Meeting Minutes - February 2012

Society of American Archivists

Committee on Education Meeting

February 3-4, 2012

Chicago, Illinois

Minutes

Friday, February 3, 2012 – 1:00 pm to 8:00 pm  

• Welcome/Introductions – Irwin

Present:  Susan Irwin, Chair; Amber Cushing, Julie Graham, Heather MacNeil, Ellen Swain, Abby Adams, Naomi Nelson, and David Kay, committee members; Lori Lindberg, Chair, DAS Subcommittee; Solveig De Sutter, Director of Education; Amanda Look, Education Coordinator. Absent: Jamie Roth.

• Review and Approval of the Agenda  – Irwin

• SAA Education Staff Report – (Attachment B).  De Sutter highlighted some of the Education Report components:
  • We are within $509 of budgeted revenue year to date, have met our budgeted number of 70 programs and will likely end up with 78.  Nine of the programs are with new hosts.
  • Overall, DAS is going very well.  We’re still implementing and fine tuning processes as we get more experience, and as the DAS Subcommittee takes another look at current practices.  We’ve processed 187 DAS exams to date.
  • Regional associations have been very amenable to supporting the DAS Program and we’ve scheduled an entire two-year DAS cycle with CIMA, MAC, NEA; SCA, and SSA.  We are looking to secure a two-year cycle in the Southeast with SGA in Atlanta, and in Washington, DC.  Final arrangements are under way with ART and METRO in New York, NY.
  • Demand for web seminars is increasing, but it continues to be difficult to find developers and presenters for web seminars.  Peach New Media is our current subcontractor (we left KRM due to costs), and we continue to realize substantial savings.

Members suggested Karen Underhill at Northern Arizona University as a potential co-developer/presenter for diversity webinar on Native American Protocols.

A question came up about having the ability to tell how popular webinars are in certain regions.  The answer is no, we don’t have reports that pull that kind of information from our database.  However, the list of purchasers indicates that we have registrants from across the US (typically more than 25 states).

• EAC-CPF grant line-up ‑ We’ve received five applications to date. Notices were sent out in In The Loop, there is an article in Archival Outlook, it was posted on the A&A listserv, and on each marketing email blast we have listed [scholarships available] in red.  Suggestions included sending announcements of the scholarships to education chairs for the regional archival societies (MAC, MARAC, SGA, etc., and student listservs.

• LIC trial collaboration: SAA agreed to display the LIC logo along with a link to the DPOE calendar on our website, and LIC is displaying our upcoming programs on their calendar in return.

• Webinars – How do we balance “what’s good for the profession” and “increase revenues?” Topics that people “should be” interested in aren’t very successful! The tools webinars have done well. What’s the feeling of the committee about future webinar topics?

Suggestions:

1. A webinar designed to become familiar with a tool or skill or a more technical webinar;
2. An Archivematica overview or an overview of a tool like that would cover the basics followed by a full day in-depth workshop.
3. These basic introductory webinars wouldn’t need to be an hour and a half.
4. Webinars that offer an overview and a bibliography for further reading.  (This should be appealing because someone has done the research, you’ll know what’s involved, and you can begin thinking about delving in yourself.)
5. A webinar about equipment requirements for digital projects (scanners, etc.)
6. A free PDF-A webinar that is 30 minutes long or one about other industry standards or different media; e.g. audio video, basic equipment, suite of hardware/software; Introduction to NEDCC leaflets; 30-minute primers; Outlook inserts.
7. Start a promotion to buy a number of webinars, get one free and reach out to student chapters at universities to see if they want to use their funds to take webinars
8. Market webinars to the Arizona Summit 

Question ‑ If we offered a basic introduction with further reading could the price be lowered?  Answer ‑ we’ve tried lowering fees for webinars like Train the Trainer but that didn’t raise sales so it depends on the topic.  We’ve also been trying to secure free webinars, even if we just link to what other organizations provide. 

• Vendor guidelines – Open source versus proprietary (Current Product Endorsement Education Policy).  This discussion resulted from the submission of a pre-conference proposal about Dataverse (Attachment D).  Members voiced concern about asking people to pay to learn about Dataverse or any specific software.  De Sutter provided some background on how previous decisions on workshops like Implementing DACS in Integrated Content Management Systems: Using the Archivists’ Toolkit™ and/or Using Archon were made.  In the end the group decided to go ahead with the workshop as a one-day workshop with theory in the morning and hands-on exercises in the afternoon; that other tools should be mentioned; to clarify what social science data is; to include a disclaimer in the materials; and, to create a more academic outline of further readings. 

That led to discussion about another proposal (teaching about PREMIS, a metadata schema that is an open source product like EAD), that was accepted by the DAS Subcommittee.  This resulted in the same concerns voiced about the DATAverse workshop e.g. SAA appearing to “sell a product,’ that non-endorsement language it can still convey that we do.  Members asked questions like “is this proposed workshop something that people want to learn,” and “should our members be paying less and have the vendor subsidize the cost?”  It was also noted that Open Source can be many different things and doesn’t always mean it’s free; and, that we need to avoid misconception. 

The group reached consensus that a policy was needed for course/workshop proposals submitted by vendors and action items included 1) adding a question about the proposer’s relationship to the product to the Course Proposal Submission Form; 2) creating a separate Course Proposal Submission Form for vendors; 3) promotion of a product should result in the vendor paying SAA or at least make concessions that would result in lower registration fees, e.g. no compensation for vendor presenter(s), 4) re-defining Open Source; 5) grant an exception for courses/workshops taught by someone ‑other than the developer ‑ who uses the software; and, 6) creating a new tier that is called “Vendor Sponsored Tools and Services”.

• To recommend to the SAA Council:

THAT SAA Continuing Education Program may add a new course/workshop category called “Vendor Sponsored Tools and Services.”  Accepted course/workshop proposal submissions that fall into that category would be subject to the following guidelines:

• Vendor/instructors won’t receive compensation;
• Vendors would be responsible for direct cost of development;
• Registration fees would consist of indirect cost, only;
• Vendor should offer a product discount to registrants; and,

Approved by consensus

• DAS Subcommittee report and recommendations – Chair Lindberg gave an overview of the subcommittee’s actions to date and reported on the subcommittee’s meeting on January 26-27, 2012, at the SAA Offices.  The group uses Google Docs as a shared space for its work and all DAS Course content, exams, and reviews are uploaded.  During the January meeting, the group mapped out a workflow for course creation from proposal submission to the first course offering; consolidated the proposal form with the reviewer form with space for notes at the end; reviewed four courses (Legal Issues for Digital Archives, Digital Forensics for Archivists; Developing specifications and RFPs for Recordkeeping Systems, and Appraisal of Electronic Records), approved three courses and made suggestions for improvement/revisions on the fourth.  Also reviewed were some exams and current exam processes and protocols. 

This resulted in the following DAS policy recommendations to the Committee on Education:

Recommendation One:

• Raise the number of questions for webinars from 5 to 10;
• Increase the pool of questions to 20 questions; and,
• Limit the time students are given to take the exam to one hour.

Approved by consensus.

Recommendation Two:

• Raise the number of questions for one-day courses from 10 to 20;
• Increase the pool of questions from 20 to 40; and
• Limit the time students are given to take the exam to two hours.

Approved by consensus.

Recommendation Three:

• Raise the number of questions for two-day courses from 20 to 40;
• Increase the pool of questions from 40 to 80; and,  
• Limit the time students are given to take the exam to four hours.

The Education Committee discussed and advocated to:

• Raise the number of questions for two-day courses to 30;
• Increase the pool of questions to 50; and, 
• Limit the time students are given to take the exam to three hours.

Approved by consensus.

It was noticed that there are no protocols for a half-day course format, and the Education Committee decided on the following:

• Half-day course exams will have 15 questions;
• Half-day exams pool will have 30 questions; and
• Limit the time students are given to take the exam to 90 minutes.

Approved by consensus.

Recommendation Four:

• Raise the passing grade from 75% to 85% for all DAS courses following accepted graduate school grading scales. 

Approved by consensus.

Recommendation Five:

• 1^st exam – included with course registration fee;
• If failed, re-take exam for free within 2 weeks;
• If failed a second time, re-take exam at a $35-member/$55 non-member retake fee.
• If failed a third time, must re-take course (at reduced rate).

Approved by consensus.

DAS Exam Policies as approved by the Committee on Education:

85% is passing grade

• 1^st exam – included with course registration fee;
• If failed, re-take exam for free within 2 weeks;
• If failed a second time, re-take exam at a $35-member/$55 non-member retake fee.
• If failed a third time, must re-take course (at reduced rate).

Recommendation Six:

• To add at least two members (preferably four) to the DAS Subcommittee (this would increase the total number six members or eight members) to be able to appropriately shepherd the development and review of DAS courses and exams.

Approved by consensus to forward this recommendation to the SAA Council.

Recommendation Seven:

• To meet twice a year as a subcommittee at the SAA office in Chicago for FY’13 to ensure the successful creation and implementation of the Comprehensive DAS Examination.

Approved by consensus to forward this recommendation to the SAA Council.

Education Committee members brainstormed about possible DAS Subcommittee members and mentioned Heather Sayko, April Norris, and Glen McAnninch. 

Nelson and Kay agreed to assist the Subcommittee with proposal, course content, and exam reviews when necessary.

Lindberg reported that the Subcommittee is asking for thoughts/suggestions from the Education Committee about the renewal requirements for DAS Certificate holders and the Comprehensive Examination.  After a lengthy discussion, the committee re-affirmed that DAS Certificates need to be renewed every five years using DAS courses from the Strategic and Tactical, Tools and Services, and Transformation tiers.  The Comprehensive Examination must cover all of the DAS Competencies, and that requires ensuring that all courses cover a number of Competencies to ensure that – regardless of the combination of courses an individual takes – Comprehensive Exam questions are covered. 

This concluded Lindberg’s DAS Subcommittee Report.

• Diary of a DAS Student blog – Staff asked for suggestions on how to direct more traffic to Erica Boudreau’s blog, noting that Boudreau does a terrify job and is a very good writer.  Everyone agreed that creating a hash tag for DAS that SAA markets (something like #SAADAS) would be a great start; invite guest bloggers? 

Boudreau’s observed that she considered the Digital Duration course (currently in the Foundational Tier) more transformational than the Managing Electronic Records course (currently in the Transformational Tier).  It was decided to collect more information based on evaluations, etc. before the committee looks at the possibility of re-shuffling the course.  Also, there’s a transformational Digital Curation course in the development plan.  Another suggestion for consideration was to have a blog that covers a student who starts with a Foundational course as opposed to Boudreau who started with a Transformational course.

Adjourned at 9:00 pm.

Saturday, February 4, 2012 – 8:30am to 2:00pm 

• ACE Categories versus new tiers – How can we best display SAA’s courses and workshops ordered under the combination of ACE Categories and Course Tiers?

After a lengthy discussion, suggestions included:

• Putting links at top to sort by tier, title, and category by creating child pages;
• Asking instructors to re-affirm the tier and category their course(s) / workshop(s) are currently in;
• Asking instructors to look at other courses and identify “suggested pre-requisites;”
• Cushing to use her Utilizing Focus Group pre-conference workshop to discuss the way the courses/workshops are ordered and displayed and get feedback from focus group participants;
• Inviting instructors to the August meeting to talk about what their program covers and where they believe it should go. It could offer us far more insight to have everyone together
• Stress to instructors how important their participation at this meeting is, and give as much information as possible.  Avoid giving the perception we are threatening their course in any way
• Use this time to ask if they’re still interested in teaching the courses or if they want to turn them into web seminars.

• TO DO:
  • Committee to develop a message to instructors informing them that we are beginning this project;
  • Host a faculty session at the August Education Committee meeting in San Diego and invite all faculty to come and discuss this transition.
  • Separate the DAS faculty from the non-DAS faculty for facilitated discussion (DAS session to run from 10:00 am to Noon; other faculty session to run from 11:00am to Noon.
  • Under consideration - getting different smaller groups (e.g. EAD people) together for an informal dinner (individuals pay for themselves) to discuss their courses, the field?

• Alternate instructors - Staff asked for suggestions of instructors who may be interested in teaching Legal Issues in Digital Archives; recommendations included Carlos Ovalle, Trudy Peterson, and Menzi Behrnd-Klodt.

• Office and Career Center Hours – Everyone felt that continuing to have committee members present at the Career Center should be continued.  However, members should look at the meeting schedule, and staffing should coincide with “the periods between sessions” because that’s when traffic occurred at the Chicago meeting.  Suggestions:
• Use the office hours at the annual meeting to invite interested parties to come by and talk about what workshops they could teach and ask them to drop off their vita and a list of testimonials about their teaching abilities.
• Distribute an email in July ‑before the Annual Meeting‑ asking for instructors in specific areas (using the gaps we identify) and invite them to come to the Education Committee office hour to discuss their ideas.  Use Cynthia Ghering’s proposal as an example of ‘what is the ideal proposal.

• Course Proposal Submission Form - The group proceeded to revise the Course Proposal Submission Form.  Irwin is going to assemble the revised form and re-submit to the committee for further suggestions.  Revised form attached.

• Education Catalog - The group reviewed the current Education Catalog ordering and approved the DAS Subcommittee’s recommendations for moving certain courses to a more appropriate ACE Category.
• Identified a gap for courses about different kinds of metadata.

• Shepherds: ‑ Assigned shepherds to various newly developed courses. Revised shepherd chart attached.

• Pre-conference line-up

The committee discussed a new format for SAA Education, looking at CURATE camp’s pre-conference proposal.  Conclusions:

• Agreement that we should try out this format.  The chief concern expressed was the need to lower cost for registrants by looking off-site on the UCSD campus and trying to get complimentary room/AV so that SAA can lower the cost of registration. Encourage the facilitators to find their own sponsors to cover the costs of the event
• List this in the pre-conference line-up for the Annual Meeting, even though it’s a different format.

Current confirmed Pre-conference line-up:

1. Moving Images – Monday (hotel)
2. Hear Today Here Tomorrow – Monday-Tuesday (hotel)
3. PREMIS Tutorial – Monday (hotel)
4. Web arching – Tuesday (off site)
5. Utilizing Focus Groups – Tuesday (hotel)
6. EAC-CPF – Monday (off site)
7. CURATEcamp – (off-site)

It was noted that it’s quite easy to get to Cal State San Diego (Tia Edmonson-Motenson may be a contact) and staff will inquire about facilities there.  There was consensus that individuals usually look for programs that are interesting or needed and that most potential registrants will probably be more interested in going to foundational/basic courses e.g. Digital Curation, DACS, Fundamentals of Appraisal, and Visual Literacy. 

• Education Committee AO article contributions – suggested articles:
• How workshops are developed/how the committee goes about creating a webinar and a face-to-face workshop – Susan Irwin and Lori Lindberg
• Writing a good conference proposal/new form – Amber Cushing and Naomi Nelson
• Hosting a workshop – what’s involved  - Julie Graham
• Standards Portal article – Heather MacNeil
• SAA’s relationship with students/being student-friendly/working with SAA student groups/SNAP/student discounts – Ellen Swain
• Deadlines and assignments:

1. April 5 (June/July) – Ellen Swain’s student article;
2. June 5 (Sept/Oct) – Amber Cushing/Naomi Nelson’s conference proposal article
3. October 5 (Nov/Dec) – Susan Irwin/Lori Lindberg’s article about how workshops are developed
4. December 5 (Jan/Feb) – Julie Graham’s article about hosting a workshop

• SAA Website: the Education Committee pages need to be revised/finalized
• How we can showcase this committee
• Graduate Education Guidelines page
• Display minutes
• Link to AO articles
• Julie Graham will write up a summary about what has been done and what still needs to be done so that the Education Committee can begin to tackle this project

The meeting was adjourned at 2:00pm.