TAG Departmental Website Proposal at the Faculty Senate

12 04 2013

Today, Jeremy presented the TAG proposal for the upkeep and maintenance of the departmental websites to the faculty senate for feedback. The proposal was briefly overviewed by Jeremy, who then opened the floor for comments and responses from the faculty to such a proposal. A brief summary of the comments follows.

  • Many of the faculty were in support of the proposal, agreeing that the time involved in updating the website is a barrier to frequent updates. Often mentioned was the idea that we faculty are often not experts in the display of such information. Thus, a number of faculty were in support of the document.
  • The provost, Hal Baille, commented that the Committee for University Image and Promotion is aware of this proposal and in support of such a position. He emphasized the fact that, more than a public relations issue, the departmental websites are an admissions issue. Getting quality students, especially in a time when universities are competing for good students, means having a standout webpage. More than half of the incoming students use the university webpage as a very important criterion for determining which university they attend. Thus, it is very valuable, from an admissions perspective, to attract quality students, and the website is an important tool in the process.
  • A comment was made about the University’s web infrastructure, and that spending money on such a position may only be a small bandage on a problematic, and potentially outdated infrastructure. One Senator commented that the webservers run software that is costly run when there are cheaper, more-secure options that may be available, which can allow webpages to run more common web software packages, such as WordPress, PhP, or MySQL.
  • Another Senator questioned the necessity of such a position and the frequency of needed updates. Certain departments and programs, the Senator stated, simply may not have updates that can or should be implemented on a regular basis. If this is a consistent event across many of the departments, forcing updates may not make for a better website. Another Senator disagreed, stating that certain national accrediting bodies require yearly updates of programatic content on websites, so, at a minimum, such updates can an should be made. In addition, it was stated that such updates are not “easy” for faculty and staff to implement.
  • In terms of the staffing of the position, it was suggested to explore the current employees of the university before requesting an external hire. There may be current employees and/or positions with the appropriate skill set that can be re-purposed to fill this role. It is important to mention here, that the website proposal group did not feel that it was within its purview to make financial or administrative recommendations about this position. We simply request that such a position exist, and that it should be within the administrative sections of the University to decide the specifics of such a position. This group does recommend, and will make explicit in future versions of the proposal, that due to the extensive collaboration with faculty that this position should be housed within Academic Affairs.
  • Other faculty expressed concerns that this position could be used as a tool for Public Relations as opposed to a vehicle for expression of the faculty and their departments. It is not the intention of the sub-group that this position interfere in any way with the web-based expression of any faculty member. Our group intends that this position be a tool for faculty to assist them in presenting content in the form desired by the faculty of that department. This position should assist faculty, not remove them from the process. Faculty and departments will not be required to use this position, but this subgroup feels that it should exist as an option for those that do. Furthermore, we feel that there are sufficient departments and faculty that will make use of such a position to make it worthwhile.

TAG is currently working on implementing all the above suggestions into the next version of this proposal and thanks everyone at the Senate meeting for their participation and lively discussion. As always, anyone with comments, questions, or feedback of any kind is encouraged to email us at tag-members@royallists.scranton.edu, or email the chair or the subgroup responsible for the creation of this document at jeremy.sepinsky@scranton.edu.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Website Proposal

TAG Meeting 2013-04-03

3 04 2013

TAG met for our third and final Spring 2013 meeting this morning, and it was a meaty one. Here’s what’s going on:

1. TAG Leadership for 2013-2014

Continuing the discussion from our March meeting, we’ve officially agreed to move to a rotating, 2-year-term, 2-co-chair leadership model for 2013-2014. Jeremy and Kristen nominated Dave (currently a Faculty Senator) to take over for Jeremy as co-chair in 2013-2014 and serve as TAG’s liaison to the Faculty Senate. We held a not-quite-strictly-parliamentarian vote among the faculty TAG members present, which passed with no audible or visible dissent, so Dave will start his 2-year term in Fall 2013… or more likely Summer 2013. Kristen will stay on for 2013-2014 and then rotate off, to be replaced by a new co-chair in 2014-2015.

2. Identity Finder Automated Scans

Jim brought Adam Edwards, our new Information Security Officer, with him to the meeting to talk about an Information Security Office/IT Client Services Identity Finder Proposal on Automating Scans. For those just joining us, Identity Finder software scans your computer for sensitive, unsecured Personally Identifiable Information (PII). It’s been installed on faculty computers since 2011 (Windows only – Mac and Linux users can skip this part). To date, the scans have been encouraged but entirely voluntary and entirely user-initiated.

The Information Security Office and IT Client Services are jointly proposing implementation of weekly, automated, required Identity Finder scans (see the proposal for details). Adam explained the rationale — if IR knows where sensitive data is stored on campus, it’s easier to protect that vulnerable data and avoid embarrassing FERPA violations. It’s also easier and faster to fix and return malware-infected machines if IR knows whether or not the machine had any sensitive data on it. Here’s how the proposed scans would work:

  • Every Friday at 12:30pm (or the next time your work machine was turned on), Identity Finder would automatically begin a scan.
  • Scans would be limited to only certain types of sensitive data – e.g., Social Security numbers, drivers’ license numbers, credit card numbers, and birth dates.
  • The Information Security Office would receive reports on the scan results. Adam would see the number of hits, and a masked view of the PII found, but he would NOT be able to see the file or the full PII picked up in the scan.
  • If a computer frequently had many hits identified, Adam would reach out to that user to help them better manage their sensitive data (so that the Information Security Office’s efforts would be focused on the largest sets of the most vulnerable data).

Adam has been testing with a small group. This Friday he’ll be rolling out the automated scans to all PIR staff members for another 2-3 weeks of testing. Adam noted that they are working on finding the most effective and efficient ways to scope the scans to minimize scan time.

TAG members mentioned a few concerns:

  • Scan length and performance effects — Kristen and Kim had run test scans on their machines that took much longer than expected (Kristen’s was 7 hours and 45 minutes, with a noticeable impact on performance).  Jim said that the subsequent scans are much faster, since you can set Identity Finder to ignore locations with many false positives – his scan takes about 3 hours. With respect to performance, Identity Finder does have a throttling capacity, such that it is not supposed to impact other applications. Adam explained that continued testing with PIR will help him make the scans faster and less noticeable.
  • Scheduling — Kevin and Katie noted that many faculty members (and their computers) are not on campus on Friday afternoons, especially if a scan needed multiple hours. We discussed a few options – for example, scheduling for Tuesday or Thursdays during the 11:30-1pm time slot, having an option to skip a scan if your machine had already been scanned within the past week, being able to pause a scan, doing monthly instead of weekly scans, pinging computers to automatically turn on and scan in the middle of the night, warning everyone to run their first scan overnight, etc.

To help resolve some of these issues and identify other areas of concern for faculty, TAG members volunteered to serve as test subjects for automated scans. Adam said that he’d like to work through the PIR staff first but will then reach out to TAG members for additional testing and scoping.

We invite our fellow faculty to contact us with other concerns or questions.  If you’d like to try Identity Finder, it should already be installed on your (Windows) machine, and you can find a Quick Guide for getting started at http://www.scranton.edu/pir/its/identityFinder.shtml.

3. Academic Server Decommissioning

An official memo from IR will be coming out in the next few days announcing a timeline for the decommissioning of the academic server (academic.scranton.edu), which has been in the works since mid-2011.  The server has been heavily targeted by attacks, so due to security concerns, academic.scranton.edu will no longer be *public-facing* beginning June 15. Internal access (via a campus IP address) will still be available until August 31 in case users need more time to move content. Adam explained that a firm deadline was needed in order to mitigate the major risk of a supposedly retired server still being public-facing.

Adam would like to work with people who still have public content on the server to migrate to either the CMS or another campus server.  (Content was supposed to have been migrated to the Content Management System (CMS), but there is still some active content there that was not migrated for one reason or another – some of it could not be accommodated within the CMS’s available functionality.) He has already met with the CTLE and the Library about moving the development pages for the Academic Integrity Tutorial. TAG will help reach out to faculty members who still have either individual content or organizational content on academic to determine what needs to be migrated where, and what level of support, assistance, or training is required. Adam will send Kristen information about the remaining directories and a list of faculty usernames connected to content on academic. After the official IR memo comes out, TAG will follow up that communication with those faculty members. (Faculty members who had individual pages on academic were contacted back in 2011 about moving their content, so hopefully most of this migration work is already completed.)

This discussion brought up some broader concerns about web development resources on campus. Tim described some of the difficulties he had finding a home for the Sheep Brain Dissection Guide. Eugeniu mentioned that some faculty members who had migrated their content from academic to the CMS reported that the Google ranking of their page had gone down in search results. The local WordPress server (sites.scranton.edu) might be a new option for student and faculty web development, but the extent of this service is still being discussed. We didn’t come up with any answers on this, but as always faculty members may contact TAG with other concerns, questions, or suggestions regarding web development on campus.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Network and Infrastructure, Outages, TAG Administrative

TAG Meeting 2013-03-04

4 03 2013

TAG’s second Spring 2013 meeting was this morning – and we actually finished up 5 minutes early! Here’s what’s going on:

1. My.Scranton/Luminis upgrade

We spent most of the meeting talking about the upcoming upgrade to Luminis 5 (Luminis is the software platform behind the my.scranton portal), which will happen during spring break. Thanks to IR, TAG has had the opportunity to weigh in with faculty feedback on what the new portal page should look like – especially the Faculty Tab.  IT staff member Joe Casabona was kind enough to stop by our meeting to answer questions and listen to comments and suggestions about what’s most important to faculty and where it should go.

More details about the Faculty Tab in a following post, but the short version is that TAG and IR will be continuing to work on it both before and after the upgrade goes live. The new version of Luminis is thankfully a lot easier to update than the current version, so we’ll have an easier time making changes.

IR will be sending out a University-wide email later today about the upgrade.  The TAG members in attendance agreed to remind their departments about the upgrade at their next department meetings, and Dave Dzurec (History) will give a brief announcement about the upgrade at the next Faculty Senate meeting.

TAG asks that all faculty members 1) report any problems you have with the new portal to the Technology Support Center (tsc@scranton.edu or 570-941-HELP) and 2) send any broader questions or comments to TAG so that we can share them with Joe and the rest of the IR staff members working on the project.

2. TAG Leadership for 2013-2014

TAG co-chair and co-founder Jeremy Sepinsky (Physics) will be taking a leave of absence for the 2013-2014 year, which means there are some big shoes to fill for next year. We discussed how TAG leadership should be determined, now and in the future, especially in the context of the formalization of TAG’s status within the Faculty Senate. We didn’t come to any conclusions today, but there was general agreement that:
  • Having 2 co-chairs is beneficial due to the time commitment and workload.
  • Having (at least) 1 co-chair be a Faculty Senator would be ideal, since TAG needs a Faculty Senator to serve as a liaison between TAG and the Senate’s Academic Support Committee.
  • A rotating chair model (each co-chair serves for two years but with staggered terms, so each year there’s one outgoing co-chair and one incoming co-chair) would be helpful so that there’s continuity. This would also make the commitment of chairing more manageable, since it would only be a two-year commitment.
  • Rotating membership in general might be beneficial in order to sustain the group and prevent burnout.

Kristen Yarmey (Library) is willing to continue as co-chair in 2013-2014 to smooth the transition for the incoming co-chair.  Jeremy will look into existing Faculty Senate committee models for selecting leadership. Kristen will follow up with the Faculty Senate executive committee for an update on TAG’s Senate status.

3. Technology and Learning Discussion Group and Communicating about Technology on Campus

This semester Kristen and Bryan Burnham (Psychology) are hosting an informal Technology and Learning Discussion Group as an extension of a Clavius-like faculty seminar on Technology in the Mind they hosted during Fall 2012. The group’s purpose is to discuss readings and issues relating to technology and learning in a broad sense. All University community members are welcome to attend – meetings are biweekly on Monday nights at 6pm. Kristen is posting topics and meeting announcements to Bboard and here on the TAG site.

We had a brief discussion about how various technology groups on campus (like the Discussion Group and the newly formed Social Media group) can share what they’re doing and talking about with IR, CTLE, TAG, etc. Jim Franceschelli (IT Services) noted that communication about what technologies are being discussed would help IR staff members prepare for and respond to emerging needs. Communication between IR and TAG has been helpful to both groups – can we establish that kind of channel with the Discussion Group and other similar efforts? (IR staff members are welcome to participate in the group, but evening meeting times are difficult for most staff members’ schedules.)

Sandy Pesavento (Education) agreed that more communication about what technology is being tested or implemented around the campus (especially within different colleges/departments) would be useful. She suggested that TAG members share brief updates about technology initiatives in their departments/colleges at the beginning of TAG meetings (or possibly on the TAG WordPress site, since meeting time is short).

Kristen floated the idea of a collaborative blog or website for technology on campus, that could aggregate feeds of posts/events/news from IR, TAG, CTLE, the Library, and any other technology-related groups (formal or informal) on campus.

Kristen will discuss the idea of a shared technology site with CTLE, Library, and IR staff members to see if it might be of interest. She will also work with Jim and Bryan to look for ways in which IT staff can connect with the discussion group, possibly via daytime scheduling in future semesters and/or by integrating discussions into existing events like the Library/CTLE Technology on Your Own Terms workshops or IR’s IT Forums.

4. Ongoing Projects

TAG input is still needed for discussions about faculty course data and FERPA considerations for cloud computing. Faculty members should let Kristen know if they are interested in leading or participating in these discussions.

5. Code of Responsible Computing / Acceptable Use Policy

Dave has posted the latest draft of the revised Code of Responsible Computing, now the Acceptable Use Policy. Faculty should send feedback to either Dave or Jim so that their committee can incorporate comments before the draft goes through the formal policy process next semester.

 


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Categories : Announcements, Minutes, TAG Administrative

World of WordPress

14 02 2013

If you haven’t yet heard of WordPress, it’s an open-source blogging and content management system that’s starting to dominate the world of web development. Three items of WordPress-related news from TAG today —

1) sites.scranton.edu/tag

We’ve migrated TAG’s website from uofstechadvisory.wordpress.com to the University’s new, local WordPress instance — you can find us at sites.scranton.edu/tag. For right now, the site is publicly accessible, but like the old site it asks search engines not to index the content (so it’s not easily Googleable).

Moving to a local instance doesn’t just give us a scranton.edu URL – it also allows us to integrate with the University’s existing Active Directory authentication system, which means (among other things) that you don’t have to set up a separate WordPress account to log in. University community members can just log in with their R number and my.scranton password rather than creating a separate wordpress.com account.

Huge thanks to Phil Erb in IR for migrating our old content and for helping us set up the new site!

2) WordPress on Campus

So… did we mention that there’s a WordPress instance on campus now? We’ve already heard from a few faculty members who’d like to use WordPress pages for class projects, travel courses, and/or department news. Blog sites have already been set up for Admissions, the Library, and now TAG. Next up is possibly a site for the History Department, which would feed news stories onto their existing department website.

It’s not yet totally clear what level of access/service faculty will be able to get related to WordPress, but we’re excited about the possibilities. If you might be interested in using WordPress on campus, give TAG a heads-up so we’ll have a better grasp of faculty interest and needs.

3) WordPress off Campus

In their off hours, IR staff members and WordPress enthusiasts Phil Erb and Joe Casabona are organizing meetups for local WordPress users. The first one is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 19 from 7 to 8pm at the Vintage Theater on Spruce Street.  Any users in Northeastern Pennsylvania, at any level of experience, are welcome (the meetup isn’t a University-affiliated event).  If you’re interested, sign up at their Meetup.com page and/or follow the NEPA WordPress Facebook page.


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Website Proposal Group – 02/12/2013 Minutes

13 02 2013

The Website Proposal Group met on Tuesday, February 12 to discuss the next stages of our proposal for a new method of updating and maintaining the academic departmental websites.  In attendance were Teresa Conte, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Kevin Wilkerson, Lori Nidoh, Kathleen Iacocca, and Jeremy Sepinsky.

The discussion revolved primarily around the creation of the website proposal document.  A sketch/outline of the document can be found here.

Sandy (nominated in abstentia) and Teresa will begin drafting the section entitled “Benefits to the Departments” and “Benefits to the Faculty” due to their experience with updating the website for their departments.  Lori will begin the draft of the “Benefits to the University” due to her experience with the outward-facing side of the university website and her knowledge of the usage statistics for our webpage.  Jeremy and Kathleen with begin the draft for the “Proposed Solution”, and attempt to aggregate the discussion at the meeting into a single solution.

The next meeting will be held in ~3 weeks, when we will begin the revision process for this document.


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Categories : Minutes, Website Proposal

Website Proposal Group – 1/30/2013 Minutes

31 01 2013

The third meeting of the Website Proposal Group was on January 30th at 9AM. In attendance were Lori Nidoh, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Sandy Pesavento, and Jeremy Sepinsky.

There were three items on the agenda to discuss.

  • Peer/Aspirant Universities – Sandy Pesavento and Teresa Conte looked into website management of the schools on the Peer/Aspirant list for The University of Scranton. Reaching out to each school on the list, they received only one response, which was from Loyola University Maryland. It seems that they have a similar system to what is in place here: webmaster distributed among different departments. We are still hoping to hear back from a number of other schools.
  • Schools Using our CMS – Lori Nidoh investigated the webpage management of other schools who currently use the same CMS software that we have implemented on campus. This resulted in two direct responses. The first was from the University of Dayton who seem to have a much more centralized website management/update procedure. They have 6 webmasters, appointed by each of their 6 Deans, who manage the web content in their area. These webmasters each have the ability to appoint staff and/or faculty members who can make edits — but not publish — content on the front-facing PR sites for the university (such as main departmental webpages). The University of Dayton is about twice the size of Scranton, having an equivalent full-time enrollment of about 10,000 students.The second response came from Jackson State who claimed to have many of the same problems that we do. They do have a central webmaster, but the publishing model is more distributed, and they also have problems determining and designating who is responsible for content management.
  • Size of the University Web Presence – Thanks to Joe Cassabona from Information Resources, Jeremy Sepinsky reported the approximate size of the departmental webpages on campus. They range from as few as 4 to over 100. Thus, it is difficult to come up with a specific “size” that represents most departments, but an eyeball-average says that most departments have about 20 separate webpages with content that needs to be managed. With over 20 separate departments at the university of Scranton, there is quite a bit of content to manage.Additionally, it was pointed out that the departmental websites don’t really have a uniform appearance. While they are all in the CMS, the navigation bar and the location of certain useful pieces of information (faculty websites, contact info, etc.) is not necessarily in the same place. This can cause confusion for prospective faculty and students. Thus, it may be necessary for a proposed hire to first create a uniform theme and content organization before being fully immersed in routine updates.

After this, we discussed some of the requirements that a proposed webmaster position would need. It seems the role we are asking to be filled is twofold: Webpage Designer and Content Manager. The Webpage designer portion is responsible for designing the general look of the sites, as well as collaborating with the Marketing and Communication Division to ensure proper marketability of the website. The Content Manager portion is responsible for contacting and collaborating with individual faculty members and departments, determine what should be displayed, and how it should be presented. Thus, it appears that this would need to not be an entry-level hire.

At our next meeting, we intend to start writing the formal proposal.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Website Proposal

TAG Senate Status

2 01 2013

(This post is long overdue – many apologies! My notes on the Senate discussion are a little rough, so please send me any corrections/clarifications you have.)

At the November 9 meeting, the Faculty Senate passed a few motions (#3.2012-13, #4.2012-13, #5.2012-13) regarding faculty representation on University committees. I asked for some clarification at the meeting about what committees would fall under the new language, since we’ve got a lot of TAG members working on various projects. Further discussion with members of the Senate Executive Committee indicated that there was some murkiness about TAG’s official connection to the Senate.  Back in 2010, when Jeremy and I approached the Senate about creating TAG, we got verbal approval as a subcommittee of the Senate’s Academic Support committee, but there wasn’t ever a vote or any formal documentation of our status.

The Senate Executive Committee was kind enough to sit down with me early in December to hash out some language formalizing TAG’s status as a Senate subcommittee.  From a TAG perspective, we were looking for a structured, defined relationship to the Senate (and a clear communication channel to the Senate), but with a flexible membership — ideally, TAG’s membership should be representative of the faculty as a whole, but should also take into consideration a faculty member’s interest in or expertise related to technology. I wrote up some notes for the Senators about TAG’s current makeup and the kinds of projects we’ve been working on.

At the December 14 Senate meeting, the Executive Committee introduced the following motion:

A proposal to change the Faculty Senate Bylaws to include the Technology Advisory Group (TAG) as a formal subcommittee of the Academic Support Committee.

The Academic Support Committee has from five to ten members of whom a majority must be members of the Faculty Senate. This committee prepares recommendations for consideration by the Faculty Senate on all aspects of support for academic programs. The Academic Support Committee has oversight of the Technology Advisory Group (TAG), a standing subcommittee of the ASC. The total membership of TAG is flexible, but should strive for representation from each of the five colleges.* The subcommittee must include one Faculty Senator who serves as a liaison between TAG and the ASC.** The Faculty Senator can, but is not required to, serve as both a liaison to the ASC and a college representative. TAG is free to seek expertise outside the faculty*** to complete its membership.

A discussion followed, primarily focusing on oversight and composition of TAG. There were a few concerns about TAG’s level of autonomy – some Senators suggested that TAG be chaired**** by a Senator on the Academic Support committee, and/or that TAG’s members be appointed by Senators from Academic Support. Others were concerned about micromanaging TAG when, to date, the group has been functioning well. General consensus seemed to be that more clarification on TAG’s goals and oversight may be needed in the future, but that for now the proposed language would be sufficient.

Some clarifications were proposed — “representation from each of the five colleges” was changed to reflect that CGCE does not have its own faculty, and “must include one Faculty Senator” was changed to “must include at least one Faculty Senator”. With this clarified wording****, the motion passed.

Since the proposal is an amendment to the Faculty Senate Bylaws, it will next go to a full faculty vote for approval, sometime after the start of the Spring 2013 semester. A 2/3 majority of those voting is needed to amend the bylaws.

Many thanks to the Executive Committee and the rest of the Faculty Senators for their time and consideration!

——————————

Notes:

* Currently, we have 4 members from CAS, 4 from PCPS, 2 from KSOM, and 1 from the Library.

**Currently, TAG’s membership includes two Faculty Senators (Katie Iacocca and Dave Dzurec).

***From the beginning, TAG has included staff participants in order to facilitate communication about technology on campus.

****For the record, neither Jeremy nor I are opposed to a change in leadership for TAG. Any volunteers? :)

*****I  don’t trust my notes on the exact wording changes – I’ll post the altered language when the meeting minutes come out.


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Website Proposal Group – 11/27/2012 Minutes

27 11 2012

The website proposal group met on 11/27/2012 at 1PM .  In attendance were Eugeniu Grigorescu, Lori Nidoh, Sandy Pesavento, Teresa Conte, and Jeremy Sepinsky.

The meeting began with a recap of the previous meeting, as well as a renewed discussion about the need for a forward-facing, uniform presence of The University of Scranton on the web. One major point of import is the need for a high-level of commitment from departments across the university to make this endeavor a success Without buy-in from PR, Faculty, and Administration, the university’s web presence will not accurately reflect its brick-and-mortar presence. Thus, it is imperative for this group to seek support, advice, and input from each sector and at all levels.

The group then proceeded to identify and affirm the charge and goal of our meeting. The current charge under which we shall proceed is as follows

The group of individuals listed below were charged by the Technology Advisory Group (TAG) to propose a process to better maintain and update academic departmental websites. The current process results in significant non-uniformity, a lack of aesthetics, infrequent updates, and significant imposition upon departmental faculty responsible for maintaining the pages. This proposal seeks to ameliorate each of these impositions on the public image of The University of Scranton and to build a process that allows the creation of a website that enhances the brand and reflects the true value of our campus.

The rest of the meeting was then spent organizing and planning the next steps. In order to create a successful and thorough proposal, we need to first invest in a significant amount of background research. To that end, Teresa Conte and Sandy Pesavento will be contacting some of our Peer and Aspirant Universities which have an impress web presence in order to determine how they maintain and update their university websites. Lori Nidoh will contact other users of our CMS to find out what methods they find are best for a continuously updated web presence. Jeremy Sepinsky will contact PIR to get a handle on the volume and organization of the webpages that we currently have, in order to estimate the workload that would be required of any proposed webmaster. Lastly, the currently working solution (as discussed in the 11/13 minutes) likely requires the hire of a part-time or fill-time webmaster for the campus. Thus, this solution will be contingent on funding for such a position. Jeremy Sepinsky will reach out to various administrative bodies to determine the liklihood of such funding being available.


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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website, Minutes, Website Proposal

TAG Meeting 2012-11-07

8 11 2012

On November 7, TAG held its third and final Fall 2012 meeting.

1. Code of Responsible Computing Committee update

Dave Dzurec (History) and Jim Franceschelli (IT Services) are co-chairing a committee charged with drafting an update to the Code of Responsible Computing. The goal of the committee is to create a single policy for faculty, staff, and students that will define responsible use of information technology at the University.

Dave and Jim have been reviewing acceptable use policies from other universities  and have almost finished a draft for the rest of the committee to review.  After review by the committee, the policy will go to VP/CIO Jerry DeSanto, and then it will enter the University governance system for full approval (probably in 2013-2014).

Faculty representatives on the committee (as appointed by the Faculty Senate) are Dave, Wesley Wang (Economics/Finance), and Bob Spinelli (Health Administration and Human Resources). The Staff and Student Senates also have two representatives each.

We discussed briefly how the new policy should be disseminated and shared with students and faculty after it is approved. Sandy asked whether new students/faculty/staff will need to sign off on the policy when they begin using University services to make sure they are aware of it. Kristen suggested incorporating a mention of the policy into the New Faculty Orientation. She will also suggest to the Associate Dean of the Library, Bonnie Strohl, that public patrons using Library computers would be informed of the policy in some way.

2. CTLE Technology Liaison

The Center for Teaching and Learning has two faculty liaisons (currently Anthony Ferzola and Marian Farrell) who provide an interface between faculty teaching and the CTLE’s resources. Faculty can reach out to the liaisons for support (e.g., teaching observations), and the CTLE can reach out to the liaisons for input on needed resources. The liaisons also run the faculty mentor/mentee program.

The CTLE wants to establish a similar faculty liaison who would specifically address academic technology questions and needs. They did a pilot project last year, with Sandy Pesavento (Education) serving as the faculty technology liaison, to see what role(s) a liaison should fill. Eugeniu asked TAG (including Sandy) for feedback on what a technology liaison’s “job description” should look like.

During the pilot year, Sandy did some technology trainings (higher order thinking, student response systems, smartboards, etc) and teaching observations (e.g., coming to a class to suggest technology tools that might be helpful to the instructor). One of the difficulties during the pilot year was that few faculty members outside of PCPS were aware that Sandy was available for consultation on technology issues, though, so a challenge for the future will be finding ways to promote the services the liaison provides.

We discussed other needs that a liaison could address. Several TAG members suggested a repository or database of some kind that would identify 1) educationally relevant technologies and 2) if/how faculty at Scranton and other universities have implemented them.  Katie noted that sometimes faculty don’t necessarily know what tools are available to them. Jeremy and Dave expressed interest in hearing from faculty members who have been doing pedagogical research with technology in the classroom – e.g., via Friday presentations like the Office of Research Services seminar series.

We also discussed the difficulty of knowing who to call for help – that is, CTLE supports faculty use of technology for pedagogy, but IT Services supports the actual hardware and software that faculty use in the classroom. Teresa suggested a flow chart to indicate who to call and when.

3. Windows 7 and Viewfinity

As Windows 7 is rolled out with new University computers, your account on your desktop/laptop will change from being an administrator account to a standard user account. This is a security measure to try to prevent users from downloading and installing malicious software. By default, standard users can’t install or delete applications, as administrators can.

We were concerned about this limitation when TAG first learned about it, but IT Services has put in a lot of work to figure out a good solution for faculty members so that this change doesn’t affect our work. Using Viewfinity privilege management software, faculty users can be automatically and temporarily elevated to administrators so we can install whatever software we need when we need it.

Kristen has been piloting Viewfinity as a faculty user since the middle of the summer, with excellent results.  There’s a small popup window that comes up each time you begin to install a program that asks for a “business justification,” but you can simply say you are using the program for teaching, research, etc – no lengthy explanation required. When you click OK, you are automatically bumped up to administrator while the program installs, and you are automatically bumped back down to standard user once the installation is complete. Commonly used software (Skype, iTunes, etc) is whitelisted to speed things up. Overall, the process is smooth and seamless — many thanks to Jim and the IT Services staff for finding a way to accommodate faculty needs.

Viewfinity has another big feature – Remote Desktop assistance! When you call the Technology Support Center, you’ll be able to share your desktop with the support staff so that they can help you easily from a distance. This service is in development and will be available soon. It will always have a prompt – your desktop won’t be shared without your approval.

Faculty members with XP machines will get Viewfinity via KBOX, so you’ll have Remote Desktop capability, but you will still maintain an administrator account (and XP) until you get a new computer.  Faculty members receiving new machines will have Windows 7 and a standard user account, with Viewfinity.

Viewfinity is not supported on Mac or Linux, so faculty using Mac or Linux machines are not affected by any of these changes.

Classroom and lab computers are all Windows 7 now, but they do *not* run Viewfinity — they have Deep Freeze instead. So you can install programs on classroom and lab computers, but those installations will disappear each time the machine shuts down. If you need to install software in a classroom or lab that you need to use frequently, submit a request to the TSC via Footprints.

4. Infrastructure for Computerized Testing

We were running out of time, so we didn’t get to discuss this agenda item. Jim suggested that a work group form to work on some possible solutions, since we haven’t made much progress on this issue. Jim, Teresa, Sandy, and Eugeniu will start to work on this.

5. & 6. WordPress Site Organization & Luminis Tab

No time for these agenda items either – Kristen will be in touch with TAG members via email.

TAG will not be meeting in December, so our next formal meeting will be in Spring 2013. TAG members will still be communicating and working throughout December and January, though, so as always please feel free to contact us with questions, concerns, or suggestions.


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Categories : Announcements, Minutes, Network and Infrastructure, Security

TAG Meeting 10/3/2012

8 11 2012

On October 3, TAG held its second Fall 2012 meeting.  [Yes, that was more than a month ago — many apologies for taking so long to post the meeting notes!]

1. Departmental Websites and the CMS

We’ve been discussing departmental websites for quite a while.  Lori Nidoh (PR) brought us some analytics from the University website (June 2012 – September 2012, all excluding internal traffic) to give us a better idea of how these pages are being used:

  • The Undergraduate Programs page is the 5th most visited page on the University website – after the home page, HR vacancy list, HR home page, and Admissions home page. (report)
  • From the Admissions home page, the Undergraduate Programs page is #5 on the list of what pages users visit next – indicating that prospective students are indeed looking at departmental web pages. (report)
  • This spreadsheet shows the most heavily visited scranton.edu/academics/ pages.
  • Lori broke out additional analytics on a few department and program pages to give us a sense of how they are used: Biology, OT, PT, and Pre-Med.

We continued to discuss options for how to keep departmental pages up-to-date. Eugeniu noted that the CTLE TechCons help faculty members with their personal websites, but that access and permissions in the CMS (content management system) are an issue for departmental pages – a department wouldn’t necessarily want to grant publishing rights to a student who is editing their page, but it’s hard to catch quirks and mistakes if you can’t publish and review your recent edits. Lori asked that any observed CMS quirks be reported to PR.

Jeremy will be convening a group of interested faculty to discuss this concern in more detail offline. The group will outline a proposal for how departmental websites could best be maintained,  in collaboration with staff from Public Relations and Academic Affairs. Teresa Conte (Nursing), Katie Iacocca (OIM), Kevin Wilkerson (CHS), and Sandy Pesavento (Education) volunteered to participate, but any interested faculty (especially those with experience using the CMS) can join the discussion.

2. FERPA Considerations for Cloud Computing

Kristen asked for input on what cloud computing tools faculty are currently using and how those tools are being used for instruction. She noted the distinction between “internal cloud” services (e.g., Royal Drive, Angel) versus “external cloud” services (Gmail, Dropbox, etc).

Kristen will meet with IR staff from the Information Security office to nail down specifics on what faculty can and can’t do with these cloud tools in order to comply with FERPA regulations (see previous FERPA post for details).

3. Faculty Input on the IT Tactical Plan

Over the summer, TAG was asked by IR to respond to a number of technology questions posed by Jerry DeSanto, VP/CIO. Planning and Information Resources is in the process of creating their 3-5 year IT Tactical Plan, and the questions were targeted at the expected needs of the faculty in the coming years:

  • How can IT better support faculty research?
  • Given the influx of new, younger faculty what kinds of technology needs/support do you anticipate they are going to need?
  • How do you see the classroom experience changing over the next several years, and how can IT assist in this evolution?
  • What new academic programs do you see developing over the next five years, and how can IT help?
  • With the President’s stated intentions about the University and globalization, how do you see this playing out with web-based education, study abroad, and perhaps the development of satellite campuses in other parts of the globe?

Jerry asked for feedback by November 1 such that faculty input could be incorporated into IR planning. Jeremy asked the group how TAG would like to gather faculty input. We decided on a two-pronged approach – a brief survey sent to all faculty, and a more detailed response from TAG members. [Update – see the results in Jeremy’s 2012-11-05 post, Feedback Regarding the IT Tactical Plan.]


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Security, TAG Administrative

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