IT Steering Committee Meeting 2/4/2021

Retreat summary                                                                                                                                                                                                                  

At the retreat, we talked about the technology to meet the needs of new demands from students, both the ones who are seeking degrees or just credentials. 

Online learning has broadened the opportunities, but first-time students must meet face to face to make sure they belong in a community. 

There is an urgency for UMBC to adapt to the new market and the competition. 

VoIP Raymond Soellner.

DoIT is currently replacing the campus phone system with VoIP. We have moved 600 numbers to VoIP during 2020. We are exploring call center features for Enrollment and ORL  to reach students and for symptom tracking. 

The plan for 2021 is to move over the rest of campus office phones into VoIP. There will only be a few users in need of an actual desk phone, and DoIT will identify these users. It is so much easier to have your phone number follow your computer where ever you are. There is very little need for a physical phone. 

Hybrid Work Enhancement will be installed in main conference rooms all over campus.

The goal is for a remote worker to participate in a meeting as easily as in person.

We have upgraded a few classrooms for Hybrid Learning, and they are in use now. We are interested to hear from the faculty what is going well and what needs improvement.

Classrooms for HyFlex Instruction/ John and Damian

Several classrooms are already turned into Active learning classrooms. Very important with feedback on how it is working if we want to transform even more classrooms. Works. Here is a link to an article that was published not long ago about this project.

https://doit.umbc.edu/news/?id=98090

Campus WebPage/ Bryan Barnes

The primary audience is Prospective Students, Admitted students, Influencers (Families and counselors), Secondary, Current students, Alumni, Staff, Faculty, Donors, Job seekers, government, 

We are currently working on rearranging the website: One home page will lead to main topic pages, subtopic pages, and regular posts.

The new website will be more mobile-friendly, but today most of the traffic is not from mobile devices. (maybe because it’s not mobile-friendly today….)

Helena Dahlen