All ADEC
Annual Meeting
Minutes

Sunday, March 5, 2000
Tom Fretz, Chair of the ADEC Board of Directors welcomed the members of the ADEC Administrative Council, Program Panel and PCOs to the beginning of the All ADEC meeting - the annual awards banquet. ADEC meeting books including agenda, minutes and items of business were distributed to all attendees.

He called on James Hamilton, University of Illinois and Barbara Fails, Michigan State University, to present the Program Panel and PCO Awards. The award recipients included:

Exemplary Service:

• Olivia Ernest and Janet Means, ADEC Headquarters Office
• Linda Cupp and Doris Littrell, University of Missouri-Columbia

• Gary Atkins, Colorado State University
• Jeffrey Poley, ADEC Headquarters Office

• Kevin Hayes, Oklahoma State University
• Michael Burke, Oregon State University

• Entomology 2004-Insects & Human Society, Virginia Tech Team
• Certificate of Excellence in Nonprofit Leadership and Management Satellite Series, University of Wisconsin and partners
• Honorable Mention: Botany Basics - Master Gardener Series - Online Botany Module, Oregon State University

Special Award:
Scott Fedale, Washington State University, was honored with a special recognition and gift for him many contributions to the organization during the past year. He was an earlier recipient of the Exemplary Service Award.

Michael Burke, Chair of the Excellence in College and University Distance Education Award Committee recognized:

• University of Kentucky Team - College of Agriculture Distance Learning: Carla Craycraft, Scott Hayes, Lori Porter, Kim Ragland, Nathan Wilson and Craig Woods. The Kentucky team was accompanied to the banquet by the dean and directors, as well as Kentucky CARET representatives. They were recognized for their outstanding distance education performance.
• Michael Swan, Washington State University
• Ron Smith, University of Illinois
• Al Turgeon, The Pennsylvania State University

Honorable mention awardees included:

• Mary Brintnall-Peterson, University of Wisconsin
• Patricia Curtis, North Carolina State University
• Michael Hutjens, University of Illinois
• H. Dean Sutphin, Cornell University
• Claudia Probart, The Pennsylvania State University

Their Deans, Directors and CARET members were also recognized.

Fretz presented Service Awards to:

• Daniel Godfrey - ADEC Board of Directors, North Carolina A&T
• Carla Craycraft - Charter Program Panel member, University of Kentucky
• Terry Gibson - Charter Program Panel member, University of Wisconsin

Fretz called upon Irvin Omtvedt, first recipient of the Irving Award and person for whom the award was named and E.G. Sander, last year's Irving Award recipient to assist him in making presentation of the Irving Awards. This year's Irving Awards were presented to Alan Moeller, University of Nebraska-Lincoln and ADEC Assistant Treasurer and Kirvin Knox, Colorado State University, ADEC Treasurer.
Monday, March 6, 2000

1. The Knowledge Marketplace

The All ADEC meeting began with a presentation from Dave King, Program Panel Co-Chair, Purdue and IHETS on the Knowledge Marketplace, including results of a survey he conducted in relationship to this initiative. He urged that all PCOs add their responses to the survey if they have not done so already. Fedale mentioned the importance of faculty incentives. There was discussion of the importance getting some historic activities stopped that are no longer useful or relevant. Cotton said he was concerned that "the system" doesn't have the fortitude to make this happen and that some of those who most need to hear this message are not here. Gibson said that faculty position descriptions are very important. Geo-political boundaries have fallen and we need to reach communities of interest beyond the old limits imposed by geography and politics. P&T guidelines have been changed in some places and more are examining. Several stated that most institutions are only giving lip service to outreach in P&T guidelines. Hayes emphasized the importance of getting policies in line on issues such as intellectual property - these need to be administered consistently but we need to be more creative and flexible about what we are looking at in terms of scholarship. Davis said we should be emphasizing our land grant role in education and outreach - how can we work together to do this? The question of speed was raised - how fast can the land grant community respond to smart.com? Davis noted that wealth is created at the edge of the digital divide. ADEC should help take the have nots and move them into the new information age. Together we will be much more successful in marshaling our resources to overcome the obstacles in our bureaucratic institutions. Davis said the land grants have some comparative advantages working together - the foremost being the tremendous reach, broad audience and the potential ability to "move together, at the same time, on multiple fronts." Also the land grant have huge research capacity to apply to all aspects of these issues - human, technological etc.

2. Facilitated Discussion of Broadened Involvement in ADEC and On and Off-Campus Marketing

Nancy Sander, Washington State University PCO, facilitated this discussion. She opened the session stating that ADEC has a golden opportunity to get brand name recognition. We have "wonderful education programs" from multiple institutions. We expect marketing to bring us greater visibility. We need to establish who to market to and how we will reach these audiences. Outcomes from the small group discussion were:

1. What are your expectations of marketing efforts; why are we creating increased visibility in the knowledge marketplace?
• Marketing and visibility will build a foundation with the public
• Increased marketing and visibility could help us capture a dominant market share
• We could narrow our focus on specific niches we have the expertise to serve
• We may also need to consider broader markets, beyond states to national and international audiences
• Land grant colleges try to serve ALL - there are many choices and we can't be all things to all people.
• The Colleges of Agriculture struggle with historical and cultural perceptions of "Agriculture", and its meaning. Not an appealing term to the new, multi-disciplinary markets we're expanding to serve.

2. Who do you currently reach through marketing?
• Faculty
• Traditional Extension audiences
• Corporate America
• Community Colleges
• Nontraditional audiences
• Some niche markets
• Not sure that any land grant university is well informed on its own state market demands and meeting those demands is another question.

3. Who do you want to reach in the future?
• Need to identify niche markets
• Clearly identified audiences that will bring in financial resources
• Culturally diverse audiences
• Audiences beyond Agriculture
• International audiences
• Home learners
• We need to address the needs of all students

4. How might we reach these audiences?
• Using old and new technologies
• Assessing the needs and technology use of new audiences
• Providing a narrow focus to our educational product
• Be the leader in new learning strategies
• Use distance technologies in the classroom
• Design ADEC offerings for both types of classes
• Identify steps to move instructors towards distance formats for delivery
• Continue to do advanced research on new technologies to remain cutting edge
• Continue to change from a 4-year approach to education to a modular approach

5. How will ADEC member institutions respond to the growing number of potential learners.
• The markets and economics are drivers for our ability to respond, each ADEC institution has to find the economic advantage in working with the network.
• What do we know about them? Conducting ADEC sponsored research on this pool of learners will help us develop appropriate responses and marketing approaches.
• We may want to try smaller collaborations for specific niche markets.
• Bring back and help alumni become lifelong learners through the offerings of ADEC member institutions.
• Secure and provide the technical support to reach an increased audience of learners.
• In some cases seed money would provide the impetus to reach new potential learners.
• We may want to establish extra-institutional alliances to reach new audiences.

6. How does ADEC as a consortium of institutions position its self to be instrumental in shaping distance education nationally?

7. To promote ADEC and Land Grant Institutions in the Knowledge marketplace, who needs to do what?

POSSIBLE ACTIONS TO TAKE:
(In response to questions 6 &7, the following ideas were recorded)

Defining ADEC:

• Begin by defining ADEC. Who we are now and who we want to be next?
  A clearinghouse.
  A portal
  Links to other sites, programs, institutions.
  A brokerage firm
  A delivery utility (the phone company model)
  A capacity builder
  A policy and legislative leader.

• What will the relationship be between member institutions and ADEC?

• ADEC can be a lightening rod or facilitator needed at the national level for the advancement of distance education.

• Need to continue to consider new partnerships to expand educational outreach and marketing potential.

What are we selling?
ADEC is not a brand.
It is the universities that are members.
ADEC markets Quality, Experience.
ADEC is a tool, a conduit for courses to be delivered.
ADEC is a portal for the programs and courses offered by the universities.

What is the Quality Control for the courses being listed by ADEC.
We accept all courses being forwarded by the members. Will we ever screen courses? Should we?

Does ADEC have to sell anything?
Yes, quality, experience is a product with value.
ADEC needs to take a more active roll in selling products (what ever that product ends up being).

What kind of value does ADEC add?
If we add no value, why pay? Who would be a member.
Could be a portal, process information/classes, act as a clearinghouse/brokerage firm.

What to add:
Marketing - audiences, design
Sharing of resources - "matchmaker" for universities to work together "Branding" a look, a "feel" for all ADEC courses
Seed moneys for programs - cost recover for courses being developed.
Technical support? Do we want to go that far??
Peer review of courses (P and T for faculty).

Task Force Approach:

• Determine the need to establish a task force on marketing, this task force might also look at policies and guidelines for marketing
• Conducting ADEC sponsored research on this pool of learners will help us develop appropriate responses and marketing approaches for specific niches.

Education and Awareness about Distance Education:
• ADEC can provide internal marketing within universities (selling the need for distance education. We can also teach others about the value of distance education
• To date local programming has the greatest impact on learners
• Issue monthly papers on key marketing issues
• Convene a deans council on the issue of marketing - target the deans marketing to corporations.
• We need help in identifying key senator, etc. to help us with a marketing push for increased visibility.
• Need to continue the lobbying efforts at all levels

New consortium approach to educational outreach/marketing:
• Facilitate the organization of mini-consortia of universities, to address the educational needs of specific niche markets
• Build effective economic models among provider institutions, but by program/products, not the entire ADEC membership. Each financial agreement (by program/product) could be somewhat different.
• Establish regional consortiums of universities to direct marketing efforts
• ADEC can develop courses that no one else is willing/able to provide. ADEC will be in the position to bring several faculty experts from multiple campuses together, develop a course, and market it. For example, the development of certification programs.
• Establish a high-tech response team for faculty development and other needs.
• If we do e-commerce and ADEC is taking moneys, will ADEC need to provide and guarantee technical support?

3. Evaluation Session - The Flashlight Project

Stephen Ehrmann, TLT Group presented "Shining a Flashlight on Technology and Higher Learning." He emphasized the importance of doing studies on things about which we are uncertain. He talked about two strategies: helping people and institutions design their own instruments and studies and common instruments and shared studies. He suggested we should be doing both - each strategy compensates for the other's weaknesses. He talked about beginning with goals: improving learning (old goals), changing learning (new), access to education, efficiency, attracting or retaining faculty, staff, students who demand some form of IT access, fear of losing market or face. He talked about two types of evaluative studies:

1. Is our use of technology really helping on a factor important to learning such as interpersonal interaction - how so? if not, why not?
2. If this factor - such as interpersonal interaction - is improving, is that improving learning outcomes here? How so? If not, why not?

   He asked small groups to develop responses to the following possible activities for ADEC:

*What technology-dependent mission critical activities are most important for training and shared studies. He emphasized the importance of looking at "activities" - i.e. notes on the web, interaction, labs, modeling and diagnostics, planning among faculty using technology etc. As we gather more evaluation data we can monitor and improve across a number of activities such as interpersonal interaction, why students really do certain things, use of libraries for exploratory learning. King said that ADEC will continue working with Ehrmann re Flashlight licensing on individual campuses and potentially as an organization. We need to look at this also in relationship to the Distance Education Evaluation Program (DEEP) that we have funded and are improving. Also we are looking at training possibilities with Steve for online and videoconferencing.

4. Presentation of the ADEC National Excellence in Distance Education Awards with CARET and the Administrative Heads and others within NASULGC and ADEC at the Marriott at Metro Center Hotel. The University of Kentucky Team, as well as the other excellence awards and honorable mentions were presented.

The University of Kentucky Team gave an outstanding presentation to the assembly showcasing their programs and identifying the importance of grant funds such as the Agricultural Telecommunications program and the Higher Education Challenge grants in making these high quality, sustained programs available. Carla Craycraft, Craig Wood and Kim Ragland made the presentation. Tom Fretz and Michael Burke conducted the award ceremony. ADEC also distributed award brochures and the anniversary report: ADEC Ten Years of Progress. Thanks to Cornell University for an outstanding job of layout and printing.

5. Importance of Open Source/Cataloging/Taxonomy

John Kane, National Agricultural Library, Melanie Gardner, AgNIC project and Tim Lynch, Mann Library, Cornell University discussed this topic. Their overview included importance of open source. They discussed the Dublin Core, ROADS-metadata, Open Source Software - "give away the recipes and open a restaurant". Metadata-stuff about stuff - descriptive, structural, administrative, The handle will change to an URI. We need a controlled vocabulary in all subjects - terms that will describe the subject content - subject specialists have to create this. AgNIC is building this type of thesaurus. We have to have words to assign to meta-data records. We'll be moving to XML and Dublin Core at a minimum. Dublin Core has a big clientele-OCLC, international, computer and libraries. Dublin Core elements are the lowest common denominator.

Follow the title link to view the complete presentation on this topic.

6. Additional Sessions

1. Interesting Approaches to Online Learning Resources

Dan Cotton walked the attendees through a series of interesting online resources and handed out the following URLS of interest.
• ADEC
  On-Line Resources
  
  • Educational Links Collection
  • Excellence in On-Line Teaching

• University of Nebraska
  
  • Distributed Environment for Active Learning - DEAL Lab
  • What's Shaping the Market
  • Crop Genetic Engineering

• University of Illinois
  
  • Council on Food and Agricultural Research (C-FAR)

• Oregon State University
  
  • Botany Basics
    The content of this module is based on the Basic botany chapter in the Master Gardener Handbook. The online module used for Web-based delivery of instruction in conjunction with the annual Master Gardner training program

• Virginia Tech
  
  • Insects and Human Society

He also suggested that people check out www.brainpop.com
2. ADEC Learning Center Survey

Scott Fedale and Nancy Sanders Fedale presented the results of this survey.

Follow the title link to view the complete presentation on this topic.

3. Land Grant Institutions for the Future

Alan Escovitz, The Ohio State University, presented this paper prepared by him and Jim Davis. It was written to encourage closer cooperation among all parties on land grant campuses interested in outreach, including CIOs.

7. ADEC E Commerce

Steven Conn and Scott Minnich, SSA Inc. presented the prototype ADEC E Commerce site and conducted a discussion of elements and changes required. Some of the items discussed were

1. being sure it fit international environment,
2. consider credit and noncredit fees,
3. e commerce privacy requirements and requirements relating to children under 13 years of age.

   ADEC will test the E Commerce with both noncredit and credit offerings in the next several months. The goal is to have everything fully functional by fall of 2000. Nearly all PCOs indicated they would want to use the ADEC E Commerce system for at least some types of transactions and the E Store.

   To view the E Commerce prototype, click on the E Commerce title link.

Back to top

Tuesday, March 7, 2000

1. Fretz called the business meeting for All ADEC to order.

Knox moved and Kelly seconded a motion to approve the minutes of the last All ADEC meeting. Motion carried.

John Kelly, Treasurer, presented the financial report. Diana Bisbee, PCO from Arkansas, suggested that since ADEC is a membership organization that the word assessment should be removed from the financial reports and replaced with the words membership dues.

Fretz called the attention of the membership to his official report delivered the previous day to CARET and the awards assembly.

Fretz called on Fedale to give the ADEC Digital Infrastructure Task Force report. The Task Force includes Jeff Poley, Gary Atkins, Jim Hamilton and Scott Fedale. Fedale explained how the cost estimates were developed for the ADEC Channel, including Head-End Carriage, Technical Support and Engineering at the Channel Aggregation Location and Program Management.

Fretz asked Poley to lead the discussion on the DBS Channel Program Aggregation. She asked Usinger to review the handout including the channel rationale, current situation, programming considerations, audience considerations and costs. Members discussed the importance of moving this forward. Watkins spoke to the importance of doing high quality issue based programming that could really help the nation in areas including children and youth, environment, community and economic development. Poucher spoke to the importance of this undertaking as the real way that the land grant universities will implement the NASULGC report on the Engaged University. All agreed that the consortium had to work hard to gain the support of Deans, Directors and most senior university administration so they will collaborate to reach into learning centers and homes across the nation. Poley said that the current program database used in the proposal to Echostar and DirecTV will be updated, more offerings will be included and the plan will be formatted professionally. She expects Usinger to come to the ADEC office to work with the Web master shortly to accomplish this task. Fretz said that this is a very important effort and it was very disappointing that it appears that Echostar has retaliated against the consortium in not allocating a channel. Poley said that members needed to take a look at what was actually up on the authorized channels - most are not full time nor top notch quality. Unfortunately to date it appears that Echostar has been allowed to do whatever they want.

Cotton reported on the NSF Project and walked the membership through the proposal for wireless Internet. He said that we expected to hear about the outcome of the grant by the end of March. He said the first Tachyon Access Point (TAP) is in place at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln and he expected the first round of testing to occur the following week. He said this would be followed with testing among the six pilot institutions. He explained how the technology works using the diagram in the grant proposal.

Fretz reported that the IDEAL 2 activities are moving along well. He asked McAlpin to report on the IDEAL2 videoconference. Promotion is out on the project. WSU will be the coordinating location - President Sam Smith will appear at this location; University of Illinois is coordinating the Chicago site; Fretz and Brian Hawkins, President of Educause, will appear from this location with distance learners; Carol Twigg, PEW Foundation Academic Transformation Director, will appear from Miami, Florida. Online registration will begin March 15. All institutions are to have an official convenor. Erik Anderson, University of Idaho is planning the wrap-around activities. Dean Sutphin, IDEAL2 Chair will appear from Cornell University and Rosemary Haggett, West Virginia University will appear from West Virginia. Both will be via videotape and live audio. Four case studies are in production and the consortium expects to have a lively conference.

The Agricultural Telecommunications Program will need the support of members to assure that it gets into the FY 2001 budget. It was not in the Executive Budget. Fretz thanked Daryl Lund, Cornell for the work they did in getting the FY 2000 appropriation as a Special Research Grant. The original $500,000 appropriation was reduced to slightly less than $400,000 after rescincion. We will all work hard together to try to assure that we get things worked out so that it once again matches the authorizing language.

2. Luncheon Speaker -Tom Davis, President, La Courte Oreilles Ojibwa Community College

Davis challenged ADEC to do more to partner with the Tribal Colleges. He noted that the Tribal Colleges have to take the lead and that ADEC members from other land grant institutions could be of assistance. This is very important work. He recalled that this is the type of task that land grant universities should be engaged with.

Jim Hafer from Dull Knife Memorial College followed Davis and spoke about the needs of his institution and said that he welcomed the opportunity to work with members of the ADEC consortium.

3. Relationship Building - Sharing Hopes and Dreams - 1890 Institutions

Zacch Olorunnipa, Nancy Sanders and Kat Harting Travers shared leadership for a series of round table discussions led by representatives of the 1890 ADEC member institutions attending the meeting. The following 1890 Institution members presented some of the most important ideas generated from the discussions:

• Freddie Richards Sr., Prairie View A&M -
  They are working on a high tech unit and are very interested in the work on wireless and with Tachyon

• Zacch Olorunnipa, Florida A&M -
  Need to know more about alternative technologies for distance education, especially interested in web based courses. Florida A&M Faculty are talking about working together - joint courses are a possibility, team teaching.

• Carolyn Brooks, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore and ADEC Board of Directors -
  We have a lack of infrastructure- we do little dips/daps of stuff - we could use ADEC to come to our campuses to help in capacity building - preferably for a long as a month or more- this should be a consultation - capacity building. We want to share our special programs using technology and we are very interested in international programs.

• Taylor Byrd, Alabama A&M -
  We are alone and we need to work together. Some of things of particular interest are:
  1. the Flashlight project we discussed with Stephen Erhmann
  2. ADEC needs to help in getting to our deans and helping them understand the importance,
  3. ADEC needs to send a team to the Deans' Research Council and show what is possible, and
  4. host a workshop among the 1890 institutions.

• Morrell Pridgen, North Carolina A&T -
  We have to reintroduce ADEC from time to time. We have changes in upper administration. We need to have an informational team that goes to institutions systematically to make this happen - we have to continually show the present and future value of ADEC.

• Carlton Morris, Tuskegee University -
  We can see the vision - we all should have this and be involved in distance education. Together we have tremendous resources - we need to educate our institutions about what they could be doing - we need to work on collaboration, best practices, development of resources. This should be part of the mission and we need to remove barriers and bring people over the digital divide.

4. International Task Force

Knox, Chair of the ADEC International Task Force, explained that the consortium is working toward an appropriate strategy for greater involvement in the international area. He said that the original task force shared their report with the Board of Directors and a smaller task force is now charged with working through the most appropriate way to deal with issues such as governance and financial contributions. He said that the Board strongly supported more international linkages, but that everyone agreed they did not want to distort the organization from its core mission, nor radically change the by-laws. Knox said that ideally we can build upon the work of our member institutions and international networks. He said that we will continue to work as a part of ICDE - i.e. ADEC does not want to be a competitor to ICDE, but rather a good member/partner. He said this work will continue in the next three months and he welcomes input from all institutions interested in this area.

5. Distance Education Evaluation Project (DEEP)

Steven Conn and Scott Minnich demonstrated the revised version of the DEEP project. Conn recoded the project in HTML, additional questions have been added to strengthen the options available for online learning. Also more questions were incorporated from the Quality Distance Teaching and Learning principles. The members decided that they wanted Steven to do the following as part of this phase of development

1. make it possible to set up an evaluation Web page using the DEEP tool
2. change the type of questions that could be asked - i.e. statements, likert scales and possibly open ended as appropriate.

   Poley will continue to work with Conn on these revisions. To view the DEEP project Web site, click on the DEEP title link and use the login: deep, password: bluesea.

6. Closing Remarks - Fretz Chairman

Fretz closed the All ADEC Meeting and urged the members to continue moving ahead with the DBS Channel plans. He said that we have made great progress this past year and we have several major projects, including the possible NSF grant close at hand. We will continue to work together and hope for more funding for Agricultural Telecommunications and the programmatic funding we need for this work. He also mentioned again the award winners and invited everyone who could to attend the Exhibits in the Rayburn Cafeteria from 5:30 - 8:00. ADEC had an exhibit designed by Purdue University and featuring the 10th Anniversary and the University of Kentucky, College of Agriculture Distance Learning team.

All ADEC Meeting Planning Committee
Thank You!

• Zacch Olorunnipa, Florida A&M
• Nancy Sanders, Washington State University
• Katherine Harting Travers, University of Maryland-Eastern Shore
• James Hamilton, University of Illinois
• Ron Matason, The Pennsylvania State University
• Dan Cotton, University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• Kevin Gamble, North Carolina State University
• David King, Indiana Higher Education Telecommunication System
• Scott Fedale, Washington State University
• Ellen Varley, University of Maryland-College Park
• Michael Burke, Oregon State University