It has been a year since we started this blog. We started it with a run down of what IS&T had been up to over the summer. So, this year we are going to do the same thing. Here are some of what has happened in IS&T over the summer.
Brackett Library
Brackett Library made some exciting changes over the summer. First, the English Department's Writing Center has moved to the library and is located on the first floor. More information about services offered and scheduling appointments can be found on the Writing Center's website.
There is also a vending machine now located in the library on the first floor by the stairway. The Harding University Bookstore will be maintaining and stocking the items which includes note cards, flash drives, and highlighters. Students can purchase items with a simple swipe of a credit card.
Faculty and students will also notice several new resources this year. If you have been wanting to learn a new language or just get a refresher course, Pronunicator is a language database that offers programs in over 80 languages. Other new resources include the Rehabilitation Reference Center, the Nursing Reference Center, SciFinder and several new eBooks.
You can go to the library's "What's New" page for details and information about the other changes such as Brackett Library opening at an earlier time on Sunday afternoons and the new rolling white boards.
Network Services
Our internet bandwidth has doubled! Yes doubled. Right now our internet speeds are pretty good. Check out these results from Speedtest.net:
Now this result will change once the students arrive of course, Never-the-less, we believe we are in good shape with our internet bandwidth - for at least 6 months!
As it easily seen there has been/is quite a bit of construction happening around campus. This means there is network cable and equipment, wireless access points, phone and so forth that has to be installed, tested and commissioned. Our crew has completed work in; Legacy phase III, 2nd floor student center remodel, Ezell building remodel and even planned for wireless coverage for the First Ladies Garden.
This week, a new VoIP phone system was installed at the Harding School of Theology in Memphis.
Center for Learning with Technology
We recorded and produced video tutorials for our Quality Matters (QM) workshops.
We have finalized our faculty training schedule for the year and are excited about our offerings of hands-on sessions for QM training. We are building a large portion of our training around effective course design and QM aligned syllabus. A new addition will be training teachers in creating an interactive, digitized syllabus.
We designed course content for EDT 620 (QM aligned), a graduate course in the College of Education.
We reviewed courses from the Nursing and the College of Education departments.
We presented at the Teaching with Technology Symposium at UAMS. Presentation Topics: Give Me a Voice, Allow Me to Create and Invite Me to Learn (VoiceThread and ShadowPuppet) and Enhance Your Learning with Web 2.0 Tools
Applications Development & Enhancement
With the Harding website mostly behind us now, we have moved onto the major redesign of Pipeline. We will follow a similar process to the website redesign, but we will do the work in house this time. Over the summer preliminary investigations have been going on. We will be making Pipeline mobile friendly and completely reorganizing it. It has grown a lot during its life. It currently has a lot of content that can be difficult to find.
We have met and talked with some people around campus already, people such as Dan Stockstill and Frank McCowen about Faculty views on what's working and what's not in the current Pipeline. We have talked with the Provost office about Faculty info and how to separate it into meaningful groups. We are planning similar meetings with Staff about the Administrative side of Pipeline.
Additionally we are assembling another group to guide, evaluate and provide relevant input to our efforts for the redesign of Pipeline. That group will start meeting very soon.
If all goes as planned we should see a redesigned Pipeline during the first quarter of 2016.
We are also transitioning the Harding Academy website over the new design. It will be branded as Harding Academy, but have a similar look and feel to the University website. Here is a peek at the Academy home page:
There is still some work to do with this site, but it is well underway.
Client Support
Replaced
- 435 Windows desktops- 100 Windows laptops
- 100 Macs
Trips to install in Memphis, Rogers, and NLR
Multiple classes each week for those upgrading, including taking the lab to Memphis to train there.
Survived:
- 3 people taking honeymoons (no dedication)
- 1 broken leg (some people will do anything to get out of work)
- 1 resignation (already married and not enough guts to break his leg)
Erased and returned 500 computers to leasing company
Erased and liquidated 80 computers
Business Intelligence
A major update and move of work to new version of Dashboards. They are more modern, but need a lot of work to convert.
Engaged a consultant from Birst to carry out a 'health checkup' on the work we have done so far. We don't want to walk far down the wrong track so had this checkup performed. We are quite healthy it seems!
Also, preparing dashboards to show our enrollment numbers. This is crucial at anytime, but especially this time of the year.
Student Communications
Quite a bit of work getting ready for the Fall and preparing ways to provide training in the use of the phones and voicemail. Look forward to having some videos available to help us all use our phone system effectively.
Dormnet is a large part of the this departments responsibilities. There are 17 Dormnet assistants. They will be here next week to participate in a full week of training and be ready to deal with the students that start arriving on Thursday (well quite a few will be here before that). Specifically the Dormnet Online Training (DOT) has been developed and implemented. This means that the Dormnet training can start during the summer.
Systems and Database Admin
Installed a new Storage Area Network (SAN) Disk Storage Array which now contains all of Harding's critical data, including the Banner database. This SAN Array is made up of mostly conventional (spinning) disk drives, but 5 Terabytes of its 50 Terabyte total capacity is comprised of extremely fast Solid State Drives (SSDs).
Construction was completed on a new Disaster Recovery Data Center (DRDC) at Harding's Professional Center in Rogers, Arkansas. Computer equipment will be moved into the DRDC this fall that will maintain continuously-updated copies of all of Harding's mission-critical servers and data. These copies will have the ability to become our live production servers and data within just a few hours if our Searcy Data Center is rendered inoperable for any reason.
Conducted a complete shutdown and startup of the Searcy Data Center so some major maintenance could be performed on our main Uninterruptable Power Supply (UPS). The UPS maintenance required the power to be completely disconnected from the Data Center for about 6 hours. This was a great test of our ability to properly shut down and start up all of the software and hardware in the Data Center in the correct order so that everything would work when it came back up. This involved many of our experts within IS&T, and the process was accomplished brilliantly!
Classroom Technology
All classroom and lab computers were upgraded to Windows 8.1 (still have a few left to do). This is a big change but should make for a smoother transition to Windows 10 when the time comes.
