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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Tags: cloud computing, cms, department websites, ferpa, Meetings, privacy, survey, Tactical plan
Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Security, TAG Administrative

State of IT – Notes from September IT Forum

3 10 2012

Last week, CIO and Vice President for Planning Jerry DeSanto presented on the “State of IT” at the semester’s first IT Forum. His talk provided some really interesting insight into how CIOs strategically plan for the future – see his slides (in pptx) for more detail.

Some of the trends that Jerry discussed:

Consumerization – consumers bring their interest in technology to the workplace, and increasingly they’re also bringing their own devices (BYOD) to the workplace as well. For CIOs, this means a shift to supporting a wider variety of devices, with less depth of support for any one device/platform.
Cloud services – as we use more cloud computing services, we rely less on the computing power of our desktop computers. Thin clients let users access software from the cloud, so you don’t have to be at a specific workstation to use certain software.
Security – cloud computing raises a lot of issues in terms of security and data management – e.g., who owns the data? Is it secure? Is it exportable? Terms of service become very important. IR is working on some additional security initiatives, like two-factor authentication (for high risk data users), forced password changes, and guidelines for remote access (under development) – that is, how to safely work with restricted/confidential data from a non-University device.
Teaching and Learning – lots of new developments here – MOOCs, learning analytics, software licensing…
Network – The redundancy and reliability of the University network have become increasingly important. At the same time, there are increasing demands on the network (video streaming, gaming…). Our network just underwent a huge upgrade – our bandwidth is now 500 Mb, as compared to 50 Mb back in 2008.
Big data – corporations are increasingly leveraging data about their consumers to make decisions and to get a competitive edge. We might start seeing some of these techniques used in higher ed.
Business continuity – disaster recovery is really important. We have a good on-site data center, but we need an off-site backup as well.
Workforce and services – soft skills are becoming as important in IT as technical skills. As more software-as-a-service tools become available, there’s less need for home-grown solutions.

So there are lots of challenges ahead for Jerry and the IR division. Jerry has given TAG some questions he has about campus technology needs – we’ll be talking at our meeting today about how we can get input from the rest of the faculty. (More notes to come.)

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Tags: big data, BYOD, cloud computing, IR, IT Forum, learning analytics, moocs, network, security
Categories : Announcements

FERPA considerations for cloud services

11 09 2012

I sat in on today’s meeting of IMAC (the Information Management Advisory Committee) on behalf of TAG. There were two major items discussed – a revision to the Records Management & Retention Policy (which I don’t think will have much direct impact on faculty) and a set of Guidelines for the Use of Cloud Computing Services.

The Guidelines are not policy – the document just list some of the concerns and considerations faculty and staff should be aware of when signing up for cloud services like Gmail, Google Docs, Dropbox, Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, PayPal, etc.

The Guidelines are currently in draft format, so I’ve been asked not to distribute them outside of TAG. Non-TAG members, the new Guidelines will be sent out in 3-4 weeks, but in the meantime take a look at former Information Security Officer Tony Maszeroski’s Guidance on the Use of Cloud Applications by Individuals – the new Guidelines are similar in content.

One of the major concerns with using cloud services for University-related work (like teaching) is that it introduces all sorts of privacy and security issues. Almost all student information, like grades, transcripts, class lists, etc, is classified as restricted or confidential (see the Information Classification Policy) due to FERPA.

Classified or restricted information should not be stored or transferred on non-University systems, so faculty need to be very aware of what information we’re sharing with what third parties. If you’re using cloud tools or social media as part of your class or lab, you need to be very conscious of any potential privacy violations, and be upfront with students about the terms of service.

(See EDUCAUSE’s 2010 report on Privacy Considerations in Cloud-Based Teaching and Learning Environments. Colorado Community Colleges Online has posted some scenarios relating to respecting FERPA in an online classroom.)

I don’t think this is an issue that most faculty are very aware of, and I’d like to get a sense of how TAG can help faculty sort out these considerations in their classes. So let me know what you think – What questions do you have? What resources or references would be useful?

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Tags: cloud computing, ferpa, Gmail, google, pii, privacy, security, social media, teaching
Categories : Announcements, Online courses, Security

Campus email will switch to Microsoft Live@Edu

4 11 2010

Here on the TAG site we’ve already talked about how campus email is heading for the cloud. Now, finally, thanks to IR, we have the news you’ve all been waiting to hear: the email system we’ll be switching to is (drumroll please)…

Microsoft Live@Edu.

There are a lot of details still to be worked out, but here’s what we know so far.

When is this happening?

The target date for campus implementation is June 2011.

What’s changing?

ALL campus email (faculty, staff, students) will move to the Microsoft Live@Edu platform. Your email will be stored in the cloud rather than on a campus server (or your local machine).
We’ll have more storage space for email- everyone gets 10GB instead of 200MB. Wahoo!
Thunderbird will be gone. We’ll be encouraged just to access email via a web browser, not via a desktop client.
You’ll keep the same @scranton.edu email address. People emailing you won’t notice anything different.
Your old email can be migrated into Live@Edu, so you don’t have to worry about losing anything. Details on migration procedures are still forthcoming.
Oracle CorpTime will be gone (not that many faculty members use it anyway!). Campus calendaring will be integrated with our email.
We’ll all get 25GB of space on SkyDrive, a cloud storage tool that you can use to access your files from anywhere. But this isn’t replacing RoyalDrive – you’ll still be encouraged to back up your files to RoyalDrive, at least for the time being.
We’ll get easy access to Microsoft Office web apps – so you can do basic editing on Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint files even if you don’t have Microsoft Office installed on your home machine.
Mac users will be able to use Live@Edu just like PC users.

Why is the University doing this?

Our old email system was… well… old.
Cloud storage for email is MUCH less expensive than our current, on-campus system – about 50% less expensive.
Cloud storage is much more robust (and more secure) than storing email on your local hard drive.
Microsoft Live@Edu gives us some extra features that our current email system doesn’t provide – collaboration and productivity tools, calendar integration, etc.

Why not Google?

Google was definitely considered as an option, but after much debate, Microsoft Live@Edu was selected as the best enterprise tool that would accommodate the needs of most University users. IR shared with us a few reasons why:

Live@Edu integrates well with the campus’s existing systems – we already use a lot of Microsoft tools.
Google is an advertising-based system, and there were some concerns about ads – both that users would have to see them all the time, and that user email content would be searched and indexed so that ads could be better targeted.
IR wasn’t comfortable with Google’s track record on privacy issues.
Google doesn’t tell users *where* their data is being stored. For the University, it’s important that data be stored *within* the United States – especially data containing personally identifiable information.

But I like Google!

Google fans can still forward their email to Gmail. That said, we have to be a bit careful about this – the University has to comply with increasingly strict federal laws, like FERPA, that protect personally identifiable information. IR is working with the General Counsel’s office to get a better feel for exactly what information makes up a student’s “educational record.” We’ll post more about this as we get more information.

How can I find out more? How is this transition going to happen?

Transition plans are still being made. Jim Franceschelli is heading the project management team and has promised to keep us up to date – and we’ll post information as we get it.
Right now, the best way to find out more is to attend the IR Forum on Thursday, November 18, from 11:30am-1pm, at which IT Services will introduce Live@Edu to the campus community. You’ll need to register with ITServices@scranton.edu. UPDATE: If you missed it, see the slides from the Forum (ppsx).

How is TAG going to be involved?

We’ll be discussing this question at our next meeting! We have a few ideas so far, though:

We’ll coordinate with IR to help them get faculty prepared for this transition.
Jeremy and I have asked for access to some test accounts early in 2011 so that TAG members can get a feel for what barriers or significant changes faculty will be facing.
Jeremy and I are thinking of doing some early training for tech-savvy faculty – maybe in April or May 2011. Let us know if you’d be interested in this – you’d likely get to switch over your account early!

Questions or concerns?

TAG members will be compiling a list of faculty questions and concerns that we’ll do our best to answer and/or act on as the implementation plan proceeds. LET US KNOW what you’re thinking – either by commenting here or posting to the TAG Discussion List – and we’ll get back to you ASAP.

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Tags: calendaring, cloud computing, Cloud Storage, Email, Gmail, google, Microsoft Live@Edu, microsoft office, oracle, pii, SkyDrive
Categories : Announcements, Email, Upgrades

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