UCosmic Stakeholder’s Meeting September 24, 2012

UCosmic Stakeholder’s Meeting

September 24, 2012

Orientation for New Members

Introduction of Consortium Staff

Dr. Mitch Leventhal, Executive Director

Dan Ludwig, Chief Technology Officer

Rebecca Smolar, Project Manager

What is UCosmic?

UCosmic is an online, open-source system that provides a means to comprehensively map global activities taking place across the institutional enterprise, enabling members to more aggressively leverage assets and achieve internationalization objectives

What services does the UCosmic Consortium provide?

1.System Development:-Members prioritize the development sequence carried out by the Chief Technology Office-Members can form mini-development teams and develop open source code to build and/or improve sections of the site.-Members can suggest improvements and additional functionality

What services does the UCosmic Consortium provide?

2. Project Management Support-Help with creation of deployment strategies

-Provide best practices and guidelines for data entry

-Provide problem-solving services

-Create Consortium-wide incentives

What services does the UCosmic Consortium provide?

3. Meetings and Communications Servicesa. Blog: http://ucosmic.wordpress.com/

b. 4 Stakeholder’s Meetings per year

c. Annual Conference

Choosing a project management team

The project management team can consist of two or more members.

1.Project Manager: Oversees campus implementation

2.IT Person: Helps integrate UCosmic with existing campus IT infrastructure

Choosing a project management team

3. Data Entry Personnel (Entry and/or Coordination) Who will be entering information on the agreements?

a. Initial upload of all agreements (dead,inactive, current

b. New agreements

Who will be maintaining the agreements section?a. Who will be entering faculty informationb. Who will be maintaining the faculty section

What data source currently exists on your campus?

For example: data from human resources, alumni association, sponsored research, registrar, university foundation, or from other software programs to manage agreements, study abroad, etc.

Do you need permission to upload data into UCosmic?

Staff approval?

Faculty approval?

Legal approval?

We recommend data push into the UCosmic. Data owners push data out of their system into UCosmic. A pull system involves accessing another office’s data.

Signing onto UCosmic and security systems

• Does your campus use a single sign-on system?

• Does your campus issue separate log-ins?

• What security concerns arise with the use of UCosmic?

UCosmic modules

• Phased roll-out of the modules: Sequencing of roll-out (to be discussed in more detail later)

• Agreements Sectiona. How to add an agreementb. What to do if you cannot find the partner

institution.

• Faculty Section (User Profiles)

Welcome and UCosmic Update

Key Staff

Dr. Mitch Leventhal, Executive Director

Dan Ludwig, Chief Technology Officer

Rebecca Smolar, Project Manager

Major achievements of the last 18 months

• January 2011: Formed Consortium

• June 2011: Agreements Module deployed

• September 2011: UserVoice Feedback system deployed

• June 2012: Faculty Activity Module deployed

Major achievements of the last 18 months

• May 2012: Banco Santander S.A., through its Santander Universities Global Division, awarded $290,000 to accelerate the development of the UCosmic® Consortium.

• September 2012: 20th member, Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center, joins UCosmic

Planned changes to the system: Faculty Sections

• Faculty Activity: Planned March – June 2012

• Faculty Pedigree: Tentatively planned December 2013 - March 2014 (more detail in next session)

• Faculty-Led Study Abroad Programs: Tentatively planned March - June 2014

Planned changes to the system: Alumni Section

It is under investigation. The timeline has not yet been determined.

Planned changes to the system: Student Sections

• Graduate Student Feeder Institutions: Planned October - December 2012

• Student Destination Countries for Education Abroad: Tentatively planned June - October 2014

• Incoming Exchange Student Feeder Institutions: Tentatively planned June - October 2014

• Student Organizations & Activities with International Focus: Tentatively planned October - December 2014

Representatives module: (Timeline TBD)

1. Application for Agency to Represent Institution

2. Signed Contracts between Agencies and Institutions

3. Agency Commission Financial Reporting

4. Public Search for Authorized Representative Locations

5. Tools for Institution to Manage Agency Relationships

Other modules

1. Travel Authorization (March – June 2013)

2. Corporate Engagement (June and October 2013)

3. Global Press (October and December 2013)

Getting Pilots Started: Agreements and Faculty Sections

Agreements Section Pilot

1. Upload 5 to 7 agreements2. If you cannot find a partner institutions, try uploading the partner by entering the institution’s website address 3. If you still cannot find the institutions, send a list to rebecca.smolar@Ucosmic.org with the institution’s name, website and the country

Autocomplete, Canonical Names, Search feature

1. User decides to add an agreement2. User sees an “Add Partner” button (replacing the current autocomplete text box)3. User clicks the Add Partner button4. User sees a new screen with a search box. They can type into it whatever they want. 5. The new screen also has a country dropdown, allowing users to scope their searches within a particular country

Autocomplete, Canonical Names, Search feature

6. User starts typing “Universidad de” into the search box.7. UCosmic immediately begins searching the database based on what the user typed into the search box, and what country is selected in the dropdown (if any). As the user types, UCosmic automatically updates a list of search results below the text box & dropdown. The search goes against all names, accounting for special characters that might not be on the user’s keyboard.

Autocomplete, Canonical Names, Search feature

8. The results display the following for all matched results:a.   The official name of the establishmentb.   The user’s translation of the establishment name (if it

exists, and if it is different from the official name)c.   The name that matched the search (if it is different

from… d.   The establishment’s official URLe.   The establishment’s URL for the user’s language (if

one exists, and is different from d)f.    The establishment’s country, and possibly second &

third level admin areas (states/provinces and counties or equivalents)

g.   A button to add the result as a partner to the agreement.

User Feedback Section1. Click on “Feedback and Support” link to add recommendation or browse existing feedback

Note: the link automatically categorizes the feedback/support request as related to the section (Faculty, Agreements, etc.)

2. Add Idea: title, text of idea, email, attach file

3. Browse Ideas: see all recommendations for each section

4. Vote for which ideas you want

5. Rebecca will mark which ones are under review and which ones are planned

Faculty Section: Planned changes for March 2012

Language Expertisei. Geographic Area(s)

ii. Nationality

iii. Country of Origin

iv. Campus Affiliations

v. Formal Education Outside the U.S.

vi. Faculty and Staff map (Possible)

How We Classify and Search for Data

1. Should we develop more drop-down windows to describe data fields?

2. Should we develop a standard list of common tags and definitions to help faculty and administrators input information?

- for agreements section?, for faculty section?

3. Do we need pop-ups to reminders for faculty and administrators to supply tags and other information?

4. What other functionality is needed to make searches more effective?

Project Management: Agreements Section

• Where do you find the information needed to fill out the agreements module?

• How much time does it take to load one agreement?

• What problems arise when entering an agreement?

• How much time is needed to maintain the section once all the agreements are uploaded?

Project Management: Agreements Section

• What are the challenges for maintaining the agreements section?

• What UCosmic functionality, campus support, or consortium support would be helpful to manage this section properly?

Project Management: Faculty Section

• What information is important to administrators and what information is important to faculty?

• What top-down approaches have you used to collect faculty data?

• What are the problems associated with top-down collection?

• How much time is involved in the top-down approaches?

• What bottom-up approaches have you used to collect faculty data?

Project Management: Faculty Section

• What are the problems associated with bottom-up collection?

• What are some of the common concerns voiced by faculty and how can these concerns be addressed?

• How much time is involved in the bottom-up approaches? (for administrators, for faculty)

• What are some of the best practices to maintain this module?

• What types of incentives should campuses or the UCosmic Consortium offer to encourage faculty to fill out profiles?

Alumni Section

• Connecting with LinkedIn

• Other sources of data

What’s Next? 1. Communications:

- How can we improve communications with

consortium members?

- Is the blog effective?

- Are there other tools that the Consortium should use to keep in touch?

What’s Next? 2. Stakeholder’s Meetings:

-Are 3 to 4 meeting a year enough, too much?

-What topics or themes do you want to be addressed in the coming sessions? We were thinking of focusing the next meeting (Nov 15) on preparing for full deployment of the Agreements module and focusing the spring meeting (date to be determined) on the Faculty section

-These meeting could be held in different locations around the world

What’s Next? 3. Annual Conference:-The annual conference could highlight best practices amongst the consortium members

-The conference could highlight other technology solutions to map campus internationalization

-The conference could be used to attract new members to the consortium

-What topics would you see as priorities for a conference (instead of stakeholder’s meeting)

-When should we hold it? Summer 2013?