Meeting Minutes
November 12, 2003

Present:
Jeff Buffington, Sue Crowley, John Culshaw, Rick Denton, Eric Gray, Allison Hartel (guest -Bookstore Marketing), Chris Hemphill, Carolyn Landa, Dave Lilly, Malinda Miller-Huey, Bryan Moll, Kaye Orten, Gary Pollock, Judy Poynter, Bonnie Templeton, Barbara Todd, Paula Vaughan

Next Core Team Meeting: December 10, 3:00 p.m., Telecomm 215

Action Items from November 12th meeting

• Core – ASAP – send generally good – or generally bad – meeting days to Paula so Spring meetings can be set up.
• Core – send additional marketing ideas to Paula. Let Paula know if willing to volunteer for any of the marketing tasks.
• Barb T. – follow-up on scheduling demo with SASC
• Carolyn & Bryan – test revert to default feature.
• Chris H. – follow-up on scheduling presentations for Cultural Events Board and Leg Council.
• Gary – check stats for PLUS grade checking vs. PLUS schedule checking. (from October meeting)
• Jeff B. – follow-up on scheduling presentation with Family Housing (Ricki)
• Judy P. – find out the deadline for making CUConnect-related changes to Summer Orientation literature.
• Kaye O. – follow-up on scheduling demo with Sys Ops managers (January agenda)
• Malinda – follow-up on scheduling meeting with Institutional Analysis, presentation with M-Team (December agenda), and UMC
• Malinda – add Honor Code and Registrar to Academic Links (from October meeting)
• Paula – search for reference to PLUS where CUConnect references need to be added.
• Paula & Malinda – craft the wording to be used for CUConnect references (where added to PLUS references)
• Sally Page – review academic calendar.

Progress Toward Spring Semester Portal Launch

• News.
  • Aggregator and validator are being programmed.
  • Schools and Colleges and key departments are being encouraged to offer news through the portal. Those that have expressed strong interest include Journalism (already available), Music, Architecture, Libraries, Housing (already available), Off Campus Student Services, CU-City Liaison, Career Services (a collaborative Professional Development news channel), International Ed, ITS (already tested) and Campus Press.
  • Default news channels will include Campus news (already available), UCSU news (all parts of student government), and Health & Wellness news (collaborative effort with Wardenburg and partners).
  • Core agreed to move Campus News to Welcome Page.
• Student Schedule.
  • Reprogrammed to include grades, quality points, drill down to detail (instructor, books); web design in progress.
  • Still working with UMS on real-time calls to SIS data.
• Course Lookup. Adding link to Schedule Planner. (Programming completed; being tested.)
• Revert to default. Programming completed; ready for testing. (Carolyn and Bryan volunteered to test.)
• Performance testing. Performance test tool has been purchased; performance script is being written. Will first test portal with 200 users moving through each of the tabs and icons (no individual channels).
• WebCT. Tech team uncovered a bug with the WebCT icons (they go to a general WebCT page vs. the individual tools indicated by the icons). Case created at WebCT. Gary and others from CU are meeting with WebCT reps.
• Password reset. Design completed (based upon Registrar’s process for PIN requests). Requires student to provide SID and PIN plus answer a subset of 10 questions derived from SIS data. [NOTE: Registrar is working on a new PIN reset process in SIS which will result in an email being sent to the student with the new PIN.]
• Hardware. Ordered; due in this week.
• Accessibility testing.
  • First round testing done. Tester not completely familiar with screen reader but still a lot was learned. We will work with low-vision students in a lab at the beginning of the semester to help personalize their portals.
  • Second round testing with skilled screen reader user is scheduled for next week.
  • Low vision skin will be developed (not a mandatory item for January launch).
• Operational Support. Support structure discussions are underway and moving forward.
• Deployment Plan. Still discussing whether to go live with entire campus or to go live with a subset. Would control size of audience by extensiveness of PR campaign. Decision is dependent, in part, on the results of the performance test. Need to decide soon so that PR campaign can be launched. [NOTE: U of Hull successfully went from a pilot of 1000 to a rollout of 20000. However, don’t know the number of concurrent users and extensiveness of channels.]
• Academic Tabs (revise from “Academics” to “Courses & Grades” and “Academic Resources”). Core discussed whether degree audit should be on Academic Resources or on Courses & Grades. Transcripts and Degree Audit both have course listings – just sorted differently. Perhaps put into one channel when moved from PLUS. Meanwhile, implement the two Academic Tabs as proposed with those features that will be available in January.
• Academic Calendar.
  • Calendar in portaldemo was drawn from the academic calendar on the current website, where information is categorized. Portal academic calendar will be revised to display dates chronologically.
  • Core discussed additional dates to be included in the calendar display. WebComm will add: drop/add deadline, tuition deadline, insurance waiver deadline, registration open date (link to details), FAFSA priority deadline. Housing deadlines will not be included (Housing will publish these in Housing announcements.)
  • Core decided that academic calendar should be refreshed 8 weeks into the semester to drop older dates and to add early dates for the new semester.
  • Sally Page will proof the academic calendar prior to publication in the portal.
• CU skin. Core approves of CU skin design. Some would prefer a real buffalo vs. Chip in the header banner.

Testing

• Volunteers for testing: Sue C., Rick D., (out Thanksgiving week), Chris H., Carolyn L and Barb T. (both out the week after Christmas), Sally Page (volunteered by Barb).
• Tech team has testing templates available for testers to use.

Outreach

• Round of applause for Bryan for the 20+ presentations he has already completed.
• Adjustments to the Communication matrix:
  • Consider advisors to be done (have presented to the A&S advisors; advisors for the other schools & colleges have been present in the school/college-specific demos).
  • Consider A&S Chairs to be done based on other opportunities (most notably the Chairs Breakfast).
  • Chancellor will see the portal at the Chancellor’s Executive Committee presentation in December.
  • Cultural Events Board has not responded to repeated invitations. Chris will talk to them.
  • Family Housing is pending follow-up from Family Housing. Jeff will talk to Ricki.
  • Institutional Analysis re. surveys. Malinda will schedule meeting.
  • Libraries. Consider done. Have met with Library Council; Dean Williams has seen demo in other meetings.
  • M-Team. Malinda will put portal on December agenda.
  • Orientation Planning Committee needs demo early 2004.
  • Parent’s Association can wait until Spring, 2004.
  • Student Academic Service Center. Barb T will follow up on scheduling demo.
  • Sys Ops Managers. Kaye will check on portal presentation for January.
  • Legislative Council has not responded to repeated invitations. Chris will talk to them.
  • UMC needs follow-up. Malinda will contact.

CUConnect references

• Barb T has contacted everyone who was found (via Web search) to be using CUConnect in reference to the phone registration system. The phone registration system has been retired.
• Everywhere PLUS is referenced for features available to current students, a reference to CUConnect should be added. Paula will search for references; Paula & Malinda will work out wording to be used.
• Summer Orientation literature will need to be updated to reflect the portal. Judy P. will let us know when this needs to be done. (Summer catalog changes have already been written; Registration Handbook changes are in process.)

Marketing

• Team will review marketing ideas list; send additional suggestions to Paula – as well as willingness to volunteer for each marketing idea. Bookstore (Allison Hartel) will definitely help out.
• Tag Lines: a few ideas received. Malinda will set up meeting with Kevin Lee to discuss further. Results of meeting will be sent to Core. Perhaps arrange a meeting with students as a sounding board.