Updates from IT Forum and IT Matters

1 03 2013

Just a few updates from recent Planning and Information Resources events and publications – PIR staff, let me know if I missed anything!

February 2013 IT Forum: PIR Tactical Plan

At the February 14th IT Forum, CIO Jerry DeSanto and AVP Robyn Dickinson gave a presentation (slides) on “Information Resources in Transition… Adding Value… Making a Difference” in which they discussed PIR’s progress on their 2010-2013 tactical plan and the thinking behind the 2013-2016 tactical plan. Robyn introduced the four parts of PIR’s vision: 1) Professional expertise, 2) Seamless technology environment, 3) Promote sound business practices, and 4) Enhance the learning experience. Points of particular interest for faculty members:

  • PIR will support innovation in teaching & learning by expanding lecture capture use and capabilities, exploring learning management tools, refining long-term plans for classroom technologies, and working with colleges (via deans and TAG) to identify and meet faculty and student needs.
  • PIR will be looking at big data and analytics in higher education – e.g., using analytics to attract students but also to measure learning.
  • IT will be addressing BYOD (bring your own device) trends as students and faculty access University services using a large variety of consumer devices/products.
  • PIR will be working on improving business practices and project management, not only in PIR itself but across the university. On the faculty side, we’ll see more information in the IT Service Catalog about what services are available (and how quickly).

IT Matters: Spring 2013

The Spring 2013 issue of IT Matters is out. Highlights for faculty members:

  • OIT staff completed upgrades to Brennan 228, 312, 314, 500, 502, and 509 over intersession (yay!). St. Thomas 207, 212, and 311 also got upgrades (yay!).
  • Google Chrome will be installed on University computers through KBOX (Tim has been waiting a long time for this!). There will be an IT Forum on Google Chrome on March 14th.
  • Remote Desktop Assistance is now here – using Viewfinity, Technology Support Center staff can share your desktop (with your permission) in order to help you resolve issues over the phone.
  • The Mobile Device Support Center has been updated with more documentation for Windows mobile devices.
  • IT Services and the Library set up some self-serve book scanners so that students can scan pages from articles or books to a USB drive or Google Docs or email.
  • Connie Wisdo has some notes on Footprints that show how you can log your own tickets (p. 1, 12).
  • Phil Erb wrote up an explanation of Active Directory and what it means for users (see p.6).

 


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Categories : Announcements, Classroom Mediation, Upgrades

Footprints Survey – Sent in Error

16 04 2012

Just a (belated) note to let everyone know that the email sent out to faculty on Friday from servicedesk@scranton.edu (titled “Technology Support Center Satisfaction Survey”) was sent in error. The link it includes is safe, but you don’t need to follow it or fill out a survey. IT Services sends their apologies to everyone for the inconvenience, and I send my apologies for posting about it three days late! :)

Text of the email in question:

From: Technology Support Center (servicedesk@scranton.edu)
To: faculty@scranton.edu
Date: Fri, 13 Apr 2012 11:43:00 -0400

Dear faculty faculty:

Your feedback is important to us! Please take a moment to fill out the attached Satisfaction Survey regarding your recently resolved issue 23706, General Information Inquiry. The information you provide will help us improve our services.

To access the survey please click the Complete Survey link in the email and complete the survey.

Thanks,

James Franceschelli
Director, Information Technology Services

Complete Survey


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Categories : Announcements, Email

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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Categories : Announcements, TAG Administrative

Track your tickets with Footprints

25 07 2011

At today’s IT Forum, Jim Franceschelli and Jason Wimmer presented on Footprints, the software that IT Services uses to track service tickets.  The U has been using Footprints for about two years, logging about 12,000 tickets so far.  This summer, IR has rolled out a new end user interface for Footprints, which is intended to help IT Services staff serve users more efficiently.  My notes on what faculty should know:

    • To date, there have been three ways you can report a problem or request a service from the Technology Support Center – you could call  (941-4357), email them, or walk up to the TSC desk in AMH.  Now, you can still use those three methods, but you also have the option of reporting a problem electronically through Footprints.
    • To get to Footprints, go to my.scranton.edu > University Links >  Footprints (under Administrative Links).
    • You’ll see three main options in the Footprints “Service Catalog”:

1. Report an IT Problem. Use this when something’s wrong and you need it fixed.  Pick the category of your problem (computer, phone, enterprise applications, audio/video, Royal Card, or cable tv), choose a subcategory from the options listed, fill out the form with as much information as possible, and then save it to submit the ticket. If you’re not sure exactly what category or subcategory to choose, just do your best – the TSC staff member reviewing the ticket can change the category to reroute the ticket if needed.

2. Change Management. Faculty probably won’t ever really need to use this option – it’s for modifications to existing University applications (changing Banner forms, querying Banner, etc).

3. Request an IT Service. This is for things like requesting multiple PCs for a special event, moving a VoIP phone, etc. You can also use this section to request installation of special software on a University PC. Just like #1, fill out the form with as much information as possible, and “save” to submit the ticket.

  • You can also use Footprints to check the status on a ticket, whether you called/emailed in a problem/request to the TSC or entered it into Footprints yourself.  Click on “Home” and choose from the dropdown menu of “My Requests” to see active and closed tickets. You’ll be able to see TSC staff members’ notes on what’s going on with your request (e.g., if you’ve reported a problem with ANGEL, Jason might leave a note that says that he’s waiting for a call back from ANGEL support staff).
  • Footprints also holds a Knowledge Base (see the link on the top of the page, next to Service Catalog), which holds keyword searchable solutions to common problems, written out by IT staff members.  Solutions are posted either in Q&A format or as step-by-step instructions.  The solutions are reviewed every six months to make sure they’re still accurate.  There are already 80 solutions posted, with more on the way.
  • Any University community member can contribute to the Knowledge Base – so TAG can use it to share technology shortcuts or tips that might be helpful to other faculty or staff.  Just write up your instructions and email them to ITServices@scranton.edu.

Hopefully, the end-user interface of Footprints will resolve some of the faculty concerns about communication with IR that TAG heard back on our Fall 2010 faculty questionnaire – so please give it a shot and let us know how it goes!

I’ll link to Jason and Jim’s slides when they go up, but in the meantime, post in the comments if you have questions.


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Categories : Announcements, Technology Training, Tutorials, Upgrades

IT Forum on Footprints

14 07 2011

There’s a summer IT Forum coming up about Footprints, the software that IR uses to track service calls to the Technology Support Center.  I’ll be there and will post any updates of interest to faculty – but all are welcome to attend.

Here’s the announcement and registration info, as posted to the my.scranton portal:

Summer IT Forum
July 25th, 2011
BRN 509
11:30 am – 1:00 pm

Footprints Client View
The next IT Forum will highlight the use of Footprints from the view of the University Community. FootPrints is a ticket tracking system utilized by the University of Scranton Planning and Information Resources (PIR) Division, for information technology (IT) requests. It tracks IT service tickets and provides communication among PIR departments and our customers. Students, staff and faculty can submit a ticket to request assistance with an IT-related problem or check on the status of a ticket. They can also search through knowledge base articles that have been submitted by IT support staff on a variety of issues. Faculty and Staff can also use Footprints to submit Change Management requests (modification to existing applications, new applications, or report / query requests) and to request special IT Services (such as PC Setups, VOIP, Port Changes, RoyalDrive, etc).

Presenters: Jason Wimmer, of IT Development and Applications and Jim Franceschelli, Director IT Services

All members of our community are encouraged to attend. Lunch will be served however registration is required. Registration is now on the portal, under University Links-Events/Facilities, select IT Services Training and Event Registration.


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