IT Connections

Ted Rozelsky presented a Preview of Microsoft Office 2007 as part of the School of Education's Tech Support Day on Friday, October 17th. The School of Education is planning to move to Office 2007 over the winter break, so Ted's presentation gave faculty, staff and students an idea of what to expect and prepare for.

Peter Jepson went to EMC Training in Albany, NY.

Cindy Barry presented a Confluence training class to Eric Sedore, Tim Jorgensen, John Boland, Andrew Joncas, and Stephen Bonomo on November 12.

Conferences & Forums

Dave Tiedemann contributed his pre-recorded comments on 10 years of participating in the Internet Commons' MegaConference to this year's conference proceedings. Syracuse University, through Dave, is among only nine institutions to have participated in all ten Megaconferences. The MegaConference is the largest worldwide annual video conference, with the goal of connecting people together everywhere on Earth and to advance the state of the art in videoconferencing technology. Participants use videoconferencing in education and research, and speakers from across the globe share their latest real-world uses of H.323 videoconferencing and other compatible systems, while using these videoconferencing systems to do so. Dan Lowe also participated in this year's conference. For more info:

http://www.megaconference.org

Michael Morrison presented on a panel discussion titled "Openness and Interoperability in Higher Education" at the EDUCAUSE 2008 conference in Orlando, Florida, on October 29, 2008. The panel was moderated by Scott Jaschik, Editor of Inside Higher Ed and the other panelists were Michael Chasen, CEO of Blackboard; Chuck Severence, Developer Network Coordinator, IMS; and Serge Goldstein, Associate CIO and Director of Academic Services, Princeton University.

Also at the EDUCAUSE Conference, Susan Watts attended a full-day seminar on ITIL (IT Infrastructure Library) entitled, "Understanding ITIL and Applying it to Your Organization". ITIL is a series of best practices standards for IT Service Management. The session, presented by Yale University, was the first of the full-day seminars to fill up and proved to be hot topic at the conference. Some of the colleges and universities that are utilizing components of ITIL to improve their quality of service and increase efficiencies include Harvard, Yale, Cornell, UC at Santa Cruz, University of Kansas, Brigham Young, Miami Ohio, Carnegie Mellon, and NYU. Susan will be talking more about how these colleges and universities are leveraging ITIL to improve their practices at the ITS Educause Brown Bag session to be held on 12/1.

Also attending the EDUCAUSE conference from SU were Chris Croad, Ryan Elstad, David Hoalcraft, Jeff Pitt, Larry Quaglia, Glenda Ranallo, Eric Sedore, and Stan Ziemba (and apologies to anyone we missed). See article elsewhere in this issue about the related brown bag discussion.

http://net.educause.edu/e08.

David Hoalcraft attended a NERCOMP (NorthEast Regional Computer Program) SIG (special interest group workshop) October 16 in Norwood, MA, on the topic:
"How to Roll Out a Helpdesk Ticketing System: Lessons Learned and Pit Falls to Avoid."

http://www.nercomp.org/events/event_single.aspx?id=1686

The ITS Service Center Staff and Cheryl Bonn from Telcom attended an onsite day-long HDI Customer Service Representative training course. http://www.thinkhdi.com/certification/csr.aspx

Gary McGinnis, Michael Morrison and Don Little attended the NERCOMP conference titled "Big Picture Instructional Technology: Models for Planning, Piloting, Promoting, and Partnering" on September 19 at Skidmore College in Saratoga Springs New York.

Jim Pease co-presented at the recent Sakai Regional Users Conference on November 12, at Virginia Tech University. His presentation, entitled "Connecting Blackboard and Sakai," was delivered with John Fontaine, Chief Evangelist from Blackboard.

Dave Tiedemann attended the November 4-8 annual convention of the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Study tours, which had not been offered in recent years, were back with two excellent half-day tours: one to a unique master's level academic program in gaming; the other a simulation and training program. Both cutting edge programs are associated with the University of Central Florida, the 5th largest University in the country with around 55,000 students. The first tour was to the Florida Interactive Entertainment Academy http://www.fiea.ucf.edu/shield/showpage.php?page_id=1) and the second tour was to the Institute for Simulation and Training (IST, http://www.ist.ucf.edu/overview.htm).

The first keynote speech at AECT was given by Dr. George Strawn, CIO of the National Science Foundation. Strawn's remarks were inspired by the recent book by Harvard Business School professor Clayton Christianson, "Disrupting Class: How Disruptive Innovation Will Change the Way the World Learns" http://www.mhprofessional.com/product.php?isbn=0071592067.

Dave was a co-presenter with Kannan AMR, former employee of SU's Faculty Academic Computer Support Services (FACSS) and doctoral student in Instructional Design Development & Education whose recently completed research apprenticeship Dave oversaw. The presentation was titled, "Challenges in Technology Integration in a Higher Education Institution: a case study at Syracuse University" and discussed faculty adoption of technology at SU.

EDUCAUSE Conference Brown Bag

Share your colleagues' learnings and insights

You are invited to a brown bag informational session where several of the SU folks who attended the recent EDUCAUSE annual conference can pass along what they learned. Bring your lunch; dessert will be provided!

The session will be held on Monday, December 1, 2008; from 11:30 a.m. to 1:00 p.m. in room 211, Machinery Hall. Speakers and topics are listed below, so you can choose to come to all or just a portion of the meeting.

Hope to see you there!

Discussion Leader	Time	Topic Description
Chris Sedore	11:30-11:35	Opening Remarks
Susan Watts	11:35-11:45	Project/Portfolio Management; ITIL
Glenda Ranallo	11:45-11:55	Project/Portfolio Management
Chris Croad	11:55-12:05	Balanced Leadership; DMCA Violations: How does SU compare to other institutions?
Eric Sedore	12:05-12:15	Trends in Virtualization; Outsourcing Student E-Mail
Michael Morrison	12:15-12:25	Learning Management Systems
David Hoalcraft	12:25-12:35	Crowd-Sourcing; Right sizing your request tracking system
All	12:35-1:00	Question and Answer Session

Content Management at BFAS

New template a tactical solution

Have you ever spent a long time looking for information on the web, finally landing on just the right site only to discover that the information is outdated or incomplete? Complex and often expensive web management tools are a major stumbling block to the timely updating of web-based content. Not only can these tools require users to know HTML, they can also take a substantial amount of time to learn and to use. Also, it's often the case that keeping a site updated is less important than other tasks, and is assigned to staff with competing priorities.

The Division of Business, Finance, and Administrative Systems, (BFAS), believes that web based content management tools will remove these stumbling blocks and enable the timely updating and communication of important online information. With their simple web-based forms, what-you-see-is-what-you-get (WYSIWYG) editors (similar to Microsoft Word), and intelligent workflow models, these tools can streamline the overall process of updating websites and greatly reduce the amount of time it takes to create and manage web content.

Currently, BFAS uses a content management system (CMS) to manage over 25 departmental, topical, and critical websites, and is introducing a new template that will greatly improve the overall look and feel of its CMS.

While BFAS plans to migrate its web content to Cascade, the university's strategic long-term CMS, the new template improves functionality and appearance, avoids the need for retraining and reimplementation, and can be implemented in a timelier manner. For more information, please contact Stephen Rieks, Associate Director of Systems and Services, at x4912 at sjrieks@syr.edu.

Soft Launch of New Change Management Process

Moving to a more accountable system

The first steps in implementing the new Change Management procedures and transitioning the process to the new Change Management Team are being taken. Starting November 20, the weekly Change Management meetings will be moved from Wednesdays at 2:30 p.m. to Thursdays at 3:00 p.m. and will be held in 211 Machinery Hall. Conference calling will be available via x5336. Change requests must be submitted no later than 10 a.m. on Thursdays to be reviewed in that week's meeting.

The new Change Management Team, consisting of ITS directors and managers, will provide appropriate ITS-wide representation and consistent CM direction and communications. This builds upon the solid foundation created by the current Change Management process which has been skillfully led and facilitated by Bob Marturano, who is assuming other responsibilities after the transition to the new process.

Revisions to the change management websites are currently underway and will be published when complete.

The redesigned Change Management process will simplify documentation protocol based on the complexity of any changes, and will provide prompt authorization, scheduling, communication, and success and failure reviewing. Erik Anderson, Jenny Gluck, and David Harris lead the project team that is finalizing the new process. Team members include: Cindy Barry, Bruce Boardman, John Capozollo, Christopher Croad, Chris Finkle, David Hoalcraft, Steve Leonard, Bob Marturano, Michael Morrison, Peter Morrissey, Jim Pampinella, Trudi Porter, Eric Sedore, and Wade Stringer.

For questions about the new Change Management process contact Erik Anderson, Jenny Gluck or David Harris.

IT Connections is published monthly by Information Technology and Services. Story ideas can be submitted to Chris Finkle by the third Wednesday of each month.

E-mail: itscomm@syr.edu

Phone: 443-2677

Web: http://its.syr.edu