GAT Meeting - 2018-08-15

Owned by Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)
Last updated: Nov 09, 2018
6 min read

The meeting was held via WebEx from 11 to 12:30 pm CT.

Agenda

  1. Follow up from last month’s meeting
    • Meeting minutes – 2018-07-11
    • Ed-Fi SIS Certification De-composition Proposal (Eric)
    • Survey/poll for surfacing future use cases – volunteer needed
  2. Community work group reports
    • Finance Work Group (Maureen
    • Assessment Work Group (Dean)
  3. Project Unicorn/Mothra update (Rick/Nancy)
  4. Governance activities (Chris)
    • Review of Community IP Policy
    • Establishing community workgroup for “Dashboard Destiny”
    • Governance proposal workflows
  5. Next steps and key dates

 LINK TO MEETING PPT

Participation

Members:

Support:

Meeting Minutes

Refer to the meeting PPT (link above) for additional details on the meeting minutes and discussions.

When available, meeting minutes should be read, and any corrections sent to Chris. All GAT members should ensure they have access to Tech Docs. 

No comments on minutes from July meeting.

Follow-up Discussion: Proposal to decompose of Ed-Fi SIS certification

The decomposition proposal was sent back last month to the TAG. Two options were considered: (a) developing a strategy for capacity building of vendors, and (b) consideration of separating identified domains (Special Ed or SPED and Discipline) into standalone certifications. There was interest among the TAG members in the second option (separating) especially for SPED. There is concern that this domain is not robust enough to be actualized and is in need of further development. The TAG is calling out to the Ed-Fi Community for a SPED SIG (or possibly a work group) to develop the special ed model which may lead to certification. The decomposition proposal as such will not be put forward now. Rather the SIG or work group for SPED can be a first step to specifying a decomposed SIS or alternative paths to full SIS certification.

There was a request from the GAT for a draft special ed certification timeline from Eric. To address this, a “call for interest” will be published in the next Ed-Fi newsletter, and the TAG will discuss the results of that to determine if there is sufficient community interest. The suggestion was made that it may be better as SIG for now.

Overall, the TAG understands the rationale for the decomposition options. That said, the SIS vendors have a compelling reason to certify in “one shot” to avoid taking more time away from product development. If there are multiple certifications, the preference is to be able to do them all together to maximize resources.

Discussion: Community members’ pain points/challenges

There was a suggestion for a survey or poll on Ed-Fi Community members’ pain points prior to the upcoming Summit. Request made of the GAT members to work on developing this. This would be to elicit Community input on current challenges (pain points) and future priorities such as the previously mentioned social-emotional learning (SEL). The leads on this would work on drafting the survey and the Ed-Fi Alliance would do the mechanics of administering it. A suggestion was made to use Ticket Tracker to help with this.

In addition to SEL, several topics have been identified including special education, learning tools, transportation and security/privacy. This is all where a need for extensions has surfaced so the question is should this be anchored on considerations for changes to the data model and extensions? We want a mix of general and specific pain points. Chris will work with the Alliance to draft a strawman and circulate to the GAT for comments.

Finance Work Group Report (Maureen)

 The FWG has sent out alternative finance models for members’ review and comments. Feedback will be collected at the FWG virtual meeting on Sept. 6, with further discussion at the in-person meeting on October 9 and will result in the selection of a proposed model to be submitted to the GAT. The GAT endorsed asking the TAG to engage with the AWG and assist with technical review and advise on proposed approaches. The link to the current model and two options based on work with Wisconsin can be found here.

Assessment Work Group Report (Dean)

 There have been multiple AWG meetings in July and August of the full group and the API and Use Case subgroups. The focus of the Use Case work has been on the development of a Put/Get Use Case proposal which has been led by Ted Dwyer of Pittsburgh. The API Adoption and Awareness members have worked with Rick Rozzelle on finalizing a contact list and tracking mechanism for vendor interaction deliverables. Drafts of these two documents can be found here.

 It is important to identify what the end game is with the assessment vendor tracking mechanism for API adoption.  Consideration should be given as to how the information is to be shared or publicized such that it is constructive without becoming a “shaming” mechanism.   

Update and Discussion: Project Unicorn/Mothra

 Project Unicorn has signed up more than 419 school districts and CMOs and 64 vendors who commit to the pledge for improving the transparency of data interoperability and empowering districts to be smart consumers.

Project Mothra is separate from Project Unicorn with an objective of creating a members-only (Data Whiz Community) inventory of the technology products used by schools to identify common leverage points, places to collaborate and shared challenges they can work on together. They have also created a repository of data visualizations and flows that their community of practice members developed for their staff and students.

There is confidential pricing information in Project Mothra.  Differences in interoperability options that some customers are getting are shared also. Mothra is mainly comprised of smaller education organizations and charters. This is one of several groups that are collecting and sharing this type of information around tools and resources being used for different purposes. How does one access the full scope of what is being paid for multiple outcomes?

Project Unicorn has been effective in reaching a diverse community of organizations, agencies and vendors and offers free resources. It can be difficult to get such a pledge signed if an endorsement without concrete return/benefit has to be approved by a school board. Beyond a statement this effort may need a rationale that results in access to specific resources, to help districts justify to their boards why signing is important.

It can be difficult to determine what a proposal is saying versus what will be done. The value of having a user-focused rating system would be valuable.  Another point was made that access to users’ contact information would be better than ratings. There are sites (such as California’s School Technology Leadership) that have ratings of thousands of tools. 

What set of data points would be most helpful and/or drive improvement?  A Yelp aspect to indicate specific outcomes in specific implementations would be helpful. Would be better to have fewer of such collections but more thorough and broadly supported. Next step would be to get Community input of whether Ed-Fi should take this on.  Potential survey question could be “When selecting a new technology vendor how do you gauge their effectiveness?”

Discussion: Dashboard Destiny Work Group

 The criteria for establishing a work group was reviewed.  Several agencies have been identified concerning a potential work group for the dashboard destiny including FL CODE, Nebraska, Delaware, Wisconsin and Tulsa.  The next step is to publish a call for participation in the Ed-Fi newsletter, with the objective of gathering enough interest to convene a meeting at the Ed-Fi Summit in October. The concern was expressed that the “bright-shiny object” as represented by the dashboard is key to further adoption.  A DBA position presented to a school board for approval appears to be fluff in a budget unless you can tie this to a dashboard and getting that developed.  The (smaller) districts that need dashboards might be under represented at the Summit, while at the same these are the organizations that can least afford to develop their own dashboards and also have the least understanding of the interoperability benefits of Ed-Fi in the absence of a dashboard.  

Upcoming dates

Virtual GAT meeting: Wednesday, Sept. 20, 2018 from 11 to 12:30 pm CT

In-person GAT meeting: Wednesday, Oct. 10, 2018 from 9 to 10:30 am CT 

Action Items

  • GAT members to review minutes from 2018-8-15 meeting
  • A “call for interest” regarding development of the SPED domain will be published in the next Ed-Fi newsletter, and the TAG will discuss the results of that to determine if there is sufficient community interest (Eric Jansson)
  • Survey of Ed-Fi Community pain points/challenges to be drafted and distributed to GAT members for their review (Chris Moffatt (Deactivated))
  • Next steps for the formation of Dashboard Destiny work group are:
  • The Intellectual Property (IP) Policy was reviewed and endorsed by the GAT. Next steps are to:
    • Post the IP policy to the Governance site (Chris Moffatt (Deactivated)) - DONE - posted here.
    • Integrate communication anad education about the IP policy into work group processes (FWG and AWG leads).