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EITS Status and Activity Report For December 2014

Status and Activity Report for December 2014 for Enterprise Information Technology Services at the University of Georgia

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accidentalcio
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116 views3 pages

EITS Status and Activity Report For December 2014

Status and Activity Report for December 2014 for Enterprise Information Technology Services at the University of Georgia

Uploaded by

accidentalcio
Copyright
© © All Rights Reserved
We take content rights seriously. If you suspect this is your content, claim it here.
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EITS Status and Activity Report for December 2014

Prepared by Timothy M. Chester, Vice President for Information Technology (VPIT)


1. Announcements for Faculty and Staff Meetings

eLC to be Unavailable During Upgrade: The University System of Georgia is upgrading


Desire2Learn, which powers UGAs eLearning Commons (eLC). During the upgrade, eLC
will be unavailable starting on Saturday, December 27 and ending on Friday, January 2, at
5 p.m. Classes for spring semester start on Monday, January 5. Given the downtime for
eLC, instructors are advised to plan accordingly. This upgrade to eLC will include
enhancements to existing features and is not considered a major interface change. Some of
the functional enhancements include those to the assignment dropbox, quizzes, and
course content. The Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) plans to conduct eLC drop-in
sessions for instructors in early January. For more information, please contact Sherry
Clouser by email at sac@uga.edu.

Wimba Classroom Ending as Web Conferencing Tool: Instructors have until Friday,
December 19 to download their archived Wimba Classroom web conferencing sessions.
Wimba Classroom was replaced by Blackboard Collaborate in August as the web
conferencing tool for instructional purposes with eLearning Commons (eLC) and outside
eLC as freestanding sessions. The company that supports Wimba Classroom will end
support of the product at the end of 2014. Wimba Voice tools, including Voice Boards,
Voice Podcasters, and Voice Presentation, will remain available in eLC. Instructors may
find downloading instructions at http://ctl.uga.edu/web-conferencing/faculty to
download their recorded sessions prior to August 2014. After December 19, the archived
Wimba Classroom sessions will no longer be available. For more information, please
contact Sherry Clouser by email at sac@uga.edu.

2. Support for Student Technology Services

Spring 2015 Class Registration Opens in Athena: Registration for spring 2015 classes
opened on November 7 in Athena, UGAs new student information system. Athena uses a
time ticketing system for students to register for classes. Students are given a date and a
time they may log in to Athena to register for classes. Students may register for classes
from their appointment times until the spring semester drop/add period. The final
registration tickets were issued on November 21. As of this report, 25,650 students have
enrolled in more than 118,490 courses for spring 2015. Overall, there are 11,916 sections
available for student registration in the spring. For more information, please visit
http://connectuga.uga.edu.

3. Support for Academic and Administrative Computing

Free Office ProPlus Software Available to Employees: University faculty and staff now
have free access to download and install Microsoft Office ProPlus software. Students have
had free access to Office ProPlus since May through Microsofts Student Advantage
program. This same service is now available to all UGA employees at no additional cost to
the University. Faculty and staff may download and install Office ProPlus software (which
includes Microsoft Word, Excel, and PowerPoint) on up to five personal devices, including
phones, tablets, and computers. EITS has complete details on how employees can

EITS Status and Activity Report for December 2014

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download this software on their personal devices via their web-based UGAMail account at
http://office365.uga.edu.

Self-Service Website to be Updated: UGAs Self-Service website (employee.uga.edu) for


employees will be updated to use the Universitys Central Authentication Service (CAS) for
logins. Visitors to the website will no longer need to provide their MyID and password on
the Self-Service home page. Instead, they will click on a link on the Self-Service homepage
that will redirect them to the CAS login page, which is used by multiple UGA online
services. The change is tentatively scheduled for December 6. The UGA Self-Service
website allows employees to view and update information related to their employment,
such as paychecks and leave balances. For more information about this change, please
contact Russell A. Hatfield by email at hatfield@uga.edu.

4. Support for Research

Regional Partnership to Facilitate New Scientific Discoveries: The National Science


Foundation has awarded a grant to a collaboration of southeastern institutions, including
the University, to fund a regional network to support next generation networking and its
use in enabling scientific discoveries. This collaboration, called the Southern Partnership
in Advanced Networking (SPAN), includes UGA, Clemson University, South Carolina State
University, and Georgia State University. SPAN will offerto campus IT personnel and
researchers alikeworkshops, expert presentations, documentation, and site visits to
participating institutions on topics such as institutional cyberinfrastructure plans,
network upgrades, and cyber security. For more information about SPAN, please contact
Guy Cormier at gcormier@uga.edu by email.

New Research Cluster Named: The Georgia Advanced Computing Resource Center
(GACRC) is preparing to launch its new cluster, which has been given the name Sapelo.
When fully launched in early 2015, Sapelo will offer significant research computing
resource enhancements, including 1 petabyte of storage for research computing and three
times the processing capabilities of the current Z Cluster. The name Sapelo refers to UGAs
long-standing research on Sapelo Island, where University researchers have made
significant advances in the field of ecology and other disciplines. For more information
about the new cluster, please contact Guy Cormier at gcormier@uga.edu by email.

5. Core Campus Infrastructure

Additional Data Storage at Health Sciences Campus: EITS recently installed additional
equipment at the Health Sciences Campus that will provide redundancy to some of the
Universitys core infrastructure systems and services. By installing this equipment at the
Health Sciences Campus, the University is placed in a better position to provide future
redundant options. For more information, please contact Mike Lucas at mlucas@uga.edu
by email.

6. Did You Know?

EITS continues to develop high-performing IT professionals at the University with its


ongoing HR Competency Project. This 18-month project aims to engage every EITS
employee in the development of competencies that outline how to observe and measure
the behaviors exhibited by high-performing IT employees. To date, every EITS employee
has participated in a series of workshops to identify the skills and competencies that

EITS Status and Activity Report for December 2014

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determine a high performer. Next, an evaluation/assessment tool for each job family will
be developed, followed by the initial rollout of the new performance review process. A
steering committee that includes EITS employees and UGA HR representatives is guiding
this process. For more information about the HR Competency Project, please contact Wes
Johnson at wesj06@uga.edu by email.

EITS is working with several technical groups on campus to refine recommendations


stemming from results of the TechQual+ survey. The annual survey measures the quality
of IT services at UGA, based on feedback from students, faculty, and staff. An advisory
committee was tasked with using the survey results to provide recommendations on four
key IT topics. Those recommendations are being reviewed by campus technical groups,
which are also providing additional input. A final set of recommendations will be
submitted to the Vice President for Information Technology by December 31. Those
recommendations will guide future IT initiatives and projects at the University. For more
information about the TechQual+ survey, please contact Lynn Wilson at llatimer@uga.edu
by email.

University of Georgia students, faculty, and staff, as well as interested others, may subscribe to
this monthly report by sending an email to listserv@listserv.uga.edu with the phrase subscribe
vpit-news as the body of the message.

EITS Status and Activity Report for December 2014

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