| Minimum Workstation and Software Site License Subcommittee Minutes |
February 17, 2011
Meeting in EBA-410 at 10 a.m.
Diana Osborn, Chair
ITS Update
- ITS is in the process of finalizing a survey to go out to faculty to find out their needs. In 2007, ITS did a similar survey to determine where to make budget cuts. There will also be a College Leadership meeting with IT heads and College leaders to help ITS with their planning for the future.
- The plagiarism software, Turnitin, has returned for campus use. Blackboard's alternative, Safe Assign, was not meeting the needs of the faculty. Turnitin will be hosting an event on March 2, in AH-2108 talking about their tools. Starts at noon and lunch will be served.
- ITS is in the process of re-evaluating the "campus standard" clicker / audience response system.
- Blackboard 9.1 is now in the pilot testing phase. Upgrade to 9.1 enterprise-wide is planned to take place in Fall, 2011.
- There is a pilot project underway to automate lecture capture for archival purposes and, in some cases, to stream live lectures.
- There is an iPad user group on campus with an informal get together scheduled for every Friday from 8:30 - 9:30 at the FIT Center (AH 1109) to discuss iPads/tablet/slate/eBook readers and other mobile computing tools. Anyone who is interested is welcome to come.
- ITS is continuing to help faculty redesign courses for online instruction through their annual Fast-Track Course Design Institute. More than a dozen faculty are participating.
- Smart Classroom upgrades are now in the planning stages for summer. If anyone has a smart classroom that needs an overhaul, please contact James Frazee. There will be a Smart Classroom Facilitators meeting in March.
- ITS is testing Atomic Learning products for on demand training, i.e. 1 to 3 minutes in length tutorials. ITS is especially interested in Atomic Learning because they offer ~70 Blackboard 9.1 tutorials and full workshops to help students succeed with their online courses.
Academic Affairs Update
There are three patch management alternatives: PatchLink - run your own server, PatchLink patchmaster, patchmaster01 - Diana has a patch management set of servers that departments can join in to, and Altiris, which is currently used by Business Affairs and will require a payment to Business Affairs.
Diana Osborn reported that she's running version 10.3.1 of the patch management software and plans to upgrade to version 11 this summer. An evaluation copy of version 11 can be downloaded for 60 days. If you'd like to test patch management, send Diana an email to get an account. The March SysAdmins meeting will include an overview of how the current system works, accounts, patches, reports, etc. as well as an overview of the enhancements to be included in version 11.
John Ross is working on the Solaris maintenance for all campus SUN servers. Info has been sent out to all Colleges to confirm their servers.
John Ross met with the Qualtrix representative. There are currently no plans for a campus site license, but may consider it at the end of the year.
Conferences
There will be a one day (low-cost - $50) event called EduSoCal. It will focus on interactive technology for web and instructional development in higher education. The event will take place on April 27th at Long Beach City College and will have vendors onsite. There is currently a call for presentations. Visit their website at edusocal.org.
The online CATS conference is April 12-14th. Their currently calling for papers to be presented. Check out information on the conference at http:/cats.cdl.edu/cats_conferences/cats-2011/home. Please let Diana Osborn know if you would be interested in getting rooms together as a group for the various topics.
The Merlot conference will be held in August and there is a call for proposals open until February 21, 2011. For more information, go to the website at http://www.merlot.org/merlot/index.htm.
SSL Certificates
We can now issue SSL certificates through InCommon. Go to the security website under resources and send the request form. Certificates can be issued for 3 years.
Security Update
Felecia Vlahos gave an overview of the Systemwide report from the Auditors. The report focused on 5 areas with 1 to 5 items each.
Google Transition
Faculty and staff with a current SDSU mail account will have the SDSU account migrated to a Google Gmail account in the SDSU domain. If you currently have a Google Gmail account, it will not be in the SDSU domain and will be considered a personal account. The ETS Help Desk does not support personal Gmail accounts.
Only the SDSU mail accounts migrated to an SDSU Gmail account with Google will have the protection of the university's contract with Google. Once the conversion takes place, new mail accounts issued by ETS for Google will be in the SDSU domain. According to Felecia, IDM must first be in place for security issues before the switch to Google Gmail will take place.
Google notes:
- The attachment size for Google Gmail is a maximum of 25 MB.
- A Google Calendar import can be done from Meeting Maker but will be a multi-step process.
- The easiest calendar import is from Microsoft Outlook calendaring to Google Calendar.
Next meeting will be March 17th, 2010 in EBA-410.
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Last modified on February 28, 2011
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