Privacy and Confidentiality Policy – Draft Review

19 04 2012

The Information Management Advisory Committee (IMAC) has invited faculty review on a draft of a Privacy and Confidentiality policy being proposed by the Division of Planning and Information Resources (PIR).

This policy, like the Incidental Use Policy, is part of an ongoing effort to update and revise the Code of Responsible Computing. Other policy updates will be forthcoming.

IMAC has asked TAG to circulate this document among faculty members for early input.  Please read through the draft, and if you have comments or concerns, send your feedback to TAG (tag-discussion@royallists.scranton.edu) by May 8 so that we can share it at the next IMAC meeting on May 15.


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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 3/6/12

8 03 2012

TAG held its second Spring 2012 meeting on Tuesday.

Online Course Evaluations:

  • We started the meeting with a discussion about online course evaluations.  Jerry Muir, as a representative from the Course Evaluation Committee, led the discussion.
  • The Course Evaluation Committee is concerned about decreasing response rates for the evaluations. In the last two semesters, the overall response rate was below 60%.
  • Response rates were higher (~80%) when students had to complete evaluations in order to see their final grades. But this policy had some serious problems – e.g., students were sometimes completing the evaluations after taking their final exam, or they would rush through the evaluations just to see their grades.
  • The Course Evaluation Committee is looking for ideas to improve response rates for online evaluations. One idea under discussion is to ask faculty to grant students 15 minutes of class time during the last week of class to complete the online evaluations in class. Students could use mobile devices like laptops, tablets, or smartphones – although smartphones wouldn’t really facilitate comments, which many faculty find to be the most valuable part of the evaluation.
  • S.P. suggested that course evaluations could be tied into the Passport system for KSOM students. Sandy and Teresa agreed that the Passport system under development in PCPS might be useful in the same way.
  • Dave pointed out that the current structure of the online evaluations doesn’t necessarily fit for online courses (e.g., there are questions about “classroom management”).  There should either be separate evaluation forms for online vs. traditional classes, or the questions should be standardized to meet both situations.

Standing Committees:

IRAC

  • IRAC (the Information Resources Advisory Council) met on February 16 and discussed the idea of a service catalog that would outline what services IR provides and set expectations for both the providers and the recipients of those services.  This is still under development and will be brought back to IRAC in the fall.

Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group

  • The LMS Work Group brought three vendors (Desire2Learn, MoodleRooms, and Blackboard) to campus for demonstrations. The demos were open to the University community.
  • Attendees at the demonstrations were invited to complete evaluation forms. The average evaluation scores for Blackboard and Desire2Learn were relatively close, while MoodleRooms’ score was further behind.
  • The next step is to obtain sandbox versions of each system for demonstration and experimentation.  CTLE has asked some of the faculty participants in the LMS Work Group for sample course content to use for the sandboxes.
  • S.P. mentioned that DelTech, the vendor that hosts the KSOM and PCPS online-only programs, is moving from Angel to Moodle (that is, their own customized version of Moodle, not MoodleRooms). Instructors who teach both online and in-person versions of a course would have to navigate two different LMSes.

Information Management Advisory Committee (IMAC)

  • TAG does not have a sitting representative on IMAC, but Jeremy and Kristen have been invited to recent meetings since there are new policies under development that would affect faculty.
  • At a February 13 meeting, IR introduced two new policies under development: a Privacy & Confidentiality Statement and the Employee Separation Procedures document.
  • The “Privacy & Confidentiality Statement” is still in rough draft form. It is intended to describe how staff members in the Planning & Information Resources division will handle electronic information, in compliance with the Information Classification Policy and other information management standards. IR asked for feedback from IMAC members and will release the next draft of the Statement for wider review.
  • The “Employee Separation Procedures: Information Resources” document outlines the divisional procedures that IR staff will follow when an employee (faculty or staff) member separates from the University.  The procedures address the departing employee’s access to information resources, including hardware, email, Royal Drive data storage, etc.   TAG briefly discussed the idea of having a checklist of technology items (for example, data transfer, email forwarding) that faculty should prepare for or be aware of prior to a separation. Sandy and Kristen will ask Anne Marie if and how a technology checklist could be incorporated into the Academic Affairs separation procedures.

Previous Action Items

Incidental Use Policy

  • Jeremy and Kristen presented a draft of the Incidental Use Policy to Faculty Senate on February 10, with Robyn Dickinson and Tony Maszeroski representing IR.  Robyn and Tony will take the input from the Faculty Senate discussion (mostly clarifications in the policy language) into consideration for the next draft of the policy.

Academic Technology Plan

  • At the February 10 Faculty Senate meeting, Hal reported that the Academic Technology Plan was essentially dead in the water since there is no budget to support it.
  • TAG members agreed that the Plan should drive a technology budget, rather than the reverse. [The same conclusion was agreed upon at the Deans’ Group half-day retreat last spring.] A plan is needed to establish goals and vision, which in turn are needed in order for progress to be assessed.
  • Jeremy and Kristen will work with Anne Marie to figure out next steps for writing and implementing a Plan.

New Business

Leahy Hall and classroom technology

  • Our discussion of the Academic Technology Plan led into a discussion about the new PCPS building to be constructed on the Leahy Hall site.
  • TAG would like there to be a consistent faculty voice on classroom technology issues during new construction or renovation. TAG had some input into classroom mediation decisions in the Loyola Science Center, but not on a consistent, continued basis.
  • Sandy and Teresa will explore this idea with Deb Pellegrino as planning for the new building begins.  Dave has been already providing classroom technology input on the St. Thomas renovations.

Networking computers and desktop sharing

  • TAG received a complaint from a faculty member about the difficulties involved in setting up desktop sharing between a faculty computer (on the faculty virtual network) and lab classroom computers (on the student network).  IR had suggested that RoyalDrive be used instead, but that solution did not meet the faculty member’s needs.  A temporary solution has been worked out by placing the lab computers on the faculty network.  The faculty member initially requested the service in September 2011, and the temporary solution is being put in place this week.
  • We did not arrive at an action step on this complaint during the TAG meeting.

Having run out of time (as usual!), we adjourned. The next TAG meeting is scheduled for Thursday, April 12, from 10:00am-11:15am in WML305.


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Announcements, Classroom Mediation, Network and Infrastructure, Online courses, TAG Administrative

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

Incidental Use Policy — Preliminary Review

8 12 2011

The Information Management Advisory Committee (IMAC) invited TAG (represented by Jeremy Sepinsky) to attend their meeting on November 11, 2011 in order to discuss the preliminary proposal for a new “Incidental Use Policy” proposed by the Division of Planning and Information Resources (PIR). This policy is part of an ongoing effort to update and revise the “Code of Responsible Computing”. Other policy updates will be forthcoming.

The Incidental Use Policy can be found here: Incidental Use Policy.

TAG and IR is currently in the process of circulating this document through the faculty Senate and the union, and we will be reporting our comments on the document from those sources. Concerned individuals are encourage to submit their comments and/or feedback to TAG ( tag-discussion@royallists.scranton.edu) and or Tony Maszeroski in PIR. Comments should be submit by Friday, January 6 so they can be included in next revision.

In what follows, we post the comments and concerns that TAG has already brought up in regards to this policy. Please add your comments, questions, and concerns in the comment section below.

TAG Comments on the Information Use Policy

    Summary Comments

  • TAG applauds PIR’s effort and interest in bringing this to the attention of the University Community at this early stage in the process when changes can be made and the policy amended. The intent of the policy is well meaning and has an appropriate function. PIR has done a good job of being fair and even-handed with the policy. However, there are a number of places where the policy as written may impact the faculty in unforeseen ways.
  • The Incidental Use is not intended to restrict or limit the reasonable use of the University technology infrastructure. Instead, it is meant to provide a context for when and how university services can be accessed for non-university purposes. The primary intent of policy is to state that the non-job-related use of the university’s infrastructure is permissible provided that such use does not interfere with an employee’s job-specific responsibilities and/or compromise university infrastructure.
    Specific Comments

  • The policy states that the incidental use of university technology resources should not “Create the appearance of impropriety or unethicality” (Page 1, letter d). These terms are ambiguous and could be used against faculty pursuing outreach or research in certain controversial topics. It is important that a policies such as this, if implemented, cannot be used as an additional “tool” for the administration or other faculty to limit or censure faculty use of technology. Statements such as this have the capability of limiting academic freedom if abused. To this end, the American Association of University Professors has this to say about policies such as this (Academic Freedom and Electronic Communications):

    The difficulty with language such as “only official university business,” apart from a distressing lack of precision, is the inherent invitation to selective use of such a standard by an administration anxious to impose substantive constraints on faculty activity. Any restrictions that an institution feels it must impose on “acceptable use” must therefore be clearly and precisely stated, must be content-neutral and narrowly defined, and should address only systemic abuses by users, such as the posting or sending of material that would cause the system to malfunction or would severely inhibit the access of other users.

  • Similarly, item “e” states that the use not be “of unreasonable time, duration, or frequency”. The definition of “unreasonable” can vary from person to person and department to department. If “unreasonable” is defined as “a time such that it interferes with the employee’s duties”, then it simply falls under item “g” which states that such use cannot interfere with the fulfillment of the employee’s responsibilities.
  • The definition of “Incidental Personal Use” on page 2 states that it is something that is unrelated to their “University Employment”. Given the vagueness of the job description of faculty, stating whether or not one’s actions are related to “university employment” is difficult. It is unclear as to who would be making such a determination in the context of the faculty.
  • Page 3, in the statement under “Determination of relation to mission” no mention of the Computer Use Board is made. The Computer Use Board is a body that already exists and is defined in the “Code of Responsible Computing”. This is particularly relevant because it is explicitly stated that there shall be faculty representation on the Computer Use Board. The group proposed here does not specifically state the inclusion of a faculty member in the group who determines whether or not such use in “mission-related”. We feel it is necessary for someone who understands faculty use of technology to be included in the judgement of whether a faculty’s use is to be deemed inappropriate. This is also relevant in the determination of the “sanctions” as listed at the bottom of page 3
  • On Page 3, under “determination of incidental personal use,” the “senior management of each University department” is the one who determines the nature and extent of acceptable incidental personal use. It is unclear who this body or individual is for the faculty.

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Categories : Announcements, Security

TAG Meeting Notes 12/1/11

2 12 2011

[Updated 12/08/11 with links to additional information]

TAG met yesterday to catch up on all our initiatives. Here’s the latest:

  • The Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group has formed and will begin meetings this week.
  • The Mobile Apps work group met at the beginning of November. Meeting minutes are available (PDF). The meeting was mostly dedicated to getting everyone caught up on the existing mobile app and mobile website.  The minutes indicate that any new mobile development will occur within the existing University app (made by Straxis), but this point seemed undecided during the meeting itself. Kristen is seeking clarification from group leader Connie Wisdo on this question.

Sandy Pesavento (education) has withdrawn from the group due to time conflicts, but Andy Berger (physics) has volunteered to serve as a faculty representative along with Ben Bishop and Kristen Yarmey.

  • The Novel Pedagogy Group has received funding from the College of Arts and Sciences to design a mediated classroom that will accommodate the new pedagogies they are exploring. The group is working with Jim and OIT to mediate the room, which is intended to be a model of what the University could do should it prove effective.
  • Members of TAG met with IR in early November to discuss the results of last summer’s TechQual survey. Kristen will post the results and highlights of the discussion on this site under a separate title.  We’ve been asked not to share the results, but we did post a summary of the discussion.
  • IR invited TAG to provide feedback on a rough draft of a new Incidental Use Policy during last month’s IMAC meeting. Jeremy will post specifics about the policy on the TAG site under a separate title.
  • IR is in the process of hiring a new manager to coordinate the work of the Office of Instructional Technology.
  • Progress is being made on the Academic Technology Plan. Anne Marie interviewed several faculty members and administrators to get a sense of what the Plan should include.
  • Faculty directory. At our last meeting TAG discussed the faculty directory’s inability to list more than one department affiliation for a single faculty member. Anne Marie discussed this concern in a Banner meeting earlier this week.  There are several similar issues with Banner not being able to describe employee designations (e.g., emeritus, program director, department chair…).  It seems like the University needs to have a larger conversation about data storage and sharing – Banner wasn’t really designed to handle all of these designations. Anne Marie will look into how other universities handle data sharing.
  • Computerized testing. Teresa spoke with colleagues at Villanova University and found out that they use Par software to conduct secure, controlled online testing.  The downside to Par is that it doesn’t integrate with Villanova’s LMS (Blackboard). Jim will look into Par to see what options we might be able to provide for computerized testing on campus.
  • Security Awareness Training. The email announcement for IR’s security awareness training program went out early by accident. All faculty are encouraged to complete the training program – it’s  a series of short videos, totaling around 60 minutes.  The idea is to expand a general user’s knowledge and understanding of security issues.  See Jeremy’s post from 11/14/11 for details.
  • We talked briefly about the Oracle outage on 11/10 and the wireless outage on 11/16. IR has an incident policy now that indicates how and what information about outages should be disseminated.  During the Oracle outage, information was displayed on my.scranton showing alternate ways for users to access Angel and email. RoyalDrive was not included, but this has been fixed.  Jim is meeting with the rest of the IR team this week to figure out what happened during the 11/16 outage. His goal is for IR to be able to send out early notifications when something is happening.
  • The email transition is a go! The email team itself transitioned this week. Students will be transitioned at the end of December after exams. We discussed the best time to convert faculty, and the best option seems to be January.  We’ll transition in batches, by department. Notifications with more details will be sent out on paper and via email, but here’s essentially what will happen:
    1. You will get email notification in advance, and a final email notice the day of the transition. If your department’s migration is happening at a time that will not work for you, you should contact IR right away to reschedule.2. Your email account will move to Live @ EDU during the night.  Server email will be migrated automatically.

    3. When you log in to my.scranton the next day, you’ll see a new tab with instructions for accessing your new account through the web portal, and instructions for migrating local mail [with Transend Migrator].  You will also need to update your mobile devices and any other email clients (Gmail, MacMail) with new POP3 information.

    4. Your email address will be firstname.lastname@scranton.edu. You will still receive email sent to your existing email (lastnamef2@scranton.edu), but you can’t send out email from that address, so you will need to update it in email listservs, etc.

    5. Training will be available that week to help you get started.  We asked Jim if short screencapture tutorials could be made available as well.

    6. Calendars won’t be migrated until later in the spring.

    7. Office 2010 will be pushed out around the same time.


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Categories : Email, TAG Administrative