[Oneac] Touching base...

[Snodgrass, Kurt]

Good morning, Council members. 

I wanted to let you know that we are working on setting a date for the next
OAC meeting.  OneNet and the Regents have successfully relocated to the new
building, so we'll have the necessary facilities to conduct our next meeting
here.  We will be in touch in the near future with a date and time.  I
assume Friday mornings are still the best for the majority of the OAC
membership.  If not, please let me know.

Some of you are aware, but I thought I would relate that I am no longer
"officially" with OneNet.  I transferred to the Regents a few months ago to
serve as executive director of communications.  I will continue to
coordinate meetings and agendas with Susan and Phil until a replacement is
hired to fulfill my OneNet obligations.  I would like to express my
appreciation to all of you for the opportunity to be involved in the
council's work and that I look forward to maintaining a close relationship
with OneNet and the council membership.   

Also, I wanted to forward a couple of interesting articles from the
Chronicle of Higher Education.  I apologize in advance if they are not
relevant to your agency or institution's mission.  

Best regards,

Kurt.

Reluctant to Fly, Campus-Computing Officials Replace a Meeting With a
Videoconference
By JEFFREY R. YOUNG <mailto:jeff.young at chronicle.com
<mailto:jeff.young at chronicle.com> > 
Many of the more than 500 campus-computing officials who were to convene
next week in Austin, Tex., were reluctant to fly because they were concerned
about air safety. So now they'll meet in a videoconference instead -- a
switch that a growing number of colleges and businesses are making in the
wake of this month's terrorist attacks. 
The meeting is for members of the Internet2 consortium
<http://www.internet2.edu/ <http://www.internet2.edu/> > of 180 colleges
working to build the next generation of computer networks. It was scheduled
to be held October 2 to 5. But officials decided late last week to take the
meeting virtual, based on feedback from participants. 
"It was a very difficult decision to make, because people had already booked
flights and had plans under way," says Greg H. Wood, director of
communications for the Internet2 consortium. The conference will be held on
the same dates, but people are being asked to tune in from their own
institutions. Many of the participants will do so using personal computers
equipped with devices that essentially turn the machines into videophones. 
The participants, many of them self-proclaimed computer geeks, are in the
perhaps-unique position of having the technical expertise to set up a large
videoconference quickly. Even so, organizers are worried about both social
and technical-management issues involved with creating video and audio links
among more than 200 locations. 
"It's going to be a big learning experience," says Jill Gemmill, assistant
director of academic computing at the University of Alabama at Birmingham,
who is helping with the technical setup for the conference. The technology
poses challenges of etiquette, she says, since it is difficult on a
videoconference to set rules for who will speak next, among other concerns. 
"There are a lot of things that people do when they are sitting together in
a meeting that are things you've known how to do since you were in nursery
school," Ms. Gemmill says. "There's body language. There's eye contact.
There's all these things that we do in meetings that are things we do to
manage a meeting. For [videoconferencing] we need a new set of rules." 
Organizers published a few tips on "virtual etiquette"
<http://www.mega-net.net/megaconference/etiquette.htm
<http://www.mega-net.net/megaconference/etiquette.htm> > on the World Wide
Web site <http://www.internet2.edu/activities/html/vimm.html
<http://www.internet2.edu/activities/html/vimm.html> > for the
videoconference. 
Among the advice: "When you start talking, JUST KEEP TALKING. Do not say
'Can you hear me?' or anything like that. Assume that everything is working
fine. ... We will interrupt you only in the direst case to say that
something is wrong." 
The organizers are working to try to make sure that participants can do a
bit of socializing and informal chatting during the virtual events. The Web
site includes a virtual lobby and a hallway area where people can connect
with one another privately, for instance. 
"We're trying to recreate the kind of interaction and information-sharing
capability that you'd get at a traditional meeting," says Mr. Wood, of
Internet2. But another concern, of course, is that people will accidentally
broadcast a private conversation to everyone at the conference. 
Many people familiar with videoconferencing predict that the technology will
quickly become more common in academe and business now that people are more
wary of flying. Demand for videoconferencing is already up on some campuses.

"We have had an increase in videoconferencing," says Dexter Hart, operations
coordinator for Alabama's Intercampus Interactive Telecommunications System.
He adds, however, that he does not know if this is due to the recent
attacks. 
Mr. Hart says he thinks the terrorist attacks have raised people's awareness
of their colleges' videoconferencing capabilities. 
"A lot of people didn't know it existed," he says. "Now I'm answering 20 or
30 e-mails a day, and they want to know how much does it cost and how can I
go about it." He says the service is basically free for most campus users in
his system, and it involves reserving time in a conference room equipped
with videoconferencing equipment. 
Other colleges are considering efforts to inform their faculty members about
their videoconference facilities. 
"We plan to have sort of a campaign to announce that this is available,"
says Robert Dixon, a research engineer in the office of the chief
information officer at Ohio State University. Mr. Dixon is also helping to
set up the virtual Internet2 meeting. 
Even videoconferencing enthusiasts say it will not replace academic
conferences and professional meetings, however. For one thing, says Mr.
Dixon, people will always want to "go out to dinner and all those nice
things -- that's how you really get to know people." 
But videoconferencing has its uses, too, he says. "For strictly business
conversation and those times where it's not practical to fly long distances,
it serves a purpose."

Education Department Cuts New Distance-Education Grants
By DAN CARNEVALE

The Department of Education won't award as many grants for
distance-education projects this year as officials had originally planned,
because President Bush has proposed eliminating new financing for the
program in the 2002 fiscal year.

So instead of making dozens of new three-year grants, the department is
making a handful of larger grants, each for as much as the institutions
would otherwise have received over three years. It is also paying off the
second and third years of grants awarded earlier.

Officials at the department say they are paying off both old and new awards
now because they are concerned that Congress might not appropriate enough
money in 2002 and 2003 to pay out the full amounts of the grants on the
regular three-year schedule.

The Bush Budget

In his budget proposal for the Department of Education, Mr. Bush asked to
cut off new financing for the program, which is known as the Learning
Anytime Anywhere Partnerships, or LAAP. The grant program, which pays for
innovative distance-learning projects, was started under President Bill
Clinton with $10-million in 1999. It received $23.3-million in 2000 and
$30-million in 2001.

In Mr. Bush's proposed budget for the 2002 fiscal year, which begins October
1, the department's Fund for the Improvement of Postsecondary Education
would provide money to pay for the second and third years of grants that
have already been awarded, although the department would not make any new
awards. The president's plan would allocate $51.2-million to the fund to pay
for LAAP and other grants as well.

But officials at the Education Department said they aren't sure whether that
money will actually be available when the spending bills are passed this
year and in subsequent years.

After spending a year deciding how to allocate the $30-million from the 2001
fiscal year, the department chose to finance six new three-year grants
completely and to finish paying off all the other grants that had been
awarded earlier. Sources said that the money was originally expected to pay
for as many as 40 new grants.

Francesca G. Giordano, assistant department chairwoman for counseling,
adult, and health education at Northern Illinois University's division of
continuing education, is co-director of a project that will receive
$1,562,465, to be spent over three years.

Helping a Needy Population

The grant will help Northern Illinois work with two adult-training centers
in developing online courses to give people coming off welfare better job
skills. The money will pay for the development of the online courses as well
as for access to computers at career-training sites. "It's a population
that's been severely impacted by the digital divide," Ms. Giordano said.

She said that she was surprised to receive all three years' worth of money
at once, but that department officials quickly explained why. It doesn't
matter how the money is allocated, she said, because the program will
operate the same way whether the money comes now or later.

Kathleen P. King, associate professor of adult education at Fordham
University's Graduate School of Education, in New York, oversees one LAAP
grant that was awarded in the 2000 fiscal year. Fordham works with three
other colleges and organizations to provide online professional-development
programs to elementary-school teachers.

The project first received $588,798 from the 2000 fiscal-year budget, but
received the full balance of $1,419,215 from this year's budget. "We're
going into our second year, and they're forward-funding us," she said.
"We're getting all our money immediately."

Ms. King said she thinks that it's a shame that fewer institutions will be
able to receive federal help for their distance-education programs now that
LAAP is being phased out. "I think it's a mistake," she said. "I'd like to
see the federal government involved in distance education."


Kurt A. Snodgrass
Executive Director of Communications
Oklahoma State Regents for Higher Education
655 Research Parkway, Suite 200
Oklahoma City, OK  73104
Phone:  405.225.9180
Fax:  405.225.9181
Toll Free:  800.858.1840
www.okhighered.org