.

Other significant services at UCI:

• Catalyst from the business school; Math Works - from the physical sciences. Humanities faculty have also developed tools to use with TA's to insure consistency/quality across TA's in large classes.

• UCI also has Distance Learning Center (DLC) and there will be a full degree program on line very soon. There are two main DLC customers: University Extension (20 courses), and a program offering a Masters in Criminology Law and Society which has a 13-course sequence.

• Irvine holds a Faculty Summer Institute . One-to-one workshops are taught twice per quarter, and there is a new faculty orientation program every year.

• Irvine offers one-on-one consulting for instructors throughout the year.

• Standardized final course evaluation and midterm evaluations are online via EEE system.

• EEE site is improved based on survey results, focus group studies, and feedback from faculty and students.

UC LOS ANGELES

Ruth Sabean, Assistant Director, Office of Instructional Development and Provost's Office

Mike Franks, Web Developer, Social Sciences Computing

In 1997 there was a web course initiative (MyUCLA), where all Letter and Sciences courses were required to have course materials on line. However, they don't equate good web sites with instructional improvement. The situation has improved since 1997 though. Now many faculty tightly interweave the web with actual instruction. Faculty are reticent to replace face-to-face meetings with online instruction, so they tell students via the web sites "Read this, do this, before you get to class" and then work with students and use the web materials in class.

UCLA uses WebCT, Blackboard, and other tools. Faculty have become disenchanted with the rigidity of WebCT. Ruth wants to engage faculty in a discussion about a replacement strategy, but hasn't succeeded. Ruth reports that E-portfolio functionality is desired for student materials collection, and they are cooperating with Indiana now to work towards this goal. Ruth doesn't agree that the course management tool doesn't matter-- students tell faculty that it is annoying to have multiple userids and passwords, and faculty also are annoyed. Ruth wants to have the "campus good" determine the core functions, tools to be built, and how to support those tools efficiently. Portals, course delivery systems, and content management systems will all be needed.

Also of note for the Office of Instructional Development:

• To achieve faculty training faculty, Ruth conducts in-depth interviews with faculty about how they use instructional technology, mounts the interviews on a web site, and shows other faculty.

• There are fully on line/distance education courses in Nursing degree programs (with UCSF), as well as the Anderson Graduate School of Management. The School of Public Health is also considering it. The Provost has just initiated a group of deans, IT administrators, and professional school faculty to consider distance learning opportunities.

Mike Franks from Social Sciences reported that there are 330 Social Science course web sites put up every quarter using home-grown software, integrated with Registrar's data. (They prefer home grown so they can make changes as needed. For example, faculty add discussion boards as needed.) The home-grown course management tools are open source, but there is no support effort. Staff includes Mike, content manager, and 3 student programmers. There are lots of negotiations with individual faculty; it's very exciting. The software has been translated into French.

• Have student web techs in the departments. The web techs tell faculty "Everything we show you we'll do for you…" to soften the learning curve. For example, web techs ask faculty for their overheads to put on the web site; then faculty tell students that after class overheads will be posted on the web.

• Mike wants to coordinate with the MyUCLA portal group to enhance integration across campus.

UCLA EXTENSION

Bill Epps, Director, Instructional Technology

University Extension is disconnected from the main campus, so UNEX can be nimble. Instructors are working professionals who are well versed in technology. Students are working professionals as well. Four years ago, UNEX provided content, and an outside vendor did the technical work/deployment. Now they are transitioning rapidly to do it themselves. They are funding the effort through reserves.

Bill is a marginalist and therefore is satisfied that Blackboard provides 85% of what they need for content management. They have an in-house course management system also that is built on Visual Basic with SQL overlays. The in-house system interfaces with Blackboard very well, but they don't have robust system for in-house development. They want to collaborate with whatever the UCLA main campus is using for content management.

Fully online courses are extensive at UCLA Extension, and many students take courses from abroad. They have offered 300 fully online courses, with about 150-175 courses offered each year. In addition to the fully-online courses, they have 60-70 "web enhanced" courses per quarter, although there is not a clean split. A new idea is "online materials required," even in face-to-face courses. They are working with group in Korea, which is interested in business courses, and plan to seek out China next.

Also, UNEX has a relationship with Los Angeles Unified School District to provide content for teacher instruction.

UC MERCED

Paula King, Acting Director, Information Technology, UC Merced

UC Merced is establishing a Distributed Center model, focusing on three ways to be a UC Merced student:

1. Enrolled as a traditional student

2. Transferred from a community college

3. Started through a "Center". The central valley has many immigrants, and Students may not be able to leave their home to go to college because of family responsibilities. Centers of learning will be located in Fresno, Bakersfield, and Modesto. These centers are viewed as an experiment, and they "aren't branch campuses". UCM is trying to avoid the connotation that centers are a lesser experience, while redefining "residency".

UC Merced currently has 100 staff, with 55 at the Castle Aviation and Development Center; the first 15 faculty members were hired this year. They expect to have 1,000 students, including 100 graduate students, when the campus opens in 2004. Some initial courses will be done online with UCB (CITRIS/WISE project). There is a new UC Merced web site.

UC RIVERSIDE

Leo Schouest, Manager, Faculty and Student Technical Support

Four years ago UCR evaluated the status of web materials and CMS on campus and decided to put resources behind what faculty think is useful. They licensed Course-in-a-box and are now converting it to Blackboard for content management and distribution. They transferred 1700 Course-in-a-box courses to Blackboard. However, the conversion tool provided by Blackboard wasn't sufficient. Blackboard is not their portal, but is used for content management, email, grade book, and content distribution. This provides 95% of the requests and functional needs of faculty. UCR limits Blackboard functions to only those services the faculty use.

In the past year, they assessed again how faculty use Blackboard and discovered they are using it more for classroom administration than for pedagogical improvements. Faculty report that using Blackboard for pedagogical improvements would take a 6-months to redesign a course. Support staff think it takes three iterations of course web sequences with a faculty member to get it right, so a course has to be offered three times before the web site is effective.

• There are 1,200 courses in and 17,000 users of Blackboard, including TA's, faculty, and students. There are 53,000 student units corresponding to 17,000 unit bodies.

• All students have at least one web course they interact with, although UCR has no requirement for faculty to use a web site. They don't push a product but push an "idea": email, lists, content distribution, grade book.

• They encourage instructors of large classes to use Blackboard. UC Riverside has 3000-3200 courses total of which 900 are lecture. Of lecture category classes with 100 or more students, 95% are online. Now they are targeting 50-100 student classes, and later will focus on smaller labs/workshops.

• Some depts. have 100% of classes on line.

• In some depts., the culture is such that faculty put up materials themselves.

• 60-65% of all lecture offerings in humanities have course materials on the web out of 675 humanities faculty total. Perhaps 5% of humanities faculty don't have a computer.

• UC Riverside Extension is now online. They initially wanted to purchase their own CMS, but worked with the main campus group to use the same CMS and tools.

The pervasive use of web-based course materials has shifted the campus culture. Now that most classes have materials online, they are ready to address pedagogy, and meet one-on-one with faculty to consult with them on HOW they teach. Support staff (2 FTE, plus 4 students) is centrally managed. Services are free, with no time limit.

Next steps: they are considering third party products from Texas A&M and others (WebAssign, Brownstone.edu) that address specific issues. They may use Blackboard for administrative functions, turn off other functions, and give faculty other tools as needed.

UC SAN DIEGO

Tony Woods, Director, Academic Computing

Christine Bagwell, Manager, Instructional Web Development Center, Academic Computing

There is a high level of faculty support in Academic Computing with a unit dedicated to this function. The unit manager has project management responsibility, with 2-3 career staff, and student staff for a total of 4-5 FTE. After the unit was set up initially, there were so few projects produced at end of the initial three years, the unit was considered a failure and closed. After a two-year hiatus there is now the Instructional Web Development Center that is a training facility for the entire campus, except the medical and dental schools. Funded with a PA3 manager/tech lead, who designs the training and backup services. Save money on licensing fees, but spend it on support. The Instructional Web Development Center provides academic support for free and does web development work for administrative departments when there is low demand for academic work during mid-quarter.

Instructional Web Development Center Services:

• Supports WebCT, Blackboard, streaming servers, eclectic tools.

• Interested in OKI, but hesitant because that would change the support model (need high-level local programmers). Tony thinks that OKI is vapor so far.

• The faculty center is an 8 station lab staffed during the day.

• They provide ten hours of training per year per faculty. They offer TA training, but only if the TA attends with the faculty member. Their goal was to train 300 of 1000 faculty in the first 3 years, and made that goal in 2 years. Training takes place one-on-one in faculty offices and is based on what the faculty have. Number of faculty coming to training is falling off, but expect to hit 400 at end of 3^rd year.

• Most CMS materials supplement classroom instruction, not stand alone CMS. Faculty say, "I don't want to do anything that diminishes the need for my undergraduates to show up at class." Some faculty release on-line materials only after a lecture is held.

• Use SQL servers, run over 90 campus websites for other campus depts.

The Library:

• Uses e-reserves, including digital audio reserves, and video reserves.

• The computing group partners with the Library to produce video reserves with QuickTime.

Instructional Materials and Support Program (IMSP):

There is also an Instructional Materials and Support Program (IMSP) encompassing the bookstore, Library, Reserves, copy center, lecture notes, printing, faculty support, etc. Ten organizations have input into a comprehensive listing of materials for each each academic course that includes the course web site, books to buy, epacks, readers, etc.

UC SAN FRANCISCO

Brian Warling, Assistant Director, Center for Instructional Technology

Kevin Souza, Educational Technology Coordinator, UCSF School of Medicine

The Center for Instructional Technology, based in the Kalmanovitz Library, was established in early 2001 to support the application of information/computing technology to the delivery of course content. The CIT's role is to facilitate and promote effective use of multimedia and computer-based resources in the UCSF curricula. To fulfill this goal, the CIT provides services to faculty in these major areas:

• Online Course Management System: The CIT licenses and maintains the WebCT (Campus Edition) online course management system currently used by all UCSF schools for delivering curricular content.

• CIT Lab: Equipped with high-end Macintosh and Windows workstations outfitted with the latest multimedia software and hardware, the CIT Lab is a place where faculty can develop multimedia content for their courses. The CIT Lab also loans out equipment, such as a digital camcorder and digital camera, for developing instructional content.

• Classes and Workshops: The CIT offers classes for UCSF faculty on how to develop and manage online courses in WebCT. The CIT also plans to offer faculty development workshops on special topics, such as how to plan, develop and evaluate effective online courses.

• Streaming Media -- Beginning in the Summer 2002, the CIT will provide an instructional streaming media service.

WebCT -- Currently, all four professional schools (Medicine, Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmacy) are using WebCT for online course delivery and management. Most of these courses are hybrid courses that include face-to-face instruction along with an online component. A few courses in the School of Nursing are primarily taught online. CIT staff provide classes on how to use WebCT; staff are also available to consult with faculty who have specific questions. Most support, however, currently comes from the schools. The School of Medicine and the School of Nursing have staff who help faculty development and manage WebCT courses. The other schools are in the process of developing support infrastructures. Support is a problematic issue at UCSF since it is a graduate health sciences campus without a large pool of undergraduate students who could be hired to provide various levels of support. Other important issues concern providing faculty with incentives to develop online courses. This is something that the Academic Senate at UCSF is looking into.

UC SANTA BARBARA

Mark Aldenderfer, Director, Office of Information Technology and Professor of Anthropology

Stan Nicholson, Director, Instructional Consultation

Mark reports that Santa Barbara is very decentralized. Integration of CMS services with the Registrar is difficult. For example, they have significant legacy systems (PL/1) that haven't changed, and are challenged to get the faculty to become more web-centric. Stan's unit (their center for teaching) is a good example of a unit that functions well, but is underfunded, supporting faculty for a limited number of courses.

Therefore, most departments on campus build their own course web sites, by cobbling together the resources from some other efforts. Grad students do a lot of the work, but when they graduate, there isn't much continuity of support. Colleges and some campus-wide support units have taken up some of the slack, but there isn't as much coordination as desired. The College of Letter and Science has provided funding for faculty training and help desks.

Mark is tasked with developing coordination across the campus, but has no budget to do this. He has developed a faculty task force to assess what faculty want for tools: WebCT, Blackboard, or other products, and hopes that by June, 2002 they will have a sense of direction.

Stan reports they are grateful to have Mark trying to pull things together. Stan's Center for Teaching counsels having pedagogical needs drive decisions about using tech tools to enhance pedagogy.

UC SANTA CRUZ

Beth Riddle, Director Instructional Computing, Communications and Technology Services

Henry Burnett, Director, Media Services, Library

UCSC has 12,500 students, and about 1000 courses per quarter, excluding labs and sections. This quarter about 27% of courses have some course materials on the web (WebCT, custom sites, and ERes; see http://ic.ucsc.edu/courses). WebCT and customized web sites are supported by Instructional Computing, with funding originally intended for labs used for support. Strategy is to target large classes for WebCT support. There are 55 WebCT courses, and about 1300 WebCT accounts. There is scripted entry of SIS data into WebCT. New SCT student system will be tied to WebCT. WebCT is preferred over Blackboard (too much Microsoft influence on Blackboard).

The Faculty Instructional Technology Center has two staff who directly assist faculty, as well as group of 10 student web developers. Each instructor is eligible for four hours of free assistance per quarter; additional hours recharged at $15/hour. When staff are available, they develop web sites for administrative departments on a recharge basis. There are 8 workstations, video editing, slide scanning, etc. Computing lab staff technically support the Faculty Center. WebCT software is paid for out of Instructional Computing lab funds. Last year for academic courses, Inst. Computing spent $318K on web page design and development, web database development and administration, web application development, and web server administration.

In addition to supporting classrooms, customized web site development is supported by Media Services, a unit in the Library. Another Library unit support the very popular ERes (electronic reserves). There is also a separate Center for Teaching Excellence to help faculty and graduate students.

UCSC is undergoing a review of all campus instructional technology services to ascertain how they might be reorganized.

UCOP TEACHING LEARNING AND TECHNOLOGY CENTER

Julie Gordon, Head, TLtC

Paula Murphy, Editor, TLtC

The Teaching, Learning and technology Center was started by the President’s office to leverage the power of the UC system, to make visible what's happening on campuses, and to leverage faculty resources and content. TLtC has $600K in grants to faculty for instructional technology implementation and collaboration. A faculty advisory board oversees TLtC.

Paula Murphy reports that "the monthly Webzine (http://www.uctltc.org/) features articles focused on how technology enhances student learning. Webzine audience is mainly faculty, because if we can reach faculty we can reach anyone. But really, the audience is the legislature, the Regents, and other political stakeholders. The TLtC staff aren't instructional technologists, but more like journalists."

"Who's doing what" database is another service. Paula reports it is challenging to get info into the database.

There are "academic community" sites…and maybe there could be a site for this CMS staff support group.

PART II: next steps for cross-campus collaboration to IMPROVE UC'S USE OF COURSE MANAGEMENT SYSTEMS THROUGH leverageD licensing, software development, tool sharing, training, and policy implementation.

Open Discussion

• We have a variety of objectives with instructional technology and course management systems, including administrative efficiencies, more revenue, more students, enriched courses, and improved use of physical facilities:

• UCLA Extension uses CMS to attract students.

• Irvine uses for a criminology online degree program to attract students.

• Other campuses use CMS tools for some general enrichment of teaching and learning, but are anticipating the Open Knowledge Initiative will produce useful tools.

• Davis uses course materials online to reduce need for classroom space.

• The objective of having standardized course elements has not been very successful. We have some standards and repositories for learning objects developed, but few are using them.

• What ecommerce middleware do we need to sustain those faculty who want to make information available online?

• UC's campuses are struggling to address the course management needs of faculty, both in the face-to-face classroom, as well as distance learning.

• UC needs to define its role in contributing to delivery of educational content to K-12 schools over CENIC and through the Digital California Project.

• Are there opportunities for CSU, Community Colleges and UC to collaborate on licensing and leverage our purchasing power?

• How can we begin to develop our own viable course management tool set that is optimized for use within UC?

• Hewlett and Mellon foundations are saying that they won't fund course development modules if they've been created before at another institution or commercially. Foundations aren't funding whole courses, but might fund learning objects.

• What have we learned from Western Governor's University that was supposed to extend course offerings and reduce the cost of education? UC isn't saying that CMS and online learning will reduce cost of instruction, but it could help us to use facilities more effectively and graduate students more quickly by increasing the variety of UC courses that are available for meeting program requirements.

• Even if the OKI collaborative framework will help, we probably need to continue supporting commercial products in the meantime.

• Gary Matkin of UCI raised the following important issues earlier in the meeting:

• There are seductive similarities between "classroom enhancement" and "full CMS delivery," but big differences in support, training, and marketing.

• Two models are: "walk up" (teach faculty to use tools, and "intellectual property" (professional designers prepare instructional materials).

• Commercial platforms have fewer vendors, higher prices, and less flexibility. We probably can't make a single systemwide "make or buy" decision.

• UC should move toward platform-independent Content Management / Repository systems.

• UC has to focus on easy wins and evolve CMS support over time (as more sophisticated faculty arrive) by continuing to empower the type of teaching faculty want to do.

In what areas are there advantages to collaborating across campuses? What can we do as an institution that will leverage our strength?

• Cost relief…it's all too expensive. WebCT and Blackboard are the most commonly used tools across the campus. System-wide purchasing power could be useful. We need to understand our existing use of these products and future use in order to better leverage our purchasing power.

• Collaborative assessment of vendors we think will offer the infrastructure software that we'll need in a year or two (content management and repositories, as well as course management systems). We should meet with those vendors as a group learning experience.

• Collectively seek scalable solutions that can be applied to a large number of faculty.

• Cross-authenticate students and faculty to facilitate establishing courses across campuses. How can we exchange data across student information systems across campuses? Are there Senate barriers? System-wide authentication may not have to replace the local authentication system anymore than the system-wide library replaces the local libraries if common development standards are used. The University-wide student directory exists and the PKI project is moving forward, albeit somewhat slowly. Perhaps the eduPerson model would be beneficial.

• Develop a system for reusing content objects, perhaps using the TLtC as the repository for those objects. If we develop and pilot 1-2 models for sharing objects, we could better understand the barriers to faculty sharing information. (Barbara Morgan from UC Berkeley has a project to take Library of Congress METS (XML) data, convert it to WebCT and to IMS compliant standalone products, and see the results/differences/efficiencies.) On the other hand, if we do develop our own content object sharing system, Microsoft or others may develop a different product and standard, and we would be non-compliant with a common standard. In any case, reusing objects is expected to reduce costs in the long term.

• University-wide license for a data repository. We could have a UC-wide license with an Application Service Provider (ASP) and full-service provider such as eCollege. Also, Yahoo offers a set of storefront tools and services that perhaps could be tailored for the UC environment. Could UCOP approach Yahoo to see if they would run the CMS for us? If so, what are the student confidentiality issues? What are copyright issues? Would this interface with Merlot?

Next steps:

1. UCOP will set up a listserv (uccmslms-l at ucop.edu) for UC CMS participants who came today.

2. The following working groups will be established:

   1. Strategy and Policy Group: High-level assessment of market trends and vendors, explore strategies that may be viable across UC campuses.

   2. Developers group: Tool builders, explore commercial and home-grown systems for object repositories and mechanisms for possibly sharing learning objects (Mike Franks offered to lead this group.)

   3. Technical Task group ("plumbing"): explore solutions for student information system and course management system interoperability

   4. Toolkit and Software licensing group: achieve cost relief by cataloging and sharing tools across campuses. Partner with TAS and TLtC at UCOP.

3. The second large meeting (of the group that is meeting today) will have presentations by vendors, including eCollege, Blackboard, WebCT, Academic Enterprise System Vista, possibly Sun LearnTone, Cisco, and campus home-grown systems (Irvine, Berkeley, etc.) We will have a specified format for vendors to follow so that we can objectively compare features and functions of systems.

4. Gary Matkin, UC Irvine, is putting together a seminar, "The State of Learning Object Repositories Today." He is seeking funding for this by-invitation only event and anticipates it will take place in summer at the earliest.

5. We will want to organize a Symposium on the State of Learning Management Systems, perhaps with system demonstrations of Indiana University's Angel, the University of Washington's Catalyst, and the UC homegrown systems.