Minutes, 31 Oct Meeting

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In attendance were Alex Devereux, Bobbie Kraver, Richard Brincefield, Oris Friesen, and Maggie Martinez

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Discuss Arizona-wide Research Survey

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Maggie will work on the elearning survey for the corporate audience. The purpose is to generally find out who is doing what. Maggie will try and find an open source survey engine to use for this project. She should have a draft survey available in November for committee review. We plan to launch the survey in January with the membership drive. We will announce the results at the CEO Breakfast and Summit08. We will discuss the results in the Summit08 Research Workshop.

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Suggest a List of Priorities, Initiatives, and Next Steps for 2008

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The committee agreed on two areas to focus in 2008, including the (1) future of social networking and virtual worlds from all perspectives and (2) support of 21st Century skills initiatives. We will announce these topics in our membership drive and at Summit08. We will solicit ideas, comments, and suggestions from the membership and conference attendees.

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How do we emphasize the importance of research for the GAZeL membership
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The committee agreed that our purpose is to provide the membership with information that helps them keep track of what is going on in Education and Training. Especially, we want to provide the research that will help the membership benefit, particularly in making the right decisions, providing and using the right products and services, and improving results, performance, achievements, and ROI.

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Review future of web site

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We know that we cannot convert the Research site at trainingplace.org (done in moodle), so we will continue using the site as is. Anyone who would like to explore the site is invited to do at their convenience. The site logs show that the site is widely used. We will continue to put future research plans on the GAZeL sites and invite forum discussion. We will need to work on the login between drupal and moodle next.

It was a great meeting. Thanks everyone for your contributions.

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Agenda Items for 13 Dec Meeting

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- Discuss the draft Arizona-wide Research Survey (Decide who to send the survey to, write newspaper article, help from D of Commerce, ATC, Biz Journal, etc.)
- How we are going to add the Research Priorities, Initiatives, and Next Steps to the Summit08 agenda and membership drive?
- How do we emphasize the importance of research for the GAZeL membership?
- Ideas to generate interest in research forums
- Discuss the Research Strategic Workshop at the Feb 2008 Summit Conference (e.g., What's happening for eLearning research in Arizona, how to engage or get involved, how to transfer / receive knowledge, etc.). The challenge is how to get the research into the hands of the membership, especially the fearful, who hide behind tradition and convenience.
- Other Agenda items?

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Again, thanks for your good work and helping us with the GAZeL research interests and initiatives. Thank you!