The Fall 2013 issue of IT Matters is out. Highlights for faculty members:
Update 2013-08-08: Downtime complete :)
[Updated 2013-08-05]
Network Infrastructure is going to be working on our wireless network this week, upgrading to a new version of Cisco NAC. If you’ll be working on campus this week, you may see some downtime on Tuesday and Thursday in the late afternoon/early evening. Notice from the downtime-notices RoyalList:
What:
Network Infrastructure will be upgrading Cisco NAC to version 4.9.3.Why:
To add support for newer operating systems and antivirus as well as add new features. During this upgrade we will also be migrating off of legacy hardware onto new appliances.When:
August 6th 4:30 PM – 6:30 PM
August 7th 4:30 PM – 8:30 PMImpact:
August 6th 4:30PM – 6:30 PM:
Approximately 20 mins of downtime is expected for the wireless network. Wired connections will be unaffected.
August 7th 4:30PM – 6:30 PM:
There will a 1 hour window of downtime where wireless (Royalair, RoyalGuest) and unauthenticated users on wired connections on campus will be unable to login.
Welcome back, all! In case you didn’t spend your summer break thinking about campus technology, here’s a quick recap of what’s been going on over the past few months and what we’ll be talking about in fall semester.
What Happened:
What’s Coming:
What’s Stalled:
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*Thanks to Jim Franceschelli, Lorraine Mancuso, Jerry DeSanto, and Robyn Dickinson for talking us through this year’s road map.
**IR staff, please let me know if I got anything wrong. Thank you!
Last month, members of TAG met with representatives from IR’s Office of Planning & Institutional Effectiveness to discuss results from the TechQual survey that faculty were asked to fill out over the summer.
At this point, IR is working through the results and meeting with focus groups to get a deeper understanding of what the results mean for planning and operations. IR will not be sharing the full results directly with the University community, but the next IT Matters newsletter will include evaluation and reflection on the survey results as a whole.
During the TAG focus group, we looked specifically at faculty responses to the survey. Only full-time faculty were included in the survey, and there was a 21% response rate. This is the second time TechQual has been administered on campus – it was first administered in 2008. The survey respondents were split differently in 2008 than in 2011, so IR is not able to compare the answers directly, but there is some indication of changes over time.
The TechQual survey looks at three major areas: Connectivity & Access, Technology & Technology Services, and End User Experience. The survey instrument asks respondents to rate each item in three ways: in terms of 1) minimum service level, 2) desired service level, and 3) perceived service level.
Overall, the survey results indicate that for faculty, IR is not meeting mean desired expectations. In some areas, IR is not meeting mean minimum expectations. Adequacy gaps, or the difference between minimum and perceived performance, were larger for faculty respondents than for staff. There was evidence that faculty user experiences varied significantly, with some responses being overwhelmingly positive while others were negative.
Although direct comparisons could not be made to the 2008 survey data, there was a trend of rising user expectations for minimum service levels. At the same time, users’ perceived service levels were generally about equal or slightly higher, suggesting that IR is holding steady or improving in some areas.
The good news is that some of the key areas identified for improvement have already been addressed or will soon be addressed. For example, faculty respondents’ perceived level of service for wireless connectivity was below their reported minimum levels of service, but the campus wireless network is scheduled (pending the approval of funding) to undergo additional upgrades that will significantly improve connectivity in academic and administrative buildings.
Classroom technology had the largest adequacy gap for faculty respondents. We spent some time discussing what kind of classroom technology needs faculty experience. Most campus spaces are designed either for using technology (e.g., all seats face a display screen; projection screen requires dimming lights) or for not using technology (e.g., seminar-style seating). TAG members asked for classroom environments that allowed spontaneity and collaboration. We also discussed how faculty and IR can best communicate about technology problems in classrooms (e.g., if a broken projector is reported, can the instructors of the next scheduled classes be notified?). Jim is currently working with OIT and the Technology Support Center staff to figure out solutions to these kinds of questions.
On a more TAG-specific note, in the End User Experience portion of the survey, faculty respondents noted that for “Opportunities to Provide Feedback” their perceived service level was approximately equal to their minimum service level. This result suggests that TAG needs to continue to raise our profile as a communication channel between faculty and IR.
We ran out of time to fully discuss all of the faculty results, but other areas identified for improvement included mobile access and the website/my.scranton portal – aspects of which are currently being addressed by IR teams with faculty representation (the Mobile Apps Work Group and the Luminis Work Group).
[My notes on this meeting were a little rough, so if anyone notices errors or omissions, please let me know and I’ll correct it ASAP! – KY]
We had our first TAG meeting of 2011-2012 this morning. We had a lot to catch up on from the summer, so apologies for the long notes! As always, post a comment if there are any questions or concerns.
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Note: Updated 10/24/11 with PDF docs of mobile app and website statistics shared during the meeting.
To help TAG get an idea of how current students are using the internet on campus, Cal over in Network Infrastructure sent me some quick stats on student connections (from live snapshots taken at around 4:30pm on a weekday).
Student connections to the campus network:
Wireless: 2617
Wired: 181
Game consoles (wired): 103
OS/device breakdown of all of the students using wireless (from a slightly later snapshot):
Mac: 914
Windows: 1074
iPhone: 499
iPad: 54
iPod: 1
Linux: 67
No huge surprises here, but it’s interesting to see just how much our students rely on wireless – and it’s good to know that we have this kind of data available.
(Thanks, Cal!)
IR posted two notices about upcoming outages to the my.scranton portal:
There will be a brief internet outage on August 13, 2011 between 9:00 AM and 11:00 AM as maintenance is performed on internet infrastructure. Off campus resources will not be accessible from on campus. On campus resources will be unavailable from off campus. Please contact the Technology Support Center at 570-941-4357 with any questions.
and
Network Infrastructure will be performing system maintenance on the CNAC systems on August 15 2011, between 9:00 PM and 11:00 PM. No downtime for authenticated users on the wired network is expected. Downtime for wireless users is expected to be less than 10 minutes. Users attempting to authenticate to the wired or wireless network via CNAC will be unable to do so during this 10 minute window.
Heads up if you’ve tried to use an iPad on campus wireless. Network Infrastructure passed along some good news this morning:
We have received feedback from a number of users regarding the frequency in which iPads have to authenticate to ROYALAIR and how this is causing issues accessing some services from their device. This behavior is due to the unique way in which the iPads manage their wireless connections in that the device disconnects from the wireless network when the device is in a sleep state. Due to a low heartbeat timer in Cisco NAC, the device is decertified from the network while in this sleep state. In order to prevent this from occurring, we have increased this timer to 8 hours so that a user only needs to authenticate once during business hours. Please continue to provide us with any feedback you may have regarding this or any other iPad network issue.
Thanks to Cal and the rest of Network Infrastructure for the fix!
The latest edition of IT Matters came out today and is available for download. A few faculty-relevant highlights:
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Note: Post updated 4/5 at 3pm with a clarification on campus wireless from Network Infrastructure.
The new issue of IR’s IT Matters newsletter is available in PDF format.
As in the last issue, many of the articles deal with issues we’ve already been discussing here on the TAG site, but there’s a few new items of interest:
