Articles about Academic Technology
Director’s Message: H1N1 Planning
Current planning efforts to mitigate the effects of the H1N1 virus pandemic at UF revolve around an expected number of absences of students over an extended period of time, possible faculty absence due to illness or need to care for an ill family member, and as an extreme measure closure of the university. For planning and preparation purposes, the Provost has appointed a workgroup, chaired by Dr. Andy McCollough, to address these scenarios. Please see his memorandum. More »
UF’s Pandemic Planning
Current planning efforts to mitigate the effect of an H1N1 virus pandemic on the academic programs of UF are designed to:
- Provide access to content and review activities for students who miss class due to the pandemic;
- Provide teaching continuity if the instructor is ill;
- Provide for instruction continuation through online resources when and if normally scheduled classes are suspended.
The tools available to accomplish these objectives include:
- Create and make available E-learning System course accounts for faculty who choose to use this system.
- Install lecture capture equipment in all large auditoria (200+ seating capacity) and capture as many lectures as possible for delivery to enrolled students through the web.
- Provide information for instructors in regards to other tools that can be used to create instructional activity for asymmetric delivery.
Information about these resources along with training, tutorials, and support details is now available at www.at.ufl.edu/flu .
Successful response to this situation will depend primarily on the faculty. The response mechanisms outlined above are intended to assist. The objective is teaching continuity. The time for planning is now. Please share with me any suggestions or concerns.
UF Adopts Sakai to be New E-Learning System
After an 8-month evaluation process, the University of Florida has selected the open source Sakai course management system to be the new course management system. By choosing an open source system, UF joins a growing trend among colleges and universities. More »
Help Desk Updates
The 2009 calendar year has brought an addition of multiple services to the UF Computing Help Desk to better serve the UF Community. The following services have been added since the Spring of 2009 and continue to grow as the University’s needs expand: More »
AT Computer Labs and Classrooms Updates
In preparation for the 2009-2010 academic year, computers in AT computer labs and classrooms have been upgraded in a number of ways. All iMac computers now allow users to choose either Mac OS X or Windows XP operating system. This new dual-boot technology permits instructors who want to use computers with different operating systems at different times to do so without changing rooms. It also allows classes to be taught entirely with Windows software in any of the three iMac classrooms (Architecture 120, Norman G512, Norman G514i). All PCs in classrooms were also upgraded to dual core architecture. labs.at.ufl.edu More »
Director’s Message: UF IT
The value of IT is predicated on how well it supports teaching and learning, research and scholarship, engagement of external clients and management of the institution. As IT evolves and communities of use continue to expand and grow in unexpected ways, so do the opportunities and challenges for the use of IT in support of the University mission.
The open letter from Interim CIO Chuck Frazier in this newsletter summarizes the most recent strategic planning effort and action plan for UF. Its purpose is to capitalize on IT investments, including the reallocation and reorganization of resources. In particular, a strong emphasis is placed on governance and engagement, leading to increased participation by the university community. Through this reorganization UF IT will realize more of the transformative benefits of IT.
Interim CIO’s Open Letter
In life, we seldom get to choose the problems we must face, their timing, or pace. I think it is safe to assume that nobody asked for the biggest economic downturn since the great depression and that nobody reading this newsletter wished to see Florida among the states hardest hit. We got both barrels anyway. Our cuts in IT at the central level were very substantial at $900,000. Cuts in distributed IT were all determined at the unit levels. I do not have a summary measure of those cuts, but I understand they were substantial too. But bad as the cuts were, I admit that I frequently worried that they would be worse. More »
Security Reminder
Viruses often spread by exploiting security bugs for which fixes are available. Your work computer has probably been set up to automatically download security updates, but what about your home computer or laptop?
The "Stay Updated" page in UF’s Information Technology Security site has instructions for setting up some common Operating Systems (Windows, Mac OS X), but don’t forget about programs you may have installed yourself. Most of them can be set up to notify you when an update is available. This will generally appear under a menu called "Options" or "Preferences."
Email Forwarding Policy Change
Because of improved spam handling capabilities and student preferences, students may now forward their @ufl.edu GatorLink email address to any valid email address, on or off campus. Official correspondence is sent to students via the GatorLink email address, so the process of changing forwarding to an off-campus service requires the student to respond to a verification email which is sent to their intended forwarding address. A free Gatorlink mailbox continues to be provided to students. Special circumstances may lead individual colleges or units to establish restrictions on the use of email by their students. These restrictions would be enforced at the local level. More »
New Help Desk Services
Starting this Summer B, the Help Desk is offering a new Laptop Drop-Off Service. Faculty, staff and students were previously required to stay at the Help Desk until their laptop was repaired. These clients now have the option of dropping their laptops off with the Help Desk if the problem reported falls under a specific set of issues. More »
2009 Provost E-Learning Initiative Courses Selected
The Provost E-Learning Initiative seeks to further improve the quality of learning and the learning experience for students, as well as to facilitate the teaching process for faculty. To achieve this, the Provost envisioned a series of course offerings for undergraduate students using pedagogical best practice and transformation of education using information technology. More »
UF Adopts Sakai to be New E-Learning System
After an 8-month evaluation process, the University of Florida has selected the open source Sakai course management system to be the new course management system. By choosing an open source system, UF joins a growing trend among colleges and universities. More »
Mediasite in Action
Mediasite allows an instructor to simultaneously show media in two windows. For example, PowerPoint slides in one window and a video feed in another window. Mediasite also allows for one or two way audio/video communication and closed captioning.
See some examples of Mediasite in use here at UF
Director’s Message: Green Computing
The American College & University Presidents Climate Commitment, of which UF is a signatory, was organized in October 2006. The intent of this initiative is to bring together the US higher education community to act on issues surrounding climate change. Aligned with this effort is the need to make an efficient use of resources in IT that leads to reduced environmental impacts, or Green Computing.
As is often the case, great benefits can be gained by simple changes in conduct and attention to business processes. More »
Focus on Educause
The University of Florida is a member of Educause, an organization comprised of colleges, universities, educational organizations, and corporations, whose mission is “to advance higher education by promoting the intelligent use of information technology.” Educause provides a wealth of resources to support teaching, research, and service, and this recurring article will draw your attention to different benefits you will receive because of our institutional membership. More »
Director’s Message: Provost’s E-Learning Initiative
This term will see the first round of courses available to students under the Provost’s E-Learning initiative. These courses are directed to prepare twenty-first century learners for an increasingly connected and complex global society by implementing practices that involve inquiry, interactivity, collaboration and technology enriched learning environments. This will ensure that educational outcomes are maximized with the resources currently available for teaching and learning at UF. More »
Open Letter to Staff: Chuck Frazier Returns as Interim CIO
UF’s new Interim CIO, Dr. Chuck Frazier, addresses questions about the transition in a letter to IT staff.
Open Letter to UF OIT Staff (IT Connections)
Technology Innovations Advisory Committee (TIAC)
In February, a new committee reporting to ITAC-AT was established. The purpose of this committee is to:
- Identify emerging technologies relevant to the academic mission of the University.
- Assess and recommend for analysis specific emerging technologies that improve the quality of learning and/or reduce the cost of instruction.
- Analyze the feasibility for implementation at UF of promising emerging technologies.
- Recommend an adoption strategy for feasible emerging technologies.
Director’s Message: Improving Course Quality and Reducing Cost
Adding technology to conventional teaching and learning paradigms is usually accompanied by the expectation that the quality of learning will improve while the cost of instruction will decrease. Bolting technology to conventional courses simply adds the cost of the technology. In addition, to effectively utilize these types of technologies in teaching requires specialized skills. Due to these gaps in expectations and practice, the quality of learning is usually not improved and the cost of instruction is often increased. More »
Director’s Message: Emerging Technologies Report
On a yearly basis, the New Media Consortium and the EDUCAUSE Learning Initiative publish the Horizons Report as an insight to emerging technologies relevant to “teaching, learning and creative expression”. More »
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