Communications and Information Technology*
August 26-28, 2002 - San Juan, Puerto Rico
August 26, 2002

Full Committee Meeting

Ellen Ritter, chairperson for the C/IT Committee, opened the meeting with introductions.

Report on PLC. Gloria Mosby presented an overview of SR-PLN. Administrators have stressed the importance of active involvement by those who are elected to serve to the PLC positions. Committee leadership roles are one-year positions and revolve from secretary, to vice-chair, to chair. Administrators have asked to poll committee members about a late-September timeframe for PLC meeting. Each committee is asked to develop a POW.

Review of agenda. Sub-committees should plan to review taxonomies.

Review of last year's action items and recommendations.
  • Competency-based training. Don Hamilton and Larry Lippke met with ANR about possibilities and opportunities. Taxonomies related to ANR were reviewed. The competency-based training appears to have been absorbed into the larger CECP project.

    Standard permission statement wording for sharable documents. Initiated by Kevin Hayes who has since moved on to US-AID. Draft document was shared with other institutions. Gloria relayed that the 1890's administrators have acted upon a common statement. The statement was previously distributed.

    Media asset database: Don Hamilton. It was suggested to the committee that this project be absorbed into CECP. The committee accepted this proposal and the project was tabled. Tom Knecht disseminated a survey whose results documented the need for a common database. Various states shared resources (such as cd-roms and URLs). This accomplishment was a preface to the capabilities of CECP.

  • Cooperative IT workshops: Nina Boston. Realizing that Internet2 (I2) was available in several of the institutions in the Southern region, it became apparent that this technology could be used for video conferencing to augment the face-to-face administrator's meetings. Along with this capability, Arkansas has been heavily involved in the overhaul of the their websites to conform to Section 508 mandates. Discussion about the necessity to modify existing websites where federal monies are used to build and maintain the sites.

Nominations for CECP Design Team were accepted. Nominations will be forwarded on to Ron Brown.

CECP roundtable discussion. Comments, concerns, and issues include:
  • C/IT members serve dual roles: providing infrastructure to enable the site, and act as content providers.

    e-Extension can be perceived as a 'brand' that has no one sole source. Information is provided by the states, but is not a separate entity. The analogy of VISA was used to demonstrate the concept of ownership.

    Content matter should drive e-Extension, not be driven by the technology.

    How to integrate the work of e-Extension/CECP into existing project schedules?

    Potential timeline: hold national workshops before December. Build prototype: Dec-Jan. Unveil prototype in February, 2003 at National Extension Directors Meeting.

    What is the marketing plan for e-Extension? Earlier discussions surrounded both urban and younger populations. Extension should be 'something to everybody'. Possible action item: develop a marketing plan. Possible registration with 'major' search engines. Each audience has its own needs and desires. Extension must be ready to provide educational materials that are relevant, accessible, and usable by the target audience.

    Use of 'standards' when developing a site. Includes: media type standards, standards for downloading information (dial up vs. high speed), SCORM. Along with the technological standards, design or visual standards might need to be included. The standards to be developed for CECP would be consistent with those standards for e-Extension. New worldwide standards will inevitably be developed. It is important that CECP be compliant with existing standards and yet remains flexible to incorporate changes to industry-accepted standards.

    Decentralized design concept: multi-state teams that can collaborate from wherever they may be housed.

    Formulation of design team. Important for the design team to communicate back to the larger committee. Ten to twelve people would participate in the regional design team; approximately twelve people would participate at the national level. Empowered to establish identity standards, institutional and individual acknowledgement standards, output standards, relevant descriptive standards, implementation strategies, sustainability strategies, peer review protocols, content descriptive standards, taxonomy standards, editorial content, graphical design, marketing plans and research, curriculum design, and instructional design for web-based educational delivery.

  • Other issues that may be beyond the design team include intellectual property standards. Appear to be a need to have an intellectual property statement that covers content and assets.

Don Hamilton facilitated a discussion of the CECP questions.

Meeting was adjourned.

Participating states set up booths for the Technology Resource Fair.
 
August 27, 2002

Beginning at 8:00, the C/IT committee participated in a technology-facilitated discussion of "How to Integrate CECP into PLC".

Following this discussion, the two sub-committees met in separate rooms to hear state reports and discuss issues and concerns related to the program areas. Meetings were called to order at 8:45. Reports from the sub-committees are provided below.

At 2:30, the sub-committees met in combined session to elect officers. Ellen explained the role of the committee officers. As part of the committee rotation, Dwayne Hunter will be chair. Princess Gordon-Patton was nominated and elected as Vice-Chair. Fred Piazza was nominated and elected as Secretary. Due to the resignation of Kevin Hays as PLC representative, nominations were taken for committee representation to the PLC. Robert Fehr and Ashley Wood were nominated. Secret ballot was taken. Robert Fehr was elected as C/IT Committee PLC Representative to join Gloria Mosby who currently serves as Committee Representative to PLC.

Joint regional committee meetings were held.

Report from Communications sub-committee: Ellen Ritter

Discussed and revised existing taxonomy for communications subject area as follows:

Conducted assessment of training programs and curricula/materials available in the Southern region.

As steps to CECP and recognizing the benefits of sharing current training materials, the sub-committee agreed to:
a) submit web addresses and descriptions/accesses of training materials that can be shared

b) formed four work teams to begin developing goals, learning objectives, materials and evaluation on the following training topics:
  • media relations - Frankie Gould, Dan Rahn

    posters - John Bentley, Frankie Gould, Ashley Wood

    newsletters - Tom Knecht, Ashley Wood, Ellen Ritter, Gloria Mosby, Princess Gordon-Patton

  • presentations - Virginia Morgan, Ellen Ritter, Garvin Quinn, Charlese Brown, Mary Anne Gularte

Discussed "standard permission statement" from Kevin Hayes. Decided to not make a recommendation but let states decide individually on such statements.

Discussed the problems and obstacles associated with current multi-state communications projects and how to overcome them as we move into CECP. These problems and obstacles include:
 Report by Ashley Wood on Radiosource.net. Radiosource.net is a multi-state web-based radio service that provides Extension radio releases to stations and Extension agents with materials that can be translated into Spanish. The five founding states from the Southern Region originally obtained grant support for the project. The project is moving towards self-support with $1500-$2000 per participating institution. Twenty states now participate in the project. The project both supports and expects to fit into the e-Extension effort.

Report from Tom Knecht on copyright issues and the process through which policies were developed as MS State. Discussed the complications and issues of copyright that could occur with the CECP project.

Discussed the development of Spanish language materials; recruiting bilingual communications staff and new resources, including Extension en Espanol and the translation services offered through Radiosource.net.

Report from Information Technology sub-committee: Dwayne Hunter

Explained C/IT committee leadership roles. Reviewed office of Secretary and accepted nominations. Fred Piazza was unanimously selected as IT's representative to be taken to C/IT for nomination. Reviewed PLC representative role (3 year term). Robert Fehr was unanimously selected as IT's representative to be taken to C/IT for nomination.

Discussion of technology resource fair. The reception, as opposed to a 'States Night Out', seemed to be well received. However, the displays did not seem to generate much interest. Another mechanism is needed to communicate with other committees. Robert Fehr will discuss, with other committee chairs, the opportunity of visiting other committees during the annual meeting.

State reports were presented, including overviews of projects started and completed since August, 2001, organizational structures, and challenges, concerns, and issues to be addressed.

Discussed CECP project and the involvement by members of the Information Technology sub-committee. Topics discussed included:
August 28, 2002
Sub-committees met briefly to continue discussion and finalize reports.

At 9:15, the sub-committees met in general session.

Robert Fehr and Gloria Mosby reviewed items from the PLC meeting. Next year's meeting is tentatively scheduled to be held on August 24-26 in Little Rock, Arkansas. PLC conference calls are scheduled for September 12, 2002, October 10, 2002, February 6, 2003, April 3, 2003, June 5, 2003, and August 7, 2003.

Ellen Ritter presented the Communications sub-committee report (see report details in previous paragraphs). The committee accepted the report and associated PLC informational items. Dwayne Hunter presented the IT sub-committee report (see report details in previous paragraphs). The committee accepted the report and associated PLC informational items. One action item was presented to the committee for approval from the IT sub-committee. (See the "Committee Action and Informational Items" section for details.) Discussion followed presentation. One concern was the process by which new committees are formed. Item approved by the committee. Tom Knecht and Dwayne Hunter will formalize wording for the action item. Consensus from the committee was that the SR-PLN should provide a process for nominating new committees to the executive committee.

Dwayne Hunter thanked Ellen Ritter for her service as chair this year with concurrence from the entire committee. Officers for the coming year are:

Dwayne Hunter, chair
Princess Gordon-Patton, vice chair
Fred Piazza, secretary
Gloria Mosby, 1890 PLC representative
Robert Fehr, 1862 PLC representative

The Communications sub-committee continued with state reports.

Meeting was adjourned.

Submitted by Dwayne Hunter, secretary and acting vice-chair.

CIT Committee Report to PLC
*This committee is no longer in existence. It has been split up into the Information Techonology and Communications Committees.