Computing & Information Services

Computing Policy Committee Meeting Minutes
February 29, 2008
3:00 - 4:00 PM, ETC 309

Committee members in attendance:
Marty Ringle, Christine Morita-McVey, Alex Botero-Lowery, Sonia Sabnis, Vickie Hanawalt, Gary Norbraten, Jon Rivenburg, Paul Hovda, Aki Miyoshi, Noah Pepper, Peter Steinberger, Ed McFarlane, Jim Fix (arrived at 3:15).

Welcome and introductions

In Jim's absence, Marty called the meeting to order at 3:10 pm.

Changes to user agreement

Marty Ringle reported that Reed’s attorneys believe the wording of the computer user agreement addresses the issue of confidentiality of college materials adequately and that a separate, campus-wide confidentiality agreement is not necessary. However, two changes would improve the agreement:
(a) adding a link from the user agreement to the CIS web page that explains what is meant by confidential data; and
(b) explicitly indicating that that confidential data should not be shared inside, as well as outside, the college.

Gary Norbraten suggested omitting the phrase “inside or outside the college” altogether. Alex Botero-Lowery voiced his agreement with Gary. Peter Steinberger stated his preference for including “inside or outside the college" as it helped to highlight the need for internal as well as external prudence. Jon Rivenburg moved to include the phrase as suggested, Paul Hovda seconded and the motion passed unanimously. Christine Morita-McVey will add a footnote in the user agreement containing the link to the confidential data web page and will revise the wording as approved. Christine will also correct grammatical errors in the agreement. Marty reminded the committee that the CPC will revisit the wording of the user agreement in the fall, as it does each year.

BlackBoard lawsuit

Last week, the BlackBoard Corporation, maker of the leading learning management system (LMS), successfully sued Desire2Learn (another LMS maker) for patent infringement. (See http://news.therecord.com/News/article/312927) This ruling could have implications for open source LMS users (e.g., of both Moodle and Sakai).

Jim Fix suggested Marty summarize this issue. Marty responded that Blackboard sued Desire2Learn, a small Canadian-based company, for patent infringement. The most important area of infringement involved the ability of a user to log into an LMS once and be able to see different sets of data based on different user roles (e.g., instructor and graduate student). Deisire2Learn countered that Blackboard’s patent for was far too broad and that there was ample evidence of "prior art" for this type of "single sign-on authentication." The trial, which took place in a small town in Texas, resulted in a victory for Blackboard. However, Desire2Learn is continuing to challenge the validity of Blackboard’s patent through the US Patent Office.

Blackboard’s president has stated Blackboard will not pursue patent infringement litigation against users of open source systems such as Moodle and Sakai. Marty noted that Reed uses Moodle as its LMS system. The Blackboard/Desire2Learn lawsuit is unlikely to have a direct or immediate impact on Reed but it is in our interest to keep a close watch on this and other legal challenges that could affect the status of open source software.

Google email outsourcing

Marty reported that 20% of Reed students forward their Reed email to external email providers, the majority of which use Google mail ("gmail"). Gmail is free and has more features than Reed’s web mail, including more storage. Marty noted that other colleges (such as Oberlin) are outsourcing student email completely in order to save money. Since Reed uses open source software for its email, we do not pay license fees. If Reed switched student email to gmail the cost savings to the college would be trivial, hence we do not have as great a motivation as other colleges to pursue this strategy.

Peter Steinberger asked if faculty and staff could use gmail. Marty confirmed that employees could do so and pointed out that Reed would not be able to manage confidentiality restrictions very well if they did. Ed McFarlane wondered if it was possible to prohibit forwarding of college business emails to outside providers. Marty stated that we could consider such a policy but that it would be difficult (both legally and practically) to prevent employees from using outside email services. Jon Rivenburg mentioned the calendaring and analytic software available from Google. Marty observed that Google provides two terabytes of storage to college researchers and that faculty at larger institutions are considering using Google since this free storage feature would save large research universities a considerable amount of money. Marty indicated his belief that the way colleges provide IT services to students (and possibly to faculty and staff) is likely to change substantially during the next few years as a result of this type of outsourcing to Google and other companies.

Audio & video content delivery options for Reed

Marty reported that Reed's effort to pursue an in-house strategy for distributing digital audio and video had run into problems and needed to be re-visited. Last year, the college made a decision to build its own digital media distribution technology (with a $20,000 investment) rather than use an outside service such as Apple's iTunesU. After 6 months of planning, development, and testing, it has become clear that Reed will not be able to match the ease of use that faculty and students get from iTunesU and that if we continue down this road we will wind up spending much more than $20,000 to produce an interface that will be noticeably inferior to the iTunesU services used by more than 800 other colleges and universities. Marty indicated that he has spoken with the senior officers and recommended that we reconsider iTunesU as a near-term strategy while we continue to explore alternatives.

Marty adjourned the meeting at 4:00 pm.

The remaining agenda items were deferred:

Approval of the minutes of the December 14, 2007 meeting
Support for faculty use of technology, including an update on the instructional technologist search

Other possible agenda items include:

Summertime use of Moodle for matriculants
Transition to universal network authentication