Moving Teacher Course Evaluation (TCE) System of UA Online!
January 29, 2009
Statement
UA should continue develop and maintain its own TCE System which is one of the best nationwide, and utilize this system to earn money for UA.
TCE IT Development team should be part of UITS FrontLine Services.
Due budget deficit TCE service must be provided only online.
The working group to serve such a big system as TCE for the entire university should normally include a Computing Manager Principal (= TCE Systems Administrator Principal) to design and oversee the entire process, an Application System Analyst/Developer (Senior or higher) to maintain and develop the TCE programming applications (currently in .NET 3.5), a Database Specialist (Senior or higher) to administer the TCE databases (currently SQL Server 2005) and create stored-procedures for data mining, a IT Systems Support Analyst (Senior or higher) to maintain the IT infrastructure, which totals to 4.0 FTE as minimum. In this case, it is possible to provide the online evaluation for entire UofA and cross train the staff and provide uninterrupted TCE processing.
To continue to provide the paper evaluation, two technicians position should be required to provide assistance and to print and scan the TCE forms (around 350,000 forms per year).
The TCE IT group (3.0 FTE) presently consists of Irina Yaroshevskaya (Computing Manager Principal), Yevgeniy Kaganov (Application Analyst Senior), and James Griffiths (Support System Analyst Senior). Our offices and server room are located in the MLK room 200 (A, B, C ...). That server room, our offices, TCE servers, our workstations and our group of three programmers, according to the UITS centralization plan, should belong to UITS Frontline services. We can continue to support the TCE printing and scanning group remotely along with serving other universities and colleges online and making profit for the UofA.
Our TCE system consists of 22 up-to-date ASP.NET web and VB.NET projects (more than 400 .NET and ASP program files, about 20 MB size), based on SQL Server databases, which include more than 200 tables, more than 400 stored-procedures, and more than 200 functions.
We have more than 1000 visitors weekly, and depending on the week, our users view anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000 web pages weekly. It produces more than 800,000 overall statistical reports annually.
It is capable to administer paper and online TCE http://aer.arizona.edu/AER/OnlineTCEHelp.asp).
It provides faculty and departments a possibility to customize their TCE questionnaires online (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEcustomization) in turn enabling, them to get more detailed feedback from students.
It delivers TCE reports to students, faculty and departments online. TCE reports help faculty to improve their teaching, students - to enroll in good classes, and departments in their P&T decisions. It lets departments to collect teaching load information and order TCE online (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEdataCollection/default.aspx)
TCE IT Group
(4.5 FTE in 2007, then has been cut to 3.5 FTE in March 2008, and to 3.0 FTE in January 2009)
1. TCE Input Systems (Computing Manager Principal, Database Specialist Senior as backup):
(Input sections data from central UA databases (currently UIS or IIW), Teaching Load and TCE ordering Data Collection for contacts, TCE Customization for departments and for faculty, TCE Online for students).
2. TCE Processing (Database Specialist Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(Calendar, Data Input, Emailing, Input Responses, Statistics Calculation, Tech. Support, TCE front web, TCE documentation, TCE consultations and workshops for faculty and departments)
2. TCE Output Systems (Application Analyst Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(TCE Department reports, TCE Faculty Reports, TCE Students -ASUA-reports, TCE Dean Reports, TCE interactive reporting, TCE dashboards).
3. TCE IT network – Web and Data Servers (IT Support Systems Analyst Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(TCE development and production infrastructure, Web Servers setup and maintenance, SQL Server databases administration and maintenance)
Paper TCE Processing Group, if continue (2 FTE)
(Printing, Packaging, Scanning, Customer Support)
Strategic Directions
1. TCE IT group should report to UITS according to the UITS centralization strategic plan.
Server room, offices, servers, and workstations in MLK room 200 (A, B, C, etc) stay with TCE IT group under UITS.
2. Paper TCE Processing group, if paper evaluation will be still provided, can stay with OIRPS or moved to UITS under supervision of Computing Manager Principal.
3. TCE IT group can continue support the Paper TCE processing group under agreement between UITS and OIRPS.
4. TCE IT group continue development and updates to the TCE systems by specifications from customers and from the Paper TCE Processing group under agreement between UITS and OIRPS.
5. TCE IT group can provide the TCE service to other Universities making money for UA.
6. TCE IT group can develop and provide other evaluation services for UA and for external customers, raising money for UA.
7. TCE IT group is to work with Mosaic development team on incorporation of the TCE System into Mosaic environment.
Budget
1. Moving TCE completely online will save money spent on ordering special expensive TCE forms (about 350,000 forms per year), cost for preprinting them, packaging in envelops, delivering to classes, scanning, entering scanned data, buying and maintaining scanners, printers and cartridges.
2. TCE IT group budget savings can be reached by better organization of TCE IT infrastructure and usage of VM capabilities.
3. TCE IT group will use UITS administration and payroll services.
4. TCE IT year salary (3.5FTE) is about $177,000 and can partly be funded from auxiliary account.
5. TCE hardware yearly cost is about $30,000.
6. TCE Systems like our TCE can be sold to another university for about $100K.
7. UA can serve other universities using existing TCE System for $10K-$30K yearly depending of university size.
8. Stop development of already existent, best and advanced TCE and buying and implementing some not so advanced system is a wasting of UA money and lost of UA possible profit.
Pluses and minuses of development instead of outsourcing
1. Plus - Investment in UA staff: Investment into software development inside of the UA supports UA staff with higher skills instead of paying to outside company for high level skills and hire for UA staff with low level skills for serving an outside product.
2. Plus - Ownership: Having own UA TCE System gives UA possibility of earning money by implementing this system for other universities or selling this system to some software development company.
3. Plus - Reusability: Software of TCE System can be used for development of other similar evaluation systems (like Staff and Supervisor Evaluation System, Office Evaluation System, etc…) for UA and for serving other universities.
4. Plus - flexibility: Software of TCE System can be easily customized and developed by future requests.
5. Minus - reliability: UA should provide reliability for its own TCE System.
6. Solution: TCE IT staff should be cross-trained and have backup for each member of the group.
7. Plus - UA academic program in Computer Science: Computer Science and MIS students can be involved in the real live development.
8. Plus - Cooperation with PeopleSoft: UA TCE System can be incorporated into the PeopleSoft solution for other universities.
TCE IT Development group: 1/30/09
Irina Yaroshevskaya, PhD, Computing Manager Principal
Yevgeniy Kaganov, MS, Application Analyst Senior
James Griffith, Support System Analyst Senior
Since we seem to be looking for a last-minute, save-the-day, bigger bang for the campus IT buck, so to speak, we might consider outsourcing UA campus IT leadership. Outsourcing the top echelon of highly paid administrative IT positions, with the sincere hope that something good can come from it, could make for a substantial savings to the University.
An advantage to this administrative outsourcing approach could, might, kinda’, sorta’, possibly be the benefits of using a professional management organization to encourage a healthy campus IT culture. Such an organization might initiate internal cross training and hiring processes that would further strengthen the University by giving campus IT personal a career path to buy into and increased opportunity to care about processes and outcomes. This outsourced approach to management would recognize the tremendous resources at hand, including but not limited to, a dedicated, hard working IT staff and a captive student body interested in real-world, on-the-job training that could lead to full-time campus employment down the road after training by a fully-supported professional staff. We’re hopeful, anyway.
There are other advantages of this particular outsourcing approach, with the most obvious being the increased cost savings by replacing several high-paid positions rather than the nickel and diming of letting go a larger number of lower paid workers who actually have the institutional, in-the-trenches knowledge that keeps the IT wheels turning here.
However this comes out, you pays your money and takes your chances. There is no guarantee of success in outsourcing the jobs and duties of IT workers. Especially in a volatile economic environment with a less-than-supportive state legislature in place, putting all your apples in an outsourced environment may prove more costly than previously considered. Once invincible, top-line businesses are falling by the wayside or faltering badly. Storefronts are being boarded all over the country. Very few businesses are immune to these phenomena, including Google, Microsoft and others. With the administrative outsourcing approach, there would be just a few administrators being outsourced while the rest of the staff remains in place, meaning the exposure to this risk greatly decreases.
Even if the administrative outsourcing fails, with the new internal training and hiring processes in place, personal will have been groomed to meet this circumstance and a properly trained middle management would be promoted into the reinstated leadership positions. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. Well, expect for a handful of current administrators, who will no doubt be greatly missed.
The lack of leadership ability to train and keep quality IT workers shouldn’t be taken out on the staff and the educational mission of this University. This is easily resolved by outsourcing leadership to a group with the insight and vision to create an environment where employees and their potential are valued beyond their immediate, short-term usefulness to the organization. In trying times, wise leadership closes ranks for protection, rather than opening themselves up to more exposure.
This proposal should replace the other UITS proposal, and UITS should stay honed on collaboration with campus IT people as the best way to get things done in the present environment.
I understand after reading this why UITS personnel are shaking with fear. If this proposal advances, they will definitely be losing some positions.
But, as far as "hands-on Faculty support", I don't see how this threatens us. Maybe the scare is in the combination of Proposal 1 with Proposal 2. Proposal 1 calls for all IT positions to be accountable to the CIO while Proposal 2 calls for significant outsourcing. Together, the proposals paint a scary picture of job losses and quixotic cost cutting measures.
However, there is nothing by itself in Proposal 2 that I find disagreeable. The 13 goals for UITS in the mission statement are admirable and appropriate. Like Mr. Luiten wrote, I wish UITS the best of luck.
I read a couple areas that gave me hope that this plan might address some of our concerns with the first plan:
"...Partner with the campus community to make information technology services the most efficient, reliable and accessible to support the mission of the institution..."
"...One idea is to rely more heavily on the distributed departmental resources that currently exist for hands-on faculty support both in the classroom and in the lab...."
"..."FISH!" philosophy..."
Outsourcing is sometimes problematic--especially user support services, but it can provide a mechanism for rapid response to changing needs and priorities. I am certain we will find areas in which we rethink outsourcing as we gain experience. Certainly ASU is making heavy use of such outsourcing in its support of their administrative data systems
All in all, I am reasonably optimistic concerning this proposal. It is very much in line with general nationwide trends in University IT. I wish UITS well.
Comments
Moving Teacher Course
Moving Teacher Course Evaluation (TCE) System of UA Online!
January 29, 2009
Statement
UA should continue develop and maintain its own TCE System which is one of the best nationwide, and utilize this system to earn money for UA.
TCE IT Development team should be part of UITS FrontLine Services.
Due budget deficit TCE service must be provided only online.
The working group to serve such a big system as TCE for the entire university should normally include a Computing Manager Principal (= TCE Systems Administrator Principal) to design and oversee the entire process, an Application System Analyst/Developer (Senior or higher) to maintain and develop the TCE programming applications (currently in .NET 3.5), a Database Specialist (Senior or higher) to administer the TCE databases (currently SQL Server 2005) and create stored-procedures for data mining, a IT Systems Support Analyst (Senior or higher) to maintain the IT infrastructure, which totals to 4.0 FTE as minimum. In this case, it is possible to provide the online evaluation for entire UofA and cross train the staff and provide uninterrupted TCE processing.
To continue to provide the paper evaluation, two technicians position should be required to provide assistance and to print and scan the TCE forms (around 350,000 forms per year).
The TCE IT group (3.0 FTE) presently consists of Irina Yaroshevskaya (Computing Manager Principal), Yevgeniy Kaganov (Application Analyst Senior), and James Griffiths (Support System Analyst Senior). Our offices and server room are located in the MLK room 200 (A, B, C ...). That server room, our offices, TCE servers, our workstations and our group of three programmers, according to the UITS centralization plan, should belong to UITS Frontline services. We can continue to support the TCE printing and scanning group remotely along with serving other universities and colleges online and making profit for the UofA.
Background
Teacher Course Evaluation system has been developed locally and has served the University Of Arizona for more than 15 years, and we are proud to say that our TCE system is now one of the most advanced TCE systems in US. It produces result reports faster, then any other TCE systems and opens them for:
students (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEstudentReports/ ),
faculty (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEfacultyReports/ ),
departments (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEDepartmentReports/ ),
and administration (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEDeanReports/),
Our TCE system consists of 22 up-to-date ASP.NET web and VB.NET projects (more than 400 .NET and ASP program files, about 20 MB size), based on SQL Server databases, which include more than 200 tables, more than 400 stored-procedures, and more than 200 functions.
We have more than 1000 visitors weekly, and depending on the week, our users view anywhere from 15,000 to 40,000 web pages weekly. It produces more than 800,000 overall statistical reports annually.
It is capable to administer paper and online TCE http://aer.arizona.edu/AER/OnlineTCEHelp.asp).
It provides faculty and departments a possibility to customize their TCE questionnaires online (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEcustomization) in turn enabling, them to get more detailed feedback from students.
It delivers TCE reports to students, faculty and departments online. TCE reports help faculty to improve their teaching, students - to enroll in good classes, and departments in their P&T decisions. It lets departments to collect teaching load information and order TCE online (https://tce.oirps.arizona.edu/TCEdataCollection/default.aspx)
TCE IT Group
(4.5 FTE in 2007, then has been cut to 3.5 FTE in March 2008, and to 3.0 FTE in January 2009)
1. TCE Input Systems (Computing Manager Principal, Database Specialist Senior as backup):
(Input sections data from central UA databases (currently UIS or IIW), Teaching Load and TCE ordering Data Collection for contacts, TCE Customization for departments and for faculty, TCE Online for students).
2. TCE Processing (Database Specialist Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(Calendar, Data Input, Emailing, Input Responses, Statistics Calculation, Tech. Support, TCE front web, TCE documentation, TCE consultations and workshops for faculty and departments)
2. TCE Output Systems (Application Analyst Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(TCE Department reports, TCE Faculty Reports, TCE Students -ASUA-reports, TCE Dean Reports, TCE interactive reporting, TCE dashboards).
3. TCE IT network – Web and Data Servers (IT Support Systems Analyst Senior, Computing Manager Principal as backup):
(TCE development and production infrastructure, Web Servers setup and maintenance, SQL Server databases administration and maintenance)
Paper TCE Processing Group, if continue (2 FTE)
(Printing, Packaging, Scanning, Customer Support)
Strategic Directions
1. TCE IT group should report to UITS according to the UITS centralization strategic plan.
Server room, offices, servers, and workstations in MLK room 200 (A, B, C, etc) stay with TCE IT group under UITS.
2. Paper TCE Processing group, if paper evaluation will be still provided, can stay with OIRPS or moved to UITS under supervision of Computing Manager Principal.
3. TCE IT group can continue support the Paper TCE processing group under agreement between UITS and OIRPS.
4. TCE IT group continue development and updates to the TCE systems by specifications from customers and from the Paper TCE Processing group under agreement between UITS and OIRPS.
5. TCE IT group can provide the TCE service to other Universities making money for UA.
6. TCE IT group can develop and provide other evaluation services for UA and for external customers, raising money for UA.
7. TCE IT group is to work with Mosaic development team on incorporation of the TCE System into Mosaic environment.
Budget
1. Moving TCE completely online will save money spent on ordering special expensive TCE forms (about 350,000 forms per year), cost for preprinting them, packaging in envelops, delivering to classes, scanning, entering scanned data, buying and maintaining scanners, printers and cartridges.
2. TCE IT group budget savings can be reached by better organization of TCE IT infrastructure and usage of VM capabilities.
3. TCE IT group will use UITS administration and payroll services.
4. TCE IT year salary (3.5FTE) is about $177,000 and can partly be funded from auxiliary account.
5. TCE hardware yearly cost is about $30,000.
6. TCE Systems like our TCE can be sold to another university for about $100K.
7. UA can serve other universities using existing TCE System for $10K-$30K yearly depending of university size.
8. Stop development of already existent, best and advanced TCE and buying and implementing some not so advanced system is a wasting of UA money and lost of UA possible profit.
Pluses and minuses of development instead of outsourcing
1. Plus - Investment in UA staff: Investment into software development inside of the UA supports UA staff with higher skills instead of paying to outside company for high level skills and hire for UA staff with low level skills for serving an outside product.
2. Plus - Ownership: Having own UA TCE System gives UA possibility of earning money by implementing this system for other universities or selling this system to some software development company.
3. Plus - Reusability: Software of TCE System can be used for development of other similar evaluation systems (like Staff and Supervisor Evaluation System, Office Evaluation System, etc…) for UA and for serving other universities.
4. Plus - flexibility: Software of TCE System can be easily customized and developed by future requests.
5. Minus - reliability: UA should provide reliability for its own TCE System.
6. Solution: TCE IT staff should be cross-trained and have backup for each member of the group.
7. Plus - UA academic program in Computer Science: Computer Science and MIS students can be involved in the real live development.
8. Plus - Cooperation with PeopleSoft: UA TCE System can be incorporated into the PeopleSoft solution for other universities.
TCE IT Development group: 1/30/09
Irina Yaroshevskaya, PhD, Computing Manager Principal
Yevgeniy Kaganov, MS, Application Analyst Senior
James Griffith, Support System Analyst Senior
Since we seem to be looking
Since we seem to be looking for a last-minute, save-the-day, bigger bang for the campus IT buck, so to speak, we might consider outsourcing UA campus IT leadership. Outsourcing the top echelon of highly paid administrative IT positions, with the sincere hope that something good can come from it, could make for a substantial savings to the University.
An advantage to this administrative outsourcing approach could, might, kinda’, sorta’, possibly be the benefits of using a professional management organization to encourage a healthy campus IT culture. Such an organization might initiate internal cross training and hiring processes that would further strengthen the University by giving campus IT personal a career path to buy into and increased opportunity to care about processes and outcomes. This outsourced approach to management would recognize the tremendous resources at hand, including but not limited to, a dedicated, hard working IT staff and a captive student body interested in real-world, on-the-job training that could lead to full-time campus employment down the road after training by a fully-supported professional staff. We’re hopeful, anyway.
There are other advantages of this particular outsourcing approach, with the most obvious being the increased cost savings by replacing several high-paid positions rather than the nickel and diming of letting go a larger number of lower paid workers who actually have the institutional, in-the-trenches knowledge that keeps the IT wheels turning here.
However this comes out, you pays your money and takes your chances. There is no guarantee of success in outsourcing the jobs and duties of IT workers. Especially in a volatile economic environment with a less-than-supportive state legislature in place, putting all your apples in an outsourced environment may prove more costly than previously considered. Once invincible, top-line businesses are falling by the wayside or faltering badly. Storefronts are being boarded all over the country. Very few businesses are immune to these phenomena, including Google, Microsoft and others. With the administrative outsourcing approach, there would be just a few administrators being outsourced while the rest of the staff remains in place, meaning the exposure to this risk greatly decreases.
Even if the administrative outsourcing fails, with the new internal training and hiring processes in place, personal will have been groomed to meet this circumstance and a properly trained middle management would be promoted into the reinstated leadership positions. It’s a win-win situation for everyone involved. Well, expect for a handful of current administrators, who will no doubt be greatly missed.
The lack of leadership ability to train and keep quality IT workers shouldn’t be taken out on the staff and the educational mission of this University. This is easily resolved by outsourcing leadership to a group with the insight and vision to create an environment where employees and their potential are valued beyond their immediate, short-term usefulness to the organization. In trying times, wise leadership closes ranks for protection, rather than opening themselves up to more exposure.
This proposal should replace
This proposal should replace the other UITS proposal, and UITS should stay honed on collaboration with campus IT people as the best way to get things done in the present environment.
I understand after reading
I understand after reading this why UITS personnel are shaking with fear. If this proposal advances, they will definitely be losing some positions.
But, as far as "hands-on Faculty support", I don't see how this threatens us. Maybe the scare is in the combination of Proposal 1 with Proposal 2. Proposal 1 calls for all IT positions to be accountable to the CIO while Proposal 2 calls for significant outsourcing. Together, the proposals paint a scary picture of job losses and quixotic cost cutting measures.
However, there is nothing by itself in Proposal 2 that I find disagreeable. The 13 goals for UITS in the mission statement are admirable and appropriate. Like Mr. Luiten wrote, I wish UITS the best of luck.
I read a couple areas that
I read a couple areas that gave me hope that this plan might address some of our concerns with the first plan:
"...Partner with the campus community to make information technology services the most efficient, reliable and accessible to support the mission of the institution..."
"...One idea is to rely more heavily on the distributed departmental resources that currently exist for hands-on faculty support both in the classroom and in the lab...."
"..."FISH!" philosophy..."
Outsourcing is sometimes problematic--especially user support services, but it can provide a mechanism for rapid response to changing needs and priorities. I am certain we will find areas in which we rethink outsourcing as we gain experience. Certainly ASU is making heavy use of such outsourcing in its support of their administrative data systems
All in all, I am reasonably optimistic concerning this proposal. It is very much in line with general nationwide trends in University IT. I wish UITS well.
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