Aarhus, June 2008
GA
Minutes of the general assembly
26th June 2008, Aarhus, Denmark

The annual meeting of the EUNIS General Assembly took place during the EUNIS2008 Conference in Aarhus, Denmark on 26 June 2008.

Present:

The President (Jean-François Desnos) took the chair. There were 26 member representatives and guests present.

1. Welcome and Registration of Representatives

The President welcomed new colleagues to their first meeting of the EUNIS General Assembly. Representatives of member institutions and organisations registered their presence at the meeting.

2. Report on EUNIS activities 2007-8

The Executive Secretary (Martin Price) led a review of EUNIS activities during the past year.

There were now 139 paid up members of EUNIS from 28 countries in Europe, plus Israel, Kazakhstan and USA. Both Microsoft and Oracle had resumed corporate membership after several years. Overall, membership had increased by 15% in 2007-8.

The Chair of the EUNIS E-Learning Task Force (Andrew Rothery) spoke about the Task Force’s activities in 2007-8:

“The EUNIS ELTF held a one-day meeting in January 2008 at the University of Malta, attended by 24 members, hosted by Robert Sultana. In addition the ELTF held a meeting at EUNIS2008 in Aarhus in June 2008, and its virtual worlds group held a meeting in Second Life. ELTF members participate in one or more of the different activity groups, and all groups discuss their work with the others at meetings, where developments and changes to the work of the Task Force is planned. Here are some examples of the ELTF activities.

  • Dorup E-Learning Award – The panel of judges shortlisted from over a dozen applications and invited the four finalists to present their work at a special session at EUNIS2008 Aarhus attended by members of Jens’ family. The Dørup Award Group having considered the success of the award will organise this again for 2009 with a view to this becoming a regular annual EUNIS event.
  • EUNIS E-Learning Snapshots – The Snapshots Group analysed data from the 2008 EUNIS Snapshots Survey and summarised the results in a paper written by the four group members, presented at EUNIS2008.
  • Future of E-Learning – Two group members published a paper at EUNIS2008 related to the earlier work of the group.
  • New Groups formed in 2008: 
    • Case Studies plans to gather e-learning case studies from ELTF members,
    • Virtual Worlds plans to arrange a series of visits to places and projects in Second Life during 2008 – 2009 and develop a network of educationalists across Europe,
    • E-Learning Platforms will compare views on the management and development of open platforms, and
    • Online repositories for e-learning will commence activities in October 2008 by first carrying out a survey of repositories and media files systems in use.”

The President (Jean-Francois Desnos) reported that a new EUNIS Management Information Systems Task Force had been set up a few days ago:

“The MIS-TF was created during the first workshop about “MIS national providers” (actually academic consortia). This workshop took place just before the EUNIS 2008 conference and at the same venue, University of Aarhus Lakeside Lecture Theatre. Around 50 people attended it.

On Monday 23rd June pm, each speaker presented his consortium: LADOK, HIS, MUCI, SURF, AMUE and CINECA.

On Tuesday June 24th June a.m., we had presentations and roundtables about:

The relations of the consortia with the universities and the IT industry

Trends and perspectives

European cooperation

LADOK was represented by Gunnar Backelin, Chief Executive for the Ladok Consortium;

HIS, by Uwe Hübner, Head of the Division “IT for Higher Education” at HIS;

MUCI, by Jan Madey, professor of informatics at the University of Warsaw, Director of Center for Open and Multimedia Education, and co-founder and the Board Member of MUCI;

SURF, by Bas Cordewener, Manager International Collaboration;

AMUE, by Jean-François Desnos, one of the founders of the GIGUE which became AMUE in 1997.

CINECA, by Simone Ravaioli, Director of International Affairs at KION/CINECA;

The participants decided to hold a next workshop in 2009 about the “national” tools (software and systems) for research management. The attendees suggested to invite also some other consortia: OCU Spain, Univ. of Brno Czech Rep, STADS Denmark, CSC Finland, OODI Finland, FS Norway, Uninett.

Aims of the TF: get organization and management ideas from other countries; share methods and principles; improve participation and influence of universities on their national providers; eventually share software pieces. “

EUNIS continues to collaborate with bodies with similar interests, including the national organizations in several European countries. The Vice President, Jan Madey, had represented EUNIS at a meeting of ZKI in Regensburg, Germany in February 2008.

It had been announced n the 2006 report to the General Assembly that EUNIS was contributing to the EARNEST Foresight Study led by TERENA. Martin Price is co-chairing the sub-study on Campus Issues. Jean-Francois Desnos, Rogelio Montanana, Michael Nowlan, Ligia Ribeiro and Martin Sutter are also working on the sub-study.

Competition for the ninth EUNIS Elite Award for Excellence had recently taken place for which Digitary had kindly agreed to donate the €2000 prize. The result of the competition would be announced at the end of EUNIS2008. The first Jens Dørup Award for E-Learning would also be announced during a special session at 2008, when four short-listed candidates would give presentations about their projects.with the first Award made, appropriately, at Jens’ home university of Århus.

A EUNIS wiki had been established by Paulo Alves (Portugal).

3. Financial Report

The Treasurer (Markku Kuula) presented the EUNIS Accounts for 2007-8, which showed an increase in the overall balance to €105,774.60 on 22 June 2007. The General Assembly formally approved the accounts.

The Treasurer also presented a proposed Budget for 2008-9. This differed slightly from the document circulated before the General Assembly by the addition of funding for a possible Rectors Seminar and a Task Force for MIS. There would be a relatively small deficit on the year of €7,500. The General Assembly approved the revised proposed Budget for 2008-9.

The Treasurer reported there would be no change in the annual membership fees for the year beginning 1 September 2008.

4. Proposals for future activities

The Executive Secretary reminded General Assembly representatives that the Board always welcomed discussing ideas for future activities in EUNIS.

5. EUNIS Statutes

The General Assembly unanimously approved the new version of EUNIS Statutes circulated by the President on 5 June 2008, with one minor alteration of wording in Article 9 to begin “The General Assembly consists of all the Representatives…..”

In brief the following changes were approved:

  • The definition of Regular Member makes less distinction between individual universities and national organisations, so it is clearer they are members on equal footing.
  • Council members are elected by member representatives at the General Assembly.
  • There are up to 24 members of Council, each one elected for 3 years.
  • Maximum of 2 Council members per country.
  • Up to 12 members of Board of Directors.
  • Past Presidents may attend Board meetings, but cannot vote (a present practice).
  • The annual Council meeting follows immediately after the annual GA meeting
6. Election of Council

For 3 years

—————

Paulo Alves (Portugal)

Kurt Grabher (Switzerland)

Tapani Kalmi (Finland)

Markku Kuula (Finland)

Jan Madey (Poland)

Andrew Rothery (UK)

Darina Tothova (Slovakia)

Ivan Vrana (Czech Republic)

 

For 2 years

—————

Bas Cordewener (Netherlands)

Lars Kayser (Denmark)

 

For 1 year

————-

Pierre Ageron (France)

Jean-Francois Desnos (France)

Grzegorz Jarzembski (Poland)

Viljan Mahnic (Slovenia)

Arsenio Reis (Portugal)

Peter Tinson (UK)

 

Martin Price , EUNIS Executive Secretary 24.9.2008