New Classroom And Event Management Goes LIVE Today
The Commons, Registrar's Office, and DoIT Launch 25Live
Back in Fall 2012, Executive Director of University Commons Joe Regier and I had a single goal: evaluate classroom and event management solutions capable of providing UMBC with a robust, responsive, and integrated solution serving the entire campus.
A scheduling group was created to review products and options that would replace or upgrade the current system from CollegeNET known as R25. The new software, 25Live, would be a result of a joint collaboration between The Commons, Registrar's Office, and DoIT. “It was a great partnership,” said Kirby, “everyone collaborated greatly with their different aspects.” Below are the members of the core team who participated in every aspect of the project and were directly responsible for the success of the project:
• William Archer, The Commons
• Joel Dewyer, The Commons
• Michelle Drummond, Registrar’s Office
• Cheri Putro, DoIT
• Drema Wentz, The Commons
The new process will allow all users to sign into 25Live and view room schedules based on their myUMBC account. Those in departments who coordinate with event scheduling for submitting events will be able to do all of their advanced functions through any web-based system and won't need special software installed on their computer.
DoIT was interested 25Live based on the scalability, reliability, and business continuity since the solution is a cloud based Software as a Service (SaaS). The new system also provides a set of programming interfaces, called APIs, that will allow scheduling offices and DoIT to develop ways of sharing the events information through myUMBC and mobile.
Another benefit involved more product updates compared to the old R25 software, allowing 25Live to continue to add more features and improvements. “The nice thing about this is there are mandatory annual updates to the software,” said Kirby “because it’s in the cloud they are promising predictable response times, even during our peak usage periods.”
Other key figures supported the 25Live project as well. Chief Mark Sparks, head of Public Safety wanted more complete information in times of an emergency. The software will provide searches for class schedules with the correct room locations, and event searches by the time and day of the week.
Juliana Simpson, Assistant Director of Planning and Michael Dillon, Assistant Vice President of Institutional Research, Analysis & Decision Support (IRADS) will benefit from more complete data source for reporting purposes as the classroom and event data becomes part of UMBC’s data warehouse solution known as REX.
You can access
25Live and view upcoming events without the need to sign into your UMBC account.
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Back in Fall 2012, Executive Director of University Commons Joe Regier and I had a single goal: evaluate classroom and event management solutions capable of providing UMBC with a robust,...
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Upcoming Changes to myUMBC
One does not simply change everything about myUMBC...
UPDATE:
This summer, we will be making some major changes to myUMBC as we evolve to meet the growing needs of our community. Some of these changes will be big and obvious, others more subtle and nuanced; but all may require you to relearn a few things.
Here's why we're changing...
- Much of the current myUMBC was an experiment. We’ve learned a lot about what works and what doesn’t. Times, technology, and people have changed. Now we're ready to take what we learned and implement some new ideas.
- Some features simply aren’t being used.
- A philosophical change of heart on how we approach some problem, especially given the changing technology landscape.
- We need to make things work better for mobile users.
And here's what we're changing...
Start
The start page will be redesigned to resemble an activity feed, much like Facebook and Twitter. The goal is to make the page more personal and easier for you to see the latest updates from the groups you participate in. Community updates will still exist but will take a backseat to the content you care about most.
Main Menu
Keep it simple. The new menu will consist of:
- Start
-
Guide - Replaces Topics. A single page with access to the resources you need most, including a complete collection of resources for when you need something special.
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Events - Redesigned. A better way to browse events on campus using interest-based calendars rather than by date alone.
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Explore - Replaces Community. This section will help you keep up with the community buzz.
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Groups - Minor Updates. Easier access to the groups you participate in and ways to find new groups of interest to you.
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Help - Redesigned. The documentation you need, as well as a quick way to request help from experts.
Groups
Groups are here to stay. This feature proved to be extremely popular, so we are going to streamline the experience using best practices created by our users.
But, there will be some growing pains. While Groups have been a huge success in myUMBC, some of the features we originally introduced are changing -- or going away.
Here’s the rundown:
- Group homepages now feature an activity feed with upcoming events, news and general information.
-
You can Follow all groups you're interested in -- similar to how a Twitter account works. You will no longer need to "join" some groups and "follow" others. All members of a group must be invited by an admin.
- News Stories have been renamed Posts and can now be used to more easily share and promote group information, including on the group homepage. These posts can also be Pinned or marked Important, giving groups even more control over how their content is displayed and promoted.
- A new email notification feature gives Followers more options for how they choose to receive information from groups: All, Important Only, or None.
- Gone the way of the dodo: Discussions, Media and Barks are being removed in favor of posts, which are a more centralized way to share all content.
Promotions
The elephant in the room: Spotlights. Spotlights served as a great way to offer groups campus-wide visibility and marketing to share important events, updates and deadlines. However, the overwhelming volume and success of Spotlights in its current model is simply unsustainable.
Whether it’s a student organization notice such as upcoming elections or an institutional event like Homecoming, we want to be sure your message is heard across campus. Which is why we have replaced Spotlights with Promotions, a new system that allows groups to promote posts on the myUMBC Start page for all visitors to see.
Here’s how it works:
A handful of posts will show up as promoted content on the myUMBC homepage each day. To submit one of your own, find a post in your group that you would like the world to see, and click the Promote button and select a date you’d like it to show up. That’s it. Have some news, updates or an event you want to promote more than once? No problem. You can promote the same post multiple times.
However, there are a few rules:
- You no longer select a specific run-time; just a single day when you want your post promoted.
- It’s first-come, first-served. To increase the chances your post will be promoted on the myUMBC homepage on a given day, be sure to submit it with plenty of lead time.
- A group can only promote a limited number of posts at a time.
- You can no longer target specific audiences. Instead, your promotion must be applicable to everyone to be approved.
- We will still be using an approval process for all posts to ensure the content shared is relevant and abides by University policies--and that the system isn’t being abused.
Guide
The Guide replaces the Topics menu with a single page containing the most used resources, based on other users like you. Can’t find what you need? Don’t worry, the bottom of the Guide will have links to other Topics pages for resources that aren’t used as frequently. In this update we also tackled the issue of roles in myUMBC. Now, all users will see all of the resources available. Hurrah.
Events
Seeing a calendar with every event on campus can be overwhelming. That’s why we have redesigned the main Events calendar to show you upcoming events filtered by interest. This new approach will provide a much more intuitive way to find events you might want to attend, rather than sending you to a list of everything happening on a given day.
Community Groups
Community Discussions will be replaced with Community Groups -- a more focused venue for conversations. Each Community Group will be associated with a topic, such as Academics, Classifieds, Athletics, or Politics, etc. Also, because Community Discussions have been converted to Groups, you will now be able to follow individual community groups to keep track of when updates are posted. All groups will be visible to members of the community (login required).
A Final Thought...
myUMBC is constantly evolving, and we rely on the feedback and shared needs of our community to continually find ways to improve this ubiquitous campus tool. It is very much a work in progress, and sometimes we just won’t know what works until we try it. With your help we’re confident that myUMBC will continue to grow into an even more successful tool for our faculty, staff and students.
We will be reaching out to various members of the community to make sure these transitions occur as smoothly as possible.
As always, feel free to leave a comment or contact me directly with questions: collier@umbc.edu
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UPDATE: We've scheduled open house events to discuss the changes. Sign Up and Stop By This summer, we will be making some major changes to myUMBC as we evolve to meet the growing needs of...
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DoIT Recommends Course Copy vs Export/Import
Beginning SU2015: Quickly recycle courses & connect content
Over many years, Blackboard courses at UMBC were exported out of and imported back into the system. This process met a specific need at a specific time, and continues to provide a way for faculty to save course materials in a digital archive. We are pleased, however, to soon launch Course Copy, a new tool to streamline the reuse and preparation of course content each semester.
The Course Copy tool is convenient way to reuse and adapt existing course structures, materials, and content. With a few clicks, faculty can identify the course to receive the incoming content, choose some or all course content, and trigger the copying process. Compared to export/import, the Course Copy process is faster. Faculty do not have to submit the export request in one Blackboard course, download a package file only to re-upload it to another course for processing. With the Course Copy process, no file is needed to download or upload.
Faculty can copy all or part of the content into a new course or an existing course. The Blackboard course copy tool will only add content to a course; it will never delete or overwrite existing content. This is a good way to copy part of one course into another without overwriting any of the existing course's content. For example, if an instructor just wants to copy Course Documents, she can select only that content area.
Best Practices for Recycling & Reusing Content
- Plan on using Course Copy for the long term -- it is the preferred way among many institutions to recycle course content every semester.
- Support for the Export tool will be gradually reduced. You should plan to only use the Export tool to create an archive for your records and then store the package in Box.
- Request a master course shell to centralize all of your course's content and never lose a document, resource or learning object again!
-
Keeping those export packages can contribute to course bloat. We recommend that faculty delete packages from the course export page after downloading. Each package counts against the course quota and keeping packages may result in limited space to add additional content to the course.
Upcoming Training
The Course Copy tool, and several other new resources, will be available at the end of the SP2015 term for use during SU2015 and beyond. Two training sessions are planned:
To pre-register for either of these sessions, please select the linked session title and click the green "I Can Attend" button on the event page. We also recommend adding the workshop to your calendar.
Whether for a traditional, hybrid or online course, cultivating and maintaining the content in a course shell in Blackboard requires an investment of time and effort. Many faculty understandably want to preserve these resources and learning objects. The Course Copy tool provides a convenient and easy way.
Imagine you are a UMBC student and you’re on your computer but you need to use a certain piece of software that your current operating system does not support. The computer labs at school are either occupied or not open, what do you do? Why not try
Desktone, the virtual desktop that can solve all your software needs without you needing to leave your room.
Desktone is UMBC's virtual lab computing environment. From Desktone, you can access virtual lab computers with all of the software available in the general use computer labs on campus, so if you only have a Mac and you need to use Windows this is the tool for you. It’s available 24/7 and can support up to 100 simultaneous users.
A simple search on myUMBC for "Desktone" takes you directly to the
FAQ page for it. From here, students simply have to hit the giant “Click here for Desktone” banner and you are taken to a page where you have two key options: launch by downloading the Desktone software on your computer or you can connect to your virtual desktop through your own browser. If you decide to install Desktone, you’ll see optimal performance and is highly recommended.
The best part is there is no account creation necessary, using your own UMBC login credentials you can load up your own virtual desktop in no time. There is no need to be on UMBC’s own network either, so if you’re at home you can still access your virtual desktop.
Reny Thomas, an Information Systems major, uses desktone to get around his own computer’s limitations. Thomas said “Personally, this solved a huge issue for me. I currently use a chromebook, and I love everything about it. I can’t really install software. I was amazed when I was able to run windows via the VDI (virtual desktop infrastructure) and I could code Visual Basic through my chromebook.”
Having a virtual desktop does not mean you still can’t manage your own computer at the same time. “Since [Desktone] is accessed via an online link I can have it as a tab on my browser.” Thomas said “This allows me to use it as any other tab, and I am still able to access my personal files.”
Any issues students may run into have troubleshooting steps conveniently located on the
UMBC Desktop FAQ page. Desktone supports both iOS and Android as well and each have their own apps to download.
Some may think that simply going to the computer labs would benefit just as much. As Thomas puts it, “As long as the UMBC lab computers have the software the student needs, then the VDI is a perfect solution.”
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Imagine you are a UMBC student and you’re on your computer but you need to use a certain piece of software that your current operating system does not support. The computer labs at school are...
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