Email Transition Starts on Monday!

3 01 2012

TAG just got an update from IT Services about the schedule for faculty email migration to Microsoft Live@Edu.  More details to come as we get them, but here’s what we have so far:

  • TAG members will be migrated next Monday evening (January 9) along with the CTLE and a few other faculty members who requested early adoption.  IR is hoping that converting TAG first will help them better prepare for any issues that other faculty might face during the conversion.
  • A second batch of faculty will be migrated next Tuesday evening (January 10).  The next groups will migrate on the following Mondays and Tuesdays (January 16 and 17, and January 23 and 24), with the goal of converting all faculty before the start of Spring classes.
  • Each individual faculty member will receive an email with detailed instructions at least a week prior to their conversion.  If your schedule cannot accommodate your planned conversion date, let IT Services know ASAP.
  • Full schedules will be posted showing when each department will be converted.  You’ll also be able to search for an individual person’s conversion date.
  • Email addresses will be standardized as firstname.lastname@scranton.edu.  We’ve shared faculty members’ concerns about that with IT Services.  We’ll post more information as we get it.
  • IT Services recommends that faculty members set aside time the morning after their conversion to get comfortable with the new interface and to migrate any local email (that is, any Thunderbird messages stored on your desktop rather than on the RoyalMail server).
  • Training will be available – look for details in your conversion email.
  • Student email accounts were successfully migrated to Live@Edu on December 19.
  • Office 2010 upgrades will be pushed out to faculty computers via KBOX.

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Categories : Announcements, Email, Upgrades

Faculty Feedback Needed!

16 12 2011

The Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group, the team that’s reviewing options for replacing Angel,  is looking for feedback from all faculty members.  They’ve put together a list of evaluation criteria and need your input on which they should treat as the highest priorities when reviewing products.

Please take a look at the survey link below and submit your feedback.  The committee needs responses by January 10th at the latest, so we’ll remind you one more time after the holidays.

http://www.surveymonkey.com/s/PWTW2ZM

If you have questions about the LMS search, let us know or talk with one of the faculty representatives serving on the work group: Maureen Carroll (math), Teresa Conte (nursing), Tara Fay (biology),  Julie Nastasi (OT), Wesley Wang (economics/finance), and Keith Yurgosky (communications, part time).


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn

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

TechQual Survey Results

8 12 2011

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]


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My.Scranton Portal Redesign – Call for Volunteers

7 12 2011

IR is looking for input from the University community as they move forward with upgrades and changes to the my.scranton portal, which runs on Sunguard’s Luminis platform. The Luminis Working Group will be headed by new IR staff member Joe Casabona and will include faculty, staff, and students. Joe expects that the group will meet monthly at most. 

IR and TAG are looking for a faculty member to participate in the group and provide feedback from a faculty perspective.  The faculty representative doesn’t have to be a TAG member, but TAG will ask the representative to keep us up to date on the Working Group’s activities so we can disseminate information or requests for broader feedback to the rest of the faculty.

If you’re interested in serving on the Luminis Working Group, please either comment below or send me a quick email at yarmeyk2@scranton.edu. Thanks!


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Categories : Announcements

Email Migration – Info and Tutorials

6 12 2011

Updated 12/07/11 with additional information from IR

IR posted a notice about the email migration this morning, and linked to some additional information and screenshot tutorials that faculty might find helpful. Again, faculty will start migrating (by department) during Intersession, and you’ll get notification emails with specific details in advance.

As you look over the information, please let TAG know if you have any questions or concerns about the email migration process.  A few people have already asked about the firstname.lastname@scranton.edu addresses – we’re waiting for  a response from IR on those questions.

Links:

And here’s the announcement post from IR (link has been corrected):

The migration to the long awaited new email system, Microsoft Live@EDU, will begin later this month.  The new email platform will provide a robust email and calendar environment for all faculty, staff and students.

Migration to the new platform has already begun with the Planning and Information Resources division.  Later this month ALL student email accounts will be migrated from the current system to Live@EDU.  The student email migration will take place December 19th through December 21st.  The migration of faculty and staff email accounts will commence in January 2012.  Detailed information will be sent prior to the email conversion.

Additional information on the Live@EDU conversion is available at http://www.scranton.edu/it_training.

Questions and concerns about the account claim procedure and the Live@EDU conversion should be directed to the Technology Support Center at x4357 or techsupport@scranton.edu.

IR added more information in an email to the entire University community, including answers to some anticipated questions:

  • Email account conversions will be processed weekly on Monday and Tuesday evenings.
  • Conversions will be scheduled by department.
  • Pre-training and post-training sessions will be available.
  • Faculty members interested in converting during Intersession should email their interest to itservices@scranton.edu.
  • RoyalMail will remain available throughout the conversion.
  • You will continue to receive email addressed to you at your legacy email addresses (e.g., smithj2@scranton.edu).
  • Your login to Live@EDU will be your primary email address in firstname.lastname@scranton.edu format (e.g.,john.smith@scranton.edu). Sequence numbers will be added when required (e.g., john.smith3@scranton.edu).
  • Your login to all other University resources, including my.scranton.edu, will continue to be your existing user name (e.g., smithj2).
  • You must claim your Live@EDU account in order to continue receiving email. Following the conversion, all email addressed to you will be delivered to you at your Live@EDU account.
  • You will need to re-subscribe to any listservs or bulletin boards using your primary email address. You will no longer be sending email from your legacy email address.
  • CorpTime and Oracle Calendar will continue to be the corporate calendar solution until June 2012. Calendar users can begin using Live@EDU as a calendaring solution once converted to Live@EDU, however, all users will not be converted to Live@EDU until June 2012.

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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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Categories : Email, TAG Administrative

Student Response Systems

29 11 2011

The CTLE has been exploring student response system software – that is, instructional technology for teaching with real-time classroom feedback/polling (like clickers, but using students’ phones instead of proprietary hardware). They’d like to know if faculty are interested in this, and whether they should set up product demonstrations or a faculty workshop on this topic.

Below is a brief write-up on two popular options for student response, Top Hat Monocle and Poll Everywhere, that CTLE TechCon Justin Kearns wrote after researching several student response products.

If you’re interested in using either Top Hat Monocle, Poll Everywhere, or some other student response system in your classroom, please let us know (or talk to CTLE directly).

——————————————————

Student Response Systems

Student Response System software creates a wireless audience response and voting system that enables educators, trainers and presenters to develop and administer real-time assessments of participants.  These software tools allow instructors to confirm participant understanding, increase participant attentiveness, and gather, rank and report critical information simultaneously in real-time.  Most audience response systems provide reporting functions that will help instructors analyze data after the presentation and have the ability to export into Excel, Word or other common formats for more in-depth analysis.  Other features include student tracking and grading.

The CTLE recently evaluated Student Response System software and found the following two options that appear to be suitable for teaching and learning purposes.

Top Hat Monocle

Top Hat Monocle is a cloud based Student Response System founded in 2009 and based at the University of Waterloo Research and Technology Park in Waterloo, Canada.  The system can be used with cell phones, smartphones, computers, iPods, iPads, etc.

Top Hat Monocle has an extensive database of interactive questions and problems that can be used by an instructor on a range of topics.

Pricing – Instructors can use this tool for free, while students have to purchase a license costing $20 a semester or $38 for 5 years.  For more information on pricing for Top Hat Monocle, click the link below:

http://www.tophatmonocle.com/tour/pricing

For a video demo of Top Hat Monocle click the link below: http://www.tophatmonocle.com/tour/features

 

Poll Everywhere

Poll Everywhere is a quick and easy way to create stylish real-time experiences for events using the cloud.  Similar to Top Hat Monocle this system can be used with cell phones, smartphones, computers, iPods, iPads, etc.

Poll Everywhere is free for up to 30 responders but subscriptions for larger groups and extended features can be purchased.  In the Poll Everywhere free version question types are limited to Multiple Choice, Open Ended, and Goal Poll.

Pricing – There are two pricing structures available; one in which students pay $14 a year and another where instructors pay $399 per semester.   For more pricing information on Poll Everywhere click the link below: http://www.polleverywhere.com/plans/classroom_response_system_higher_ed

For more information on Poll Everywhere click the link below:

http://www.polleverywhere.com/how-it-works


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Categories : Announcements, Classroom Mediation, Mobile

Brief St. Thomas Network Outage

22 11 2011

We just received the following e-mail from Ron Skutnick in IT about a brief network outage. Hopefully this won’t affect too many people, but if anyone sees any problems after the upgrade, please let us know!

There will be a brief service outage affecting wired and wireless network services within the Communications Wing floors 4 and 5 and the St. Thomas Harper McGinnis Wing floors 4 and 5 on Saturday, November 26, 2011 between 7:00am and 3:00pm. The actual service outage will be much shorter in duration. Copper cable pairs delivering Centrex services to numerous safety telephone throughout the new Loyola Science Center will also experience short duration service outages during this time frame. These disruptions are related to the completion of work relocating the data center from St. Thomas Hall 385 to 111.


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Categories : Announcements, Outages

Communicating about Campus-wide outages

17 11 2011

Last night, internet connectivity on campus was down between around 7:00pm to about 9:15pm.  With the network down, the only way to find out what was happening was by calling the TSC.  Jeremy and I called the TSC at different times, and we got different information about when the network was expected to be back up.

While there weren’t many faculty on campus at the time, we thought it might be a good idea to discuss communication about campus-wide outages.

In situations like this, what’s the best way for IR to update faculty about what’s happening?

Please let us know what you think.

(Many thanks again to Tim and Cal for the rescue operation!)


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Categories : Announcements, Network and Infrastructure

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