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 Apps Group update

13 11 2012

Updated 2012-11-26: Meeting minutes are available.

The University-wide Mobile Apps Group (chaired by Connie Wisdo from IR, with Ben Bishop and me as faculty participants) met yesterday. A few updates:

Blackboard Learn Mobile App for Angel

  • Now available for students and faculty.
  • Available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry devices in their respective app stores.
  • Once you install the app, search for University of Scranton and log in with your my.scranton credentials.

Student Services Mobile Page

  • A mobile web page for student services (m.scranton.edu/studentservices) went up in September.
  • Feedback from students seems to be positive, although we did not have any analytics to review.
  • One of the student representatives in the work group mentioned that the tools currently available on the web page (grades, schedule, channel guide, Library, Aquinas) aren’t compelling at this time of the semester. Grades will be more important as the semester ends.

University App (Straxis)

  • Straxis has scaled back/slowed down their plans to include a Dining Services module in the University app.
  • The next modules Straxis plans to release are Faith & Service module, Enhanced Twitter, and GPA Calculator.
  • Straxis will soon be sending out an update with iPhone 5 graphics and iOS6 enhancements.

Luminis Upgrade

  • We will be upgrading to Luminis 5 over spring break 2013, which will be a major update to the my.scranton portal.
  • Mobile access to my.scranton will likely be improved – testing will begin in January.

Next Steps for Mobile

  • We reviewed the results of last spring’s mobile survey to consider what other mobile functionality should be developed.
  • Ben suggested that mobile access to a list of faculty office hours or faculty schedules would be useful — it doesn’t seem like this data is available via an API, though.
  • Student suggestions (via CTLE) included a GPA calculator and easy access to financial aid information.
  • Students also asked if campus event feeds on mobile web pages could be iCal feeds (i.e., so you could easily add an event to your calendar on your phone.
  • Students were interested in mobile access to course registration, but this is not supported at this time.
  • Computer lab availability is a possibility due to the switch to thin clients in the Library and in Brennan.
  • When the Royal Card system is upgraded, students will be able to use a free (to them) app from Blackboard Transact to add funds and check their balance. There is a university subscription fee, so ITDA has requested funding to support that feature. Transact would interact with Royal Card funds, not Flex or meals.
  • No progress has been made on a LaundryView app.
  • A graduate student in Computing Sciences is doing a project to track usage of the Pilarz Hall gym — so that students could check their phone to see approximately how crowded the gym would be.
  • ITDA staff members met with Aramark to discuss mobile access to dining hall menus. Information from CampusDish (the web service Aramark uses) is not accessible to us via API. Aramark may be working on their own mobile app.
  • The Library is experimenting with a mobile study room reservation system. There will likely be a pilot in January and February using two group study rooms on the 2nd floor. The Student Services mobile page could simply link to this system.

I’ll post full meeting minutes when they come out. Let me know if you have any questions or suggestions!


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Student Services – Mobile

12 09 2012

A mobile web page for student services is now up at m.scranton.edu/studentservices. It includes grades, student schedule, the Library, the Aquinas, and a TV channel guide.

This project came out of the Mobile Apps work group, which includes Ben Bishop and me as faculty representatives. Here’s the announcement from work group leader Connie Wisdo:

I wanted to let you all know that the student services mobile web app has been launched in our production environment.  You can access it using m.scranton.edu/studentservices.

You’ll be seeing posters going up around campus in the next week or so to announce both this app, and also Blackboard Mobile Learn for ANGEL.

The Student Services Mobile web app will be incorporated in the Scranton app very soon (hopefully this week), and it will also appear as a menu item on the m.scranton.edu main menu.

Thanks again for all your help in getting this first version developed and launched!

I believe we will meet again as a group in November, to gather feedback and consider options for the next version of the app.  We lost both our student reps from last year, so if you have students you’d like to nominate to the group (either undergrad or grad), please let me know.


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Mobile Apps Group update

24 04 2012

Updated 5/10/12: Minutes from this meeting

——————————————————–

The University-wide Mobile Apps Group met last week for the first time since February 8.  A few updates that are relevant to faculty:

Blackboard Learn Mobile App for ANGEL

  • Since the Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group is now considering staying with Angel as an option, the University is doing a full-blown trial of Blackboard Mobile Learn for Angel to see if it can meet student/faculty mobile needs.
  • The mobile version does not have all of the features that the standard Angel interface does – most notably, the gradebook and assignment dropbox are not fully accessible from the mobile app.
  • Faculty can try it out by downloading the app (the “New” version with the red ribbon on the icon) to their mobile device.

Review of Mobile App Survey Results

  • Lori Nidoh shared results from the Spring 2012 Mobile App and Services Survey that they ran on campus. Lori’s presentation (pptx) is here: 2012 Mobile Survey Findings
  • Most of the survey respondents were current undergraduate students – only about 3% were faculty.
  • Survey respondents were very interested in getting mobile access to Angel. Mobile access to Angel was ranked most highly (average of 3.9 out of 5) of a list of suggested future features, and more than 60% of respondents ranked it as the University resource they’re most interested in accessing from their phone.

Android access to the my.scranton portal


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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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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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