IT Matters Spring 2011

5 04 2011

The latest edition of IT Matters came out today and is available for download.  A few faculty-relevant highlights:

  • Security Manager Tony Maszeroski explains what the Identity and Access Management (IAM) initiative is all about.  The IAM initiative is the reason behind a lot of the smaller changes you’ll see happening on campus – e.g., your R number becoming your user ID, etc.
  • University of Scranton faculty and staff can get serious discounts on Microsoft Software like Office 2010 and a Windows 7 upgrade if they need the software on their home computers for work-related purposes.  Check out http://www.journeyed.com/select/go/CAUSCRANTON for pricing – just know that you’ll have to fax or email a copy of your Royal ID in order to complete your order.
  • There will be some major outages this summer from 7/28/11 through 8/2/11 as we go through an Enterprise Resource Planning (ERP) upgrade to a new operating system.  More details when we get closer to the migration date.
  • Three rooms in the Unified Science Center will have lecture capture capability.  If you’re interested in lecture capture, let TAG know – we need your input!
  • Deployment of Microsoft Forefront as a replacement for McAfee continues.  All campus PCs should be switched over by the end of May.  All faculty should get two warning emails with instructions in the week before their computer is scheduled for Forefront deployment.
  • Should funding be secured, campus wireless will be upgraded within the next six to ten months, starting with the dorms and followed by academic and administrative spaces.

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Note: Post updated 4/5 at 3pm with a clarification on campus wireless from Network Infrastructure.


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Academic Technology Plan

24 03 2011

On Monday, the Deans’ Group held a half-day retreat to discuss the idea of writing an Academic Technology Plan for the next five years.  Members of TAG were invited to assist in the formation of the plan.  Many thanks to those who were able to attend, and thanks as well to the Deans’ Group for including us!

I’m posting my notes from the retreat (in PDF format) for review by any interested faculty members – please let us know what you think, particularly about the draft vision statement and goals.

The next step is for the Provost’s office to start writing up an actual draft of the plan. I’ll post again when there’s a draft ready for faculty review.


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Mobile Update

22 03 2011

The University has been working a lot lately on developing a mobile presence.  Lori Nidoh, our newest TAG member and a representative from the PR office, took a few minutes to write up an update for us:

At the end of this month the University will be launching both a mobile application and a mobile website.  These presentation slides (in PDF) explain the context surrounding our decision to move forward with the mobile projects at this time and provides a preview of the functionality of both.

In addition to the 15 features that will be included in the mobile app at launch, several new modules are in the works for later this year such as Admissions, Alumni and Library.

A promotion plan is in place to support the launch of the mobile application which includes posters and table tents on campus, a slide on the iTower in DeNaples, a story and advertisement in the Aquinas, posts on the University’s social media pages, tiles on the home page of the University’s website as well as on Admissions and other key pages that will link to a splash page containing full details on the app.

The new mobile app will also be featured on billboards and mall posters in our secondary recruiting markets of MA, CT, MD and VA and on upcoming Admissions direct mail pieces and at Preview Day for accepted students in early April. Finally, there will be an official press release and the launch will be featured in the April 5 edition of Royal News.

The mobile website is in the final stages of development, at least for phase I.  You can access it at m.scranton.edu.  The mobile site will have a much quieter entrance – we are looking at ways to insert an icon on the home page and on other pages on the full site where there is a mobile equivalent, and we will include a tile on the mobile app splash page that gives basic info on the mobile site. It will also be announced in Royal News and on the University’s social media sites.  When the new server goes online in early June there will be the ability to have an automatic redirect to the mobile site when the server recognizes a mobile operating system.

We will keep you posted about developments in both the mobile app and site and welcome your feedback and suggestions.

If anyone has questions or comments for Lori, let us know!


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Academic Technology Plan

8 03 2011

The Provost has invited members of TAG to participate in a spring break retreat with the Deans Group in order to start developing an academic technology plan.

We’d like TAG members to be able to come to the retreat with ideas in mind. I’ll be reviewing some academic technology plans from other universities this week in preparation, but wanted to toss out a few general questions to get some feedback from all of you:

What should be in an academic technology plan?

Where should the University head in terms of technology?

What should be the goals of technology use on campus?

What questions should we discuss with the Deans?

If anyone’s interested in talking face-to-face about ideas for the plan before break, please let me know!


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Categories : Announcements, TAG Administrative

Classroom Mediation Surveys due Friday!

28 02 2011

Just a reminder to all teaching faculty that your Classroom Mediation Surveys (the one you got on paper from your department chair) are due to your departmental administrative assistant by Friday, March 4.

This survey was a joint effort between Information Resources, Academic Affairs, the CTLE, and TAG, and the results will be used to inform decisions about how equipment will be allocated in the future – so please take a few minutes to fill it out, your responses are important!

As usual, feel free to let us know if you have any questions about the survey. Thanks, all!


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IR Employee Recognition Program

25 02 2011

I know a lot of us have had some tough times working with computer problems, and we’ve done a fair bit of complaining about it here on this blog. But have any of you had any good experiences? Any member of IR that’s gone above and beyond the call of duty to help out and get you what you need? Now’s your chance to reward the people who you think are doing a good job over there in AMH. Check out the “Planning and Information Resources Employee Recognition Program” . Submit something about your favorite IT professional here http://matrix.scranton.edu/pir/erp.shtml . Check out the solicitation, copied below.

Planning and Information Resources Employee Recognition

Once again nominations are being sought for the Planning and Information Resources Division Employee Recognition Program.

The Employee Recognition Program provides an avenue whereby Planning and Information Resources employees’ exemplary contributions and achievements will be recognized.

This effort will support the values established by the Planning and Information Resources organization. As a division, we are committed to the on-going recognition of the achievements and contributions of our staff who are committed to the divisional values.

Three awards are given each year to the nominated employees who best exemplify and further the following fundamental values:
· A passion for our work
· An atmosphere of mutual respect, collaboration and professional respect
· A distinct customer focus
· A spirit of innovation
· An emphasis on agility

This year’s awards are based upon performance from April 2010 through March 2011. Nominations will be accepted through March 31, 2011.

Nominations may be received from any source, internal or external to the division and submitted to the awards committee, in care of the Director, IT Services or submitted electronically to http://matrix.scranton.edu/pir/erp.shtml.

The following information should be included:
(1) Nominee’s name
(2) Description of the specific contribution or action made by the nominee
(3) How the nominee’s action(s) and contribution(s) demonstrate at least one of the five values listed above
(4) Nominator’s name The nominator should give as complete a description as possible regarding what the nominee accomplished to deserve the award and how it demonstrates one or more of the Divisional Values.

If you have any questions concerning the Planning & Information Resources employee recognition program, please e-mail Desantoj1@scranton.edu.


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Categories : Announcements

February IT Forum

18 02 2011

Yesterday, the Department of Planning and Information Resources held a very well attended forum where they discussed the switchover from RoyalMail to the new Microsoft Live@edu software to manage our university’s email. Some of the key points brought up were:

  • Your access information will likely change to a permanent, unique identifier (likely your R-number). Your e-mail address will not change.
  • Migration of users to the new system will begin in the Summer of 2011, starting with the staff.
  • Faculty email conversions are slated to begin (on a department-by-department basis) the 3rd week of the fall semester.
  • Early adopters are welcome! Starting in the Summer, any faculty who wishes to convert their email early will have the option to do so. When we find the procedure for this, we will let you know asap.
  • There is a hard limit of 10GB on the new email system. Requests for a more storage cannot be honored for any reason. This is due to the limits of the software implementation and is dictated by Microsoft.
  • Mail stored in your webmail will be moved to Live@edu without any effort on your part.
  • Mail stored on your local computer can be moved to the new system. There are a number of software packages IR is looking into that can facilitate this, but it will require some intervention by the user.
  • Since there is a 10GB limit, you should make sure you have less than 10GB of mail stored on your local drive. Vince Yanusauskas put together a short handout to check the amount of email stored on your local computer. You can find that here. If you are storing less than 9GB, you have nothing to worry about!
  • If you are storing files via Thunderbird or Outlook on your local hard drive, please post below how much you’re using. We’re interested in knowing how many faculty might run into this 10GB limit.

You can download the full presentations here.


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Email Transition: A Note about Old Email

15 02 2011

TAG has heard some concerns among faculty lately about the upcoming email transition to Microsoft Live @ Edu.  Most of the concerns have centered around making sure old email can be migrated into the new system.  Here are a few clarifications:

  • If you use RoyalMail and Thunderbird, there are two places email can be stored.  Each faculty member currently has 200 MB of space on RoyalMail – that email is stored on an on-campus server.  But many people have additional email stored in “local mail” folders – this email is stored on your computer’s hard drive.
  • Email stored on the RoyalMail server (that 200 MB) will be migrated into the new Microsoft Live @ Edu cloud environment by IR.
  • Instead of the old 200 MB quota on the RoyalMail server, the Microsoft Live @ Edu system allows each user to store 10 GB worth of email.  We’ll soon be sending out some instructions for how to figure out how much email you have stored on your local system so you can tell how close you are to that limit.
  • There will be a way for faculty to migrate their local mail from their hard drive to the Microsoft Live @ Edu system.  We don’t have specifics from IR yet, but faculty will not lose access to their old email.  Faculty, as end users, will have to actively do something to help move their mail once the transition time comes – but we don’t have to do anything yet.  During the transition, CTLE TechCons will be on hand to help faculty with the migration.
  • IR is not against faculty migrating their email to Gmail instead of using Microsoft Live @ Edu, as long as we keep in mind issues of Personally Identifiable Information (PII).  The University has to comply with increasingly strict federal laws, like FERPA, that protect PII.  Any information dealing with a student’s “educational record” should not be stored on Google’s servers.

The bottom line is – don’t panic, you’ll still have access to your old email.  If you have questions or other concerns about the email transition, please let TAG know!


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IT Update: What it Means for Faculty

8 02 2011

All faculty and staff got an email from CIO Jerry DeSanto this morning, and  I thought it might be helpful to try to pull out and discuss what’s specifically relevant to faculty.  Here’s my take, though IR staff and administration are welcome to comment or clarify.

Jerry mentioned that IR has three priority projects:

1. “Converting the platform on which our enterprise resource planning system (Banner) runs on from VMS to Linux.” This change doesn’t have much of a direct impact on faculty, other than that it’s a major upgrade to the University’s infrastructure.

2. “Implementing phase one of an Identity Access and Management (IAM) system.” The main impact of this change on faculty will be that we’ll soon be asked to use our R numbers as our user IDs.  We’ve discussed this previously on the TAG site, but as a quick reminder, the main reason IR gave us as to why this change is coming is so that each user will have a unique, immutable ID. And this needs to happen before we can move to Microsoft Live @ Edu.

3. “Establishing Active Directory domains for devices and individuals.” Active Directory is a Microsoft service that will sync your Windows account –  you’ll be able to access synced files from any computer on campus.

Jerry points out in the last paragraph of his email that a main impact these three projects will have on faculty is that they’re taking up quite a bit of time and energy on IR’s side – which means that we might need to be patient when we have special requests that require IR staff time.

Reactions, thoughts, comments?


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Categories : Announcements, Upgrades

TAG Members visit department meetings

7 02 2011

In February and March, TAG members will be visiting department meetings for each academic department. Our goals in attending these meetings are as follows:

  • Make sure all faculty members know about TAG
  • Solicit feedback on campus technology issues
  • Have faculty fill out a quick survey that will help us create a Knowledge Base (a listing of faculty who have tried using different technologies in the classroom, like clickers, social media, etc)
  • Invite faculty involvement in TAG either as a full committee member or as a participant on our TAG-Discussion list

We’ll look forward to seeing all of our fellow faculty members. Be sure to bring us your thoughts and comments on technology on campus.


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