The Education Committee met for the last time before merging with the Regional Institutes Committee to become the new (ta-da) Eduation Committee.
Susan Logue, as LITA board liaison, reported on the board meeting and shared information about the board’s assignments and expectations for the newly merged committee.
Included in the charge for the new committee are these points:
- Create 3-5 short online events
- Create liaisons to LITA interest groups for ideas
- Create an education committee wiki and supply editor for it from the committee members
- Create and maintain list of tools for educational initiatives
- Monitor delivery of 2 institutional repositories’ offerings including an evaluation tool
- Goal for the committee is to have two new courses per year
Discussion by all members present centered on how to fulfill these assignments, whether it was possible to do so by a volunteer committee, and where to begin. The committee agreed on the need to do the educational needs survey first.
Mark Wahrenbrock discussed his sample survey that was previously distributed to committee members. He will collect questions from the committee members and compile them into a survey that can be sent to LITA members using Survey Monkey which is available through the ALA office.
cj
I recall reading but cannot find that ALA passed a resolution at Annual urging organizations to utilize Section 508 compliant products when deploying technology. SurveyMonkey is not Section 508 compliant. I found this out when I realized that we were required as a government entity to utilize Section 508 compliant products when possible. I wrote SurveyMonkey and they confirmed this. The only product I know of that claims to be currently Section 508 compliant is SurveyGizmo. There are most likely others, but I have not come across them in my research and stopped after I found SurveyGizmo as it has the feature set that we needed and claimed to be compliant. It is not clear to me who really establishes whether something is or is not compliant, but just somethign to be aware of as you conduct your surveys.
bspivey
I have confirmed with the LITA office that Survey Monkey is the product that is in use at ALA.
Chris Finley
Effective June 5, 2008 SurveyMonkey.com surveys are certified Section 508 compliant. We are in the process of updating our website today to reflect the certification.