What will happen after Campus Cruiser’s sunset

We know that the community is eager for new information about the Campus Cruiser closeout process. Due to Cruiser’s upcoming disappearance, we have had to make a series of quick decisions. The good news is that we are able to consider a lot of options in the weeks before the holiday break, and now we’d like to share more information with you about our progress.

Announcing MyWidener

ITS is already constructing the platform to replace Campus Cruiser. Over the next two months, a sophisticated, mobile-friendly website will emerge, which we will call MyWidener. The essential features of Cruiser (committees, clubs, organizations, WebAdvisor, etc.), will all be available through this single point of access

MyWidener will use keyword searches to navigate and access services directly. While the new site is under construction, you may be interested to see a public version using the same software at University of Michigan: http://maizelink.umich.edu. (Note: everything you see there is just a link to web sites and applications that UMich uses. Our links will be tools that are specific to Widener, e.g. StudentPlanning, WebAdvisor, Office365, etc. The underlying software, rSmart OneCampus, doesn’t provide us with any of the applications or modules, it simply allows us a better way to find and access our own information.)

For departments that currently use Cruiser to publish websites, we have good solutions to offer as well. Members of the Cruiser Closeout team will be reaching out to those departments to coordinate.

In the meantime…

Campus Cruiser is still running for now. You may continue to use it to access administrative services, such as time sheets. Moving our essential services over to MyWidener is a top priority, and we do have a backup plan if we lose access to Campus Cruiser prior to the expected final shutdown in March.

As always, the best way to follow up to this message with questions or comments is to email cruisercloseout@widener.edu. ITS staff also continues to make updates to the Cruiser Closeout FAQ.

A few words about process

ITS is relying on the advice and feedback of Faculty Council TIRC and other stakeholders as we make changes. Even so, the urgency of this project has required us to make some of our decisions faster and with less input than we prefer. Thank you for your cooperation as we’ve worked through this challenging situation. We are also grateful for all the work you have done to move/manage your own information on extremely short notice.

Widener will be in a much better situation once this migration is complete.

New Roles for Two ITS Employees

Our new employees are great, but so are our veterans. We’re celebrating two long-time employees in ITS as they take on new roles in the organization.

John Kitchen

Long-time ITS employee John Kitchen ’97 stepped into the Interim Director of Client Success position several months ago. Good things followed immediately, so it didn’t take long for it to be clear that he was the right person for the job. Effective immediately, John Kitchen deletes the word “Interim” from the beginning of the title.

The director of client success position is responsible for leading a variety of crucial services at all three campuses: our help desks and student labs, the asset management program, desktop software, and technology training.

John Kitchen has deep experience in all of these areas. He has worked in ITS for a total of 18 years, and has been in charge of supporting law school IT needs since 2006. He’s a recognized leader in his field, currently serving as a vice president for the Philadelphia local chapter of HDI, a professional association for the technical support industry.

Jackie MacDonald

As part of John’s charge to deepen our focus on client advocacy, he promoted Jackie MacDonald ’12 to the newly created position of client success analyst. Jackie has worked in several different positions in ITS in her eight years at the University. Jackie is an in-house expert for Macs as well as the systems that manage our trouble resolution and asset management data. Most importantly, Jackie has always been a person who acts as a “voice of the client” in ITS processes, pointing out how we can improve our services for faculty, staff, and students.

The client success analysts—we will eventually have two at the Chester campus— focus more of their time on the parts of IT support that extend beyond the help desk. In addition to asset management, Jackie will spend a lot of her time supporting training and professional development efforts to make better use of our supported software. She was the driving force in our launch on Lynda.com last year, and one of the main reasons that over 825 Widener community members have already taken advantage of the technology learning platform.

If you or your department would like to discuss technology learning needs, contact Jackie to let her know of your interest.

John Kitchen assumes new role in ITS

Kitchen is appointed interim director of client success for all three Widener campuses.

kitchenj As we were starting the new academic year needing full-time leadership for the client success team, we were fortunate that John Kitchen stepped up to help.

Outside of Widener, John enjoys spending time with family and friends. He volunteers for Wills For Heroes Delaware Charter by providing technical support. In his leisure time, John enjoys reading, hiking and fishing.

People at the Delaware and Harrisburg campuses know John well already. We’re excited for the Chester campus community to have a chance to work with him more closely.

It’s Canvas

We are excited to announce that Widener University has signed on with Instructure to use Canvas LMS as our University standard. [Trigger confetti!]

We are confident in this decision because so many of you helped to make it. Faculty Council TIRC guided our selection process, and then dozens of faculty members attended product demonstrations or experimented with trial versions of the finalists. The feedback was consistent: both our instructors and our project team consistently agreed that Canvas was the best platform for us.

What now?

Much of the summer will be spent bringing Canvas to life for Widener. We will need to work out all the technical processes for integrating with our administrative systems, design its initial look and feel, and develop our in-house technical expertise. Consequently, only a small number of courses will use Canvas for the Fall 2017 semester. The coming academic year will be filled with activities to support migration of courses from Campus Cruiser and WebStudy.

For more information…

We know you will have many questions, only some of which we have the answers for today. Project leader Joanne Caione-Keating posted some initial information on permanent pages here (http://itsnews.widener.edu/canvas). Please bookmark the location and return there often for updates. In the meantime, you can email your questions to the project team at the address canvasteam@widener.edu.

Lynda.com: unlimited tech training for Widener

Thousands of video courses taught by technology, design, and business experts.

Starting immediately, ITS is providing all Widener students, faculty, and staff with access to Lynda.com, an online library that teaches the latest technical and professional skills through high-quality instructional videos. Lynda maintains a very large and up-to-date library of courses taught by experts in their fields. New titles are added every week.

tile_lyndalearning_logo Courses are broken up into bite-size chunks of a few minutes each. You can use Lynda whether you have five minutes or five hours. If you are trying to complete an entire course or playlist of courses, it automatically keeps track of your progress. But you will also find Lynda useful as a just-in-time knowledge base. If you’re stuck trying to figure out a feature in an application, search for it on Lynda. You may just get the answer you need to get back up and running quickly.

What’s there?

There are Lynda videos for every skill level. For beginners with an application, here are just a few of the relevant “Up and Running” and “Essentials” titles in the collection:

Microsoft Office 365
Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, After Effects)
MacOS Sierra and Windows 10
SPSS
Mathematica
Final Cut Pro and ProTools
HTML5 and CSS

Beyond a deep collection of technology titles, there’s a host of professional development subjects on topics ranging from project management to social media marketing.

Get Started

Just visit lynda.widener.edu. Use your Widener login ID and password—the same ones you use for Office 365 or CampusCruiser. Try making a playlist of a few courses you’re interested in trying out later.

Lynda.com: unlimited tech training for Widener

Thousands of video courses taught by technology, design, and business experts.

What’s there?

There are Lynda videos for every skill level. For beginners with an application, here are just a few of the relevant “Up and Running” and “Essentials” titles in the collection:

Microsoft Office 365
Adobe Creative Cloud (Photoshop, Illustrator, InDesign, Premiere, After Effects)
MacOS Sierra and Windows 10
SPSS
Mathematica
Final Cut Pro and ProTools
HTML5 and CSS

Beyond a deep collection of technology titles, there’s a host of professional development subjects on topics ranging from project management to social media marketing.

Get Started

Big IT projects getting under way

The most frequent question I’m asked is “What is going to happen with Campus Cruiser?” After talking with many members of the community about your needs, it’s time to share where things stand.

Three projects in one

Campus Cruiser is really three products in one: an email system, a learning management system (LMS), and a portal for internal collaboration and administration. Consequently, ITS and its many campus partners are actually preparing to undertake three major projects:

Complete the transition to Office 365, including email migration, for all students and remaining faculty/staff. (~6 months)
Identify and implement a state-of-the-art LMS. (~18 months)
Identify and implement tools to facilitate internal collaboration and provide access to online administrative resources. (18-24 months)

Make no mistake: this is a huge undertaking that will touch every member of our community. But the outcome will be worth it: streamlined technology platforms that truly match the needs of a dynamic campus environment.

Where do we start?

For now, we’re focusing on the first two pieces: full migration to Office 365 and implementing a new LMS. The portal question is very important, but will be much easier to sort out after we’ve addressed the other two.

Office 365

It will be advantageous to all be on the same email, calendar, and productivity software. Going forward, we’ll all have Outlook calendars to schedule appointments with each other. Faculty and staff will finally have a single email address. And we’re excited to provide all of our students with free access to the Office productivity tools like Word, Excel, PowerPoint, OneNote, and OneDrive.

We know this is a big undertaking, but we are committed to helping our community migrate their email and get running quickly on Office 365. Our project team, led by Chris Smith, has developed a migration plan for all of us to start next academic year on the same system. Chris will be sending out more information to the community next week to share additional details about the plan.

A new LMS

There is an appetite on campus for a learning management system with improved features, a more elegant interface, and superior mobile device support.

With substantial support and guidance from the TIRC Committee, Joanne Caione-Keating is ramping up an interdepartmental project team to conduct a quick, but careful review of the current leading platforms. We expect the selection to be completed before commencement, and for early adopters to be able to begin learning and working in the new LMS this summer. Over the following semesters, we will work with faculty to support the migration of their courses and help them learn the new system.

Through their TIRC representatives, many faculty have already indicated their interest in the selection process. In addition to multiple, by-invitation sessions, there will be opportunities for any interested faculty, staff, or students to see demonstrations of finalist products and provide input. We will also be supporting “sandbox” environments of the top products for any faculty who want to experiment with the systems hands-on. We are committed to making the selection process transparent, faculty-driven, and learner-centered.

Joanne will make announcements about the project plan and evaluation schedule in the next week.

About change

These are big projects with ambitious timelines. But in my first months as CIO, it’s been clear that a lot of campus processes and pedagogical developments have been in a holding pattern while the University community awaited clear signals about our path forward. We hope you agree with us in ITS that implementing and supporting state-of-the-art digital platforms is a strategic investment in our institutional effectiveness. I, for one, can’t wait to see how much better off we’ll be once these projects are done.

All of us involved are aware that changes like these place demands on your time and may occasionally be disruptive. We will do everything in our power to be considerate of impacts on you, but we also hope that we will continue to receive the support and encouragement that so many of you have already expressed. Technical support, training, and communications are core components of our project plans. If you have concerns as they get under way, please do not hesitate to contact Chris, Joanne, or me.

Introducing Zoom web conferencing

Over the past few years, there has been a boom in demand for web conferencing services (such as Adobe Connect, Skype, WebEx, and GoToMeeting). While these tools are handy, we haven’t always been satisfied with their quality or ease of use.

As of February 2017, all Widener faculty, staff, and students have a basic Zoom account— just go to http://widener.zoom.us. Sign in with your Widener University username and password.

With your Zoom basic account, you can have a one-to-one meeting with anybody for an unlimited amount of time. You can also create class sessions or meetings for 3-50 people, but they will be limited to 40 minutes. Regardless of length, you can record and download a video file of any session.

I’m interested! Now what do I do?

Log into the basic Zoom account to try it out. Faculty and staff who want to use Zoom for classes or meetings of 3-50 people can contact the help desk (itshelp@widener.edu, x1047). We can upgrade your basic account to a pro account, which has no session time limits. All you have to do is ask us!

If you are interested in more in-depth ZOOM training or have questions about using the platform for teaching, please feel free to contact TLT Classroom Support (x4090)

Why Zoom?

You may be surprised how easy it is to start up a meeting. All you need to know are your participants’ email addresses. They can access a meeting from nearly any computer or mobile device. (Obviously, they need a camera to be seen, but you can have a mix of users who have cameras and those who don’t.)

One of the big advantages of Zoom is that your participants do not need to have a Zoom account. They only need to be able to do a quick download of the software, which they’re assisted with when they receive your invitation.

Zoom is a great way to carry on synchronous online classes, or to include colleagues in meetings when they’re at a remote location. It’s also a great way to reduce the costs and the environmental impacts of some travel.