SIGUCCS ’19- 2019 ACM SIGUCCS Annual Conference
The links to the conference papers are available to view free of charge for one year period from the conference start date (until November 3, 2020).
SESSION: Keynote Address
Cybernetic Education: The History of the Future of Teaching Machines
Audrey Watters
In 1950, Claude Shannon, “the father of information theory,” built a robotic mouse called Theseus that could navigate a puzzle box, the type of maze that behavioral psychologists had long used to train and test real mice. Built from electromechanical relays (used by his employer Bell Labs in the telephone system), Shannon’s mouse would bump into the walls and sense its way to the “cheese,” a movable metallic goal. Demonstrating cybernetics’ interest in feedback loops, Theseus could be set back in the maze to find the cheese again without bumping into walls, and according to Shannon, this meant that the robot learned from experience.
This keynote will explore cybernetics and its connection to behaviorism and to post-war theories of learning. It will use this history to examine how metaphors about machines that teach and learn remain pervasive in our understanding and our imagination of education technology.
The Speed of Learning
Jaime Casap
We are living in extraordinary times. As the world gets more digitalized, it also gets more complicated. Learning can happen faster today than at any time in history, and this is both exciting and critically important to get right. The idea of “lifelong learning” has been around for a generation, but we haven’t ever really put in practices to make this idea a reality. Today, not only do we have the tools and technology to bring this idea to life, our students will not survive the future without the ability to learn new skills continually. Jaime’s presentation will explore these ideas and make a case for the ability to learn as the most important skill students need to master.
SESSION: Paper Session – Monday 10:45-11:45
Building an Information Technology Professional Development Program from Scratch
Carol Currie Sobczak
The University of Maine System’s Information Technology teams lack an organized approach to professional development. A coordinator position was established in 2015 to start addressing technical training needs of all staff and students. A documentation site was established. Strides were made to enhance the content available to staff; Atomic Learning (now Hoonuit) was used as a pilot program. Human Resources jumped on board and expanded that availability to the university community – all faculty, staff, and students. As this program developed, it became clear that something was needed to organize the training efforts specifically for IT staff, which often went beyond the routine GSuite and Office type training. This presentation will outline the development process and beginning stages of implementation of the program.
Re-Planting All Your Trees in One Forest: Deploying an Enterprise Wide Active Directory at Penn State
Alexa Spigelmyer
Darren Hron
Four years ago Penn State’s Identity Services department was issued a herculean task; to deploy a centralized, enterprise wide Active Directory. The project was given a five-year goal to move from an underutilized central service with departments and colleges who had been hosting their own domains to one centrally managed service with university wide buy in.
We are now closing in on our five-year goal and are in the final phases. This paper will explore why this goal was set, how we went about tackling such a massive scope, where we are now, what we have left, the mistakes made, and some of the lessons learned along the way
Case Study of Building a High-Performance Team: Endpoint Engineering Experiment
Muhammed Naazer Ashraf
Hear the story about the conception of our Endpoint Engineering team that brought together a diverse group of high-potential individuals from within our organization to focus their efforts on maximizing our efficiencies.
This cross-functional team was charged with reimagining desktop support and lab management across the entire university. Their prime directive was to bridge the centralized and decentralized IT organizations to deliver a collaborative service. The result of this effort, we anticipate, will offer a level of service that exceeds anything that either organization alone has delivered in the past, and support Lehigh University’s Path to Prominence vision [1].
AR/VR Strategy Considerations for Academic Computing Services
Owen McGrath
As higher education institutions take up augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) tools and applications, important choices and challenges arise in deciding how to approach the planning and design of infrastructure, spaces, and the services to be offered. The observations in this paper are based upon early experiences of growing AR/VR spaces and support in one university setting. The emerging services, space designs, and choice of technology and training offered are informed both by consideration of the varied AR/VR environments being explored in the curriculum as well as a general interest in supporting AR/VR use by individuals and groups in non-curricular settings. The goals of this paper include: 1) briefly surveying commonalities and differences of AR and VR as they’re being applied to teaching and learning; 2) considering service design approaches and decision points around AR/VR technologies; 3) and noting challenges for developing sustainable approaches to AR/VR support.
SESSION: Abstract Only (Panel)
Applying Design Thinking:
Corin Walker
Tomeka Nolen
Jinlan Du
Heather Davis
Building relationships with busy administrators, faculty, and staff can be a challenge. Our team of learning technologists have applied design thinking to “learn with our eyes” by visiting individuals at their desks to observe their workarounds and frustration points. These building walkthroughs have yielded positive results, allowing our department to build relationships with individuals across our campuses.
Our panel will feature a brief overview of our technology outreach (building walkthroughs) across our multi-campus university. We will include a sample of our timely topics/questions. We plan to engage attendees by asking them about their strategies for reaching administrators, faculty, staff, and students on their campuses and welcoming their questions about our process.
Rather than waiting for employees to come to us for assistance, we take support to their desks. This service is a “white glove treatment,” during which we are able to share information about projects and services, as well as answer questions from employees. The learning technologist carries an iPad to practice collaboration software, video call subject matter experts for immediate support, and share documentation from our knowledge centers. The iPad is also handy for scheduling follow-up appointments on the spot.
Further, while the learning technologist is conducting the site visits, she has an opportunity to engage with students across each campus to make them aware of the services available to them.
The panel will include metrics related to numbers of visits, follow-up meetings, and assessed value.
SESSION: Paper Session – Monday 1:00-2:00
Strategies for Career Resilience in the Face of Economic Uncertainty
Lindsey Freer
It’s time for us to be honest with ourselves about the economic pressures faced by colleges and universities in the United States. Small colleges are closing regularly, sometimes with next-to-no warning. Many schools are trying to do more with fewer employees, given the rising costs of pensions and health care. The news is full of caution about coming demographic shifts, and cost-conscious families are questioning both the sticker price and the long-term value of a degree. In light of these socioeconomic trends, it’s reasonable to be concerned about your employer’s financial health, your own job security, and what impact the shrinking higher education market will have on your career.
In this facilitated workshop, we’ll discuss strategies you can deploy to help you thrive in the face of economic instability, and where possible, pivot into positions of growing authority and scope. We will articulate and discuss five strategies for career resilience: assessing organizational structures, knowing your value and your needs, remaining true to yourself in the face of change, practicing strategic vulnerability, and balancing opportunities to grow and thrive. Each of the five focal points will be accompanied by an opportunity for audience participation and reflection.
Innovative Uses for an Online Survey Tool at WVU
Kathryn Fletcher
West Virginia University (WVU) employees and students use a variety of online survey tools for research, polling, and feedback. In addition to these uses, survey tools have been used to develop complex online forms with workflows and email notifications, program reviews that allow collaborative responses over a six-month period, online tutorials with built-in quizzes, and ballots for student body elections. This paper focuses on WVU’s “off label” uses of its most popular survey tool, Qualtrics, and includes a few best practices gleaned from lessons learned.
Be Careful what you Wish for
R Kevin Chapman
In the Fall of 2019, Carleton’s new integrated science facility is scheduled to open for business. The ITS department was determined to be more involved in conversations around the design and implementation of technology in this building than it had been on previous projects, and from as early in the project as possible. The administration saw the value in this, and brought them in. However, the commitment turned out to be far more than was bargained for. An expectation of slightly greater consultation and attendance at a handful of more meetings grew into a significant time commitment and responsibility for the success of project, work that spanned almost three years and hundreds of staff hours for three members of the ITS team.
The department’s involvement began in 2016, reviewing networking, lab layouts, classroom tech, and printer locations. Soon, ITS staff were leading plan reviews for science faculty and staff on these and additional aspects of the building. This led to involvement in regular reviews of architectural plans, power locations, data ports, furniture design, lighting, and more. There were weekly walkthroughs of the construction site, checking progress, and working directly with the trades on site to identify and address issues as it became apparent that certain design choices did not necessarily work in practical reality.
The project added considerable workload to the staff involved, even before they started the hands-on work of bringing the building online after construction was substantially completed. Was this greater involvement worth the time and effort? Will the building be in substantially better shape than it would have been without as much ITS involvement?
This paper will discuss this new approach, walking through ITS’ involvement in the project, highlighting both the aspects that the department chose and expected to be a part of, as well as those that they were drawn into as a result of their initial engagement.
Communication Skills and Teaming are a Project Manager’s Best Tools
Kristi Lenz
As a project manager, it is our job to control the scope, time and budget of an initiative with a defined start and end. The everyday logistics of how that occurs varies greatly from one PM to another and from one organization to another. Two skills that can be consistently used to support success are strong communication skills and teaming. Teaming is the art and skill of creating several small focused working groups to concentrate on very defined deliverables while working as a part of the whole project as one cohesive unit. Communication skills are a vast bucket into which many things can be grouped; in this particular scenario, I am referring to communications within your project teams, controlling communications to your customers/stakeholders and communication up to senior management. In this paper, I will explore the various tools and strategies, including teaming which can be used to increase project visibility, create stakeholder buy-in, encourage organizational change management and ensure project success.
SESSION: Abstract Only (Panel)
Supporting Students and Technology at Stanford University
Melissa Doernte
Arik Broman
Tiffany Lieuw
The Office of the Vice provost of Teaching and Learning (VPTL) at Stanford University serves as a model of student technology services by supporting all matriculated students. 98% of our undergraduate and graduate students live on campus, which presents unique challenges and opportunities. We are set apart from other schools by having limited full-time management, while employing upwards of 150 student staff who support 16,000+ students.
Our program uses a tiered student support system comprise of Technology Desk Consultants, Residential Computer Consultants, Operations Tech, and Peer Technology Specialists. The Tech Desk Consultants provides first tier support, triaging incoming needs. They also loan specialty technology and maintain resources that facilitate students’ academic goals.
In the undergraduate residential spaces, Residential Computer Consultants live amongst their peers and assist with technical support. The main hours of documented support occur between 7-10 pm. They also provide first tier support for in-resident computer clusters/labs.
Operations Techs provide tier two and three support for Stanford owned equipment and residential learning spaces. We maintain 86 computer clusters and 55 learning spaces with audio-visual technology. Peer Technology Specialist handle tier two support and teach educational workshops to all students.
Our system provides a path of student growth within each job, as well as the chance to move to enhance their skill set by moving to a different technical job. Student leaders are given management specific training, and are expected to fulfill a supervisory position that includes interviewing, hiring, training, and reviewing their peers.
Come to our panel to learn more about our unique program and learn techniques to build your student staff program!
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Monday 2:15-3:15
Student Staff in IT: From “just a job” to a career
Trevor Freeland
Kendra Strode
How can IT go from “just a job” to a career path for students? Many IT professionals have experienced this transition – this paper explores a range of contributing experiences and circumstances to identify common themes and significant indicators in that transition. Through a case study and student technician surveys and interviews, we will examine the roles that student training, projects, increasing levels of responsibility, and other interactions play in transforming students’ awareness of IT as a career choice rather than simply a work-study position.
Virtual Reality: Classroom Tool or Classroom Fool?
Eric Handler
In March of 2019 Macalester College’s Center for Scholarship and Teaching purchased a computer and headset for a Virtual Reality Cart. The purpose of the cart is to provide the instructional support staff a resource for learning more about VR as well as eventually facilitating projects in classroom spaces for faculty without the resources to purchase their own VR systems. Using an HTC Vive Pro and an Alienware Aurora Desktop computer, the cart was assembled and the aforementioned staff had the summer to learn and prepare for designing systems that took advantage of the hardware.
How Do you Migrate your System to the Cloud Environment? An Example of Conversion from Silo Type to Horizontal Type
Masaru Okumura
Sho Fujimura
At Fukuoka University, we are promoting the transition of information systems centered on administrative systems to the cloud environment. Existing systems are composed of on-premises, and migration over 100 servers to the cloud environment including Azure is our task. Our main missions are two. One is to unify the complex system infrastructure by utilizing virtualization technology and the cloud. The second is to reduce the operating costs of those system infrastructures for the future. In this transition, we aimed to standardize the system environment by establishing a new server infrastructure utilizing the cloud, from silo type system construction. As an actual effort, we created standard service specifications to present to each system construction vendor, unified support windows, and routinely apply server patches. As a result of this standardization, centralized management operation of the system infrastructure was achieved. Moreover, we were able to contribute to a reduction in human cost and operation cost associated with system operation. In this report, we will introduce our approach and report the position of each step. In particular, we would like to share our approach and experiences with the vendors and departments that build and operate each system as an information infrastructure department and how we organized the structure and operation of the campus information system.
Cook ‘em Like Gumbo
Mo Nishiyama
Gumbo (the official state dish of Louisiana) is known for assimilating many culinary traditions throughout its rich history. The highly revered dish continues to be influenced by multicultural traditions and is enjoyed by a diverse group of people. Customer-facing Help and How-to document system at Oregon Health & Science University shares many features as gumbo: articles are authored by experts from various missions, they share similar and consistent content structures, and are served to diverse customer bases.
Although the Help and How-to document repository has been in existence for just over five years, we learned from many challenges and successes when developing the system. We have learned where and how customers interact with information, what types of articles are in high demand, and how documents complement our communication campaigns. We have adopted better inclusion practices with the words and graphics we use, and raised awareness for accessibility concerns. We also expanded our group of core editors during this time.
Yet there are more changes on the horizon. With the organization’s imminent ITIL adoption, the role of support articles and technology challenges will continue to evolve—just like gumbo.
Bringing Campus Experience to Online Classes
Karl Owens
Michael Suskin
Chris Wiesemann
No recording ever captures the experience of a live performance. The same is true about education. Feedback we have received, regarding online education, has been that remote attendees miss access to resources and the live interaction with their instructor and classmates. Through the layering of multiple commercial services, we are able to bring some of the campus experiences to online students.
SESSION: Paper Sessions (Lightning Talks) – Monday 3:45-4:45
My SIGUCCS Book Report
Laurie Fox
The SIGUCCS Community read together 7* professional development and leadership books this year. In this lightning talk, I will give a one-minute book report on each book.
SustainabiliIT: Maximizing Surplus Equipment Viability with Community Engagement
Dan R. Herrick
There is a problem with surplus property on campus: From the “owner’s” perspective, it takes more time and effort to get rid of it than it is worth. Yet, what is worth zero or negative value to one department is worth something to another. Although our central Property Services group manages surplus property at end-of-life, something else was needed to manage assets that still had use… to someone. In addition to maximizing the use of campus surplus property, we wanted to demonstrate a commitment to compliance and sustainability, improve space utilization and increase cost avoidance and revenue.
In 2017, the Buff Surplus web tool was launched to facilitate the exchange, sale and re-use of surplus property between campus departments. Nearly two years later, the tool still struggles to gain traction. Learn how one university has attempted to solve this community problem through a community-driven process, why it still struggles and what we are doing to drive toward success.
Productivity Pants
Mo Nishiyama
With thousands of books on the topic, productivity is a popular subject in the business world. Increase work output, reduce the bottom line, and stay competitive—those are some of the magic bullets that productivity promises.
But with so many thoughts, schools, methods and gurus in the world, where do we begin? How do we find a productivity strategy that is right for our professional and personal goals? How do we know which voices to listen to? The short answer? “It depends.”
In this lightning talk, we will discuss important considerations when we decide to embark on our own productivity journey. We will focus on sharpening our goals, understanding what we value and creating a space for improving the way we work (and live).
You’re (Probably) Not Bad at Your Job: Impostor Syndrome and IT Work
Alexa Spigelmyer
Julio Appling
What is it about working in IT that can make us feel like everyone will ‘figure out’ we have no idea what we’re doing? ‘Impostor syndrome’ refers to the belief that you are under-qualified or inadequate, even in the face of overwhelming evidence to the contrary. In only seven minutes we’ll examine the various ways impostor syndrome manifests itself and why is it so common in IT work. This will hopefully alleviate any feelings you may have of being a complete and total fraud. We’re pretty sure we know what we’re talking about…mostly.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Tuesday 9:00-10:00
Improving Leadership Through Improv
Ella Tschopik
Improvisational theater may seem to be a distant concept from daily meetings, emails and routine tasks, but as we’ll “learn through doing” in this session, many connections exist between the two. For example, what do you do when someone gives you a problem that needs an immediate solution? Honing improv skills helps you improve quick thinking, flexibility and collaboration. This session will show and tell how to start improving through improv!
Solve and Evolve: Practical Applications for Knowledge-Centered Service
Rebekah Lineberry
In any organization with a true service focus, knowledge is a community asset. The sharing and availability of knowledge is crucial to providing better customer service, but the larger and more decentralized your group is, the more the logistical challenges pile up. By implementing formal knowledge management (KM) practices, higher education IT organizations can improve performance metrics and customer service, while improving collaboration among fragmented teams and cultivating a singular, rather than siloed, view of the IT ecosystem.
Knowledge-Centered Service (KCS, formerly known as Knowledge-Centered Support) presents the administration and lifecycle of an organization’s knowledge base in two interdependent rings: the Solve and Evolve loops. “Solve” covers the day-to-day transaction work with knowledge: service desk and customer, incident tickets, and creating articles. “Evolve” then layers in leadership, organizational strategy, and data-driven methods for improving and maintaining a healthy knowledge base.
In this paper, we will explore KCS best practices in Solve and Evolve, and how they align with ITIL framework for IT Service Management. Through the lens of knowledge management at Washington University in St. Louis, we will examine the practical application of these processes and the results we are experiencing in our burgeoning KM work, and present scalable takeaways for organizations looking to grow and expand knowledge management.
Automating a Part of the Assessment of a University using Excel
Yoshitaka Kihira
Takashi Yamanoue
Motoo Tanaka
Eiji Sato
Yutaka Otsuka
A process of establishing an assessment policy for a university and automating a part of the assessment is discussed. Excel was the tool used to carry out the automation. The form the assessment policy should take was discussed for three years, and was partially implemented in two months. We collected grades of all students of all classes from our university, using our academic affairs system. After the grade data were downloaded from the academic affairs system, we produced radar charts for each student, for each department, and for the university as a whole. Then, by clicking some buttons in the Excel book, the data were partitioned into the grade lists of all departments.
An A11Y-ance
Jeffrey Kontio
Preston Radtke
As purchasers of services and equipment, application developers, and end-user support providers, information technology professionals at all levels hold unique positions in regards to the possible role of an accessibility advocate. The Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990 laid the foundation for which numerous other laws and guidelines have been built [1]. It is in the best interest of Universities to not only meet these guidelines, but to be an example of how these guidelines can empower a wide range of individuals.
Rutgers University has been building a team of professionals whose main goal has been to not only address accessibility needs, but to be engaged with a wide range of groups across campus. They are regularly promoting accessibility; actively educating and engaging with faculty, staff, and students. By bringing awareness of accessibility concepts to every level of their campus community, Rutgers University strives to provide the best opportunity to meet the needs of its members in addressing unintended access barriers.
Princeton University has undertaken an arguably successful campaign to certify a wide range of their IT Support professionals as Certified Professionals in Accessibility Core Competencies (CPACC). As a result, Princeton University holds the largest number of CPACC certified professionals in a single organization in the world with just over 90 certified as of February 19, 2019 [2]. The training and certification program at Princeton has been designed to promote accessibility wherever technology is developed, supported, or purchased by decentralizing broad expertise across a wide population in the campus community.
Though Princeton and Rutgers are embarking in granularly different approaches to meeting accessibility needs and requirements the goal is the same: to not become a barrier that dissuades or blocks access to spaces in the digital, mental, and physical realm; affording everyone the chance to participate equally and freely.
SESSION: Abstract Only (Panel)
Digital Transformation from Day One:
Iris Du
Heather Davis
Corin Walker
Tomeka Nolen
We redesigned our technology onboarding for new hires using UX and design thinking tools to engage new employees through just-in-time communication, while developing a personal relationship. Beyond welcoming new employees, these changes enabled us to encourage good tech habits and to promote digital transformation concepts from day one.
The poster will feature a brief overview of our onboarding relationship management for new hires across our multi-campus university. We will include a sample of our just-in-time communication plan and new hire face-to-face meeting checklist.
New hires who have benefitted from this revised process report fewer tickets and feel more comfortable with our technology services and systems than those hired before our process began.
We plan to engage attendees by asking them about their strategies for tech onboarding and welcoming their questions and discussions about our process.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Tuesday 1:00-2:00
How’s your EQ? – Let’s find out!
Mark Davis, Jr.
Do you understand the role your emotions play in how you see yourself and others? What role does Emotional Intelligence (EQ) play in successful leadership? How does EQ affect DEI (Diversity, Equity and Inclusion)? How much of an impact does emotional intelligence really have on your professional success and the relationships you build? The short answer: a lot! This interactive discussion will help us identify and assess our abilities in each of the EQ quadrants of self-awareness, self-regulation, empathy and social awareness. We will also discuss methods and strategies to help us embrace EQ at all levels and identify the influence it can have on creating a more Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive community.
How Student Workers Saved the Day
Timothy Palumbo
Grant Hittinger
Lehigh University currently utilizes a custom-built system to garner data on all active directory joined PCs owned by the University. This system replaced an antiquated login script based inventory system that was unable to accommodate a number of demands requested by our endpoint support teams and our management.
This paper will focus on a few key areas, including why the need to start over was necessary and the original replacement that, while functional, still did not adequately meet the needs of our staff. The heart of this paper will cover the full revamp of the inventory, which included a full code rewrite of the front and back end. This will include brief discussions on what the project was previously built on (ColdFusion, HTML, JavaScript, and PowerShell) and what it was changed over to on the new system (Python, Flask, HTML/CSS, JavaScript, and PowerShell). It will cover the pivotal role of student workers in making this project a reality and discuss how projects that lack feasibility with current staffing may be possible with the help of properly empowered student workers. The paper will also include interview data with current and previous student workers. This is to showcase the value that they find in working with a technology group and to ascertain if their student work enhanced their marketability when applying for jobs. Finally, an actual look at the final product will be demoed.
Challenges in IT Operations Management at a German University Chair – Ten Years in Retrospect
Martin Geier
Samarjit Chakraborty
Over the last two decades, the majority of German universities adopted various characteristics of the prevailing North-American academic system, resulting in significant changes in several key areas that include, e.g., both teaching and research. The universities’ internal organizational structures, however, still follow a traditional, decentralized scheme implementing an additional organizational level – the chair – effectively a “mini department” with dedicated staff, budget and infrastructure. Although the Technical University of Munich (TUM) has been establishing more centralized workflows for many administrative tasks over the past decade, the transition from its distributed to a centralized Information Technology (IT) administration and infrastructure is still an ongoing process. In case of the authors’ chair, this migration so far included handing over all network-related operations to the joint compute center, consolidating the Chair’s legacy server system in terms of both hardware architectures and operating systems and, lately, moving selected services to replacements operated by Department or University. With requirements, individuals and organizations constantly shifting, this process, however, is neither close to completion nor particularly unique to TUM. In this paper, we will thus share our experiences w.r.t. this IT migration as we believe both that many of the other German universities might be facing similar challenges and that, in the future, North-American universities – currently not implementing the chair layer and instead relying on a centralized IT infrastructure – could need a more decentralized solution. Hoping that both benefit from this journey, we thus present the design, commissioning and evolution of our infrastructure.
Improvisation for the Rest of Us and Those Who Want to Be Better Communicators
Russell McMahon
Teaching the “soft” skills to technical people is just as important as learning the “hard” skills. However, it is oftentimes left to the hiring company to fill in this void as most STEM related curricula are focused on the necessary science, math, and technical aspect of the related discipline. Creative problem-solving methodologies, design thinking, lateral thinking all tie into the use of improvisation. Companies are using the improvisation methods as a way of creating better collaborative teams and creating a work environment that says “Yes” before “No”. Improvisation training can help the rest of us to become better listeners, communicators, collaborators, innovators, and those who can focus on the organization or team story and not their own story.
SESSION: Abstract Only (Panel)
Productivity Panel & Discussion
Laurie Fox
Dan Herrick
Beth Lynn Nolen
Jason Vaughn
Kathy Fletcher
As our community members continue to share their productivity journey, this popular panel topic returns to SIGUCCS with new faces. Listen to panel participants share their planning strategies, tools, and experiences then join in on the conversation with other attendees.
SESSION: Paper Sessions (Posters) – Tuesday 2:15-3:45
If You Specialize It, They Will Attend
Heather Davis
Texas Woman’s University’s popular School of Tech applies best practices in adult learning. Participants engage in active learning in a computer classroom where they grow skills and build relationships. This model provided the opportunity to build digital dexterity that may ultimately transform our workforce.
Developing Technology Training Videos
Beth Lynn Nolen
More and more, learners are looking for videos to help them learn technology skills. Sites like LinkedIn Learning (previously Lynda.com), Pluralsight, and even YouTube offer training videos that help people learn all types of tech skills, from Photoshop to Python. However, what if you want to create your own videos to help people learn basic technology skills? Well, it’s not as daunting a task as you might think! With a specific idea of what you want to demonstrate, and the right tools, anyone can make a technology training video. In this presentation, you’ll be introduced to video development workflows, tools for screen recording, and tips for easily making your videos accessible to all audiences.
Contemplating Public NTP Service Issues: How to Terminate Large-scale Infrastructure Service
Sho Fujimura
Fuminori Tanizaki
Masaru Okumura
Do you provide a network service through the Internet? When you started the service, did you consider the repercussions of terminating the service?
Fukuoka University provided the first public Network Time Protocol[1][2] (NTP) service using GPS in Japan in October 1993. Since then, NTP traffic has increased significantly increased, the Internet connection has become unstable, making it difficult to provide a suitable education and research network environment for students and faculty.
The traffic comes from around the world and we would like to cease the service immediately. However, when we remove the service, the traffic increases several times more, causing the network switch, firewall, and other network equipment to malfunction.
In this paper, we will consider issues of terminating a service which has become part of internet infrastructures like the public NTP service, and its various related issues based on various facts.
First Year’s Actual Operational Results of Efficient Security Measure System with Automatic Isolation in TUAT
Kazuhiro Mishima
Takahiro Nemoto
Yoichi Hagiwara
Takahiko Tsujisawa
To reinforce a security measure on our campus network, we implemented a brand-new style of secure campus network system in 2017. The variety of the device in campus network is more complicated. The existence of various devices also increases the possibility of security incidents. In Tokyo University of Agriculture and Technology (TUAT), since Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) was started from 2016, the types of devices connected to our campus network is increased. Therefore, as a security measure, we designed and implemented a campus network security system based on automatic isolation. In our system, network traffic is monitored on the campus network side (e.g. core switch, edge switch), and a device considered as high security risk is automatically isolated from the campus network on the edge switch. In our system, it is possible not only to perform shutdown automatically but also to automatically perform recovery processing by end-user, and reduce operational cost. After more than a year since the operation began, we clarified the actual operation conditions of our system. In this paper, we introduce the overview of our system, and summarize the operational situation from the start of operation. This makes it possible to overview the appearance of our actual system and the situation of security incident status at the Japanese National University in the science area. By considering the results of our system, we will also help to think about security measures in university environment.
No One Has Any Time
Gina Donovan
New technology can spark innovations in both assignment design and classroom structure; however, training faculty, staff, and students on new technology can be a struggle given everyone’s busy schedule. A Tech Talk delivers technology instruction through short, targeted drop-in sessions. The series is the result of a collaboration between the Digital Liberal Arts Center, where I serve as the Instructional Technologist, and the Language Learning Center at Grinnell College. The Language Learning Center Director and I present weekly on new and/or relatively easy to use tools already available on campus that can be integrated into current or future courses.. Each Talk is short and informal, open to all on campus including students. We build in time for participants to try using the tool and to brainstorm how they can use it in class. We also provide examples from implementation from campus or other learning experiences.
Migrate Legacy Email Services in Kyushu University to Exchange Online
Yoshiaki Kasahara
Takao Shimayoshi
Tadayuki Miyaguchi
Naomi Fujimura
In Kyushu University, Information Infrastructure Initiative provides an email service for students and staff members, called “Primary Mail Service”. We had operated an on-premises system for this service, and the lifetime of this system would end in early 2019. We needed to reduce costs for replacing this system because our university had just finished a major campus migration. We compared some options such as building a yet another on-premise system and migrating to a cloud-based email service and finally gave up the on-premise option because we couldn’t afford replacement and operational costs of another on-premises system anymore. We selected Microsoft Exchange Online as the new service mainly because we already had a contract with Microsoft and been operating an Office 365 tenant. We had additional requirements for user provisioning and services which were not available in Exchange Online, so we had to implement and maintain additional systems on top of it. On December 18th, 2018, we successfully migrated the email service to Exchange Online. By coincidence, Kyushu University Administration Bureau decided to migrate their in-house Exchange server to Exchange Online. After some discussions, they concluded to migrate their domain to the same tenant with Primary Mail Service. Other than that, there are more than a hundred legacy email servers inside our campus network operated by various departments as subdomains of kyushu-u.ac.jp. We are designing a plan to consolidate them into our tenant of Exchange Online to reduce a budget and human resource costs, and to improve security. In this presentation, we share our experiences about migrating our campus-wide email services to Exchange Online. We also discuss why we want to consolidate other legacy email servers and how to implement the plan.
How to Integrate On-premise Authentication System into Cloud Services: Single Sign-on for Office365
Tsuyoshi Akiyama
Takayuki Nagai
Hideo Masuda
Hiromi Yamaoka
Kyoto Institute of Technology has 444 faculty and 3,943 students. We began using Microsoft Office365 in April 2018. The authentication for Microsoft Office365 is accomplished using Azure Active Directory. We synchronized between on-premise Active Directory and Azure Active Directory the users who are permitted to use Microsoft Office365. In addition, we enabled authentication by single sign-on using SAML. Using this structure, the user experience and security improved through the centralization of login information.
In this paper, we will describe the detail of user synchronization between on-premise Active Directory and Azure Active Directory at our university and details of the authentication cooperation for Cloud Service.
Renovation of the Office 365 environment in Kyushu University: Integration of Account Management and Authentication
Takao Shimayoshi
Yoshiaki Kasahara
Naomi Fujimura
Office 365 Education is a suite of cloud services for students and educators. Kyushu University has provided Office 365 accounts for all students and staff. The first generation of an environment for Office 365 provisioning in the university had several issues about associating between Office 365 accounts and member identifications of the university. All university members are randomly assigned unique identifiers by the central ID management system for using commonly in university-wide information services. Since the IDs are for internal use only, the first environment authenticated a user with another ID and password specific for Office 365. In addition, processes for assigning licenses and giving privilege to users of Office 365 depending on modifications to member information in the ID management system were not fully automated. This paper shows how we resolved problems integrating Office 365 into the ID management of the university by rebuilding the infrastructure. We configured a federated authentication system and developed a system for processing in events of the account life cycle.
Case Study of Implementing an IT Service Desk Ticketing System at Small Computer Center
Hiromi Yamaoka
Kazuki Yamamoto
Takayuki Nagai
Hideo Masuda
The Center for Information Science [3](CIS) is a section of IT that manages the operation of core systems and core information networks, and 10 members (3 faculty, 7 IT staff) support them. Our work covers many fields, including system and network operation management, technical consultation, security management, education, and security incident response. In Kyoto Institute of Technology, there are about 4000 students and 450 faculty, and user support is a large percentage of our work. Until now, support work had mainly been received and managed using email, but had various problems. By documenting each task with Jira Service Desk [2], we can decide the priority, share information, manage progress, and assign the person in charge depending on the situation. It also reduces the time and effort required to communicate with users. As a result, the work efficiency of the IT staff has been improved. Additionally by the centralization of tracking tickets users can expect better convenience.
Establishing Governance for Project and Service Management
Jason Glenn
Kenneth Rose
Recently, the Carnegie Mellon University Libraries began to implement a new strategic plan, which greatly increased the number, complexity, and scope of new projects and services sponsored by the Libraries. Historically, initiation, planning, and management of projects and services within Libraries lacked both codified processes and uniform management tools. Libraries’ leadership quickly realized that the rapid increase in the size of the unit’s project and service footprints had rendered such an unstructured approach to project and service management untenable. In response to leadership’s concerns, the Libraries’ Digital Strategy team launched an effort to establish a structure of governance around project and service management within the University Libraries. This paper will review the selection process for new project and service portfolio management tools, as well as the effort to define project initiation and management and service transition guidelines, with the intent of providing a framework for establishing project and service management governance in similar organizations.
It Takes an IT Village to Raise a Service Desk
Kirsten Petersen
Most ITIL practitioners know the basic responsibilities of a Service Desk. What is less often mentioned is what the rest of the IT organization needs to do to help the Service Desk be successful.
Oregon State University’s (OSU’s) Service Desk is relatively new, and we are now in a stage of refinement. In order to be more effective, we are looking at ways to better integrate the Service Desk with other departments within the Division of University Information & Technology (UIT). To that end, we are looking at process improvements and better documentation practices by implementing Knowledge Centered Service (KCS). One challenge is that UIT as a whole may not understand the role of an ITIL Service Desk, and may think it is “just a help desk”.
SESSION: Paper Sessions (Lightning Talks) – Tuesday 4:00-5:00
In Defense of the Monolith: How Standards are Good News for Innovation
Dan R. Herrick
“Standardization: IT’s lazy way to reduce costs and make IT’s job easier, from the people who have no idea what I need to do my job.”
That’s the perception many of IT’s customers have, at least, about standards. And there’s the popular but misplaced idea that best practices hinder innovation. IT customers of a large organization are by nature consumers of IT, and consumers have a difficult time understanding what commodity technology is and why it’s important to use the standards. Even IT workers are sometimes unaware of the value proposition and institutional strategy around commodity IT. Standardization, associated with commodity computing, is often seen as the antithesis of flexibility and innovation, but this is an inaccurate view. Standardization fosters rather than stifles innovation; and best practices enable flexibility in an organization to become “smart practices.” The purpose of this talk is to enable you to quickly and succinctly speak to your customers and colleagues about the benefits of standardization.
Badges: Do We Need to Show You Some Stinkin’ Badges?
Eric Handler
In the spring of 2019 in partnership with Macalester’s Center for Scholarship and Teaching I am leading a group of faculty and staff in an exploration of gamification and badges in higher education. Inspired by my Apple watch, I wanted to learn from faculty what they thought of gamification, badges and more. Are they interested, how do they define these terms, what challenges do they foresee. We anticipate reading some literature on the topic as well as partnering with our campus career center to learn about what they are hearing from employers. While Macalester is far away from implementing an on-campus badging system, this “Talking about Pedagogy” workgroup is likely to inform that exploration in the years to come. In this presentation/lightning talk/poster/panel I’ll share what I’ve learned from the faculty as well as what we learned together about the state of badging across the Higher Education landscape.
Barrels, Buggy Whips, And BASIC – A Historical And Personal Perspective On Skill Obsolescence
Travis Freudenberg
Over the last several years, Apple has released new designs that have received rave reviews as being some of the least repairable computers ever made. Colleges and businesses are increasingly outsourcing repair and maintenance of their technology assets to third parties. Why, then, would anybody choose the increasingly anachronistic trade of hardware repair as a career anchor? In this lightning talk, I’ll discuss historical examples of skill obsolescence, as well as how a “wrench” can stay relevant in an era of disposable hardware.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Wednesday 9:00-10:00
From Patient to Population
Adam Mikeal
Information security is practiced at many levels—sometimes it is close to the end user, and sometimes it is not. Sometimes malware and computer threats are personal, but sometimes they affect an entire population. Sometimes in order to manage a cybersecurity threat, it is necessary to step back and look at data that spans traditional organizational silos; to make connections that would otherwise remain hidden. I propose using the model of public health as a way to understand how to address cybersecurity threats. Just as public health officials have different priorities than a doctor engaged in individual clinical care, information security officials at a university must necessarily be concerned with different priorities than an IT professional at a college or department. Frustration arises when those competing priorities seem to produce conflicting goals. Understanding the differences between these two approaches—and also the points of connection—is necessary to increase the ability for these groups to effectively communicate, and ultimately collaborate.
Organizing Decentralized Helpdesks
Karl Owens
In a decentralized support environment much of user support looks much like an improvised jam session of technology masters. Is it possible to organize decentralized support services to provide some standards for best practices, share resources for staff training to improve, provide vetted feedback to centralized technology services and improve the user support to the campus community? We’re creating a community of practice of technology helpdesk managers with the hope to achieve some of these goals.
CampusEMonitor: Intelligent Campus Environment Room Monitoring System
Shamar Ward
Mechelle Gittens
Nicholas Rock
Keone James
It is important to monitor, analyze and make decisions to ensure the comfort of students and staff on campus as well as maintain an optimal operating environment for various equipment. Server/switch rooms may become hot due to air conditioner failures unknown to the staff. These undetected failures cause servers to switch off, affecting service delivery. In other cases, unsafe gases may occur in the environment. This situation may be unknown to management and the environmental conditions can cause personal discomfort. We present CampusEMonitor, which monitors environment parameters. CampusEMonitor is capable of monitoring temperature, humidity and environmental gases in campus spaces and can be used for quick decision making. Additionally, CampusEMonitor can be configured to trigger various types of alerts, such as emails, automatically to notify staff of unfavorable conditions. CampusEMonitor was developed as a low-cost system using Raspberry Pis, sensors and open-source software used to display information on dashboards in real-time and trigger alerts. Retired cell phones are also repurposed here to reduce cost. Interviewed staff members revealed instances where CampusEMonitor reported anomalies in the campus environment and proved to be a system that can monitor campus environments and send suitable alerts to the appropriate personnel.
Slaying the Bad Communication Beast!
Mark Davis Jr
Aixa Pomales
There are individuals who believe the smarter you are, or the higher your IQ, the more effectively you communicate. Unfortunately, this is not the case. In fact, sometimes, believing that you are the smartest person in the room can easily get in the way of communicating effectively.
In comes, Emotional Intelligence or EQ. Those who leverage EQ have a much better indicator of their ability to influence, persuade and connect with others, which ultimately is all about the way we communicate. So whether you think of yourself as a world-class communicator or as someone who would rather just send an email than deal with face-to-face chatter, chances are you have at least a few bad communication habits that may drive people crazy. How can we slay the beast of bad communication? This interactive session will discuss the pitfalls, methods and strategies to help us embrace thoughtful and effective communication at all levels. We will also discuss the powerful influence it can have on creating a more Diverse, Equitable and Inclusive community.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Wednesday 10:15-11:15
Effect of Cloud Based Learning Management System on The Learning Management System Implementation Process:
Ajayi Ekuase-Anwansedo
Akai Smith
The concept of E-learning in Universities has grown rapidly over the years to include not just only a learning management systems (LMS) but also tools initially not designed for learning such as Facebook and advanced learning tools, for example games, simulations and virtualization. As a result, Cloud-based LMS is being touted as the next evolution of the traditional LMS. It is hoped that Cloud-based LMS will resolve some of the challenges associated with the traditional LMS implementation process. In a previous study [10], we reported that lack of involvement of faculty and students in the LMS implementation process results in the limited use of the LMS by faculty and students. The question then is, “Will the cloud-based LMS resolve these issues? We conducted a review of literature and presented an overview of the traditional LMS, cloud computing and the cloud-based LMS and we described how the cloud computing LMS resolve issues raised by faculty and students. we find that even though, cloud-based LMS resolve most of the technical issues associated with the traditional LMS, some of the human issues were not resolved. We hope that this study draws attention to non-technical issues associated with the LMS implementation process.
Teaching an Old Yellow Jacket New Tricks – Adopting Change Management
Vicki Rogers
“The measure of intelligence is the ability to change.” – Albert Einstein
The Information Technology (IT) Change Management process exists to help control the life cycle of strategic, tactical, and operational changes to IT services through standardized procedures. The goal of Change Management is to control risk and minimize disruption to associated IT services and business operations.
Georgia Institute of Technology introduced IT Change Management in 2017. This paper and subsequent presentation will briefly describe and define change management and how it fits into the ITSM model. It will then discuss Georgia Tech’s process, as well as how we managed adoption. Finally, we will summarize the first year of data, and share our successes and our lessons learned.
This document and presentation endeavor to present a clearer understanding of IT change management, how it can work in a higher education setting and how a large research institution traversed adoption of change management.
A Less Dangerous “Ask Us Anything”
Jessica Stockett
Joel Price
When we started really paying attention to how people use IT and how they respond to the offerings our department has, we noticed something fascinating: people have great questions, and they do not always have a space to ask them.
Traditionally, our department offered periodic in-person “training” sessions around the type of software applications you’d expect: Word; Excel; Photoshop; InDesign. We (perhaps coincidentally) also noticed low numbers of attendees at these sessions, and the same self-selecting folks showing up regularly.
We found that when we identified key folks around campus, we had higher engagement and higher attendance at sessions, as well as a welcome and engaging diversity of questions at the sessions. We transformed our approach from an “us-to-you” delivery platform to a preparation for the types of things many people want to know about a program, and preparation for answering the things people needed to know once they had used the program. We started asking “What do you want to be able to do?” instead of telling them “This is how you should use this application.”
Our documentation style changed in response to this change in session offerings. We started writing in a way that streamlined the user path to information. Our mantra became “don’t hand me the dictionary when I ask you how to do something.” We strive to provide succinct and distinct paths to commonly requested information in plain English, and to address concerns up front with our users.
The results of our approach are easy to see – people feel more comfortable when learning on their own terms, and it is easier for our team to help provide meaningful sessions when we have identified people who help identify and target sessions and to help round up attendees. When we listen, we can do better.
Think Like a Scientist, Solve Like a Sleuth! An Introduction to Troubleshooting Theory, and How to Make it Accessible to Others
Edward Morreale
One of the most challenging skills to teach new technicians is the ability to troubleshoot any kind of issue, even if they have no prior knowledge of the given topic. Without knowing where to begin, understanding how to look at a problem and learning to break it down can be daunting. However, the task does not need to be viewed in such a fearful light. Technical problems in IT can be broken down and solved much in a similar way to how a detective will search for clues, gather information, and then make an inference. In much the same way, the Scientific Method can also be applied to the process of troubleshooting. Creating a hypothesis, performing an experiment, and drawing conclusions are all steps that can help a technician solve a problem just like a scientist. By presenting the process of troubleshooting through one of these lenses, the task can be made more accessible to fledgling technicians and can even reframe the task as an engaging activity.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Wednesday 11:30-12:30
Draft Day: How Lessons from Fantasy Football Can Teach About Staffing
Mitchell Ochi
Judy Toma
Claire Chun
When Matthew Berry (2014) wrote, “A bad league ruins the experience for so many…” a resounding nod amongst Fantasy Football (FF) players echoed every manager’s plight: staffing. The same can be said for staffing within a higher education institution if you compare great staff with a bad “league.” Staffing, much like building one’s FF team, is not only critical to an institution’s success but also to its strategy. Many managers, however, are not trained properly and are usually left to improvise or figure things out on their own (Wilk, 2018). To address these issues, we will discuss how FF can mimic the hiring process and can provide a model to understand what a manager requires from a new staff member (player research), the interview process (preparing ones’ roster for draft day), the selection committee’s consensus process (draft day), on-boarding staff (building ones’ roster), and continual training, concluding with an effective evaluation process (maintaining one’s team). We will use some of Bob Lewis’ Eight Tasks of Leadership (2011) to define how staffing is dependent on both concrete and subjective processes such as making decisions, motivating employees, communication, and building and maintaining teams. Finally, we will examine the continual evaluation process and how that aligns with winning the FF championship.
Access Service Unbound:
Emy Decker
Karen Glover
Following a supply chain model, appropriated from the business world, a public four-year institution dismantled its Access Services Department by limiting physical item processing tasks, delinquent account management, and the Circulation Desk, redoubling its efforts to focus on customer service by offering a “roving” model of customer service. This newly reformed Public Services Department offers self-checkout options in addition to these aforementioned changes. Users depend on access to course materials, technological equipment, and ILL/Reserves items. This paper describes how this library managed the transition of changes in responsibilities and offered excellent access despite the new format.
Avoid Phishing Traps
Katelin A Moul
The Dickinson College User Services team has been working diligently to educate members of the campus community on ways to identify and avoid phishing traps. This paper and presentation will highlight our steps in the fight against phishing. We have used annual phishing quizzes with prizes, created a phishing alerts page, hosted Cyber Security Awareness Month events, had an “Avoid Phishing Alerts” presentation, added a warning banner to external incoming emails and started implementing Microsoft Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) utilizing, primarily, the Microsoft Authenticator app. Success in this initiative involves various members from our entire division. These efforts and techniques have been evolving for years.
SESSION: Abstract Only (Panel)
Mental Health in the IT Workplace
R Kevin Chapman
Everyone has their own personal struggles, and we are in the habit, for better or for worse, of powering through them. But is that the right approach? Sleep deprivation, anxiety, depression, to name but a few, are frighteningly commonplace amongst the general populace. To deny that these conditions exist in the workplace would seem to be foolish. The important question is, is this reality acknowledged? Are there support structures in place to help us address mental health issues when they arise? After all, healthier employees are in everyone’s best interest: company, client, and of course, the individuals themselves.
This panel will be comprised of members of the SIGUCCS community who currently experience, or have experienced, some form of mental health issue that they feel has had an impact on their professional (and personal) lives. We’ll talk about how these conditions manifested themselves, the impact that they had or are having on our work, and what we did or are doing to address them. We’ll also talk about the importance of support structures in our workplace, whether they existed in our personal experiences or not.
Please join us in what we hope to be a safe environment for an important conversation.
SESSION: Paper Sessions – Wednesday 1:30-2:30
Jamf is A Verb, Have you been Jamfed?
Cristina Koorie
Devin Jayetileke
A cross-functional team at Lehigh University Library and Technology Services (LTS) implemented a management system for Apple devices. This presentation will cover the steps to collaboratively implement an Apple device management system, the security features it provides, training, machine enrollment, creating documentation, communicating to the campus, and future management features. We will focus on the development and design of the Jamf Pro Cloud service for Lehigh University’s use case, while emphasizing the security goals of this project which include, strong password requirements, enforcing encryptions, and inventory device management.
This presentation will focus on why it vital to implement Jamf. It will also focus on the best solution for the design in Jamf Pro Cloud for our university and its benefits for further implementation and enhancement. There will be a demonstration from start to finish the interface of enrolling machines, and design processes. Improving the security to apple users is vital and was unaddressed. It was important to also document and communicate Jamf to make the transition for faculty and staff. There are continuous enhancements of Jamf at Lehigh for the following year becoming a more valuable component of the Lehigh University device management process.
Building Bridges to Outstanding Customer Service:
Deb Meyer
Josh Savoy
Patti A. Mitch
After years of providing the same annual training to all our student staff regardless of skill level or time of service, it became evident that we needed to revise our approach to better prepare students to deliver the quality service our customers deserve. New students struggled to retain information, asking the same questions repeatedly in their first year. Returners flat out told us they were bored and learned very little in structured training. It was important to get and maintain student interest and enthusiasm for their work while providing them with professional challenges and growth opportunities. Success was measured by the completion of five deliverables: We identified skillsets, redefined position descriptions, and developed a multi-tiered, hands-on training program with specific learning outcomes and assessment tools. Now our annual four-day training features differentiated instruction for each level and area of student employment – Help Desk, Hardware, and Tech Maintenance from new hires through lead consultants. There is also opt-in training for those who are interested in specializing in specific areas of support.
ITS full-time staff provide the training on-site and are also responsible for developing an alternate method of delivery for students who are not able to attend in person. To make sure the program continues to meet the needs of our staff and of campus, we instituted a process for annual review and revision of the program.
Creating a “Phoenix” Service Desk
Kirsten Petersen
Andrew Wheeler
Max Cohen
This paper will detail how Oregon State University formed an ITIL-based Service Desk from the staff and resources of a centralized helpdesk, a contracted desktop support team, a walkup support service, and a campus labs support team. We will explain where we started, what our goals were, what we changed to reach our goals, what we learned along the way, and what we plan to do in the future. Readers will learn how to address structural and other barriers to implementing an ITIL-based Service Desk from existing support teams.
Training Faculty: Teaching Goals vs. Tech Tools – Finding a Balance
Lisa Brown
Laurie Fox
Miranda Carney-Morris
Beth Lynn Nolen
Faculty often ask us about specific technologies to use in their teaching; however, context to their teaching goals might suggest use of a different technological tool, or suggestions for specific settings to a tool. Additionally, research has shown that faculty expect and want technology support, not support in their teaching and pedagogy. Our goal in supporting faculty in their instruction would be to educate them about the tools, but also guide them to the right tools for their specific teaching needs. When training faculty about the tools available to them, how do we find a balance between pedagogical support and strict technology overload? How can we offer them the technology training they want, along with the guided support toward best practices in teaching and learning with technology? This session will cover how different schools provide different types of training in technology tools for faculty and how each finds the balance between teaching and technology.