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JUNE 2017 CONTENTS
SUMMER 2017 PROJECTS There are lots of initiatives that we are working on for this summer – some visible, some behind the scenes; some are designed to provide brand new services, and others are upgrades to older technology. Regardless, they all are part of our journey to transform the IT services at the college and many of them are in partnership with offices around the campus. Please reach out to us if you would like more information on any of them. Below are some of the more significant efforts:
NEW FEATURES FOR SAKAI COMING THIS FALL A new upgrade to our Learning Management System (LMS) to bring us to Sakai version 11 is underway that will provide students and faculty significant new features, including a responsive user interface, new gradebook, enhanced lesson tools, and improved assessments, among others. The upgrade includes a completely redesigned mobile ready interface design, and the new responsive user interface design which includes improved accessibility and navigation. A new Sakai 11 gradebook includes features like spreadsheet-style grade entry, individual student Grade Summary screens, a simplified import/export process, enhanced statistics and flexible display options for final course grades. New multi-column layouts, enhanced student contents areas, peer review rubrics and an easier process to add content are among some of the lesson tool enhancements. Sakai 11’s assessment features are also improved to allow individual-specific delivery settings for assessments, new image-map question type, improved reporting capabilities, and a side panel allowing students to track progress during the assessment. DIIS has a dedicated site for providing the College community with updated details, training, FAQ, and other information at: https://www.ithaca.edu/diis/services/iss/Sakai/sakai11/ MAKING SIGN-IN SIMPLER Ithaca College has recently joined InCommon, an organization whose mission is to create and support a common trust framework for higher education and research. This provides us with the ability to enable your Netpass username and password so that it can be used to access services on other web sites that the college has a formal relationship with. For example, as a proof of concept, we used InCommon to link up with the EDUCAUSE web site. As a result, you can now use your Netpass username and password to log into that site to access additional resources – you no longer need to establish a separate account and password directly on their site (simply go to the EDUCAUSE login page, scroll down to “Federated Login” and search for “Ithaca College” – then enter your Netpass username and ID when prompted). This is just an example – many other sites will be added in the coming year. Would you like to integrate other services that are used for Ithaca College purposes that currently require a separate username and password? If so have the vendor you are working with go to https://www.ithaca.edu/diis/services/sso/ in the Service Provider Information section and complete the "SAML Integration Form." This form is submitted to DIIS for review and the service will be integrated if capable. If you have any questions email shibbolethadmin@ithaca.edu. InCommon allows us to securely and easily integrate with external services. We are excited to share this information in the hope that over time it will lead to more convenient access to the systems that we use to conduct College business and activities. WORTHWHILE READING Each month we will highlight an article that touches on an area that may be of interest to the campus community. Student Success: Mission Critical (EDUCAUSE Review, May 2017) “If students don't succeed, colleges and universities don't succeed. Our full attention must be concentrated on the mission-critical goal of helping students define—and meet—their educational goals.” From the EDUCAUSE Review Article Student Success: Mission Critical In early May, EDUCAUSE published an article that describes a number of approaches and perspectives of how different campuses are addressing the issue of student success. Given the discussions about this topic that are occurring on our campus, this article provides some timely perspectives and approaches that can help inform our discussions. http://er.educause.edu/articles/2017/5/student-success-mission-critical THE LAST BIT We welcome your feedback. We will be publishing this IT@IC Monthly Update each month. We purposely will be keeping it brief, but hopefully informative. What information would you find most helpful? Please send your thoughts and feedback to CIO@ithaca.edu. We’d love to hear from you! Dave Weil, Associate Vice President and Chief Information Officer |
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Welcome to our IT@IC monthly update from Digital Instruction and Information Services. Each month we will provide you with some brief updates and highlights of efforts that we are working on related to the IT services for the campus community.