Among the many successes of Ocotillo were the concept of Open Entry/Open Exit, the District Grants Writer position, Wiring Standards, addressing library access issues, the Authoring Langauges pilot project, a video for Intellectual Rights, and developing ideas for Service Learning.

In 1995-96 was the "Second" generation, under then-faculty Chair David Weaver, a time to reflect on Ocotillo addressing Disitrct-wide issues, and after much dialague, Ocotillo was re-cast into college-focused "roundtables", to develop technology plans that were driven by learning. The model was taken from the American Association of Higher Education (AAHE) program for Teaching, Learning, Technology Roundtables (TLTRs).

Ocotillo started its "Third" generation with the 1997 Retreat, with the formation of college "Ocotillo Roundtables", each led by a faculty chair and supported by the Dean of Instruction. The exact roundtable configuration and relation to other college committees was left to each college to design, starting from a set of suggested guidelines modified from AAHE.

In the summer of 1997, 45 Maricopa faculty and staff attended the AAHE Summer Institute, held in Phoenix, and over the summer, the faculty chairs did some research into existing technology plans. During the fall, the faculty chairs have been meeting every month, and have started developing ideas for the "common" elements that should be in every tech plan. The May 1998 Retreat wil be held in Flagstaff, on May 19-20.

Most of this information is available from the Ocotillo web site at:

Part of their background work was the assessment of the number of computer labs and their uses and getting faculty buy-in to the concept of computer replacement priorities, with the promise that computers would be regularly replaced, and non last longer than 5 years. (When asked how the buy in was achieved, Bob replied that he bought "lots of lunches", i.e. that he met with everyone to hear their concerns and win their support)

GCC has also developed an "Instructional Palette" of agreed upon software that would be available to all students in any course that required computers; hence a standardization of word processing software from class to class.

GCC has also developed at $2 per credit technology use fee.

An issue they are facing is planning for expanding technology capacity for the new building construction. More info is at:

Ocotillo @ PC, Joan Ritsch, (Ocotillo Roundtable Chair)

PC had an existing Technology committee in the Summer of 1997 that fit most of the guidelines for the Ocotillo Roundtable. Joan's role is to interface with the district Ocotillo group and to solicit faculty input as far as possible. The committee has spent much effort on gather data about technology use and percieved needs. At an early meeting, they invited all of the deans and had them detail their technology perspectives that were drawin into the devloping campus-wide guidelines. Along with the major college construction currently underway at PC, all of the networks are being replaced with fiber optic lines.

PC's Roundtable has formed several "action groups" to address issues.

• The Lab Action Group is looking at standards for computer lab hardware and software and guidelines for deciding when to build an open computer lab versus a departmental computer lab.
• The Teaching and Learning Action Group has recoomended funding of $15,000 to support faculty development projects.
• The Web Action Group has made recommendations for the desired features and faunctionaly of college web pages.
• The Survey Action Group is collecting data on faculty technology needs.

Ocotillo @ SMCC, Mary Long, (Ocotillo Roundtable Chair)
South Mountain has been working to integrated Ocotillo with existing technology committees while at the same time gearing up for their NCA visit. Mary reports their process has been in three "phases"

Phase I (1993-1994) was the development of their Educational Technology Center (ETC) with the assistance of the MCLI. ETC has been providing training, demos, experiments with technology in the classroom, student interns, and general technology support that is ongoing. ETC will be intimately involved with the Ocotillo process.

Phase II (1995) was a time that the college saw that they "needed the network", fast and reliable computer network access in and out of the classroom. They did needs assessment, agreed to standardization of software and hardware, and recently completed their fiber optica network installation with an expected shift from Microwave T1 to ATM access in February 1998. The critical issues are ACCESS to technology as they cannot expect a majority of their students to own home computers. The Guadalope Center has also recently been connected via a T1 line.

Phase III (1996 - now) is the period of expanded utilization and integration of technology. The District desktop project provided equal computer equipment for all faculty and staff. Since the college is preparing for their NCA visit, all of the data gathering needed for their review will be available to use in their technology planning efforts. They have published their web development guidelines, a series of templates for faculty, training, and a unified web presence for the college. They have made a recommendation for funding of a full time network support person.

Mary says their motto is "we do a lot with very little." See more at:

Ocotillo @ CGCC, Ted Wolter, (Ocotillo Roundtable Chair)
Ted has been involved with the technology planning group for its 10 year existence. This committe very well fits the guidelines for the Ooctillo roundtable. Initially it was a budget deciding entity but has evolved into a recommending body for technology needs. This has dramatically transformed the committee from a competetion to collaboration. They made this change around the philosophu of "enoughness", that all the resources they have are "enough" and to meet their needs, they just have to work together to find ways to use their resources better, using their own human resources.

The committee reviews technology proposals from the academic divisions, and work with the proposal writers to make strong cases for their ideas. The committee has written their technology vision and mission statements, discussed student technology fees, web page guidelines, and other issues as they arise.

Ocotillo @ SCC, Doug Sawyer, (Ocotillo Roundtable Chair)
The SCC roundtable just started in the Fall of 1997. They spent 4 weeks soliciting campus technology needs and then organizaed them into 7 categories such as Distance Learning, Instructional Technology, Allocation of Resources, and Security. Sub-commiittees were formed for each of the categories, forming 2-4 golas for each category and then writing measurable objectives for each goal.

In the Spring 98 semester, they plan to cast each stated goal into Action Items. On the infrastructure side, the college network will soon be upgraded to fiber optic.

For more see:

Ocotillo @ MCC, Andrea Greene for Brad Kincaid, (Ocotillo Roundtable Chair)
MCC's roundtabel is a new entity, and has been forming a group with braod representation that will focus on instructional technology issues. They have formed "Action Groups" to deal with different issues:

• Distance Education Pedagogy (distinct from existing committees that are dealing with logistics and hardware)
• Classroom Research and Assessment
• Student Technology Assistants
• Faculty Development
• Communication and Outreach

With a goal of an Early Success, the MCC roundtable is putting much effort into their Student Technology Assistant program, a means to address a critical technology support crisis for faculty at MCC. Frank Gonzalez described a pilot program to hire 8 students to support faculty technology projects. Rather than just a work-study program, the pilot is geared to provided students real-life experience more like a Service Learning program.

MCC has had very string support from DI Gail Mee and has enjoyed a diverse participation of faculty, staff, and the library. They will be addressing many planning and design issue with the construction of a new large technology classroom building.

For more see:

Ocotillo @ GWCC, Fred Gaudet, (Ocotillo Roundtable co-Chair)
Gateway's TLTR has been in existence for two years and its major achievment has been its establishment as a permanamt college committee. They have strived to focus on the process of technology integration, and are not directly involved in budgeting and infrastructure planning.

The GateWay TLTr as developed its technology vision and mission and goals for each. Each member of the committee has signed up for activities under each goal. Some of the activites so far have included recommending funds ($10,000) to sponsor summer faculty projects, semester release time for faculty to implement their summer efforts, and developing a faculty mentoring program.

For more see:

Discussion Topics
With the remaining time in this session, a few topics "bubbled" up.

• How can Ocotillo roundtables influence the budgeting process? Perhaps by requiring that requests have criteria attached to them (e.g. components for training, access issues, maintance, etc)
• Can technology be granted as faculty rewards?
• How to assess technology? The exact tool does not matter, but more important to require that assessments are followed up by linked actions
• How can we develop student technology assistant programs to support faculty?