mobile « Technology Advisory Group

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

Comments : 1 Comment »
Tags: Academic Technology Plan, Banner, cms, computerized testing, Directory, Email, footprints, Incidental Use Policy, IRAC, lms, LMS Work Group, luminis, Microsoft Live@Edu, mobile, Mobile Apps Work Group, my.scranton, outage
Categories : Announcements, TAG Administrative

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.

CTLE is exploring options for student response systems.

Comments : 2 Comments »
Tags: Academic Technology Plan, classroom mediation, computerized testing, Directory, Email, Incidental Use Policy, internet outage, IRAC, LMS Work Group, Microsoft Live@Edu, microsoft office, mobile, Mobile Apps Work Group, Novel Pedagogy Group, outage, security
Categories : Email, TAG Administrative

TAG Meeting Notes 10/27/11

27 10 2011

TAG met this morning to catch up on our projects. Here’s the latest:

A Learning Management System (LMS) Work Group is forming to review and evaluate alternatives to Angel. Connie Wisdo in ITDA will lead the group. There are six spots available for faculty participants, and (as of a few minutes after our meeting!) we now have a full slate of volunteers:

Tara Fay, Biology
Julie Nastasi, Occupational Therapy
Keith Yurgosky, Communications (part time)
Maureen Carroll, Math
Teresa Conte, Nursing
Wesley Wang, Economics/Finance

The group will also include 3 representatives from CTLE (including Eugeniu), 5 representatives from IR, and 4 students (graduate, undergraduate, and adult). CTLE and IR will begin drafting evaluation criteria this month in preparation for the first full group meeting in December. The goal is to make a decision by May so that we can run both Angel and the new LMS in parallel in 2012-2013.

The Mobile Apps work group is forming to guide the design and development of mobile applications for teaching and learning. This group will begin meeting in November. Connie will lead this group as well, and it will include representatives from Alumni and PR. Faculty member participants are:

Ben Bishop, Computing Sciences
Sandy Pesavento, Education
Kristen Yarmey, Library

The University now has an in-house WordPress Network (http://sites.scranton.edu), available to be used for University blogs. Currently the only users are the Admissions office, though the Library will be migrating its blogs to the local server during Intersession. Anyone interested in migrating or starting a University blog should put a request in Project Tracking under “Systems.”
Continuing education opportunities. Wilkes University is hosting an Apple Education Seminar on November 17. Villanova University is hosting a Technology Expo on April 26, 2012.
IT Roadmap. Jeremy and Kristen met with IR to discuss their project list for 2011-12. The email conversion timeline is still uncertain, but IR expects that the first test conversions will begin in November and that student conversions may be done after final exams end. Faculty and staff conversions will likely be in January. IR will continue to communicate with TAG about the most optimal time for faculty conversions. Questions about the conversion came up during the last Faculty Senate meeting.
Faculty directory. TAG shared concerns with IR about the faculty directory’s inability to list more than one department affiliation for a single faculty member. The fix for this problem is more complex than we anticipated and will involve working with several University departments.
TAG will meet with IR on November 10 to discuss results from the summer TechQual survey.
CTLE has two upcoming events for faculty. On November 9, Margarete Zalon will lead a faculty-to-faculty exchange on management of bibliographic resources. On November 17, there will be a Faculty Advancement Series event on peer review and writing for journals. CTLE also has hired a new associate director, Brian Snapp.
CTLE is exploring options for classroom response systems (also known as clickers). They have a demo scheduled with Top Hat Monocle, and a TechCon is researching other options. Sandy mentioned that there are tools like PollEverywhere available that utilize text messaging rather than clickers.
Jeremy, Sandy, Anne Marie, and Jim all attended the recent EDUCAUSE conference. Items of interest included Penn State’s open source WebLion application for program assessment, Pearson/Google’s new OpenClass learning management system, QR codes, mobile education, Google+, and Google Hangouts.
At the last Faculty Senate meeting, a motion passed that asks the Provost to provide updates on various academic initiatives. The motion included the Academic Technology Plan that TAG members have contributed to.
The newly reconstituted IRAC group met, with two TAG members (Dave and Paul) serving as faculty representatives. Their recent meeting focused on the TechQual survey results, which will be discussed with TAG on November 10.
Teresa provided further insight on the Nursing department’s need for computerized testing. We discussed several options, including the purchase of Chromebooks or the use of specialized, restrictive software. OIT’s budget cannot maintain any new mediation, so the construction of a full computer lab would mean that other mediation could not be maintained. Jim would like to know if any other departments have this kind of need. TAG will continue to explore possible solutions to this issue.
This week’s IT Forum was on Data Security and Classification. (Kristen will post specific notes.) We discussed how faculty might be exposed to and educated about different data types and security procedures.
Jeremy reported on a classroom mediation issue in the Loyola Science Center. He asked if OIT could provide email updates to faculty to let them know if/when a computer or projector is not functional in one of the classrooms where they teach. Jim is exploring this idea with OIT.

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Tags: Academic Technology Plan, angel, classroom mediation, computerized testing, Directory, Email, IRAC, lms, mobile, Mobile Apps, security, TechQual, wordpress
Categories : TAG Administrative

TAG Meeting Notes 9/29/11

29 09 2011

We had our first TAG meeting of 2011-2012 this morning. We had a lot to catch up on from the summer, so apologies for the long notes! As always, post a comment if there are any questions or concerns.

New members. Teresa Conte joined us from Nursing as a replacement for Cathy Lovecchio. Ben Bishop (Computing Sciences) joined us late last spring, as did Lori Nidoh (representing Public Relations). S.P. Chattopadhyay is currently on sabbatical, and Kevin Wilkerson has returned from his.
Novel Pedagogy Cohort. Jeremy and a few other CAS faculty members have formed a small group to explore and implement new pedagogy techniques in their classes – some of which involve technology while others don’t. Tools to be explored include lecture capture and clicker systems. If any other faculty are interested in innovative pedagogy, let Jeremy know.
Lecture capture. A team of stakeholders (including TAG members Jeremy, Kristen, Sandy, and Eugeniu) met several times in the spring and summer to review possible products for lecture capture. The final recommendation was a hybrid solution of Media Site (as a back end) and Crestron HD appliances for the actual capture. Implementation will start in the Science Center and then spread to other departments. Right now, IR is working on setting up the back end servers while VistaComm is implementing the front end capture devices. The goal is to have LSC lecture capture ready to go by Spring 2011, and then expand to other departments next year as funding allows. Sandy and Teresa noted that Education and Nursing would be very interested in implementing lecture capture in their classrooms. Thanks to Jason Oakey over in Instructional Technology for taking the lead on this project!
Office 2010. The upgrade to Office 2010 for faculty and staff is tied to the email conversion (see below) due to the incorporation of Outlook.
Windows 7. The upgrade to Windows 7 for faculty and staff machines currently running Windows XP is held up due to a security issue. XP users are currently admin users on their computers. While this gives us a lot of flexibility and control over our own machines, it also introduces security risks – users can accidentally install malicious code. When we move to Windows 7, IR will change XP users’ roles from admin to standard user accounts. By default, standard users wouldn’t be able to install or delete applications, but ideally there will be a way for users to obtain temporary admin status when they need to install programs. IR is currently working out these privilege management issues, so Windows 7 deployment is pushed back to (tentatively) Spring 2011. Wesley asked about 64 bit vs 32 bit machines – Jim said that by default new machines will be 32 bit, but faculty who need 64 bit should let him know.
Email conversion. The Microsoft Live @ Edu email transition has been delayed by issues with identity management (e.g., automatically assigning set permissions to new hires, and removing permissions from retirees, departing employees, etc). IR is working on a workaround plan that would let us go forward with the email conversion while temporarily skipping over identity management. IR is aware of “crunch times” in faculty schedules, so faculty email conversion will probably wait until intersession or beyond.
Personally identifiable information. Ben asked about security concerns for faculty members who don’t use University email. Jim recommends that any University business, and especially any University business that involves confidential information, be done using University services (like Angel and Royal Drive). The Identity Finder tool is available to help faculty and staff find any PII that might be on their machines. IR also has security training videos that faculty can watch to get an entry-level awareness of PII.
Information Resources Advisory Committee. IRAC had been inactive for a year but is now reconstituted. IRAC members will be providing input on IR’s service portfolio. TAG members Dave, Paul, Eugeniu, and Lori will be on it as CAS faculty, PCPS faculty, CTLE, and PR representatives, respectively.
TechQual. IR ran this customer service survey over the summer. Preliminary results just came in, but IR is still processing them and will present them to IRAC next month.
Loyola Science Center. Most of the IT work in LSC is done, but there are still a few equipment issues popping up in classrooms. IR will continue working on this. Remaining projects include lecture capture, the auditorium, and RoomView, a tool that will allow Instructional Technology to monitor and maintain classroom equipment (e.g., whether or not a projector has been left on).
Wireless. The wireless upgrade project was approved. Phase I (freshmen residences, the new Mulberry Street residences, and the LSC) is complete and adds 350 new WiFi points to the campus. Phase II is currently underway and will add 252 WiFi points in 21 buildings (residences, St. Thomas, and the Long Center). Phase III is scheduled for summer 2012 and will include the remaining academic and administrative buildings as well as outdoor coverage. This is a big improvement – many thanks to the Network Infrastructure staff!
CTLE liaison. CTLE used to have two faculty liaisons who focused teaching and pedagogy. They have now added a third faculty liaison, TAG member Sandy Pesavento, to provide input on faculty interests and needs regarding pedagogical uses of technology.
Mobile access to Angel. CTLE and IR experimented with Blackboard’s iOS app for Angel, but found it to be a very limited tool, particularly for teachers (e.g., faculty can’t enter grades or interact with Angel dropboxes). So mobile access to Angel still isn’t conveniently available at this time.
LMS review. Our contract with Angel expires in 2013, so a review committee will begin exploring other learning management system (LMS) options in January. Connie Wisdo in ITDA will lead the group. Eugeniu said that we might have an opportunity to use a “free” installation of Blackboard temporarily (on top of our existing Angel installation) so that faculty could try it out. Dave asked whether or not we would be able to migrate courses from Angel into a new LMS. Eugeniu said that from our current version of Angel (7.4), we could export/import single courses into Blackboard, with some imperfections. If we upgraded to v8 of Angel, we’d be able to batch migrate courses. Blackboard would also complement our Royal Card and emergency notification systems, since they’re Blackboard products (Transact and Connect), but it might not be easily tied into Banner.
Academic Technology Plan. The Provost’s office has no updates on the Academic Technology Plan.
Mobile website and app. Lori shared some analytics to give us an idea of how the mobile website and mobile app are being used. The app has been downloaded 7,604 times (mostly by iOS rather than Android devices). An in-app poll asked about the user’s identity, and 57% of the poll-takers were current students, 28% were alumni, 10% were prospective students, with faculty, staff, and other community members making up only 6%. New app modules include Admissions and the Library (live but still being tweaked), with an Alumni module on the way. An iPad version is also on the timeline for this year, and hopefully mobile authentication is on the horizon. The m.scranton mobile site is getting plenty of traffic. The most commonly viewed mobile pages are the home page and the admissions and academics home pages. [Note: Stats on the mobile app are here (in PDF). Stats on the mobile site are here (also in PDF).] PR is also setting up automatic redirects from the full site to the mobile site for recognized mobile devices – right now, the only active redirect is from the full site home page to the m.scranton home page.
Faculty websites. We’ve figured out a good workflow for faculty websites with CTLE. Any faculty member who wants to create a new website in the CMS should contact Aileen McHale in the CTLE. The CTLE TechCons will set up the faculty member’s web space, and then can help him or her as needed with templates or other support. Sandy and Anne Marie would like to encourage faculty members (and any other page admins) to keep their websites current.
Continuing education. TAG members interested in learning more about academic uses of technology should keep an eye out for continuing education opportunities, since funding may be available. Jeremy and Sandy will each attend a day of the EDUCAUSE conference, courtesy of the Provost’s office. Anne Marie and a few representatives from IR will also attend. TAG members who do participate in continuing education are asked to report back and share conference highlights.
Computerized testing. Teresa reported on concerns from the Nursing department. Nursing licensing exams are all online, so the department uses computerized testing to help their students prepare for the licensing environment. Nursing faculty have run into trouble finding places to conduct their computer tests – there isn’t enough space to accommodate large classes, and classrooms that do accommodate that many students have been booked for other courses. An ideal solution would be a large “shared resource” lab (possibly run by CTLE/Library) that faculty could schedule for tests, with computers set up to restrict access to the testing environment. Anne Marie suggested that we look at how other schools have solved this problem. Teresa will get more details on Nursing needs. Jim asked if other departments have this need, and for what class sizes. Once we have more information, we can agree on a good solution and then seek funding.
Our next meeting will be October 27. TAG members are asked to keep collecting (specific!) feedback from other faculty members on technology concerns or issues, and we’ll keep sharing information here as projects continue.

——

Note: Updated 10/24/11 with PDF docs of mobile app and website statistics shared during the meeting.

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Tags: Academic Technology Plan, angel, computerized testing, ctle, educause, Email, faculty websites, IRAC, lecture capture, lms, Meetings, Microsoft Live@Edu, microsoft office, mobile, Mobile Apps, pedagogy, pii, TechQual, Windows 7, wireless
Categories : Angel and Desire2Learn, Email, Minutes, Mobile, Network and Infrastructure, Security, TAG Administrative, Upgrades

Snapshot: How students are using the network

23 09 2011

To help TAG get an idea of how current students are using the internet on campus, Cal over in Network Infrastructure sent me some quick stats on student connections (from live snapshots taken at around 4:30pm on a weekday).

Student connections to the campus network:

Wireless: 2617
Wired: 181
Game consoles (wired): 103

OS/device breakdown of all of the students using wireless (from a slightly later snapshot):

Mac: 914
Windows: 1074
iPhone: 499
iPad: 54
iPod: 1
Linux: 67

No huge surprises here, but it’s interesting to see just how much our students rely on wireless – and it’s good to know that we have this kind of data available.

(Thanks, Cal!)

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Tags: mobile, network, students, wireless
Categories : Announcements, Mobile, Network and Infrastructure

iPads available for faculty and students

22 08 2011

Just a heads up that there are iPads on campus available to students and faculty who want to try out tablet computing this fall.

Students can borrow one of three circulating iPads from the Library for a 24-hour period. (We’re also considering purchasing one or more Android tablets if this program proves popular.) The Library’s iPads are only available to students – not faculty or staff.

Faculty can borrow an iPad for a week at a time from the CTLE. Eugeniu sent out this announcement to all faculty on Friday:

Do you want to become familiar with the latest tablet technology and its use in pedagogical settings? The CTLE has an iPad that faculty can borrow for up to one week to explore and experiment with. With an iPad you can surf the web, check email, watch movies, read books, take and save class notes. You can download the latest apps and connect the iPad to the video projector in a mediated classroom. For more information or to borrow an iPad, contact the CTLE at x4038.

Faculty who are interested in using mobile devices in the classroom could also consider applying for one of the CTLE’s Teaching Enhancement Grants.

If you’re using a tablet or another mobile device to support your teaching or research this fall, please let us know how it goes!

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Tags: ctle, iPad, Library, mobile, tablets
Categories : Announcements

Good news for iPad users

3 05 2011

Heads up if you’ve tried to use an iPad on campus wireless. Network Infrastructure passed along some good news this morning:

We have received feedback from a number of users regarding the frequency in which iPads have to authenticate to ROYALAIR and how this is causing issues accessing some services from their device. This behavior is due to the unique way in which the iPads manage their wireless connections in that the device disconnects from the wireless network when the device is in a sleep state. Due to a low heartbeat timer in Cisco NAC, the device is decertified from the network while in this sleep state. In order to prevent this from occurring, we have increased this timer to 8 hours so that a user only needs to authenticate once during business hours. Please continue to provide us with any feedback you may have regarding this or any other iPad network issue.

Thanks to Cal and the rest of Network Infrastructure for the fix!

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Tags: CNAC, iPad, mobile, wireless
Categories : Announcements, Network and Infrastructure, Upgrades

More on the Mobile App

4 04 2011

TAG has gotten a few questions and heard a few concerns about the new Scranton iPhone and Android App. Just thought we’d post some extra information about it:

There are two different mobile tools available – one is the mobile app, which is available for iPhones through the App Store and for Android devices through the Android Market. The other is the mobile website, which you can view from any internet browser at http://m.scranton.edu.
Both the app and the mobile website are optional – you can use them if you find them convenient, but no faculty member (or anyone else) is obligated to use them.
The app does access some data from your phone in order to make the features work. For the Android version of the app, these are spelled out in the Android Market page under Permissions. The Permissions page mentions that “malicious applications” can use those permissions to do bad things – this is boilerplate language from the Android Market, essentially warning you not to download and install apps from developers that you don’t trust. In this case, the app is coming from the University via Straxis Technology and is not malicious.
The app can use your GPS location in order to place you on a map for the Campus Tour feature. However, at least on the iPhone version, you are asked whether or not you will allow the app to use your location before it pulls this data. I believe the Android version asks user permission as well – can any Android users confirm?
There was some faculty input in the app development – I sat in on meetings with the Mobile Applications Team as a representative of the Library. I was asked by IR and PR not to post details during the vendor selection process, but I’m happy to share my feedback report and thoughts with any interested faculty.

As usual, if anyone has questions, clarifications, or concerns, please post below or to the TAG-Discussion list.

Comments : 5 Comments »
Tags: mobile, Mobile Apps
Categories : Mobile

Mobile Update

22 03 2011

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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Tags: mobile, Mobile Apps, Public Relations
Categories : Announcements, Mobile

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