MinerAlert
MinerAlert
UTEP TECHNOLOGY SUPPORT
A joint effort with the College of Education.
Classroom 302 in the Education building was identified as an underutilized space. The existing regular-size Active Learning Classrooms (ALC) in the Education Building and the professional development program offered by the College of Education on active learning teaching techniques was considered in the selection of this room with 2,654 square feet into becoming the first large-size active learning classroom in UTEP.
Result: The transformation of Education 302 was completed on time for the spring 2020 courses. This room has an open floor plan with moveable desks and furniture, 8 individual television monitors which students can connect to wirelessly, a large projection for the instructor, and wireless plushy microphones students can toss around. This classroom provides faculty the flexibility to modify the learning environment and shift technology to break students into groups and engage in team-based learning. Active learning classrooms are not new to UTEP, but until now have only been available to small enrollment classes.
A moving forward direction is to look at opportunities to transition the use of academic software that traditionally installs on desktops/laptops or accessed thru our cloud into the vendor’s cloud ecosystem. In recent years, software vendors with on-demand access to their products continues to grow. To provide faster access to new product versions and features for UTEP users, we will be relocating our existing resources into vendor’s cloud offering on-demand access to their software. In addition, software on-demand only requires a web browser to access the software. This feature along with the use of Respondus Lockdown browser will increase the adoption of e-Exams in courses where students need access to the software while taking an exam (i.e. Mathematica in Mechanical Engineering courses) using their own laptops.
Result: MatLab and Mathematica are two popular software environments for students in Engineering, Computer Science, and Business. Similar to other software, these are available at no cost to UTEP students, faculty, and researchers. This powerful software can now be accessed directly from the cloud through a web browser without any installation or configuration requirements. Students may also download the software to their device if they prefer to keep it on their computer.
Incoming students may go out and purchase a laptop for college. They take this journey without guidance and most likely spend more money than they should (i.e. laptop packages, which includes software that UTEP provides at no cost to them). In collaboration with Student Affairs, we will connect with new students as early as when they get their acceptance letter and provide them with information on free technology resources and guidance in buying a laptop.
Result: We signed program agreements with Dell and Apple to provide custom web stores with discounted prices on standardized laptops for UTEP students. Admission packets have been updated to provide incoming students with information about purchasing a laptop.
Microsoft’s Windows Defender is the built-in anti-virus (AV) protection for all Windows supported operating systems. We are currently using BitDefender for campus computers and would like transition to Windows Defender. For this project, we will conduct a pilot of Windows Defender by enabling it on all computers in two of our campus computer labs. This pilot will take place starting Fall 2019.
Result: The advanced version of Windows Defender; Microsoft Advanced Threat Protection (ATP), was deployed to Windows and Mac OS computers in the Collaborative Learning Center. Microsoft ATP and other security-related systems such as disk encryption, firewall, and security policies can be administered from a single pane of glass, Endpoint Security Center.
Desktop Management and Information Security teams should work together to evaluate Microsoft ATP in this lab environment. If Microsoft ATP can provide the same level of protection as Bitdefender and Security Management is simplified through Endpoint Security Center, we would recommend that Bitdefender’s subscription is not renewed in 2022.
In efforts to improve the overall Blackboard user experience, we will be implementing the Blackboard Learn Ultra Experience, which will consist of the overall transformation of the user interface and workflows in Blackboard. This project will be implemented in two phases.
The first phase will be the activation of the Ultra Base Navigation. Enabling the Ultra Base Navigation will allow us to transform the existing Blackboard landing page into a more modernized look, allowing intuitive navigation that will provide quick access for faculty and students to the most critical information from across their courses. It creates a more engaging, efficient, and improved experience for faculty and students without any changes to the actual courses. Our goal is to turn on the Ultra Base Navigation in spring 2020.
The second phase will be to start the transition of courses to the Ultra Course View. Like with Ultra Base Navigation, Ultra Course View provides a cleaner, intuitive and more modern design at the course level. With Ultra course view, the workflows and tools for faculty to build their courses will be much simpler to find and use in comparison to the existing “Original Course view” we are currently using. This will also improve the overall user experience for students across their courses. Tentative transition start date is spring 2021.
Result: The Ultra Base Navigation was enabled on December 23, 2019. Both students and faculty now see a new landing page that is simple, modern, and easy to use. The left menu provides an easier way to get to resources like Courses, Grades, and the Activity Stream, which is a feed of any important alerts from all of your courses. The new design is also responsive, so it works well on any device.
In collaboration with the University Library, Technology Support's TeachTech Program was transformed into an initiative designed to empower a group of faculty to replace their commercial textbooks. Eighteen faculty across disciplines, working with the Provost's Office, Technology Support, and the UTEP Library, transformed their courses by creating or curating OER materials so that students did not have to pay additional textbook or course material costs.
Result: This initiative successfully saved students $188,476.25 in textbook costs, provided access to their course materials from Day 1, and reduced drop, withdrawal, and failure rates during spring, summer, and fall 2020 terms in participating courses. Faculty used the Learning Management System (LMS) as the foundation to successfully eliminate the use of any commercial textbooks in their courses. For more information on this initiative, please visit www.utep.edu/oer .
We decided to replace CrashPlan with the Microsoft OneDrive (included in UT System – Microsoft agreement) desktop application. We configure OneDrive to automatically backup the user's desktop, documents, and picture folders to the Microsoft cloud.
Result: CrashPlan by Code 42 (aka MyBackup) was retired on June 20, 2020.
A couple of highlights about this initiative:
An increased interest by faculty on flipping the classroom has provoked us to look into the technology that can facilitate the creation and sharing of videos. We have collaborated a video content management system, and had a pilot with faculty in various departments in Spring 2019. The features that we will explore during the pilot include the following:
• Embed interactive quizes to videos
• Indexing videos
• The ability for students to create and edit videos within Blackboard
• Use of analytics to measure the engagement of videos
Result: An RFP for a video management systems was put out by UTEP in the fall of 2019 concluding with a three-year agreement with Yuja Inc. Yuja is now the centrally supported Video Content Management System (VCMS) for UTEP’s instructional use. The VCMS facilitates the creation and management of multimedia. Its' robust integration with the Learning Management System (LMS) makes it a great resource for faculty to flip or hybridize their courses.
As of spring 2020, all Blackboard Learn courses have access to the Yuja.