-Announcements
-RefWorks training report
-CIT/CUL Blackboard Integration update
-Area Teachers Professional Development Day update
-Planning for Instruction Coordinator meeting
-ETS ICT Literacy Assessment

Attending: Camille Andrews (recorder), Tony Cosgrave (chair), Thad Dickinson, Leah Solla, Susanne Whitaker

Announcements

• Leah has posted the minutes
• Camille has joined the committee as Mann’s representative and Leah will update the website
• Leah indicated a metasearch task force was looking for a tool to replace Find Articles in the near future.

RefWorks training
Tony reported that the RefWorks training on 2/17 was attended by approximately 20 people and was well-received; the trainer was good and also did a short administrative session for Tony, Virginia Cole and Susan LaCette and demonstrated a building block for RefWorks for Blackboard.

Blackboard integration
Tony is involved in a committee of library and CIT personnel headed by Jim Lombardi who are working on better integration between the library’s resources and Blackboard. The committee is using a Cornell-wide project management system called Cornell Project Management Methodology (CPMM—for more information see http://projectmanagement.cornell.edu/). Some of the initiatives the committee is working on include:

• Making the Library Gateway part of the persistent left navigation buttons rather than just a link that only appears on the opening page
• Including Ask a Librarian as part of each course in the left navigation
• Adding context-sensitive resources (e.g. assignment pages that link to specific subject databases)
• Including librarians in Blackboard training (e.g. librarians would give courses on how to link to subject specific resources or how to do e-reserve)
• Integrating Refworks with Blackboard
• Possibly integrating capabilities of new metasearch tool with Blackboard

There will be future phases of the project but the committee is working on implementing these “low-hanging fruit” objectives first with an implementation target date of August for newly created courses (backwards implementation may occur later). The merger between Blackboard and WebCT should not greatly affect this since Cornell is running an older version of Blackboard. As an example of another implementation, Binghamton is running the newer community version of Blackboard and has included the library as a separate tab in Blackboard rather than as a module integrated within the main course. There was some question of whether library resources integration would be possible with customized course management systems like the one created at the Vet School, which would need to be addressed by coordinator Julie Powell. JGSM, Hotel and Law also have separate Blackboard coordinators. Members of the integration team will meet with the Library Student Advisory Council on 3/27 to brief them on the plan and receive feedback.

Educator’s Professional Development Day on 3/24
Four units will give workshops:

• Olin/Uris- workshop for AP History and English teachers which modeled the kind of session they could have for their AP students
• RMC-workshop on digital manuscript collections to support educators
• Olin Maps-workshop on maps by Bob Kibbee and Michelle Thompson from City and Regional Planning
• Mann—workshops on keeping current with educational resources (using RSS, blogs, etc) and on educational resources available at Mann

Instruction Coordinators Meeting
Tony sent a note to all the instruction coordinators suggesting a meeting and asking for feedback on the timing, location and possible agenda. The meeting will be in mid-May in Olin 703; the committee decided that the week of the 15th, particularly Wed. 5/17 would be good. Refreshments could be housed in Olin 702 and the meeting could take place in 703.  Camille will check for conflicts with the Committee on Professional Development (CPD) calendar.

Agenda suggestions:

• Update on what PSEC Instruction has been doing and what we can do in the future
• Mini-poster session of assignments, assessment techniques, etc.
• Demonstration of new registration system
• Possibly some kind of professional development training for instructors (if not as part of meeting as part of CPD’s Professional Development Week, a series of brown bags, retreat etc.). The topic of assessment on a practical level was mentioned--how do you make a survey and what kinds of assessment work best for which contexts? What are best practices and guidelines?). CU Med should be invited and Tony will contact helen ann brown about dates.

It was suggested that the meeting lean more toward a gathering to look for answers to common instruction problems rather than a report of the committee’s activities and that the meeting not be too structured. It was also suggested that we make it very clear that PSEC Instruction is not just for the members but for all instruction coordinators and that the PSEC instruction committee could serve as a kind of clearinghouse to gather information, assessment techniques, assignments and the like to save the time of individual instructors.

ETS ICT Assessment Webinar
Because of technical difficulties on ETS’ part, Tony, Camille and Kornelia Tancheva were not able to attend the webinar on the Educational Testing Service’s Information and Communication Technology test. This will be rescheduled since there are other dates.