meeting notes

Meeting Notes 06.07.99
@GateWay Community College, 2:00 - 3:30 PM.

Intros and Participants
Thanks to Gloria Stahmer of GWCC for setting up the meeting space.

Diana Hutchinson, SCC       Tricia McLaughlin, MCC
Kathleen Moore, SCC         Gloria Stahmer, GWCC
James Quintero, SCC         Nick Bacon, SCC
Gene Schnidt, SCC           Bernie Combs, SCC
Jim Galindo, MCC            Donna Rebadow, PVCC
Chris MacCrate, EMCC        Nino Pascolati, PVCC
Donna Molton, SMCC          Mary Lou Mosley, PVCC
Cathy Hart, PVCC            Michele Marion, PVCC
Anna Rose Lampis, GWCC      Ken Delp, GWCC
Nancy Hellner, MCC          Chris Schnick, CGCC
Jim Devere, DIST            Maria Bender, SCC
Pat Medeiros, SCC           Alan Levine, DIST

Notes
Final purchase details of CourseIno awaiting approval from Legal department. Should be news when Ron Bleed returns to office Monday (6/14).

Alan Levine suggested discussion of technical issues, design/development issues, and training/support. Several persons shared their experiences in using Blackboard from the company's server site. Most agreed that the most compelling feature was its ease of use, despite short comings in the testing/quiz features.

Users also reported that company was quick to fix problems and was eager to hear of feature requests.

It was urged for developers to go through the planning process of flowcharting/storyboarding a web course, and keeping an organized backup of all content and media (the server can fail you!).

There was interest in maintaining an area on the District BB server for this group to post questions, provide suggestions for improvements, and create a collection of tips, workarounds, etc. Alan reports that this will be created as soon as the server is intalled.

Chris Schnick (CGCC) shared his observations from running a 3 day intro workshop for faculty at his college. He has set up an information page at:

that includes the links to get to his workshop.

courses the fauclty participants created, and information Chris found in his use of the software. When the server is set up at district, we will move this content over to be a first example of training materials for CourseInfo running from CourseInfo.

Next Meeting
Next meeting is tentatively scheduled from Thursday, July 8, at Scottsdale Community College, room 360 of the new Language and Communications Buliding (LC 360) on the northeast side of campus (see map).

Before the meeting, be sure to try setting up your own course area on Blackboard's server on come prepared with questions or tips to share. We will also try to see if anyone from Blackboard could be available for a live teleconference or chat via the net.

PVCC has offered to host an early August meeting.