TAG Meeting Notes 2014-03-12

12 03 2014

TAG Meeting March 12, 2014 12:00pm-1:00pm

Attendees:
Tim Cannon, Paul Cutrufello, Kim Daniloski, Dave Dzurec, Tara Fay, Jim Franceschelli, Eugeniu Grigorescu, Katie Iacocca, Charles Kratz (guest), Sandy Pesavento, Kristen Yarmey

1. Lunch

TAG members thanked CAS Dean Brian Conniff for sponsoring lunch for our meeting. Dave thanked Mary Ann Maslar in the CAS Dean’s office for making the arrangements. Charles noted that he is willing to sponsor lunch at one of TAG’s remaining Spring 2014 meetings.

2. Items for Discussion

WordPress

Dean of the Library and Information Fluency Charles Kratz asked to come to a TAG meeting to speak about the campus WordPress network (sites.scranton.edu), which has been a topic of TAG discussion since 2011. (In preparation for today’s meeting, Kristen emailed TAG members notes summarizing the history of the campus WordPress network as well as a justification for the academic use of WordPress that former TAG co-chair Jeremy Sepinsky had composed for IR in Spring 2013.)

At our last meeting in February 2014, we received word from Jim that IR would not be expanding support for sites on the campus WordPress network until at least 2015. Subsequently, at the February 14 Faculty Senate meeting, Senator Terry Sweeney expressed concerns about access to the campus WordPress network. There was seemingly some confusion at the Senate meeting about CTLE’s role in the WordPress network and a misunderstanding that CTLE staff were responsible for determining which requests for WordPress sites would be approved, when this decision actually rests with IR staff.

Charles (who oversees both the Library and CTLE) has since met with IR and CTLE staff in order to seek clarification on the criteria and process for WordPress site requests, as well as to ascertain whether there might be a middle ground for supporting faculty use of the campus WordPress network. Charles noted that the CTLE, while currently very busy with the Desire2Learn transition, is interested in supporting faculty use of WordPress and would be willing to support a few pilot sites in fall 2014. He suggested that TAG might identify faculty who would be interested in a WordPress pilot in the near future, and advocated for transparency for faculty regarding the criteria and process for site requests.

Prior to today’s meeting, Kristen had asked Jim for IR’s criteria for reviewing requests for WordPress sites, which she then emailed to TAG members. These are as follows:

Blogs are available to the University community to provide an area for discussion and collaboration. The following criteria will be applied to these requests:

  • Blogs can augment University web sites on www.scranton.edu which are built in the Web Content Management System (CMS). They cannot be used as a replacement for a department or organization’s www.scranton.edu site.
  • Blogs are only for University-related purposes, not personal interests.
  • Only faculty & staff members of the University community can be given access to post to the blog site.
  • All blogs will be accessible for public view access.
  • The URL for the blogs will be in the form of http://sites.scranton.edu/blogname/
  • No redirects of the form www.scranton.edu/xxxx will be set up for blogs so they are not confused with University web site(s).

Related information:

  • Desire 2 Learn (D2L), the University’s Learning Management System, has blogging functionality that can be used as part of a course offering.
  • Faculty & staff desiring to use wordpress.com for other blogging services should refer to our policy website (www.scranton.edu/pir/policies.shtml) for the Guidelines for the Use of Cloud Computing Services.

Jim noted that IR has limited resources and has to weigh what services they can support. He also explained that since this is a new service, it has taken some time to develop the criteria for what requests could or could not be accommodated. For example, individual student blogs (as one faculty member requested) could not be accommodated due to the difficulty of maintaining an accurate user list for that class within WordPress – while the campus network is integrated with Active Directory authentication, it is not integrated with Angel or Desire2Learn, so class lists must be manually added and maintained for WordPress sites. (As a side note, Charles mentioned that CTLE is working with a few faculty members to test Desire2Learn’s blogging function for student blogs. Results have not been encouraging so far, but testing continues.)

Charles and Kristen asked for clarification on the site request and decision-making process. Jim said that WordPress site requests could be submitted via Footprints (tsc.scranton.edu) and promised to add a request to the service menu within Footprints. He said that Connie Wisdo, director of IT Development & Applications (ITDA), will review the requests and make a decision based on the above criteria. If the decision is clear-cut, the response will be immediate, but if a request falls along the edge of the criteria, there might be some delay to allow IT staff members to discuss it first. Charles asked if there would be an appeal process for a faculty member whose request was denied. Jim answered that appeals could be directed to him.

Sandy asked if faculty could use third-party (external) blogging or web development sites (e.g., Blogger or WordPress.com). Jim said that faculty were free to use whatever tools they liked, on the condition that they review IR’s Guidelines for the Use of Cloud Computing Services and consider potential threats to privacy or security of students or other participants. Kristen said that as a librarian she had significant concerns about the privacy implications of requiring students to use third-party cloud services for class projects. An advantage to the on-campus WordPress network is that site data remains on campus and under University administration rather than entering the commercial data tracking and aggregation marketplace.

Tangentially, IR now offers server space to faculty and academic departments, with roles and support responsibilities enumerated in a service-level agreement. IR provides the server environment, while the faculty member/department is responsible for installing/maintaining the applications they wish to use on the server. There is a one-time licensing fee charge for this service. Kristen asked Jim for more information about this service, as TAG had been previously unaware of it.

Discussions about WordPress and related service offerings will continue. Kristen and Dave will meet with Jim and Robyn Dickinson (Interim VP for Planning and Information Resources) on Monday, March 17, and separately will meet with Interim Provost Pat Harrington and the academic Deans (date TBD). Charles suggested that, in addition to working with Jim and IR directly and reporting to the Faculty Senate,  TAG should also communicate with the Deans and Provost to keep them informed of technology needs on campus.

To further facilitate communication among all stakeholders, Katie suggested that TAG remind the Faculty Senate and the rest of the faculty to share their concerns about academic technology with TAG, such that TAG members can continue to work constructively with IR staff. Dave will include this reminder (as well as an update and clarification on WordPress) in his report to the Faculty Senate this week.

Faculty Specialized Software/Computer Lab Questionnaire

Back in November, TAG sent out a questionnaire to all faculty to ask for input on their use of specialized software, computer labs, lecture capture, and learning management systems (Angel/Desire2Learn).

Kristen apologized for the delay in sharing results, but has finally finished a qualitative summary of faculty responses, shared here for preliminary review by TAG members. Only 52 responses were received, and respondents tended to be faculty interested in software/lab issues, so the sample did not seem representative. The summary is almost entirely qualitative, so anyone interested in performing a quantitative analysis should contact Kristen for access to the full data set.

Kristen asked that TAG members review the results and identify any action steps or areas for further research. 

3. Brief Updates

Identity Finder Automated Scans

Back in April 2013, Information Security Officer Adam Edwards brought a proposal for automated Identity Finder scans to TAG for consideration. At our February meeting, Adam Edwards and Scott Finlon from Information Security came to the second half of the TAG meeting to demonstrate the administrative side of Identity Finder automated scans, which non-Mac-using TAG members have been piloting since September. They also demonstrated TrueCrypt as their recommended tool for encrypting sensitive data (including confidential human subject research data, as Adam has discussed with the IRB).  Scott has since shared step-by-step instructions for TrueCrypt, which Kristen posted to the TAG site. Update 2014-07-02: Support for TrueCrypt has been discontinued, so Information Security now recommends using 7Zip for encrypting sensitive or confidential data.

Adam and Scott would like to begin the roll-out of automated Identity Finder scans for faculty desktops, starting with departments that would be unlikely to have confidential subject data stored on their computers. Scott sent Kristen a list of departments as they appear in Identity Finder (based on Active Directory groups) as a starting point. Kristen asked at today’s meeting for TAG member volunteers who were willing to confirm their department’s readiness to begin automated scans. Dave has already spoken to the History Department, and Kristen will speak with Library faculty at their next department meeting. Kim and Paul were willing to speak with their departments (Management/Marketing and Exercise Science) but asked for some additional information that they could refer colleagues to. Kristen will write up a summary/FAQ on Identity Finder for faculty and post to the TAG site for reference.

Kristen suggested that faculty members run their own Identity Finder scans  to understand the software and results (the software is already on all faculty PCs, via KBOX). Any sensitive data can and should be encrypted with TrueCrypt. Jim reminded the group that Identity Finder also helps IT Services deal with faculty computers that have been infected by malware — a recent scan confirming the absence of confidential data makes it much easier and faster for them to clean and return the machine.

There were a few remaining questions about the automated scan process, which Kristen and Jim will review with Adam:

  • Who exactly is included in a department group? Full time faculty, adjuncts, department staff (e.g., departmental administrative assistants)? Jim believes that the groups include *only* faculty members (including part time/adjuncts), but we will confirm this with Adam.
  • Automated scans are currently scheduled in batch for Fridays at noon. What happens for faculty members who are never/rarely on campus, with their laptop, at that time? (Katie noted that this is common among KSOM faculty.) Could an alternative scan time be scheduled? Or do scans begin the next time you turn on your computer?
  • What happens if you turn off your computer during a scheduled scan? Does it pick up where it left off when you turn your computer back on?

Departments that are ready to begin automated scans should contact Kristen and/or Adam. Adam and Scott are also available to answer questions about Identity Finder, TrueCrypt, or other information security issues.

Lecture Capture – Panopto Pilot

On Wednesday, March 5, Dave and Kristen attended a meeting with Jason Wimmer, Jason Oakey, Jim and Eugeniu for an update on lecture capture and the pilots taking place in PCPS this semester with Panopto. (Full notes from that meeting, summarized here, are on the TAG site.) 

IT Services began piloting lecture capture back in Fall 2012 with two installations of MediaSite (LSC334 and LSC433). TAG members Jeremy Sepinsky and Tara Fay tested out the technology in their classes. While there were some good things about MediaSite, IT Services discovered lots of complications that would make it difficult to scale and expand across campus (see Jason’s article in the Winter 2013-2014 IT Matters for more details).

As of Fall 2013, IT Services has been working with faculty in PCPS (Counseling, Nursing, and Education – including TAG member Sandy Pesavento) to pilot a different lecture capture technology – Panopto.  Panopto is a hosted service, which makes installation faster and easier in comparison to MediaSite. IT Services set up 13 rooms in McGurrin, and already over 790 sessions/interviews/classroom scenarios/nursing simulations have been recorded. Feedback to date from faculty and students has been very positive – even enthusiastic. Sandy has been using Panopto in her education classes to record students teaching sample lessons. She invited interested faculty to visit one of her class if they would like to see it in action. (As a reminder, on last spring’s ECAR survey on undergraduate students and information technology, 63% of our student respondents said they wanted their professors to use lecture capture.)

Our current license for Panopto only covers PCPS (where the pilots were taking place), but IT Services has put in a request to the FMC for a full campus license. IT Services plans to expand access to lecture capture across campus (potentially enabling 5-6 additional classrooms next year) and to integrate Panopto with Desire2Learn. Jason Wimmer will be giving a presentation on Panopto at an IT Forum on March 27 at 11:30am – all faculty and staff are welcome to attend (please register).

PR Department/Program Website Initiative

This project is on the agenda for the next meeting of the Committee on University Image and Promotion (CUIP), scheduled for Monday, March 17 from 2pm-3pm. In addition to regular CUIP faculty representatives Terry Sweeney, Abi Roy, Jack Beidler, and George Gomez, PR has also invited TAG to send representatives — Dave, Teresa, and Sandy will be there (and maybe Kristen).

It is not yet clear which department/program pages will be in the first wave of updates, nor is it clear who will make that decision. Katie noted that from KSOM, OIM department chair Nabil Tamimi was interested in participating in a department website update, particularly since OIM is a growing program and the home of the E-Commerce major.

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 a Fulbright sabbatical in Slovakia (congratulations!) in Spring 2015. Andrew LaZella has volunteered to serve in Spring 2015 while Dave is away, but we are still looking for someone to begin a full two-year term as co-chair. Please contact Kristen or Dave if you are interested/willing. Dave noted that, pending the results of the Faculty Senate election, we should make sure that we have a Senate liaison for 2014-2015 as well.

Adjournment

The meeting adjourned at 1:10pm. TAG’s next meeting will be Wednesday, April 9 from 12pm-1pm, location TBA.


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Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Announcements, CMS and University Website, Minutes, Security

Reminder: Academic Server non-public as of June 15

5 06 2013

Just a reminder that the academic server (academic.scranton.edu) will not be accessible from off-campus beginning June 15, in preparation for the long-awaited decommissioning, scheduled for August.

TAG and IR have sent out multiple email reminders to all faculty members who still have accounts or folders on the server, and the CTLE TechCons have been busy helping several faculty members move their web content to the CMS before the decommissioning. If you haven’t talked with any of us yet and need assistance moving content off of academic, please let TAG know ASAP!

Many thanks to Adam Edwards, Scott Finlon, Connie Wisdo, John Culkin, and Robyn Dickinson in IR and Aileen McHale and the TechCons in the CTLE for all the assistance and coordination!


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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website

Scranton.edu 3.0 – Responsive Design

23 05 2013

At Tuesday’s IT Forum, staff members Lori Nidoh, Val Clark, and Matt Wren from PR and Joe Casabona from IR gave a joint presentation on the new design templates for the University website, which will go live in July.

The new designs are responsive, meaning that they’ll automatically adjust to the screen size of whatever device you’re using to view them. See slides (.ppsx) from the Forum presentation for a comparison of old vs new.

More specific information will be coming out for CMS users, but one of the more immediate changes that will need to be made is to banner images (e.g., on department pages or on faculty pages in the CMS that use the standard templates). The new designs are wider than the old (1280 x 361 pixels vs. 780 x 180 pixels), so properly sized images will be needed. You can pick a photo from the Photo Gallery, but you can also use your own image as long as it’s sized – see instructions in the slides (.ppsx).

We’ll post more information as we get it – in the meantime, please let TAG know if you have questions about the redesign.


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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website, Upgrades

TAG Departmental Website Proposal at the Faculty Senate

12 04 2013

Today, Jeremy presented the TAG proposal for the upkeep and maintenance of the departmental websites to the faculty senate for feedback. The proposal was briefly overviewed by Jeremy, who then opened the floor for comments and responses from the faculty to such a proposal. A brief summary of the comments follows.

  • Many of the faculty were in support of the proposal, agreeing that the time involved in updating the website is a barrier to frequent updates. Often mentioned was the idea that we faculty are often not experts in the display of such information. Thus, a number of faculty were in support of the document.
  • The provost, Hal Baille, commented that the Committee for University Image and Promotion is aware of this proposal and in support of such a position. He emphasized the fact that, more than a public relations issue, the departmental websites are an admissions issue. Getting quality students, especially in a time when universities are competing for good students, means having a standout webpage. More than half of the incoming students use the university webpage as a very important criterion for determining which university they attend. Thus, it is very valuable, from an admissions perspective, to attract quality students, and the website is an important tool in the process.
  • A comment was made about the University’s web infrastructure, and that spending money on such a position may only be a small bandage on a problematic, and potentially outdated infrastructure. One Senator commented that the webservers run software that is costly run when there are cheaper, more-secure options that may be available, which can allow webpages to run more common web software packages, such as WordPress, PhP, or MySQL.
  • Another Senator questioned the necessity of such a position and the frequency of needed updates. Certain departments and programs, the Senator stated, simply may not have updates that can or should be implemented on a regular basis. If this is a consistent event across many of the departments, forcing updates may not make for a better website. Another Senator disagreed, stating that certain national accrediting bodies require yearly updates of programatic content on websites, so, at a minimum, such updates can an should be made. In addition, it was stated that such updates are not “easy” for faculty and staff to implement.
  • In terms of the staffing of the position, it was suggested to explore the current employees of the university before requesting an external hire. There may be current employees and/or positions with the appropriate skill set that can be re-purposed to fill this role. It is important to mention here, that the website proposal group did not feel that it was within its purview to make financial or administrative recommendations about this position. We simply request that such a position exist, and that it should be within the administrative sections of the University to decide the specifics of such a position. This group does recommend, and will make explicit in future versions of the proposal, that due to the extensive collaboration with faculty that this position should be housed within Academic Affairs.
  • Other faculty expressed concerns that this position could be used as a tool for Public Relations as opposed to a vehicle for expression of the faculty and their departments. It is not the intention of the sub-group that this position interfere in any way with the web-based expression of any faculty member. Our group intends that this position be a tool for faculty to assist them in presenting content in the form desired by the faculty of that department. This position should assist faculty, not remove them from the process. Faculty and departments will not be required to use this position, but this subgroup feels that it should exist as an option for those that do. Furthermore, we feel that there are sufficient departments and faculty that will make use of such a position to make it worthwhile.

TAG is currently working on implementing all the above suggestions into the next version of this proposal and thanks everyone at the Senate meeting for their participation and lively discussion. As always, anyone with comments, questions, or feedback of any kind is encouraged to email us at tag-members@royallists.scranton.edu, or email the chair or the subgroup responsible for the creation of this document at jeremy.sepinsky@scranton.edu.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Website Proposal

Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey 2012

11 04 2013

The 2012 report from the Ithaka S+R US Faculty Survey, which tracks attitudes and practices of faculty members at American colleges and universities, just came out this week. It’s a little library-centric but touches on many issues related to teaching, research, and scholarly communication. It’s long (70+ pages) but a relatively quick read:

Download Report

If you don’t have time to skim the full report, here are some excerpts that may be of particular interest to TAG:

Teaching

  • Small but non-trivial shares of respondents use technology in their undergraduate teaching. But while most recognize the availability of resources to help them do so, many respondents do not draw upon resources beyond their own ideas or feel strongly motivated to seek out opportunities to use more technology in their teaching.

Conducting Research

  • Collaboration — The prevalence of collaborative research varies significantly by discipline. Virtually all of the scientists reported that they have collaborated with others at some point in their career, while only two-thirds of humanists had done so.
  • Data Preservation and Reuse — About four out of five respondents indicated that they build up some kind of collections of “scientific, qualitative, quantitative, or primary source research data.” But while scholars across disciplines build up collections of relevant research data—of whatever type may by appropriate for their field and research—in the course of their work, few turn to established solutions for preserving these materials aſter a given project ends (see Figure 37). Four out of five respondents strongly agreed that “I preserve these materials myself, using commercially or freely available soſtware or services.”
  • Digital Research — We asked faculty members if they would like to “more deeply” integrate digital research activities and methodologies into their work. About half strongly agreed that they did, while about 20% strongly disagreed. A relatively greater share of humanists (about a third) strongly disagreed with this statement than did scientists and social scientists (about one in ten)… Among those who indicated they were interested in more deeply integrating digital research activities and methodologies, more than three quarters of respondents indicated that each of the [types of support] listed—more time, more conceptual help in understanding how digital research activities and methodologies can be thoughtfully integrated into their research, or technical support for implementing digital research activities and methodologies—would be very important to them.
  • Digital Humanities — A far smaller share of humanists than of social scientists and scientists indicated that any of these digital methods were very important to their research. Even methods that are believed to be specifically applicable in the digital humanities, such as text mining or GIS mapping, are reported to be utilized by only a minority of humanists.

Disseminating Research

  • Publication — Respondents tend to value established scholarly dissemination methods, prioritizing audiences in their sub-discipline and discipline, and those of lay professionals, more so than undergraduates or the general public. Similarly, they continue to select journals in which to publish based on characteristics such as topical coverage, readership, and impact factor. Finally, respondents tend to value existing publisher services, such as peer review, branding, and copy-editing, while expressing less widespread agreement about the value of newer dissemination support services offered by libraries that are intended to maximize access and impact.
  • Journal Selection/Open Access — The fact that the journal “makes its articles freely available on the internet, so there is no cost to purchase and read” remains among the lowest priorities to scholars in selecting a publication venue; only about a third of respondents indicated this was a very important factor.
  • Faculty Web Pages — A third of respondents indicated that they receive support in the form of having a public web presence [“a public webpage that lists links to my recent scholarly outputs, provides information on my areas of research and teaching, and provides contact ifnormation for me”] managed for them.

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Categories : Announcements

Academic webserver to be decommissioned

8 04 2013

Robyn Dickinson sent out the note below in regards to the academic webserver on Monday. If you have active webpages or content on the server that you need access to, please remove it and/or contact TAG immediately. We will do our best to help you find a new home for your data. Since the server has been a target for malicious attacks, your data is already at risk! If you do not do anything, you will lose access to anything stored on that server. If you have any questions, please contact your tag representative or email tag-members@royallists.scranton.edu.

Thanks for your prompt attention!

Previously, you received a notice from our division that we had planned to decommission the public facing server academic.scranton.edu in the summer of 2012. In the past, this server housed web pages for the University’s academic departments, related organizations, and individual faculty. Academic administration and department pages have now been converted into the University’s web content management system (CMS). What remains are primarily individual faculty web pages and a few other organizations; we have identified each of you as still having active web pages residing on this server.
Recent vulnerability scans of this server have identified multiple weaknesses in the operating system. Due to these vulnerabilities, this server has become the target for attacks from foreign countries seeking to access our enterprise computer systems. I am writing to alert you that we will now be taking steps to remove public facing access to this server as of June 15, 2013. This means that after June 15, you will only be able to access the web pages that remain on this server from within our own network on campus. On August 15, 2013 the server will be retired and you will no longer be able to access any of its content.

Faculty members should watch for additional information about this transition coming from the Faculty Technology Advisory Committee (TAG) and can send questions to TAG-members@scranton.edu If you would like assistance moving your web pages into the University’s web Content Management System (CMS), please contact Aileen McHale from the Center for Teaching and Learning Excellence (CTLE) at aileen.mchale@scranton.edu. Training for staff and faculty on how to use the web CMS is also available through IT Services by contacting Jack Williams, our IT Training Specialist, at jack.williams@scranton.edu to sign up for a class.

I appreciate your attention to this matter,


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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website

TAG Meeting 2013-04-03

3 04 2013

TAG met for our third and final Spring 2013 meeting this morning, and it was a meaty one. Here’s what’s going on:

1. TAG Leadership for 2013-2014

Continuing the discussion from our March meeting, we’ve officially agreed to move to a rotating, 2-year-term, 2-co-chair leadership model for 2013-2014. Jeremy and Kristen nominated Dave (currently a Faculty Senator) to take over for Jeremy as co-chair in 2013-2014 and serve as TAG’s liaison to the Faculty Senate. We held a not-quite-strictly-parliamentarian vote among the faculty TAG members present, which passed with no audible or visible dissent, so Dave will start his 2-year term in Fall 2013… or more likely Summer 2013. Kristen will stay on for 2013-2014 and then rotate off, to be replaced by a new co-chair in 2014-2015.

2. Identity Finder Automated Scans

Jim brought Adam Edwards, our new Information Security Officer, with him to the meeting to talk about an Information Security Office/IT Client Services Identity Finder Proposal on Automating Scans. For those just joining us, Identity Finder software scans your computer for sensitive, unsecured Personally Identifiable Information (PII). It’s been installed on faculty computers since 2011 (Windows only – Mac and Linux users can skip this part). To date, the scans have been encouraged but entirely voluntary and entirely user-initiated.

The Information Security Office and IT Client Services are jointly proposing implementation of weekly, automated, required Identity Finder scans (see the proposal for details). Adam explained the rationale — if IR knows where sensitive data is stored on campus, it’s easier to protect that vulnerable data and avoid embarrassing FERPA violations. It’s also easier and faster to fix and return malware-infected machines if IR knows whether or not the machine had any sensitive data on it. Here’s how the proposed scans would work:

  • Every Friday at 12:30pm (or the next time your work machine was turned on), Identity Finder would automatically begin a scan.
  • Scans would be limited to only certain types of sensitive data – e.g., Social Security numbers, drivers’ license numbers, credit card numbers, and birth dates.
  • The Information Security Office would receive reports on the scan results. Adam would see the number of hits, and a masked view of the PII found, but he would NOT be able to see the file or the full PII picked up in the scan.
  • If a computer frequently had many hits identified, Adam would reach out to that user to help them better manage their sensitive data (so that the Information Security Office’s efforts would be focused on the largest sets of the most vulnerable data).

Adam has been testing with a small group. This Friday he’ll be rolling out the automated scans to all PIR staff members for another 2-3 weeks of testing. Adam noted that they are working on finding the most effective and efficient ways to scope the scans to minimize scan time.

TAG members mentioned a few concerns:

  • Scan length and performance effects — Kristen and Kim had run test scans on their machines that took much longer than expected (Kristen’s was 7 hours and 45 minutes, with a noticeable impact on performance).  Jim said that the subsequent scans are much faster, since you can set Identity Finder to ignore locations with many false positives – his scan takes about 3 hours. With respect to performance, Identity Finder does have a throttling capacity, such that it is not supposed to impact other applications. Adam explained that continued testing with PIR will help him make the scans faster and less noticeable.
  • Scheduling — Kevin and Katie noted that many faculty members (and their computers) are not on campus on Friday afternoons, especially if a scan needed multiple hours. We discussed a few options – for example, scheduling for Tuesday or Thursdays during the 11:30-1pm time slot, having an option to skip a scan if your machine had already been scanned within the past week, being able to pause a scan, doing monthly instead of weekly scans, pinging computers to automatically turn on and scan in the middle of the night, warning everyone to run their first scan overnight, etc.

To help resolve some of these issues and identify other areas of concern for faculty, TAG members volunteered to serve as test subjects for automated scans. Adam said that he’d like to work through the PIR staff first but will then reach out to TAG members for additional testing and scoping.

We invite our fellow faculty to contact us with other concerns or questions.  If you’d like to try Identity Finder, it should already be installed on your (Windows) machine, and you can find a Quick Guide for getting started at http://www.scranton.edu/pir/its/identityFinder.shtml.

3. Academic Server Decommissioning

An official memo from IR will be coming out in the next few days announcing a timeline for the decommissioning of the academic server (academic.scranton.edu), which has been in the works since mid-2011.  The server has been heavily targeted by attacks, so due to security concerns, academic.scranton.edu will no longer be *public-facing* beginning June 15. Internal access (via a campus IP address) will still be available until August 31 in case users need more time to move content. Adam explained that a firm deadline was needed in order to mitigate the major risk of a supposedly retired server still being public-facing.

Adam would like to work with people who still have public content on the server to migrate to either the CMS or another campus server.  (Content was supposed to have been migrated to the Content Management System (CMS), but there is still some active content there that was not migrated for one reason or another – some of it could not be accommodated within the CMS’s available functionality.) He has already met with the CTLE and the Library about moving the development pages for the Academic Integrity Tutorial. TAG will help reach out to faculty members who still have either individual content or organizational content on academic to determine what needs to be migrated where, and what level of support, assistance, or training is required. Adam will send Kristen information about the remaining directories and a list of faculty usernames connected to content on academic. After the official IR memo comes out, TAG will follow up that communication with those faculty members. (Faculty members who had individual pages on academic were contacted back in 2011 about moving their content, so hopefully most of this migration work is already completed.)

This discussion brought up some broader concerns about web development resources on campus. Tim described some of the difficulties he had finding a home for the Sheep Brain Dissection Guide. Eugeniu mentioned that some faculty members who had migrated their content from academic to the CMS reported that the Google ranking of their page had gone down in search results. The local WordPress server (sites.scranton.edu) might be a new option for student and faculty web development, but the extent of this service is still being discussed. We didn’t come up with any answers on this, but as always faculty members may contact TAG with other concerns, questions, or suggestions regarding web development on campus.


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Categories : CMS and University Website, Minutes, Network and Infrastructure, Outages, TAG Administrative

World of WordPress

14 02 2013

If you haven’t yet heard of WordPress, it’s an open-source blogging and content management system that’s starting to dominate the world of web development. Three items of WordPress-related news from TAG today —

1) sites.scranton.edu/tag

We’ve migrated TAG’s website from uofstechadvisory.wordpress.com to the University’s new, local WordPress instance — you can find us at sites.scranton.edu/tag. For right now, the site is publicly accessible, but like the old site it asks search engines not to index the content (so it’s not easily Googleable).

Moving to a local instance doesn’t just give us a scranton.edu URL – it also allows us to integrate with the University’s existing Active Directory authentication system, which means (among other things) that you don’t have to set up a separate WordPress account to log in. University community members can just log in with their R number and my.scranton password rather than creating a separate wordpress.com account.

Huge thanks to Phil Erb in IR for migrating our old content and for helping us set up the new site!

2) WordPress on Campus

So… did we mention that there’s a WordPress instance on campus now? We’ve already heard from a few faculty members who’d like to use WordPress pages for class projects, travel courses, and/or department news. Blog sites have already been set up for Admissions, the Library, and now TAG. Next up is possibly a site for the History Department, which would feed news stories onto their existing department website.

It’s not yet totally clear what level of access/service faculty will be able to get related to WordPress, but we’re excited about the possibilities. If you might be interested in using WordPress on campus, give TAG a heads-up so we’ll have a better grasp of faculty interest and needs.

3) WordPress off Campus

In their off hours, IR staff members and WordPress enthusiasts Phil Erb and Joe Casabona are organizing meetups for local WordPress users. The first one is scheduled for next Tuesday, February 19 from 7 to 8pm at the Vintage Theater on Spruce Street.  Any users in Northeastern Pennsylvania, at any level of experience, are welcome (the meetup isn’t a University-affiliated event).  If you’re interested, sign up at their Meetup.com page and/or follow the NEPA WordPress Facebook page.


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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website, TAG Administrative

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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Categories : Announcements, CMS and University Website

Faculty Websites – Know Your Options

24 10 2011

TAG has heard some renewed concern and confusion about faculty websites lately, so we thought it might be a good time to revisit the available options and outline how faculty members can take advantage of them.

When building a personal website (not a departmental website), faculty have several options with varying levels of control and support:

1. Use the Content Management System (CMS) and build off of your department’s page.

  • You can choose to build a personal faculty website as an offshoot of your department’s page.
  • Faculty pages using this option must use the standard CMS templates (that is, the page will look like all of the other University pages).
  • An example is TAG member Dave Dzurec’s page off of the History Department website.
  • This option offers the least amount of design control, but it can be done pretty quickly.
  • To request a page like this, talk with your department’s webmaster.

2. Use the Content Management System (CMS) and build your own site.

  • You can choose to build an independent (that is, not an offshoot of your department’s page) personal faculty website within the CMS .
  • With this option, you’d store your page content within the CMS, but you are not required to use a standard University template – so your site doesn’t have to look like the rest of the University pages.
  • The CTLE offers two templates (basic and advanced) that you can use as a starting point, but both are completely editable either by the faculty member him/herself or with the help of a CTLE TechCon. So you can change colors, add features, etc. Note that neither template is branded with  University of Scranton colors or logos.  As an example, I made a demo page by tweaking the advanced template.
  • You can also choose to design your own site from scratch by copy/pasting HTML from a web design tool (like Dreamweaver) into the CMS. This choice gives you more control over the page design.
  • To request space on the CMS, simply contact Aileen McHale at the CTLE. The CTLE TechCons will set up your web space, and if you like, they can also help you build and edit the pages – just let Aileen know how much help you think you will need.

3. Use third party services to design and/or host your site.

In all cases, faculty members have complete control over their site’s content. PR and CTLE don’t have any control over the text, images, documents, and links you post.  All that is expected is that you follow the University’s Code of Responsible Computing.  Also in all cases, it’s the faculty member’s responsibility to keep their page up-to-date.

If you have questions or concerns about faculty websites, or if you want to share recommendations for third party web design/hosting tools, please let us know!

Many thanks to PR and the CTLE for helping us work out a user-friendly workflow for faculty websites in the CMS.


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