Yesterday was our last TAG meeting of the 2010-2011 academic year. Hard to believe, but it’s also (approximately) the one-year anniversary of TAG’s founding. We spent the first part of the meeting reviewing the past year of projects (some more successful than others):
- TAG Formed – Recruitment of Members
- Faculty Communication Survey
- Faculty Websites / CMS
- Email transition Planning & Outreach
- TAG Guidelines
- Classroom Mediation Survey – data has been received, not yet processed
- Department Meeting visits
- Academic Technology Plan – feedback and notes
- Social Media Guidelines
- Lecture Capture guidelines
- New Science building mediation
- Mobile app
- TAG website/blog
- TSC tech support feedback
We then had a discussion about where TAG should go from here and what its level of involvement should be like. Some of the key points of the discussion:
- What is the most important role for TAG? Our original goals were pretty ambitious. Some members felt that it was bridging the communication gap between IR and faculty. Others felt that TAG should focus on making sure that IR resources are deployed in the most effective way. Another thought was that TAG should be a campus leader in using and reviewing new technology tools. There was general agreement that our efforts should focus on teaching and learning, and that our goals need to be more realistic.
- How involved should TAG be? We discussed a 1-10 scale of involvement with “1” being just a discussion group and “10” being a highly active group lobbying for campus-wide changes. We’ve been debating about this since the beginning of TAG. The members present settled somewhere around an “8,” noting that we should continue to ensure that the faculty voice is heard on technology issues.
- We also talked about how to manage TAG’s workflow. One suggestion was to come up with a prioritized list of things that TAG wants to accomplish, and then have each member take responsibility for one or more of those items. Some could be accomplished by individuals, others would be more of a group effort.
- Department visits were seen as one of the more effective ways of communicating with faculty.
- TAG has earned respect on campus from doing good work in the past year. It’s important to the members that we maintain this reputation.
Bottom line – Jeremy and I will be making up our list of TAG to-do items, and we’ll be sharing them with the TAG members to figure out what TAG’s priorities are and then split up the projects.
If anyone else has thoughts on where TAG should go in 2011-2012, please let us know!
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