Officers:
Chair: Howard Beck, UF
Vice-Chair: Rhonda Conlon, NCSU (Absent)
Secretary: Kappie Mumphrey, LSU AgCenter
PLC Rep: Nina Boston, Arkansas
Attendees:
Ross Love, Oklahoma State
Dwayne Hunter, OSU
Fred Piazza, LSU AgCenter
Tim Mack, Virginia Tech
Dan Brook, Mississippi State
Michael Bratcher, NC A&T
Jonathon Davis, Auburn
Anne Adrian, Auburn
Jamie, Kentucky
Ken Pruitt, Clemson
Agenda Items:
1.- Roll Call
Everyone checked in as they connected to Centra.
2.- Agenda for PLN meeting in Puerto Rico – Howard Beck
Howard – Primary purpose of today’s meeting is to finalize the agenda for the Puerto Rico meeting in August. Howard brought up the tentative agenda which had been sent to Kathy and reviewed it with the group.
Nina – agenda includes all action items. Elections must be held Tuesday while in Puerto Rico because the results have to go to Kathy that day.
Howard – Disaster reports are focused on in the tentative agenda. Is this the theme for the meeting?
Nina – Keynote speakers for the conference will be covering this topic. Committees will be given action items to report on how they can respond in a disaster situation. Not all information given will be about hurricanes but all aspects of disasters, such as 9/11, biosecurity, etc. We will then need to respond with how IT can help to prepare and respond.
Dwayne – are we expected to have a formal response that will be collected?
Nina – yes. Tuesday at noon each group has to give a very brief recap from the committee meetings. A representative elected from each program committee will get up and do a short Powerpoint with a few bullet points.
Nina – we will not be meeting with Communications at their request. They felt they needed more time to work on their CECP modules. That works for us because we need to meet with Middle Managers.
Howard – are we working on CECP modules at PLN like Communications? We have an agenda item and will discuss then.
3.- eXtension
Dwayne – should there be an agenda item for PLN for the states to present to Directors on their perspective of how eXtension is going? Should we generate a collective response from the IT committee on our perspective?
Nina – we should all include an eXtension item in our state reports. Include what we are doing, plans, etc.
Fred – it would be useful to give an IT perspective to the Directors. Assess items going on and give the group at PLN as well as the Directors feedback.
Tim Mack – has a technology issue regarding eXtension. He has to use RSS per his campus requirements for news releases. He contacted eXtension about supporting this popular format, since it is required and other institutions use it. Said that the response from eXtension was that they did not want to have to help with assisting in interfacing with RSS. eXtension has chosen ADAM and wants to use that.
Fred – they discussed that issue on a recent eXtension Advisory Group conference call. eXtension feels that ADAM is a superior transport mechanism. The PLN IT committee could get this feedback (that eXtension needs to accommodate more of the technologies used across the system) back to eXtension as well as the administrators.
Howard – need to address the role of training and LMS, such as with CECP. Added this as an agenda item.
Jamie – has heard that AgLearn is not an option for eXtension at this time. Has anyone else heard that? No responses. Howard indicated he hadn’t heard about any progress in this area but heard at the NETC meeting in May that AgLearn was still under consideration as the eXtension LMS.4.- Other PLN meeting business Nina – asked Kathy for other committees’ agenda items since they are not yet posted on the web. We need to see if any other committees need to meet with us. She will send to us when she gets them. Also, when we meet with the Directors on Wed, we can discuss information items and agenda items.
Nina – we will need to bring our own projector. Power cables, screens, etc will be made available, but they won’t provide projectors. Wireless will also be available at the resort in the meeting areas. Nina indicated she could bring a projector from her organization if it is not checked out. Howard indicated that he has an old one that he could bring if Nina’s was not available.
Howard – we will need to elect a secretary in Puerto Rico. Asked if there were any volunteers yet. No reply. Howard asked that everyone think about it and either come ready to volunteer or to nominate someone for the position. 5.- State Reports Howard – brought up the link to the online state report application.
Kappie – asked if multiple people can update the state report.
Nina – indicated that yes, her programmer had been working on that functionality. You can save and then come back later and edit.
Howard – August 1 deadline is currently showing as the deadline for completing the state reports.
Nina – that deadline will be extended at least a week. Haven’t been getting information so we need to give more time. Plus her programmer had been out and has just completed the changes.
6.- CECP Modules Howard – we need to complete the CECP modules from IT.
Nina – committee changes have happened. We need to discuss this when everyone is together in Puerto Rico. For example, LSU wants to be involved in the DE module and asked that it be delayed, but we don’t know if they are ready yet.
Tim – has a Master Online Educator training program at his institution that we discussed last year. It will be in CECP by the 28th.
Howard – CECP/CIP code comparison study was mentioned. Is there interest in pursuing further combining these?
Fred – not much interest presented but perhaps we could discuss in Puerto Rico.
Howard – at NETC there was discussion about keywords, subject headings, etc. and it seems to be of more focus and interest. 7.- Other Business Howard – does anyone have additional information on the outsourcing guide? Did Nina get response from her surveys on this topic?
Nina – no, she did not receive any replies.
Howard – One Solution discussion. Did anyone have any additional information on this CSREES/USDA project? Do we need more updates from Greg Crosby?
Nina – asked if we have Greg Crosby’s email address. Kappie indicated that it is in the minutes from the February PLN meeting since they were presenting at that meeting.
Nina – she will send an email to Greg asking if we need an update.
Someone asked if we know how the states will be required to interact with the system.
Nina – her understanding is that once it is rolled out, states will have to use it. We are encouraging them to write interfaces or APIs so we can electronically transfer data we are already collecting. Current web data entry for CSREES is very cumbersome. U of A had to hire a temp to cut and paste and reformat it to the appropriate format for CSREES.
Tim – USDA now has Knowledge Areas in One Solution. You have to have your program areas mapped to Knowledge Areas. There is a whole new series of things that have to be reported on and mapped to these Knowledge Areas.
Nina – concern is that if they rewrite too soon, then will things change again?
Howard – is there a mapping between CIP codes and Knowledge Areas? Not at present. May be a question for Greg Crosby... 8.- Adjourn The meeting was adjourned at approximately 9:55am CST. 9.- Centra Information The July PLN IT meeting was recorded and archived via Centra. Please use the link below to view the web conference:
http://centra.uaex.edu/main/uaex/User/GuestPlayback.jhtml?s_guid=000000dab85900000105728b9daa8fda