TAG Meeting Notes 2014-02-12

14 02 2014

TAG Meeting February 12, 2014 12:00pm-1:00pm

Attendees:
Jeremy Brees, Tim Cannon, Paul Cutrufello, Kim Daniloski, Dave Dzurec, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Katie Iacocca, Andrew LaZella, Lori Nidoh, Kristen Yarmey

1. Brief Reports

Acceptable Use Policy

CIO Jerry DeSanto announced on February 6 that the new Acceptable Use of Information Technology Resources Policy had been approved by the President’s Cabinet. The new policy is an update to the old Code of Responsible Computing. Many thanks to Jim Franceschelli and Dave Dzurec for co-chairing the committee charged with revision.

PR Department/Program Website initiative

Back in late November, Dave, Kim, and Kristen (along with Hal Baillie, Darla Germeroth, and Ray Schwenk) met with Gerry Zaboski and Lori Nidoh in PR to discuss department and program websites. Also in on the meeting (phoning in from Cedar Rapids) were representatives from Converge, a vendor that PR has hired to help us with initial planning and updates for departmental websites and academic program pages (note: *not* course catalog content/program descriptions, which require formal review).

The main goal from a faculty perspective is to develop content for department/program pages that is consistent across the University website and does a better job of communicating what it is that we do — reflecting the quality of our programs/departments, “telling the story” of the student educational experience, etc. (In 2012-2013 TAG had prepared a proposal for improving and maintaining department/program websites that advocated for additional support for this task.)

Briefly, Converge plans to 1) outline/inventory needed content, 2) do some search engine optimization research (e.g., what terms do users type in to Google when they’re looking for nursing programs?), 3) develop a draft template for page content, 4) get faculty feedback via a campus visit and questionnaire, 5) draft some copy, and 6) help us prepare a long term strategy. Their main output would be a consistent template for department/program pages, and they will create content for up to 50 department/program pages (though the institution has the final say on content). Gerry explained that this way we can get a lot of updates done quickly.

PR and Academic Affairs would like to bring together a steering committee or task force to coordinate this project, with work beginning in March. Gerry has broached this topic with the Committee on University Image and Promotion (CUIP), which includes faculty representatives.  After the November meeting, Kristen and Dave had asked TAG members to identify faculty who might be interested in serving on such a steering committee. Teresa, Sandy, and Dave then volunteered.  However, Lori noted that it has not yet been decided which program/department pages will be selected as the focus of the project, and she was not sure who will make that decision. We agreed that once these programs/departments have been selected, TAG will support the faculty representatives on CUIP in trying to recruit faculty volunteers to participate.

Desire2Learn

Desire2Learn went live in January, and so far the transition seems to be going smoothly (see the LMS transition page for details). About 30 faculty members opted to begin teaching in Desire2Learn in Spring 2014. Courses that are being taught in Desire2Learn have been disabled in ANGEL so that students don’t see them in both places.  Workshops and video tutorials are available for faculty.

Eugeniu reported that there was an issue with merging courses that CTLE wasn’t able to resolve in time for this semester, but it will be resolved in time for summer and fall courses. Another issue has been reported with links – Firefox and Chrome are problematic when trying to display unsecure pages within secure frames.

Mobile Apps

IR’s Mobile Apps feedback group met in December (pptx). Sandy attended as a faculty representative. The group reviewed the University’s current apps — ANGEL Mobile, eAccounts (for RoyalCard), the Straxis app, Student Services app, RoyalSync, and Desire2Learn (which also has two special purpose apps – Binder and Grader) — and discussed what additional features should be mobile accessible.  The Straxis app will be retired at the end of the year and replaced by a locally developed web app for the fall 2014 semester.

Royal Card

Faculty are reminded to visit the TSC to get a new RoyalCard. Take your old RoyalCard or a driver’s license, and you will be photographed.

Windows XP to 7 Conversions

(Jim was unable to attend the meeting but sent an update on this via email.) IT Services is continuing to work on converting all remaining Windows XP machines to Windows 7. Faculty machines are the current priority, with a goal of finishing all faculty conversions by the end of May.  IT Services will contact users to schedule a time and date for conversion — the process takes about two hours.  Dave noted that the history department was almost entirely converted and had no issues.

II. Items for Discussion

Specialized Software/Computer Lab Survey Results

Kristen is still working on putting together the survey results and apologized to TAG members for the delay.

WordPress Network

Kristen reported that at least one additional faculty request for a site on the campus WordPress network (sites.scranton.edu) had been turned down. There seems to be a continuing need among faculty and students for academic web space, particularly since the academic server (academic.scranton.edu) was decommissioned.

At our September 2013 meeting, TAG had requested that IR draft language on service levels for WordPress. Kristen asked Jim for an update on this issue. Jim was unable to attend this meeting but sent an update via email, excerpted here:

We met this past fall and have consulted with the CTLE on various support issues.  Unfortunately at this time, we cannot extend the wordpress offerings.  Looking at the current issues at hand – especially with the CTLE and the conversion to D2L – extending support won’t happen until January 2015 at the earliest. I know there is growing demand and many faculty want to use wordpress as an alternative web site.  Unfortunately the supported options are within the CMS.  D2L does have options for blogging and discussion boards.  I think TAG had offered to look at it from a faculty perspective – any news back on that?

Eugeniu explained that CTLE was unable to provide assistance to IR on support for WordPress at the same time as they are supporting faculty and students during the transition to Desire2Learn.

Kristen asked TAG members for their reactions. The majority agreed that we would like to keep advocating for WordPress but acknowledge that Desire2Learn should take priority at this time. Dave suggested that we revisit the question again in January 2015 as Jim indicated.

III. New Business

Vice President for Planning/CIO

Fr. Quinn announced in December 2013 that Jerry DeSanto would be stepping down as Vice President for Planning/CIO. Associate Vice President Robyn Dickinson will serve as Interim. While the search for a new Provost is taking priority, Dave and Kristen noted that they planned to volunteer TAG’s input (either formal or informal) in any upcoming search for the CIO position.

TAG Leadership for 2014-2015

Kristen will be rotating off as TAG co-chair at the end of Spring 2014. Dave will continue as co-chair for 2014-2015, but will be on sabbatical in Spring 2015.  They asked for one or two volunteers (preferably but not necessarily including a Senator) to serve a two-year term as co-chair. Andrew volunteered to serve in Spring 2015 while Dave is away. We are still in need of another volunteer to serve the full year.

IV. Demonstrations

Adam Edwards and Scott Finlon from Information Security came to the second half of the TAG meeting for two demonstrations.

Firstly, they demonstrated the administrative side of Identity Finder. TAG members have been piloting automated Identity Finder scans, which are running each Friday at noon. Identify Finder scans the user’s computer for any personally identifiable information (PII) in unprotected files. The Information Security Office receives reports that indicate the level of risk for that machine. Anticipating concerns about privacy and confidentiality, Adam and Scott showed a sample report. The report shows the number of hits and the location of each file with hits, but the actual information is obscured. Based off of these reports, Adam then works one-on-one with users to either delete the files or move them to a more secure location. Adam said that he is working with staff with the most risk first (e.g., people with 1,000 hits or more).

Secondly, Adam and Scott demonstrated using TrueCrypt (free open-source disk encryption software) to encrypt files or folders that contain confidential information (such as human subject research data). They have already shown this tool (along with another encryption tool in Identity Finder) to the IRB and would like to make it a recommended standard for campus use. [Update 2014-07-02: Support for TrueCrypt has been discontinued, so Information Security now recommends using 7Zip for encrypting sensitive or confidential data.] TAG members did not bring up any concerns, so we will move forward on this. Adam will share brief written instructions, and we will share them with the faculty as a recommended practice for confidential data.

Adam and Scott would like to start automated Identity Finder scans on faculty computers beginning with departments that would *not* have any confidential subject data stored no faculty desktops. We were not sure that such a distinction could be easily made, but TAG will try to work with department chairs to determine which departments might be willing to begin scans. Scott will send Kristen a list of departments as they appear in Identity Finder (based on Active Directory groups) as a starting point.

Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 1:10pm. TAG’s next meeting will be Wednesday, March 12 from 12pm-1pm in WML305.


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Announcements, Minutes, Mobile, Security, TAG Administrative, Website Proposal

Mobile site (m.scranton.edu)

28 08 2013

Just found out that the mobile site (m.scranton.edu) has been replaced by responsive design on the main website (www.scranton.edu). This change caught the Library by surprise over the weekend – was anyone else affected?


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University Website – Responsive Redesign

16 08 2013

So you’ve probably noticed that the University website is different – we’ve switched to a new responsive design. (Full, official announcement from PR below.)

In case you missed it, here’s the email address where you can report issues: cms@scranton.edu. You can also reminisce about the old website in the Library’s web archive.

academics

2013-08-14 email from External Affairs:

Later this evening we will launch a major update to the University’s website (scranton.edu), including a new homepage and section pages (e.g. About Us and Academics). Designed and developed in collaboration with nationally recognized partners, the enhanced site provides a fresher look that incorporates larger images, and new fonts, colors and graphics. The enhancements to our overall website follow the successful implementation last week of a substantial microsite to serve undergraduate admissions (admissions.scranton.edu).

Both scranton.edu and admissions.scranton.edu reflect our first use of “responsive Web design,” which adapts the presentation of images, links, forms and other content to match the screen size of the viewer (e.g. desktop, tablet or smartphone).

The overall project is the culmination of more than a year of collaboration between Marketing Communications and Information Technology Development and Applications. Given the breadth of work involved with this project and the complexity of accommodating such a wide variety of browsers and devices, you may encounter issues or concerns with pages on our site. If you should come across something, then please let us know by sending a link to the page and an explanation of the issue to cms@scranton.edu

Special thanks to all those who have worked so hard to put these improvements in place.


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Scranton.edu 3.0 – Responsive Design

23 05 2013

At Tuesday’s IT Forum, staff members Lori Nidoh, Val Clark, and Matt Wren from PR and Joe Casabona from IR gave a joint presentation on the new design templates for the University website, which will go live in July.

The new designs are responsive, meaning that they’ll automatically adjust to the screen size of whatever device you’re using to view them. See slides (.ppsx) from the Forum presentation for a comparison of old vs new.

More specific information will be coming out for CMS users, but one of the more immediate changes that will need to be made is to banner images (e.g., on department pages or on faculty pages in the CMS that use the standard templates). The new designs are wider than the old (1280 x 361 pixels vs. 780 x 180 pixels), so properly sized images will be needed. You can pick a photo from the Photo Gallery, but you can also use your own image as long as it’s sized – see instructions in the slides (.ppsx).

We’ll post more information as we get it – in the meantime, please let TAG know if you have questions about the redesign.


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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

Website Maintenance Proposal Group Minutes, 11-13-2012

14 11 2012

The website proposal group met on 11/13/2012 at 1PM. In attendance were: Kevin Wilkerson, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Sandy Pesavento, Teresa Conte, Kathleen Iacocca, and Jeremy Sepinsky.

The meeting agenda can be found here.

The discussion began with a recap of what TAG has learned, and the problems that exist regarding the current department webpages. See the above minutes for a detailed description. Some additional information that was provided by the attendees during the meeting:

  1. The current guidelines for departmental webpages have no way of requiring continued maintenance of the department pages. The language address “encouraging” the faculty to update and submit content. When crafting this language, the faculty and staff involved debated whether they could make it stronger, but decided they could only request participation from the faculty members.
  2. Some colleges have implemented “local” solutions. For example, PCPS has hired a Graduate Assistant savvy with the CMS to implement revisions as opposed to having individual faculty members update the pages.
  3. While Admissions is very concerned with the website from a student perspective, it is important to realize that we need good PR from a faculty perspective as well. When departments are looking for a new faculty position the website can play a critical role in whether or not quality candidates apply for the job.
  4. The current CMS, unfortunately, creates a barrier for the CTLE to help faculty update and maintain departmental or personal pages. The permissions structure requires the faculty to be present for updates, edits, and, particularly, publishing. Furthermore, the CMS preview rendering is NOT consistent with the final product that is displayed on a webpage. Thus, a Tech Con would be able to modify and edit a page so it looks good in a preview, but it will be changed when the faculty publishes. The number of iterations required to get a final, attractive product would be overly burdensome on the faculty.
  5. There were debates as to whether the University got what it paid for in terms of the CMS. It was designed to allow faculty easy access to update their own pages, but it is NOT as user-friendly as hoped. In order to include the features that many people needed, the interface and design became too complicated for the casual user.

To summarize the problem that this group hopes to tackle:

  • PR is not well-informed enough about faculty content to independently update the webpages;
  • Faculty are neither taught nor incentivized well enough to update the site on their own.

Thus, we hope to develop a CMS-agnostic process that bridges the gap between presentation skills and complete content.

Previously on our campus, there have been two models for the update and design of the webpages, neither of which seem to have worked. The Webmaster model, and the Faculty Ownership model.

  • The Webmaster Model
    • This model existed prior to the current CMS, where a person (or group of people; hereafter “The Webmaster”) was responsible for updating the pages with content provided by the faculty.
    • The Webmaster thus had the access and the skills to create and present the departmental webpages, whenever the content was provided by the faculty.
    • Unfortunately, the faculty did not often provide or update the information on the page, and the Webmaster was not tasked with actively seeking out that information. Faculty were not tasked with actively contacting the Webmaster with such information. Thus, many pages were not actively updated
  • The Faculty Ownership Model
    • This is the model that is currently in place. The faculty have full control over their departmental webpages. The CMS was intended to provide easy access to the content producers (read: faculty), so they could play an active part in the dissemination of that content on the webpages.
    • CMS training exists for the faculty, and afterwards they are able to update the pages. But it is far from simple or WYSIWIG. The biggest problem becomes when faculty want to update the webpage later. Because they update infrequently, it generally requires faculty to relearn the CMS in order to re-update, which is really the big time sink.
    • Because of the learning barrier for the CMS, most faculty don’t know how to use it, and a departmental webmaster is appointed. There are still no clear expectations of the webpage, and faculty are often ill-equipped for creating publicly consumable knowledge, let alone PR materials. Thus, while the webpages may be more frequently updated, there is less useful content and an inconsistency in presentation which hampers PR efforts.

Thus, given this information, the faculty present feel that a Periodic Webmaster model might work best. Our group describes this as one where significant updates to the departmental webpages happen at certain times throughout the year. The Webmaster would solicit updates and/or approval of changes from faculty regarding certain parts of their department’s webpage. For example, faculty changes may happen in January and June whereas front page changes may happen in February and September. Each recurring facet of departmental webpages should have a deadline attached to it. This is not dissimilar to the model currently employed for course catalog updates. For departments that want more regular updates, there would be an avenue available for ad hoc changes, or even the possibility of continued faculty access to the CMS.

At the close of the meeting, the members feel that this plan is worth exploration and will begin to work out the details and logistics of such a process. This will happen over the course of the next few months.

As always: questions, comments, or suggestions are more than welcome. Email tag-member@royallists.scranton.edu, or comment below.


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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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Departmental Websites

12 09 2012

One of the issues TAG is tackling this fall is departmental websites (as distinct from faculty member websites, which we worked out with the CTLE and PR last year). The big question is: Who has responsibility for creating and updating content on academic department websites?  Some background information —

–Departmental web pages are really important for admissions and PR – they get a lot of hits and a lot of attention (as seen in Google Analytics).

–Departmental web pages are housed in the University’s content management system (CMS) and follow templates so that all University pages are consistent.

–The CMS is managed by Public Relations. (Lori Nidoh represents PR on TAG).

–The University’s Web Guidelines break web pages into categories, and each category includes information about who has what roles. Two parts, excerpted here, mention departmental websites. Section III.C.b (“Academic Departmental Pages”):

“Academic department pages are vital for prospective students, current students and faculty. Departments are encouraged to maintain their pages and to develop content on their pages that reflects the distinctive interests and qualities of the faculty and their discipline. Academic departments should appoint at least a contributor and approver for their pages and can request to have a person designated as a publisher following appropriate training.”

and Appendix 1 (“Academic Uses of the Web”):

“The Web is a valuable opportunity to present creatively and dramatically departments, academic and extracurricular programs, and the faculty members that make it all work. Academic use of the Web is ultimately governed by academic freedom, as described in the Faculty Handbook, and the Code of Responsible Computing. Each academic department will have pages on the University’s Web site
created and maintained by the department using the University’s Web Content Management System (CMS), and structured by the templates provided in the CMS. These pages present the formal administration of departments and the curricula that comprise academic programs, that is, the material approved and published in the catalog. The content of these pages require approvals from the chair of the department or the program director and the relevant dean.

1. The academic department page (see Fig. 1 and Fig. 2) serves as the entry point or ‘landing page’ for prospective students and other guests through Web searching. Except for a the top navigation bar and a block containing Admissions information, the content of this page consists of input from the academic department chairperson or the program director and faculty associated with the program, as approved by the Dean. The faculty of the programs are encouraged to provide original content for program pages to make them as dynamic and engaging as possible.”

–Course descriptions are managed in the centralized University catalog.

–Academic departments were supposed to identify a “point person” in the department who would be responsible for the department’s site, and their work would count as departmental/University service. (See Dave’s post from last year on his experiences with the History department page.)

–A faculty member “point person” needs to attend CMS training to learn how to edit the department website. Text and minor structural changes can be made by faculty, but additional customizations generally require additional support from PR.

–Faculty have some concerns about this plan. A summary:

  • The CMS interface is not easy to use, especially if you’re not using it regularly. It takes time to remember how to do things and to remember where files are/should be.
  • Editing and updating content is very time consuming – faculty “point people” may see a significant increase to their workload. There is a constant flow of information of different types that needs to be updated or revised.
  • Interactive or customized web requests still have to go through PR.

–PR’s perspective (Note: will update after consulting with Lori)

  • Faculty should be responsible for web content on academic pages.
  • Academic department pages need to be up to date and relevant to students.
  • New efforts towards developing responsive web design may affect this discussion.

–Ideas for possible solutions that we’ve come up with to date:

  1. Faculty “point people” control, provide, and publish academic department websites via the CMS.
  2. Some academic affairs staff members specialize in web publishing and implement CMS changes on behalf of their departments (?) [Academic Affairs was working on a faculty profile project last year – status of this is unknown.]
  3. Faculty provide information updates and content to an undetermined “point person” with expert knowledge of the CMS, who then alters the actual files and publishes the changes.
  4. [Rutgers model] Faculty provide information updates and content to an undetermined CMS expert – but with rolling windows of time. E.g., each Sept/January faculty could submit changes to courses. Each July, departments could submit information for new faculty, etc.
  5. ??

TAG members and PR staff, please let me know if I’ve misstated or missed something – and please let me know if you have other solution ideas or suggestions on next steps to consider!


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TAG Meeting Notes 4/12/2012

16 04 2012

TAG met on Thursday, April 12 for our final meeting of the 2011-2012 academic year.

Standing Committees:

IRAC

  • IRAC (the Information Resources Advisory Council) will be meeting this week.

Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group

  • Blackboard recently announced that 1) they are purchasing MoodleRooms and 2) they will be extending support for Angel indefinitely.  (See this post for more information)
  • The LMS Work Group will still be reviewing the three original options (Blackboard, Desire 2 Learn, and MoodleRooms), but will now also consider the option of staying with Angel for the future.
  • Mobile support for the LMS is still a primary concern for faculty and students.

Information Management Advisory Committee (IMAC)

  • The Incidental Use policy has been approved by the Cabinet. The final draft of the policy has been posted on the web.
  • There is still some concern among faculty about the governance process the Incidental Use policy went through. Anne Marie noted that there are some issues (e.g., privacy and confidentiality) for which compliance with federal regulations, rather than consensus from faculty and other campus users, must be the goal.
  • TAG was able to provide feedback on the policy language at an early stage, and we hope to continue to work with IR in that capacity on future policies.
  • A privacy and employee confidentiality policy is still in the works.

Previous Action Items

Incidental Use Policy

  • See IMAC discussion above.

Academic Technology Plan

  • The Academic Technology Plan has been backburnered. Anne Marie said that it’s unlikely any progress will be made on the Plan any time soon, since there are too many other things going on on campus that are a higher priority.
  • At some point, the next step will be for Anne Marie to meet with Jeremy and Kristen to identify a path forward.

Faculty Directory

  • HR and the Provost’s Office are continuing to explore options for storing in Banner such faculty-related information as chair or program director status and departmental affiliation.
  • Currently, Banner identifies a faculty member as a Chair, but does not specify of what department or departments.
  • The Provost’s Office has volunteered to maintain this kind of data once a location in Banner is identified. This information changes from term to term, so frequent maintenance is important.
  • The Provost’s Office would like to know what *other* information about faculty status or affiliation should be recorded that isn’t currently documented somewhere.
  • In a related project, Anne Marie and Maria Landis are working to create web profiles for faculty members – similar to those done in the past few years for new faculty, which are highlighted from the Provost’s web site. This set of data will include faculty photos, and will be compiled and maintained manually in flat HTML rather than in a relational database. We discussed that this seems like a very ineffective way to gather, publish, and maintain information about faculty members. However, this was the only solution presented to the Provost’s Office by PR.  Eugeniu suggested that the web pages could be hosted somewhere else so that information could be pulled from Banner.

Networking Computers Follow-up and Resolution

  • A faculty member contacted TAG with a concern about networking computers. The issue is now resolved, but it served to highlight some ways in which communication between faculty and the Technology Support Center and IT Services staff members could be improved.
  • Jeremy met with Jim and Robyn to discuss the faculty member’s request and the TSC’s service response. On the IR side, the communication issues inspired some changes in the Support Center workflow.
  • On the faculty side, TAG will work on encouraging faculty members to 1) report issues to the TSC either via phone (941-HELP), email (techsupport@scranton.edu), or Footprints, 2) if reporting by phone or email, to request a ticket number to be able to follow the TSC’s progress, and 3) provide as much information as possible to the TSC staff member (e.g., classroom number, symptoms, any attempted troubleshooting, etc) to speed service response time.
  • Kristen asked if there could be an “other” category in Footprints for requests that don’t seem to fit under any other category. Anne Marie warned that then every request would be submitted as “other.” Jim recommended that faculty who aren’t sure what Footprints category to use should call or email the TSC, who will route the ticket to the proper category.

Leahy Hall and Classroom Technology

  • Teresa C. and Sandy met with Dean Pellegrino to request that a TAG representative be involved in classroom mediation discussions regarding the new PCPS building. Dean Pellegrino agreed with this request.
  • TAG and IT Services will work to keep each other informed on classroom mediation in the new building.

St. Thomas Hall and Classroom Technology

  • The plans for the St. Thomas renovation have changed, so there are no longer plans to remodel classrooms in that part of the building, only faculty offices.

Lecture Capture

  • The lecture capture end point devices are already installed in the Science Center. IT Services is currently working on configuring the back end MediaSite server.
  • Testing will continue through the spring, with a goal of implementation over the summer for use by faculty in Fall 2012.

New Incidents/New Business

Faculty/TSC communication

  • A faculty member contacted TAG about a ticket that she put in to the TSC. The TSC staff member who responded hadn’t read her initial request, so while the issue was eventually resolved, it took a few more emails back and forth than it should have. This seems to have been a one-time mistake on the part of the TSC staff member rather than a systematic error, but it renewed our discussion of how faculty can best communicate with and report problems to the TSC, and how TAG can relay that information out to faculty.
  • We discussed the possibility of tutorials or screenshots on Footprints being made available, though faculty don’t necessarily have time to view tutorials.
  • When Luminis (the my.scranton interface) is upgraded, Kristen will request that the faculty tab have TSC contact information clearly highlighted so that it’s easier to find.
  • Jeremy suggested that TAG work with IR staff to incorporate that information into New Faculty Orientation.
  • Other possibilities included communicating with faculty administrative assistants or emailing faculty at the beginning of the semester to ask if they need help adapting to a new classroom.
  • The best way for the TSC to get information is to have a conversation directly with the faculty member experiencing the problem, whether via phone call to the TSC, email, or Footprints request.

Thin client computing

  • IR is currently experimenting with thin client computers in the Library. The experiment has hit some road blocks, so the original computers were replaced, and the pilot is now continuing.
  • Once the thin client model is proved successful, the next step would be to replace the lab computers in the Library and in Brennan, and then additional computer labs on campus.
  • Faculty and staff computers are farther away on the timeline.
  • One of the major benefits but also difficulties of thin client computing is software licensing – e.g., faculty would be able to log on to a virtualized environment from anywhere and have access to the software they need (SPSS, etc). But this is a very expensive process.

Faculty development specialist in CTLE

  • CTLE is hiring a new staff member to work with faculty on pedagogical techniques. This position is not specifically targeted at teaching with technology, and in the job description, the requirements focus on curriculum development.

TAG Membership for 2012-2013

  • TAG members should let Kristen know if they do not plan to continue serving on TAG in 2012-2013. She will send out an email reminder to all members.
  • We plan to follow the same model of meeting as a group once a month, with different TAG members tasked out to serve as TAG representatives on various related committees or projects.

2011-2012 Recap and 2012-2013 Planning

  • We talked about potential technology-related issues that faculty might face in 2012-2013 that TAG should monitor or be actively involved in.
  • Dave mentioned that there may be some technology issues over the summer as faculty move offices, but to date everything has gone smoothly.
  • One of the major concerns for next year may be the maintenance of departmental web pages in the University’s content management system (CMS). Maria Landis has reached out to each academic department to try to identify a point person for web page development and maintenance. There may be significant faculty concerns about the time commitment involved in departmental pages. Lori said that PR doesn’t feel comfortable creating content for academic pages, but at the same time, the pages need to be up-to-date and complete since they’re such an important factor in recruitment. We ended the meeting without being sure of whether and how TAG should play a role in these discussions, but it will likely be an issue that we will address in 2012-2013.

We adjourned for 2011-2012. TAG’s next full meeting will be scheduled for September 2012.


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Categories : Announcements, Minutes

TAG Meeting Notes 2/9/12

13 02 2012

TAG held its first Spring 2012 meeting last Thursday.

Standing Committees:

IRAC

  • IRAC (the Information Resources Advisory Council) is meeting this Thursday and will be discussing the service catalog.

Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group

  • The LMS Work Group has chosen three vendors – Blackboard, MoodleRooms, and Desire2Learn – to bring to campus for demonstrations.
  • The three candidates have been asked to focus their demonstrations based on the Work Group’s list of top desired features, which included feedback from the faculty survey distributed by CTLE in December and January.  The faculty’s top desired features were mobile access and grading.
  • All faculty are invited and encouraged to attend the demonstrations. If you attend, you’ll receive a list of the top desired features so that you can mark it with your comments and concerns.
  • The group aims to choose a vendor by the end of the semester. Next fall, faculty will be able to choose whether they’d like to try the new LMS or stick with Angel – the two systems will be run in parallel for the 2012-2013 academic year.

Mobile Apps Work Group

  • The Mobile Apps work group met on Wednesday, February 8.
  • New mobile development will be in the form of mobile web pages – accessible either via the University’s mobile app or directly through a user’s mobile browser.
  • The February 8 meeting focused on identifying the top priorities for mobile development.  Mobile access to the Learning Management System (LMS) and Banner data were ranked highly by most of the work group.
  • Public Relations will be sending out a survey to users and non-users of the University app to get feedback on what users want to see in the app.
  • Full minutes will be posted when they’re are available: 2012-02-08-Mobile Apps Working Group Minutes

Luminis Work Group

  • This spring, an upgrade is planned for Luminis, the software behind the my.scranton portal.
  • Kristen and Anne Marie met with Joe Casabona from IR to provide faculty/staff feedback on the my.scranton portal.

Previous Action Items

Incidental Use Policy

  • TAG continues to work with IR to provide faculty feedback on new drafts of the Incidental Use Policy.
  • Jeremy explained that the policy clarifies the responsibilities of faculty, staff, and students when it comes to technology use. It does not add new restrictions to faculty technology use.
  • Jeremy and Kristen will bring this draft of the policy to Faculty Senate on 2/10/12 for discussion and further faculty input.
  • This policy is one part of a multiple-policy Information Security compliance program.   The Code of Responsible Computing will essentially be broken up into smaller, more adaptable policies.
  • The next part of the compliance program will be the Privacy & Confidentiality Statement, to be discussed at the February 13 IMAC meeting. IR has invited TAG to provide feedback on this proposed policy as well.

Academic Technology Plan

  • Anne Marie reported that other priorities have prevented progress on the Academic Technology Plan.
  • She will work with Hal on identifying the direction and goals of the plan, which are amorphous at this point.

Faculty Directory

  • We revisited the question of listing more than one department for a single faculty member in Banner.  This problem is not going away, since new faculty in Women’s Studies will be joint appointments.
  • Anne Marie reported that this issue seems to be dead in the water – there doesn’t seem to be a viable solution for adding another field to Banner.  It’s surprisingly difficult to create a new field in Banner, and when Banner is upgraded to a new version, custom fields aren’t carried through.  The field also would need to be maintained.
  •  We will revisit this conversation with HR in the future.
  • A short term solution may be a faculty photo directory that Anne Marie is working on with Maria Landis.  The directory will include portraits of all faculty members as well as their department listings, etc.

Computerized Testing

  • The new Learning Management System (LMS) may be able to provide a secure testing environment for computerized testing.  Eugeniu is looking at this.

Email Transition

  • January’s email transition seemed to go smoothly for most faculty members.  Most of the faculty have successfully migrated – only a few outliers (who requested later migration dates) remain.  Many thanks to the IT Services staff for quickly answering lots of questions from Kristen and other faculty members.
  • Training courses are still available for faculty who want assistance getting used to the new Live@Edu environment.  Next Thursday’s IT Forum will include tips and training for Office web apps and SkyDrive.
  • Eugeniu recommended using OneNote, synced to SkyDrive, for notetaking.
  • SkyDrive storage space can be used for pretty much anything, but any institutional documents that contain Personally Identifiable Information (PII) must be stored on Royal Drive.

Social Media Guidelines

  • At a recent meeting of the Committee on University Image and Promotion (CUIP), Public Relations distributed a new draft of the Social Media Guidelines, now integrated into the University Web Guidelines.   TAG gave feedback on an earlier draft of the Social Media Guidelines, much of which is incorporated into the new version.
  • Kristen will post the new guidelines for review by TAG members and other faculty.

New Incidents

  • Faculty should be careful to log out of Live@Edu and close their browser at the end of a session. Dave pointed out that if you don’t log out of Live@Edu on a shared computer, another user can access your account simply by going to Hotmail (also owned by Microsoft).

New Business

TAG policy workflow

  • The Incidental Use policy so far has been a good case study for how IR and TAG can work together on policy issues to address faculty needs and concerns.  We got to give feedback on the policy language and will present the draft language to Faculty Senate before the policy starts to go through the full governance process.
  • We’re working on solidifying this process with IR and the Faculty Senate Academic Support committee.

Content Management System

  • The transition from Tiger to the CMS server went smoothly.
  • So far about ten faculty members have approached the CTLE and developed a CMS website.  The process isn’t ideal – e.g., instead of creating a new page a user had to copy an existing page, etc.

Outage Notifications

  • Jeremy suggested that there should be a feed or web page detailing for each enterprise service 1) when the next scheduled downtime is and 2) what the status is of any unplanned outages.
  • Jim said there used to be a page like this, but it was hard to maintain.  It can be done, but where should it rank on the priority list?
  • We will keep this in mind and try to figure out how high a priority it would be for faculty.

Footprints

  • Footprints is working well as an internal tool for IR. Not many users are creating their own tickets, but it helps to track issues internally.
  • The knowledge base hasn’t been used much yet, and it’s somewhat hard to find.  We discussed the idea of posting a direct link to the knowledge base from the portal, after the Luminis upgrade.

Having run out of time, we adjourned. The next TAG meeting is scheduled for Tuesday, March 6, from 10:00am-11:15am in WML305.

————

Updated 4/24/2012 with a link to the 02/08/2012 Mobile Apps Group meeting minutes


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