May 2013 Update

I wanted to share the IRES May Update with you. It includes Information Resources’ accomplishments and news for the past few months. We welcome your input as we continue to refine our communications with the campus. If you have any questions regarding this update you are welcome to contact me directly at mlschilling@csuchico.edu (x6212) or Brooke Banks at bfbanks@csuchico.edu (x6212).

Thank you, Mike Schilling

Textbook Alternatives Project (TAP)

The Textbook Alternatives Project (TAP) grant was launched in fall of 2012 to help students save money by encouraging faculty to replace high cost print textbooks with lower cost or free alternatives. The alternatives include eTextbooks, library resources, open educational resources, and self-authored materials. TAP is part of CSU, Chico’s Affordable Learning Solutions (CALS) program, which is an expansion of the CSU’s system-wide Affordable Learning Solutions (ALS) campaign.

Faculty awarded 2012 TAP grants included Leslie Atkins, Eric Ayars, Laurie Browne, Maria DeCastro, David Kagan, Jim Mensching, Susan Roll, and Steve Stewart. In the fall of 2013, faculty participating in TAP will present their findings at the CELT Annual Conference. To learn more about TAP visit the Chico Affordable Learning Solutions website. 

Campus coordinators for this project are James Tyler, Online Learning Librarian, and Laura Sederberg, Manager of the Technology and Learning Program.

University Police and IT Support Services Team Up!

Safety Training

ITSS has been working closely with UPD. At the beginning of the Spring semester, Sergeant David Bird was assigned to ITSS to provide training to both our staff and student employees in the event of a library incident. We started the training with a video called “Run, Hide, Fight” on YouTube found here. Sgt. Bird provided relevant information to our specific areas both in the Lab and the Service Desk. He addressed questions and then conducted a role-play, or re-enactment, of an active shooter situation. It was a valuable training exercise on a very serious topic. Sgt. Bird said he received positive feedback from our employees who participated in the training.

Extended Lab and Laptop Lounge Hours 

ITSS is also working with UPD to provide Campus Connection services for students that stay late in the computer lab on Thursday, Friday, and Saturday nights. ITSS extended their lab hours in the beginning of March and we are already seeing an increased number of patrons utilizing the space. In addition, UPD is present Thursday-Saturday from midnight until 2 a.m. to provide safe rides for all students.

Application Development Unconference

On April 5 Information Resources sponsored the first developer “unconference” for groups that participate in the Application Standards Subcommittee. An unconference is like a regular conference, except that the agenda is determined by the attendees at the start of the conference and the speakers are not scheduled ahead of time. Topics in the unconference included utilizing revision control for source code, programming language and framework standards, training, and cataloging skill sets and applications.

The feedback from attendees was extremely positive and led to a commitment to hold quarterly unconferences. Attendees also committed to creating and maintaining better avenues for developers. The next developer unconference will be held during the summer.

ECAR Study of Undergraduate Students and Technology

This spring CSU, Chico participated in the ECAR (Educause Center for Applied Research) Study of Undergraduate Students and Technology. The survey, developed and hosted by Educause, is designed to evaluate undergraduate student’s perception of technology trends.

The survey was sent to all 14,614 undergraduate students. The survey link was available to students for three weeks and officially closed on April 12. 1,997 students (13.7%) completed the survey. The typical response rate for this type of survey is about 10%.

Educause will be sending our data in June along with a standard benchmarking report. Because so many CSUs participated this year, there will be a “system-wide” benchmarking column in the report. 

This year’s results, as well as future participation in the ECAR-hosted student surveys, will assist us in identifying longitudinal technology trends in higher education.  We also hope to develop actionable recommendations about how to meet or exceed students’ preferences and expectations for technology in academics. Last year’s 2012 report can be found on the Educause website here.  

Chico State Mobile App Update

Since January 28, 2013, the Chico State Mobile App has been downloaded more than 5,400 times on iOS and Android devices. Students are accessing the Learning Management System from their mobile devices in record numbers. In April as many as 2,200 students have been logged in each day.

New features are continuing to be added. Recently, building photos have been added to the map, viewable in the Places module (bottom right corner). The building list now is organized by categories and includes Museums, Dining & Snacks, and Residence Halls. Stay tuned! Stay tuned as many exciting new features will be available in early summer.

Microsoft Exchange Server Upgrade

The hardware supporting Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 recently reached its end of life.  To ensure the reliability of email services, Computing and Communications Services replaced the ailing hardware in late April. The hardware was replaced to ensure that the current Exchange Server has the capacity to grow and expand into the next version of Exchange. If the campus should ever choose to move to a cloud based email service, the newly purchased hardware can be repurposed to support other enterprise services such as Blackboard Learn.

Data Center Storage Upgrade

The campus data center deploys virtual servers utilizing software from VMWare, host servers from Dell, and disk storage from NetApp. Over the past eighteen months, the campus’s storage demands have grown so quickly that the system began exhibiting intermittent performance issues. The Enterprise Systems (ESYS) team worked closely with high level NetApp support personnel to determine the root cause of the performance issues. NetApp offered to upgrade a critical component of the system to provide additional performance and stability at no charge. The donated equipment, valued at $190,000, is performing well and is capable of meeting the growing needs of the campus into the future.

Rob Salmon, Vice President of NetApp, a CSU, Chico Alumni, says “Being a model company is at the heart of our culture at NetApp. We believe a great culture is the foundation for success.  It’s what makes our promise to help customers “go further, faster” a reality. We are excited to join CSU, Chico to enhance the academic computing infrastructure building upon the April, 2011 donation to Chico’s SAP America University Alliance Program.”

Project Portfolio Management (PPM) System

Information Resources is implementing a Project Portfolio Management (PPM) tool and set of processes in the IRES IT Planning and Projects office. There are two main components to this project: implementing a PPM software solution and developing effective PPM processes.

The IT Planning and Projects team put together a cross-departmental PPM selection team, including members from HR and FMS, to examine and evaluate cloud-based PPM solutions. After an extensive search that involved 15 different products, the team selected Clarizen as the tool of choice for managing the Information Resources project portfolio.

The factors that made Clarizen stand above the other products evaluated include:

• Ease of use and simplicity
• Flexibility
• Extensive tools for creating custom actions, evaluation criteria, etc.
• Mobile/iPad support
• Powerful email interface 

Information Resources is looking forward to fully implementing project portfolio management best practices with the help of Clarizen. If you are interested in more information, contact Tony Dunn in the IT Planning and Projects Office.

IT Support Services helps with Data Recovery

For many of us, much of our work at the university is stored on our computers or other digital media. Unfortunately, desktop computer hard drives occasionally fail and flash drives (or even floppy disks  – yes, there are still a few out there) can become corrupted. If your data is not backed up somewhere (or saved to the Bay file share, which is backed up regularly), it may be permanently lost.

Fortunately, IT Support Services (ITSS) can utilize F.R.E.D. (Forensic Recovery of Evidence Device) from Digital Intelligence to attempt to recover data from damaged or corrupted digital media. F.R.E.D. is a combination of specialized hardware and software specifically designed for this task.

Using F.R.E.D. to recover data can be a complex and time-consuming process.  When critical data is worth the recovery attempt, ITSS does its best to help. Although ITSS has been very successful over the years recovering lost data from University equipment for faculty and staff, not all data can be recovered all the time. ITSS recommends that faculty and staff use the Bay file share to store important data and will do what they can to try to recover your important data in the event of damaged or corrupted media.

Academic Technologies Receives Champions of Diversity Award

The Office of Diversity and Inclusion recently named Academic Technologies as a recipient of the Champions of Diversity Award. This is a new Diversity and Inclusion award, which recognizes offices/colleges/departments for their efforts in creating an inclusive and welcoming community at CSU, Chico. Academic Technologies was acknowledged for their efforts in assisting with the Cesar Chavez Day Educational Campaign by creating a video to educate people about the holiday and deter negative behavior and stereotyping of the Latino/a community. The video can be viewed here.

February 2013 Update

I wanted to share with you the IRES February Update which includes Information Resources’ accomplishments and news for the past few months. As we continue to refine our campus communications we welcome your input. If you have any questions regarding this update you are welcome to contact me directly at mlschilling@csuchico.edu or Brooke Banks at bfbanks@csuchico.edu (x6212).

Thank you, Mike Schilling

Chico State Mobile App

On January 28^th the Chico State Mobile App was released for iPhone users from the Apple App Store. The application was released for Android users on Feb. 8th and on Feb. 22th the mobile web version was made available for mobile devices not supporting iOS or Android. By Feb. 20th the iOS version of the application had been downloaded over 3,600 times and the Android version had been downloaded over 450 times. The CSU, Chico Mobile App connects users to campus classes, the campus directory, maps, emergency contact numbers, campus news and events and much more. On one day during the past week, there were more than 3,000 active connections to the Blackboard Learn mobile application.

Information Resources partnered with organizations across campus to design the features offered in the 12 links within the CSU, Chico Mobile App. We are excited that this collaborative effort resulted in our first mobile application available for use in less than six months from the start of the project. We anticipate a second version of the application, with additional features, will be available before the end of the spring semester.

Business Continuity for Blackboard Learn

In December 2012, an investment by Information Resources enabled the implementation of a redundant virtual server environment within our secondary data center in Meriam Library. By replicating the production Blackboard Learn virtual servers and databases to a secondary data center, the application is protected in the event of a major outage in the primary data center in Butte Hall.  Utilizing VMWare Site Recovery Manager Software, Blackboard system administrators can bring-up the Blackboard system in hours instead of days or weeks in order to rebuild all the servers and databases from tape backup media. This new data center capability ensures rapid recovery of the learning management system and extends the service level to our students and faculty. This added environment also protects many of our other systems which run in the virtual server environment.

Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA) Compliance Process

For almost 10 years CSU Chico has responded to DMCA notices sent from organizations such as the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA), the Motion Picture Association of America (MPAA), Universal Studios, and Paramount Pictures. When these copyright holders identify that someone on the CSU, Chico network is offering their copyrighted material for download, they want us to take action.  Information Resources has partnered with University Housing and Food Service and Student Judicial Affairs (SJA) to develop processes that both meet our requirements under the law and help educate our students. 

When we receive these notices we forward them to students along with information regarding copyright law and alternative legal sources for downloading music, movies and software. The chart below illustrates the volume of these notices processed in the past two academic years. While we have made some progress in educating our students, we continue to receive a significant number of reports for both first time and repeat occurrences.  Each report consumes valuable staff time in responding to the DMCA and following-up with our students.  For more information regarding our responsibilities under the DMCA as an internet service provider, feel free to contact Brooke Banks at bfbanks@csuchico.edu or x6212.

  

10-Gigabit Network Upgrade

The campus upgraded its connections to the Internet in November 2012. We moved from two 1-gigabit connections to one 1-gigabit connection and one 10-gigabit connection. Not only has this increased the campus’ bandwidth capacity to the Internet by a magnitude of 10, but it has also provided a completely redundant connection to the Internet. The increase in availability and reliability of the campus’ Internet connection is a major benefit of the upgrade.

In addition to the upgrade in Internet connectivity, the campus has provisioned a new connection to the High Performance Research Network (HPRN). The HPRN backbone provides resources to academic departments with enhanced Internet access requirements for their grants. HPRN connects to the Internet2 Abilene network and will provide leading-edge services for large-application users on campus.

Support in the Transition to Blackboard Learn

In fall 2012, the Technology and Learning Program (TLP) responded to 1,842 requests for assistance from faculty and staff. Calls remained the most popular method for contact, followed closely by lab visits (see graph below). Assisting with the transition to the new enterprise learning management system in Fall 2012, as well as an increased faculty focus on the impact of technology in teaching and learning through Academy e-Learning and other campus discussions of online education, has contributed to an 18% increase in service requests over Spring 2012 and an 80% increase in service requests over Fall 2011.

November 2012 Update

The November update includes Information Resources accomplishments and news for the previous two months. If you have any questions regarding this organizational update, please feel free to contact Brooke Banks at bfbanks@csuchico.edu or x6212.

Contents

• New iPad Lab
• 10-Gigabit Network Upgrade
• New Library Database: BizMiner
• BIT9 Application Whitelisting Tool Upgrade
• Blackboard Learn
• Migrating from Wimba to Blackboard Collaborate
• Information Security Assessments
• Web Conferencing
• Ongoing IRES Projects

New iPad Lab

The College of Humanities and Fine Arts used their computer refresh funds to purchase a set of classroom iPads (thirty for students and one for faculty) for the English Computer Lab rather than purchasing new desktop or laptop computers. The iPads have a number of advantages over traditional computers or laptops, including the ability to easily move the ‘computer lab’ to any room.

While these iPads are primarily used in one classroom, they can be used in other classrooms or buildings as needed. Although many students continue to bring their own laptop or tablet devices to class, the iPads are now available so everyone can gather and compile video and audio data, sync field notes, share annotations, create digital stories, compose essays, and give feedback.

As iPads are typically personal computing devices rather than shared devices, the implementation of the iPad lab does bring with it some technical challenges. However, the feedback from faculty and students has been very positive. English 130 faculty member, Kelly Candelaria said, “The iPad lab is a hit with my students. They absolutely love using them. In fact, most of my students talk to one another about how lucky they are to be in a class that uses them… and a benefit I didn’t think of is that I haven’t had to make one copy this semester due to the iPad lab.”

10-Gigabit Network Upgrade

The campus is in the process of upgrading its connection to the Internet and should complete the upgrade by mid-November. Currently, we have two 1-gigabit connections to the Internet. The campus will be upgrading one of the 1-gigabit connections to a 10-gigabit connection. Not only will this increase the campus’s bandwidth capacity to the Internet by a magnitude of 10, but it will also provide a completely redundant connection to the Internet. The increase in availability and reliability of the campus’s Internet connection is a major benefit of the upgrade.

In addition to the upgrade in Internet connectivity, the campus will be provisioning a new connection to the High Performance Research Network (HPRN). The HPRN backbone has 10-gigabits of bandwidth and will provide resources to academic departments with enhanced Internet access requirements for their grants. HPRN connects to the Internet2 Abilene network and will provide leading-edge services for large-application users on campus.

New Library Database: BizMiner

Beginning in October, the Library has licensed access to the BizMiner Library. BizMiner is a professional online business database that provides access to a wide range of business reports, including industry financial reports, profit and loss benchmarks, industry market analysis reports, and other business-oriented statistical reports. Reports can be generated by market (e.g., Agriculture, Utilities, Manufacturing, etc.) at the national, regional, or local level, down to individual zip codes. BizMiner covers 5,000 lines of business.

BIT9 Application Whitelisting Tool Upgrade

BIT9, the campus application whitelisting service, was recently upgraded. Application whitelisting allows the campus to manage which applications are safe for faculty and staff to install and provides a tool for applications to be added to the ‘whitelist’ of safe programs. With this upgrade, IT Support Services is now able to allow after hours staff to quickly and safely approve whitelisting requests. This upgrade was important in order to minimize the disruption to our faculty and staff who work outside of traditional hours. For information on application whitelisting, please visit our Knowledge Base article.

Blackboard Learn

Since the start of the fall semester, Blackboard Learn has delivered over 20 million pages of content to faculty and students, with an average page load time of 1.8 seconds. The graph below displays the number of page views per hour over the course of a typical day. While the system experiences peak loads during the middle of the day, there continues to be high levels of access in the late evening.

As Blackboard Learn continues to be improved and updated, we've established a new weekly maintenance window to allow us time to apply patches and performance tuning changes on a regular basis. The new maintenance window is Thursday mornings from 5:00 am to 8:00 am, although most often maintenance will be completed before 7:00 am to minimize impact on faculty and students. We have completed six weekly maintenances, tuning our performance and applying nearly a dozen patches. Details of past and future maintenance windows can be found on the Learning Technologies blog.

Migrating from Wimba to Blackboard Collaborate

Since 1999, CSU, Chico’s distance learning program has used Wimba to allow students to attend class from a distance and to review archived lectures. During summer 2012, Information Resources worked to complete testing of Blackboard Collaborate and integration with Blackboard Learn as a replacement for Wimba.

Collaborate provides the functionality needed to support a 21st century teaching and learning environment, including two-way audio, multi-point video, interactive whiteboards, application and desktop sharing, rich media, text chatting, breakout rooms, and session recording. Faculty and students can engage real-time as if they were in a traditional classroom.

Over the summer, Technology and Learning Program staff consulted with faculty and held workshops to facilitate the migration from Wimba to Collaborate. Faculty began using Collaborate in the fall 2012 semester.

Information Security Assessments

Information Security has completed an RFP process for the selection of two Northern California firms, Pacific Computer Forensics and Matson & Isom Technology Consulting, to conduct information security assessments of technology supporting the core campus, the Student Health Center and several other areas on campus. These independent assessments will provide a current state baseline upon which to base strategic security efforts and risk mitigation for the campus. The assessments will also address any unremediated findings from the Chancellors Office audit from 2008.

Web Conferencing

Academic Technologies has completed an upgrade to the Meriam Library 027A Web Conferencing room. The room includes a video camera, computer, tabletop microphones, and seating for up to 20. With the addition of a new video camera and software, the number of web conferencing solutions available now includes:

• Blackboard Collaborate – a full-featured web conferencing tool, connecting multiple conference attendees
• Skype – one of the industry leading point-to-point conference tools supporting video and voice calls, instant messaging and file sharing
• Polycom system – standard point-to-point teleconferencing

 MLIB 027A can be reserved by contacting Nancy Park at x5671.

Ongoing IRES Projects

Information Resources is working on a large number of other projects with completion dates in 2012/2013. The links, below, list the projects that Information Resources is currently working on.

• Top Priority Projects 
• Medium Priority Projects
• Information Security Projects
• Facilities Projects

August 2012 Update

The Information Resources monthly update focuses on Information Resources' accomplishments during the prior month. As this is the first update, we have included accomplishments for June and July, 2012. Information Resources plans to implement an on-line version of this monthly update sometime this fall. If you have any questions regarding this update, please feel free to contact Brooke Banks at bfbanks@csuchico.edu or x6212.

Contents

• Meriam Library 4th Floor Improvements
• Virtual Software Library (VSL)
• Satellite Dish
• Portal Upgrade
• Public Safety Project Phase II
• New Library Reference Service
• Project Management Enhancements
• Blackboard Learn
• Service Desk Update
• Academy eLearning 

Meriam Library 4th Floor Improvements

Improvements to the 4th floor of the Meriam Library were recently completed. Four collaborative study areas (with media boxes that allow four laptops to share up to two LCD monitors), forty powered tables, lounge seating, soft seating, and whiteboards were added.

Virtual Software Library (VSL)

The Chico State Virtual Software Library (VSL) provides anytime and anywhere access to Windows applications while reducing the need for end-users to install and store those applications on their local devices. With VSL, students and faculty are currently able to access seven applications from home that have traditionally only been available in select campus computer labs.

As of the end of August, 2012, approximately 20 instructors with more than 20 sections and 1200 potential students are set up to use the VSL service this semester. Applications being used in the VSL environment include SPSS, Matlab, Mathmatica, ArcGIS, SAP, Solid Works, and RISA 2D. For more information, please refer to this ITSS Knowledge Base article.

Satellite Dish

The satellite dish project was completed in early July after two years of planning. This was a collaborative effort involving FMS, Procurement, the University Foundation, and multiple external contractors. The project resulted in the installation of a new communications satellite dish on the roof of the Meriam Library, the removal of the satellite dishes from the ground based compound near Siskiyou Hall, and the installation of 100 new bike racks. 

Satellite Dish Outside Siskiyou Hall Before Move	New Bike Racks Outside Siskiyou Hall

Portal Upgrade

On August 20^th the campus Portal was upgraded from uPortal version 2.6 to 4.0, providing significant architectural and infrastructure related benefits. For example, downtime was previously required when changes were made to the content of portal channels (also called "portlets"). The upgraded version of the Portal allows IRES to make changes without bringing the system down and impacting users. There were also minor content and design changes. Some problems, however, surfaced when the upgraded Portal encountered high traffic on the first two days of the semester. By Wednesday afternoon these challenges had been resolved. Although the problems encountered were very disruptive to students and faculty, we are now able to provide improved services as a result of the upgrade.

Public Safety Project Phase II

This project is the second phase of the campus' ongoing Public Safety project. Over the summer, six emergency phone towers and fourteen safety cameras were installed.

New Library Reference Service

In July, the Meriam Library implemented LibAnswers, a Q&A reference system and knowledge base, providing text message and Twitter integration. The knowledge base is populated and maintained by Meriam Library faculty. The system grows more robust as more questions and answers are added. Patrons use natural language to ask questions. For common questions and answers already in the knowledge base, patrons receive an answer instantly. When a patron asks a question not in the knowledge base, a librarian answers it once and it then becomes part of the searchable knowledge base for all patrons. 

Project Management Enhancements

Over the past several months, the Information Resources Project Management Office (PMO) has implemented a number of project management standards in order to streamline and standardize Information Resources' project management processes. The standard project definition supports managers in determining what is a project for the purposes of reporting, tracking, and leveraging formal project management processes. The PMO also implemented a standard set of project milestones that define specific measureable accomplishments for each project. These milestones will facilitate tracking and reporting of project progress. These milestones were implemented in a SharePoint Project Tracking tool, as well as in other reporting tools. Below is a screenshot of a portion of our top priority project list. IRES has four project lists: Top Priority Projects, Medium Priority Projects, Information Security Projects, and Facilities Projects.

Blackboard Learn

Nearly 670 faculty have now been trained in the new Learning Management System, Blackboard Learn. As of the beginning of the fall semester, courses are being taught in Blackboard Learn, with no courses being provided from the old Learning Management System, Vista. Preliminary statistics indicate that 78% of faculty and 92% of students are using Blackboard Learn. For more information regarding how faculty are using Learn, see the informative faculty "Spotlight" YouTube videos created by Academic Technologies.

Service Desk Update

Each semester Information Technology Support Services prepares for the return of faculty and students to campus. The chart to the right illustrates the number of calls received and entered into our trouble ticketing system. On Monday, August 27^th, due to challenges with Portal/authentication over 375 calls were placed to the service desk. The chart illustrates how these challenges impacted the service desk's ability to answer calls. 

Academy eLearning

Academic Technologies, in cooperation with Deans, Faculty, and Academic Affairs, provided administrative, technical, and instructional support to the Academy e-Learning faculty cohort in successfully launching their re-designed courses. More than 2000 hours were spent by the Academy eLearning team to support faculty during the three-week intensive program in June. 

The chart below summarizes the four year impact of this program. The majority of the redesigned courses in Cohort IV were for new GE Pathways courses. 

Cohort	Year	Teams	Faculty
Cohort I	2009/2010	6	14
Cohort II	2010/2011	6	14
Cohort III	2011/2012	13	33
Cohort IV	2012/2013	11	25
	4 Year Total	36 Teams	86 Faculty