Group A:
Budget, Membership and Core Services2
Group C:
Regional and Affiliate Working Group6
Group E:
Conference Planning. 13
Group F:
Electronic Issues, Outreach. 16
Participants: Lauren Rosen, Gamin Bartle, Teresa Johnson, Barbara
Sawhill (recorder), Jörg Waltje
§
MOTION: Lauren
moves that IALLT adopt the following membership fee structure effective in the
new fiscal year (July1st):
Educational members $50/year $90 /2 years
Full time student/Retired IALLT
members: $25 year
Library, institutional
subscriptions to journal: $60 / volume
Retired persons: $25/year and $40/
2 years
Commercial membership: $75/year
$140/ 2 years
§
We recommend that the President-elect be required to
make sure that the regional officers are in good financial standing as part of
his or her responsibilities
§
We recommend that
o
commercial members not have access to the member
database.√
o
membership have access to full Journal articles √
o
LLTI issues: recommend that the list serv be made “private” such that only Otmar can
see the email addresses√
o
abstracts of the Journal articles be available to all
and serve as an enticement to non-members to join the organization√
o
the Board encourage Otmar to make the addresses on the LLTI listserv “private” and not
accessible to anyone who might know how to access them. (per his suggestion in
his report to the Board) √
o
with regard to access to LLTI listserv: in his report
Otmar suggested that the listserv be available to members only. Our group recommends that the active
listserv remain open to the public but the archives be available to members
only. Recommend that conversations continue about this issue.
§
We would support the publication groups’
initiatives towards “raising the bar”
and having the IALLT journal’s articles represent the scholarship that is possible and evident in this developing
field.
§
We would recommend the IALLT journal consider including
a regular column about issues of tenure and language learning technology in
higher education.
§
We would recommend that the membership have access to
the Professional Statement drafted by Peter and David and encourage that this
document be revised continually and that it reflect the current state of the
profession. This in turn could perhaps
be used as a way of supporting tenure decisions for professionals in this
field.
§
We recommend that the regional groups’ conferences and
the biennial conference include frequent discussions of scholarship in the
field, tenure, “networking” between individuals with similar jobs, etc.
§
Recommend that the IALLT conference program committee
consider a one-day exhibitors pass as a way of encouraging new vendors.
§
Recommend that the program committee consider a big
name speaker for IALLT '03 with the hopes of developing revenue from public
participation that would benefit IALLT.
§
Recommend that donations made to the Graduate Student
Scholarship fund NOT be listed as a minimum donation of $20.
§
Recommend that on the membership registration forms a
box be created for tax-deductible donations.
Participants: Peter Liddell, Samantha
Earp (recorder), Read Gilgen, Ute Lahaie, Andrew Ross
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Participants: Harold Hendricks (recorder),Cindy
Bravo, Cindy Evans, Georgia Schlau, Jeff Samuels, Sara Wilson
§
What is working now and what is not?
o
Some regions have longevity, momentum. Others have struggled to remain alive. Part of the problem has to do with
personalities. What makes a good
regional group in terms of leadership?
o
SEALLT had been defunct for several years until Mark
Mallet took over. Recruited at ACTFL,
built organization, but got involved in other endeavors. Interest waned. Georgia was vice president and had hosted many meetings, has now taken
over. Will strongly advertise the
upcoming conference in Miami. Will try
to drum up enthusiasm in the states.
Charleston went so well because a lot of people came from outside the
region. Participation from South
Carolina hasn’t been so hot.
o
Often, a single person keeps things together and when
that person leaves…
o
In SOCALLT, it’s a small group (rather than a single
person) but we support and nudge each other along. It is important to choose a venue that people really want to go
to (Miami, New Orleans, etc.). Also,
the person who coordinates and plans needs to coordinate within the region.
o
Moving from a single personality to a small cadre, to a
larger working group is important, as well as location and a good facility with
new or cutting edge facilities and programs.
o
NERALLD determines the next meeting topic first, then
the venue of the meeting. The topic
drives the choices of venue. For
example, the next meeting is “Celebrate / Sell-ebrate Language Learning” and will meet at UMass Amherst even though
their center is defunct. Dartmouth
would have been more appropriate if it were a technical topic, for example.
o
Some groups have the host choose the topic while others
have the board determine it. Some
groups solicit suggestions from attendees and members.
o
Whereas NERALLD has a rather compact region, the extent
of the SOCALLT region is a challenge.
Their approach is to vary the location so as to keep people
interested.
o Balance between lab directors’ interests and faculty interests. (NEALLT) usually finds that on Sundays, it’s “lab directors” day. There is a core group and some others who come periodically.
o
Some groups send out mailings, others don’t. Some maintain an ongoing list, others have a
student search for names and emails. NERALLD produces 4 newsletters a year and sends the first pre-fall
meeting newsletter to all on the mailing list who do not specifically request
the electronic version. Postcard announcements of the spring meeting are sent
to the generic "ATTN: Lab Director" type listings in the database.
Post-meeting newsletters containing summaries of presentations given at the
fall and/or spring meetings are not sent to the generic "ATTN: Lab
Director" group.
o
Many times, the division between lab director stuff and
faculty issues and concerns is an artificial one. We need to know what faculty
are doing and they need to know what each other is doing (and what the labs and
media centers can do).
o
Another concern is that the meetings for regional
groups can take on a decisive bent toward either showcasing faculty endeavors
or lab director management and related issues.
o
SOCALLT has reached a critical mass – if it gets too
big, it becomes cumbersome for members running the conferences and for the
universities who might host. It’s not
always easy to find appropriate space for large presentations, or to have 2
tracks of presentations at once.
o
MAALLT seems to be somewhat cohesive and cozy; doesn’t
have the dichotomy of focus between lab directors’ issues and faculty
focus. Many of us are both. We have a core group of dedicated people who
are active regionally as well as in IALLT.
Our last conference had one track rather than several concurrent sessions,
which seems to work well.
o
SOCALLT finds that participants in the region often
become active in IALLT. Often they ask
for informal interactions, raising issues, discussions, bouncing ideas off each
other.
o
Some groups do workshops in addition to their regional
meetings. One or two mini
workshops. Hands-on workshops are
popular.
o
SOCALLT has to have 2-day meetings; others can do one
day. Some other groups do a workshop
afternoon and then the meeting itself is the following day.
o
SEALLT used to have 3 concurrent sessions, now they do
one. One concern is the quality of the
presentations. How does one assure of
the quality?
o
Sometimes, rather than to reject a submission, people
will be placed into a showcase rather than a formal presentation. SOCALLT will probably need to set limits the
following time. Others fine-tune the agenda
based on presenters’ time estimates.
Balance between encouraging new people and providing a forum for ongoing
members.
o
Once in a while, a presenter will show up, present, and
then leave. This doesn’t go over
well. Most of the time, people come and
participate throughout.
o
Some groups have a program coordinator for the
conference; others have their officers coordinate everything with the host
institution. Generally, at least the
president if not the whole board, has a hand in selecting presenters and
programming endeavors.
o
Responsibilities and officers’ titles vary from group
to group.
o
Idea: have a
drawing for early registrants – give away a flat screen monitor or similar
prize. That gets people to register and
to do so early.
o
Relationships with for-profit companies – most regional
groups do get support from companies such as Tandberg or Sony. Concern that our pursuit of funds should not
be at the expense of their involvement on the national/international
level. Some companies feel they reach more
of their target people via the regional meetings and via advertising in the
journals.
§
Hot Topics
§
Delegation of responsibilities among officers
§
Development of membership via mailings and other means
§
Meeting formats
§
Setting the themes
§
Duration of meetings
§
Multi-track vs. single group sessions
§
Optimal conference group sizes (often larger ones have
K-12 folks that come and go)
§
What is considered critical mass for a conference? (20 as a minimum?)
§
Finances as an issue – subsidies? Host institutions
covering some or all costs?
§
Need to enumerate all the obvious and hidden costs
§
Conference costs and membership costs – how much to
charge? Can you get Tandberg or Sony to
cover some? Related to this,
relationships with for-profit companies:
best way is to deal with their regional offices.
§
For the Group as a Whole
o
How can the IALLT board help the regional groups?
§
Could there be a standardized process for getting the
regional subsidy from IALLT, so that we don’t each have to approach Lauren individually
and ad hoc? Perhaps a specific
deadline? Could it be automatically
done or on an annual basis? Perhaps
rethink the whole thing?
·
**Resolved that we discontinue the $2 subsidy at the
end of fiscal year 2003.
§
Non-profit status – can we umbrella regionals under
IALLT? Should regionals become
“chapters” or if the officers are all IALLT members anyway, are they by
extension already able to enjoy this status?
·
**Recommend a meeting of the president or
representative of each regional group at each IALLT conference and SLM, and
that the IALLT 2003 meeting include a discussion of tax-exempt and non-profit
status based on research conducted by members of SLM 2002 working group.
o
**Recommend the northern US regions invite Canadians to
their regional meetings
o
K-12 outreach
§
**Each regional group undertake K-12 outreach as a
priority in ways appropriate to their region, including the use of financial
incentives, such as reduced or waived registration fees, to attract membership
and attendance at regional meetings.
Regional groups should also endeavor to communicate with K-12
organizations and state/local school systems within their region.
§
What is, and what should be, our relationship with
other national groups?
o
**Recommend that we continue to maintain a strong
relationship with these groups and to maintain an organizational presence at
their annual conferences.
o
Coordination of conference schedules:
§
Concern that IALLT will suffer because WorldCall and
CALICO are around the same time.
o
Are there other affiliations we should be looking
at? EDUCAUSE, K-12 organizations such
as ISTE, and AECT (Association for Educational Communication and
Technology).
§
**Recommend that regional groups investigate benefits
of communication and affiliation with other foreign language and
technology-related regional groups.
Participants: Lynne Crandall, Claire Bartlett,
Julie Evershed, Marlene Johnshoy, Reid Paxton, Bruce Parkhurst (recorder). Also
attending by conference call, for part of the meeting: Eric Granquist, Bruno
Browning.
§ Lynne provided a project overview and identified the priorities:
o To address the conference database issue, which is a decision needing to be made for the imminent future, for delivery of that package in time for use in IALLT’03.
o To confirm or identify the issues of interactions between the IALLT membership database and conference database package. This has been framed as the steps need to be taken to make those two entities talk to each other.
§
Discussion
o
Discussion began by touching base with other member
services database needs, in particular, the Journal, and others including the
consulting database. Marlene reported the Electronic Publications committee is still
sorting this out, and that pdf is the direction they are moving in, for the
online version of the Journal.
o
Claire gives an overview of what Rice is doing vis-a-vis
the conference package. For IALL’01, she had budgeted $8K to develop the conference
web site, to be remitted to the DACnet group (responsible for computer
programming projects at Rice). DACnet went under and the bill was never
consummated. (As a parenthetical, Claire notes that the conference was
successful as a moneymaker, which she thinks may be partly due to tracking of
funds). Claire held the money to ensure
that it would be there in case the bill showed up late in 2001. When it did not
appear, Rice advised her to keep the money at the lab. Instead, she has opted
to plough it back into IALLT conference organization efforts. (thumbs up to
Claire!).
o
Claire sent a bid to Web Services at Rice (the
replacement service for DACnet), to redesign and program the conference
package, and hopes to hear from them soon. (The initial, estimate was $6-8,000.)
o Claire enumerated the conference package design issues:
§
It must be editable - so that it can be
customized for each conference. The registration module in the IALL '01
database is dynamic in terms of records but not in terms of customization. A
problem of the previous version: progressive registration was not possible. The
new design must allow the user to log in, and then go back in to amend and
update registration as much as desired, until ready to pay.
§ The database should have full connectivity with the proposal module - so that program content can be massaged within the conference database and conference site. (The proposal module is built from the online ”presentation proposal” abstract submitted by presenters.)
o Claire does not know how Web Services will respond to the linkage requirement (to membership services) -- Marlene explained the FileMaker database for membership has been recently set up for membership verification thanks to a little scripting by Bruno. So now for instance the members only sections of the new web site are accessible to members only, in a short routine which runs automatically.
o Lynne brought Eric Granquist into the conversation by conference call. For Eric, Lynne reiterates the interaction requirements between the conference site and membership data and also asks Eric whether he has talked with Bruno about the structure and interaction between these two data stores. She explains that Bruno has already set up a little routine to handle yes/no queries to the membership database and has found that the problem was looking up people by their name - double listings can be problematic - and looking up by email also raises issues because people have multiple addresses, change jobs, etc. Marlene suggests we consider what happens when you look up someone who is NOT a member.
§ Discussion continues about various scenarios. Would registration frustration make people give up altogether? Reid Paxton made a point about eliminating complexities; Eric adds that technically you can do anything, but you want to avoid “points of wildness” and programming fussiness. About the inconsistencies and inherent problems with name redundancy, he says it would cost money to fix that hole - how much money it would cost to do is not known. The system needs to be able to survive. Claire suggests that WebServices may have a solution.
§ Claire explained the consequences of not being able to verify membership status: at Rice, 90 or 100 people registered as members who were not members, or were not members in good standing. Claire does not know if any analysis of the data, or follow-up was done. Lynne says there was follow-up in discussion, as well as communication with those in this category.
§ Reid pointed out that any such matters are especially problematic for those who wait until the last minute to register, just before registration cut offs and deadlines.