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• Evaluation

Core Services Update 2008

This is an update of our Core Services Plan for 2009 and beyond. Phase One was completed over the past summer, with the roll-out of Courses (the curriculum management system formerly known as ModCore) and the re-engineering of COMTrac (the COM registrar’s system). The central core of 1) identity management (IDCore and FIND), 2) class rosters and gradebooks (Courses), and 3) COMTrac underpin all our current development efforts. The flowchart graphic (click to enlarge) shows this core in the context of other major systems. The table below provides more detail. Note the small red x’s indicating elimination of manual or redundant processes.

Phase One also included the new MedInfo Sites service, on which you are reading this post. Sites provides a simple means to publish and maintain websites and is available to all COM organizational units.

Phase Two is well under way at the time of this writing. One part involves re-engineering of IDCore and FIND to further improve identity management. Of particular importance is a new interface to the master campus directory (Bridges). This will allow us to retire the older and inaccurate LDAP interface. The ultimate goal is to have the most up to date and valid information on people and their roles within the College.

A parallel development effort addresses faculty and course evaluations. These will move from the legacy Evalsuite system into Courses. We are working with the Evaluation Sub-Committee to define a standard set of faculty evaluations forms. The timing and assignment of evaluations will be based on course rosters and schedules. This will be mostly automatic and eliminate a large amount of manual work necessary to maintain the older system. We anticipate deploying this service in time for the Spring 2009 evaluation cycle.

Phase Three will probably begin in late Spring 2009. In addition to continued refinements of the systems outlined above, we will start work on a “Communications Core” or CommCore. Portions of this system are already in place, handling “tickler” notifications for Courses and secure exchange of documents between faculty. CommCore will provide a communications hub for systems and people. The ultimate goal is to replace the ever problematic listservs and rein-in excessive email.

Older documentation from 2007 and earlier is still available online at http://medinfo.ufl.edu/omi/docs/core_services/.

Richard Rathe, MD