Event Management System

22 03 2012

At today’s IT Forum, Andrea Mulrine from Development showed a demonstration of event management system RegOnline.  RegOnline is a web-based service that provides online registration and attendee tracking and reporting as well as tools like customizable event websites, customizable registration fields and questions (e.g., t-shirt size, dietary preferences), invitation and automatic reminder emails, automatic name badge creation, credit card and payment processing, etc. Judging from the demo, I was impressed – it looked like a pretty sharp but user-friendly tool.

Andrea is the chair of the Event Management Committee, a subcommittee of IMAC (Information Management Advisory Committee). The Event Management Committee, which included representatives from IR, Development, Alumni, the Library, CTLE, and Finance, reviewed seven event management products and recommended RegOnline as the product that would best serve the needs of the University.  Today’s demonstration offered a chance for the broader University community to provide feedback on the product.

At this time, there’s no budget set aside for a product or service like this.  Pricing is volume-based, so the Event Management Committee’s next step is to gather information about how many departments on campus need something like this and how often they would use it.

I’d like to find out if there is a need for this kind of tool among the faculty, so if you think you, your department, or a committee/group that you serve would be interested in an event management service, please let me know:

  1. What events or type(s) of events** you would use it for
  2. Approximately how many events per year you hold
  3. Approximately how many attendees your events have

I’ll put our feedback together and send it along to Andrea. Thanks, all!

 

**At this point in the process, the Event Management Committee is thinking big, so send me anything you’re thinking about. Some past or recurring faculty-driven events that occurred to me: Biology Dept Pig Roast, MELUS, disAbility, Ready to Run, Education for Justice trip to the 9/11 memorial, guest speakers…


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Categories : Announcements

LMS Group Update

12 03 2012

An update on the Learning Management System search, courtesy of LMS Work Group leader Connie Wisdo:

In February, the three chosen LMS vendor finalists presented their products to the University Community.  Roughly 30 people in total attended each vendor’s presentations.  Of the 30, about a dozen faculty members consistently attended all three demonstrations, and engaged in meaningful Q & A with the vendors.  CAS, PCPS, KSOM and WML faculty were represented.  Members/leaders of the Faculty Technology Advisory Group, and 4 of the 6 faculty from the LMS Evaluation Working Group were among them.  A handful of students also made up the audience, mostly CTLE Tech Cons.

The vendors covered the 15 most important features identified by our faculty in the survey conducted last December/January , and attendees completed evaluation sheets which were based on those 15 features.  Preliminary analysis of the evaluations indicated that Blackboard and Desire2Learn had comparable ratings and both were rated higher than Moodlerooms.  On a scale of 1 to 5, Blackboard’s average rating overall was 4.71 and Desire2Learn’s overall average was 4.64.  Moodlerooms’ overall average was 3.71.  (However, it should be noted that technical skill deficiencies of the Moodlerooms presenter hampered the overall demonstration, and her technical support dialed-in to the demo through Webex, rather than being here in person.  We believe this may have had a negative impact on the ratings for Moodlerooms.)

The LMS Evaluation Working Group met this past week to review the evaluation results and the comments provided by attendees.  Members were in general agreement with the overall evaluation ratings, but obviously want to reserve final judgment until we’ve had the opportunity to work in the test sandboxes being provided by each vendor.  Two of the three sandboxes (D2L and Moodlerooms) have already been set up, and we expect Blackboard will have its sandbox available for our group next week.

The group members will conduct their testing  over the next 6 weeks, using rubrics based upon the group’s original list of required LMS features, and will meet in mid-April to compare results.    If you should have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me.

As a reminder, there are six faculty representatives on the LMS Work Group – Maureen Carroll (math), TAG member Teresa Conte (nursing), Tara Fay (biology),  Julie Nastasi (OT), Wesley Wang (economics/finance), and Keith Yurgosky (communications, part time).

Many thanks to Connie and the rest of the Work Group for arranging the demonstrations and giving us the opportunity to see the products!


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Announcements

Campus Directory – Quick Updates

12 03 2012

Two quick updates on the campus directory this week.

First off, print copies of the campus directory will not be distributed this year – we’re encouraged to use the online directory – but you can request a print copy. Excerpt from an all faculty/staff email from Tricia Day, Jerry DeSanto, and Gerry Zaboski:

While we remain committed to adopting an environmentally sustainable solution, we also recognize that some members of the University community would still like to have a printed copy. We have decided to print a limited number of copies of the directory. To gauge the demand, we ask faculty or staff members who wish to receive a printed directory to complete an online request form by March 31, 2012:
Login using your My.Scranton identification
Complete and submit the online form

Secondly, TAG has been exploring whether faculty can be listed in the campus directory (online and print) with two different departmental affiliations (e.g., World Languages and Latin American/Women’s Studies).  At our February meeting, it looked like the question had been tabled due to difficulties with adding fields to the Banner database – but we’ve just heard that it will be on the agenda for a joint IR/HR discussion later this month. Many thanks to Anne Marie Stamford for pursuing this issue on TAG’s behalf.


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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

Scheduled Downtimes

29 02 2012

IR will be migrating a number of systems over the next few weeks due to a required hardware upgrade. Thus, quite a few services will be experiencing very brief downtimes. Most of the downtimes that affect the faculty have been scheduled at times of low system use. A summary of the services that are likely to affect the faculty, and their downtimes, is listed below. For a full list of services, see this excel spreadsheet.

  • Oracle Database and SIS: down from 7AM to 8AM, Saturday March 17th
  • RoyalDrive: down from 8:30AM to 9:30 AM, Saturday March 17th
  • Angel: down from 7AM to 9:30AM, Saturday March 3rd
  • BBoard: down from 5:30PM to 6:00PM, Thursday, March 1st
  • Live@EDU access via my.screanton: down from 9:30AM to 10AM, Saturday March 3rd.
    Note: Live@Edu will still be accessible via the outlook client and the webmail client
  • Royalists: down from 5PM to 5:30PM, Monday, March 5th

As always, if you have any issues or problems, call the help desk at x4357 (xHELP), or contact your friendly TAG representative: tag-members@royallists.scranton.edu


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myScranton Portal service restored

25 02 2012

myScranton service appears to have been fully restored. If there are any further problems, please report them ASAP.


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myScranton Portal Unavailable

25 02 2012

Update (2:00PM): The Portal is back up and running, services seem to be restored. If there are any further issues, please report them to the help desk.

my.scranton.edu is currently unavailable. At this time, TAG has no information as to the nature of the downtime, but it was first noticed at about 8AM. The HelpDesk is aware of the issue, and the portal will be up as soon as possible, but there is no estimate at the present time. In the mean time, you can access services using the direct links

Live@edu at http://outlook.com
RoyalMail at https://royalmail.scranton.edu
HR and MBA Online at http://scranton.learntoday.info
Library resources (except for “My Account” and Off campus Database access) at http://www.scranton.edu/library
RoyalCalendar at http://royalcal.scranton.edu/ocas-bin/ocas.fcgi?sub=web
The University’s main web site at http://www.scranton.edu
Angel LMS at https://lms.scranton.edu
Royal Drive at http://royaldrive.scranton.edu or via the Xythos client installed on desktop PCs (mapped drive)
RoyalBBoard at http://webnews.scranton.edu


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Categories : Announcements

CMS Changes

15 02 2012

Our school’s official website will be making a change from “matrix.scranton.edu” to the more canonical “www.scranton.edu”. This will not have any affect on your web browsing experience, but it may affect some pages created in the Content Management System (CMS). Any links currently pointing to a “matrix.scranton.edu/” site will be automatically redirected to the corresponding “www.scranton.edu/” site, but IR would like to encourage you update your websites (and republish) to reflect this change. The full email from IR is below, including dates that the change will take place.

Please note: please refrain from publishing websites during the upgrade window: 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2012 until 8:30 a.m. on Friday, February 16

On Thursday, February 16, 2012, the University’s public web server, known as matrix.scranton.edu will be replaced by a new server, which will be known as www.scranton.edu. No interruption in service for the University’s web site is expected as a result of this action.

As a CMS user, please take note of the following minor changes that will occur on the afternoon of Wednesday, February 15, 2012. They will affect how you navigate within the CMS and link to University pages:

1. After you log in to the CMS, the dropdown menu option, “matrix.scranton.edu”, will be renamed to “www.scranton.edu”. This is merely a name change, all website data will be retained.

2. If you created links to other pages in the CMS via the “Internal Link” option, the CMS will automatically update these links to the correct “www” address.

3. If you linked to other pages in the CMS via the “External Link” option, where you entered the full website address (i.e. matrix.scranton.edu/admissions/index.shtml), we encourage you to change these links to “www” shortly after the move on February 16, 2012. You will then need to republish your pages.

Any existing links containing “matrix” will still work, but we want to eliminate “matrix” from our web vocabulary.

4. Finally, please avoid publishing from 4:30 p.m. on Thursday, February 15, 2012 until 8:30 a.m. on Friday, February 16, 2012.

If you have any questions or concerns, please email webmaster@scranton.edu. Please forward as necessary.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Network and Infrastructure, Outages, Upgrades

Web Guidelines and Social Media – Faculty Review

14 02 2012

At a recent meeting of the Committee on University Image and Promotion (CUIP), Public Relations distributed a new draft of the University’s Web Guidelines (PDF).

The Guidelines include several sections relevant to faculty – addressing divisional and departmental web pages, personal web pages, and academic uses of the web.  I’ve highlighted these sections in this annotated copy of the Guidelines.

The new draft also includes a section on social media websites.  Last year, TAG gave feedback on an earlier draft of this content (then referred to the Social Media Guidelines), much of which has been incorporated into the current language.

Please take a look at the Guidelines and let me know if you have any objections, concerns, or comments.  Public Relations is interested in gathering feedback before sending another draft through the governance process.


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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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