CAS Meeting
ETC Building
October 13, 2003, 1:45-4:30

 

Attendees: Fred Forseman, Mary D’Andrea, Margo Mueller, Laurie Trallie, Jason Holscher, Carol Cline, Sara James, Paula Brugge, Gary Fuller.  Follow up from Margo 10-14-03, 10-27-03.

REVIEW/UPDATE PROGRESS

Sarah reports the U of M has essentially cleaned up the TA and IREF tables; dates are in place.  Non-FICE schools pointing to another school is still a consideration.  Items on the list are done.

Margo reports that getting the audits to run was a challenge.  She has been adjusting things CAS for the last month.  Logo is good and is now showing. Have created links to: Admin., application, and registration.  Some programs also.  Crookston and the U of M TC campuses will be brought up at the same time.  Could George go in and hide things from UMD and Morris?  This might be a command clean up.  Margo has been coming to ETC setting items up.  The U will be sending another "load" soon to Fred. Margo has looked at a lot of schools.  The files are looking good, though the U needs to have separate COMS.

Laurie reports setting up 6 campuses in CAS: Central Lakes, Southwest MSU, Bemidji SU, Lake Superior, Hibbing.  Laurie asks each campus which tables and which programs to be loaded.    Date ranges can be problem, as they may work with DARS, but not with CAS. 

Fred reports about the terminal server:  The ODBC connectors will not work with the U of M firewall.  With Windows, you can connect to a machine on the inside of the MnSCU firewall.  This allows use of a windows machine inside the firewall.  Terminal services client connects to a remote access.  When opened on the desktop, this is a smaller then normal window.  Currently the only two users are Laurie and Margo.

MnSCU will be pursuing the purchase of a larger server.  The purchase of another server would be at least 6 or 7 weeks. 

 

General Q & A from the Review/Update:

When does the U data get loaded, each day?  (answer below)
Will Gary want the ini feature dropping the former user name?  
What time and how often for the load? (answer below)

How is the U going to limit the IREF’s?  If the institution is not on the ACCRAO crosswalk, then it should not be sent to the server.

For test purposes, in CAS accounts, should we be signing on as a student or and administrator?  Use the administrator account, as you can see the student account through this. 

Student account question.  Do we delete the student account: if inactive for a year?  What happens?  User conference question.

What does the pseudo nohide do in CAS, and why would you select the pseudo $ (hide) in DARS/CAS?  If requirement A lines include a direct course and a list (Match = L), in the degree audit all the courses on the list prints; in CAS, the name of the list requirement prints.

USER FREINDLY APPROACH

What are the standards for the U of M and MnSCU going to be?

1. CAS requires 3 help screens: General CAS, Student & Advisor, and Administrator.  Each of the 3 help screens must have a pointer to a U of M help as deemed appropriate (darweb@umn.edu).  The General CAS screen on each MnSCU institution CAS site must have a pointer to darsinfo@so.mnscu.edu, the Student & Advisor screen on each MnSCU institution CAS sit must have a pointer to a campus CAS administrator, and the Administrator Help screen on each MnSCU institution CAS site must have a pointer to darinfo@so.mnscu.edu.   In MnSCU, the questions will go to the DARS team first, and secondly to someone on the campus.  Currently at the U, the help desk answers questions on APASS reports.  The U determines if it is a technical question, or a registrar question.  The U could do the same for CAS as they do for APASS now.  They would have to be trained on CAS, but they are doing a number of different help desk questions.  Besides the help pages, they could have a link on the CAS audit. 

In this seamless product, we probably want the help screens to look the same.  The screens should look the same, but the pointer will be different.

 Password help is a problem.  Laurie is working with Jason (Miami).   

2.  Quarter/semester question presents issues.  For any given master reference, the date range for TA must be exactly the same.   Margo has a problem of two IREF, but only one TA table.    U has some variety in this issue.  Margo clarified that CAS will work with one IREF and 2 TA tables if the dates cover the same range.  

This is a question for the CAS user conference. 

Do we want to show quarter info, or hide this data?  If we include quarter information, the school would appear twice in the list, once for each time you have an IREF.  Hence, you would need to include some type of explanation.  If you chose not to show the quarter stuff, at lease for now, then the IREF’s and TA tables would just need to be hidden.  George may have already done this.    

3.  U discipline designators. If dept is number, then the course equivalencies look odd. 

Look at the groups with numbers and determine if they will be using a different group name.  The Group is a way to find the TA rules.  Should we use “801” or the term “Math” in the Group? 

Does the U set up a department and course number begin and end in the IREF? 

4.  Disclaimer for reader.  TOPLNECT gives us an opportunity for a disclaimer in each CAS audit.

5.   When you log out at Ohio, it takes you to the survey page automatically.  You can decline to take the survey.  Fred wants it to link to the campus web site rather then to a survey.  Do we want a survey or not?  Would it be overly annoying to students who use CAS often? Should we go to campus home page or a survey?  How about the option of taking a survey OR going to the web home page.  Should we use a common survey?  Put under the help function?  Should we make it a link to a survey instead?  An indirect survey in the BOTLENECT?  Ask this of the user conference: how do other schools handle the survey issue. 

 6. Set-up for MnSCU campuses: 

a. Minimum of 5 to 10 full catalogs. What is enough to be a meaningful catalog?  Perhaps the U won't have a minimum.  Perhaps they would only have the largest feeder schools? 

            b. TA date ranges must be the same as in the IREF. 

            c. Hide non-FICE institutions: AP, CLEP.

            d. Generic and processing rules hidden: i.e., have 2.0, remedial, and unknown rules.

            e. Campus has to have a CAS administrator on a campus. 

            f. Must have CAS training.

            g. Group names must be meaningful to user

            h. Alternate and target course must be consistent.  ELECT vs. ELEC issues.

U of M administrators do the set up for the campuses.  Will the helpdesk set up the passwords?  Need to decide.

DATA LOAD-HOW OFTEN INITIALLY & IN THE FUTURE?

How frequently will the U make the update?  TA tables will be updated in Darwin daily.  Can the U just send TA?  Should it be done on the first and the 15th? Updating also requires that CAS is not available during that period of time.  This can be for 2 hours, making it 22/7, no longer 24/7.  Just send TA updates?  Currently, Gary sends 8 files.  Fred loads what is sent: this can be one file or 8 files.  Probably choose to send the IREF and TA.  Fred will look at everyone.  It is the U's decision for updates in Darwin.   Update at 1 or 2 the morning.  Should we publish certain down time on a daily basis?  Break it down in a period of time for a specific campus.  Nothing is available until the data is loaded, as the data has to be deleted first.  "You may not be able to access current data between x time and x time."     Outage in CAS never occurs if no new data exists.  “No new data, no outage.”  Another user conference question.

Gary: Students are least likely to be active on Sunday and Friday nights.  Gary suggestion:  updates on week ends.  (Earlier if needed to change).  This could be a survey question. 

John, Gary, Jason, and Margo to discuss who will be running the script that needs to be sent to the CAS server

SERVER PLANS

We have a better server at MnSCU then what we started with.  Continue using the current server until we can get the new MnSCU server.  Having use of the larger server would mean that someone (not Fred) would be watching the server as part of their normal tasks.  The server would be in production.  The larger server would not be available until after the first of the year. MnSCU would probably keep the old server for test use.

Sun to sun box.

MARKETING

UMACRO conference in Fargo, Oct. 26-28, 2003.  Laurie, Margo, and Mary will have a table in the vendor area, with one internet connection.  Handouts and banner will be created.

Laurie, and maybe Mary, will go to Rutgers to demo CAS for chief academic officers in a lab environment. 

Gary recommends:  “check the lunch hour schedule” before updates!!!!  Meaning that, making updates or changes to CAS during a presentation time is not good timing.  Make sure the technical types know what you are doing when you have a presentation. 

Touch the ear to reload.

If the IREF is in hide, don't pull the date.

Announcement to the public.  What are the marketing techniques?  Include in the next transfer guide to high school students?  Visits to colleges are in the fall term.  Should the announcement be mailed to students?  Handouts to students?  Currently, info on CAS from the U has been very limited.  Outsiders see things in DARS/CAS which is language limiting. Ask at the user conference also.   

Attempt to keep as many info pages generic to insure the seamless concept. 

FUTURE

Academic program questions processing questions, i.e., do you have an AA degree, does this school accept D grades?  If included, then the answer leads you to another spot on CAS.  MnSCU has decided to do these later, deciding that this is an incremental task.  The current version of CAS requires considerable set up to take advantage of academic program questions.  Might this be a default institution type of question, rather then the current set-up?   

Currently, do to the complexity, we doubt that any one is doing this now

This too may be a user group question and request of Miami.