OIT has published a report on its activities for 2014-15.  Here are some highlights.

Strategic IT Realignment

Over the last 5 years, UCI has undergone a campus-wide consolidation of IT services while simultaneously grappling with unprecedented service demands. Organizational changes that had been postponed were implemented this year. Five new OIT “divisions” were established: Student & Academic Services, Enterprise Applications, Central Services, Enterprise Infrastructure, and Client Services.

Key Initiatives

OIT made significant progress this year on a number of initiatives in support of strategic priorities. Full details can be found in the online OIT 2014-15 activity summary page.

• Infrastructure improvements
  

UCI started a major network upgrade initiative in 2014 and replacement of our 30+ year old telephone system is nearly complete. The standard email for UCI students is nearly 100% cloud based (Gmail) and the faculty/staff email managed by OIT (Office 365 or Gmail) will be approaching the same metric by the end of 2015.

• Research and education
  

Thanks to a $500k NSF CC-NIE grant, we have established “UCI LightPath,” a separate “Science DMZ” network dedicated to research. UCI continues to expand the high performance research computing cluster (HPC). In the past year, 20+ smart classrooms and lecture halls in Engineering, Computer Sciences and Physical Sciences had technology upgrades and wireless coverage enhanced. UCI began a pilot of Instructure Canvas with a planned hybrid strategy which will augment our in-house EEE offerings to create a best-of-breed feature set for campus instructors.

• Administrative applications
  

In July 2014, UCI went live with its new enterprise financial system (KFS). The implementation phase of a major project to replace UCI’s legacy student information systems with the Ellucian Banner platform started in January 2015.  OIT worked with a number of units in an ongoing effort to enhance other campus administrative systems, including Kuali Coeus Research Administration, UC-Path, business intelligence using the Data Warehouse (Cognos), Facilities Management service platform (IBM Tririga), and Electronic Document Management (IBM FileNet).

Canvas is a learning management system (LMS) developed by Instructure.  OIT is piloting Canvas as a complement to the EEE LMS.  More information about Canvas and EEE can be found on the Canvas Pilot web site.

UCI’s year-long Canvas Pilot kicked off March 30th with the start of Spring instruction. The Canvas Pilot is an opportunity for instructors, teaching assistants, and students to use Canvas in their courses and participate in a formal assessment of the value and usability of Canvas as a potential addition to the instructional technology ecosystem at UCI.

Canvas was implemented for UCI during Winter quarter. During that time, the EEE team completed infrastructural development work including MyEEE integration, EEE assistants integration, UCI branding, WebAuth (UCInetID login) integration, and a data management utility to synchronize our campus Canvas instance with appropriate instructor, teaching assistant, student, course, and enrollment data for participating pilot courses.

We identified an initial group of early adopter instructors, created their Canvas course spaces, and (optionally) provided: EEE content migration, three-hour hands-on training workshops, as-needed support and consultation, and an informal pilot participant meet-up (this will be an ongoing, recurring event).

Participating instructors, TAs, and students were invited to complete their first pilot assessment activity: short, pre-quarter surveys designed to gather information on expectations and prior experiences in Canvas before the quarter is in full swing. Those surveys conclude Friday, April 3rd (end of the first week of classes).

The Canvas Pilot website (http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/) was launched shortly before Winter Recess and has been updated throughout the quarter with new information, including a feature comparison page (http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/comparison/), info for students (http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/students/), a list of participating courses (http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/participants/) and an assessment timeline (http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/about-canvas-pilot/). The EEE team also developed and launched a new EEE Help Center (http://help.eee.uci.edu/) with a dedicated Canvas Pilot section (http://help.eee.uci.edu/canvas/) that will be expanded as-needed based on campus feedback and support interactions.

We coordinated a new component of the formal assessment in collaboration with Donald Bren School of Information & Computer Sciences Professor Alfred Kobsa, who has tasked several groups in his undergraduate project class on user interface design and evaluation with conducting a usability evaluation of Canvas. Professor Kobsa’s students have previously reviewed the EEE website and worked with campus groups including the UCI Libraries and Distance Learning Center. They bring a fresh perspective and valuable skill set to this process.

As of March 26th, the pilot participants in Spring courses include: 6,083 students, 136 instructors, and 67 teaching assistants.

Next steps for the Canvas Pilot in the upcoming Spring 2015 quarter include mid- and post-quarter assessment surveys, student focus groups, info sessions (For instructors: https://eee.uci.edu/workshop/sg / TAs: https://eee.uci.edu/workshop/yg / Students: (https://eee.uci.edu/workshop/tg), and coordination with University Extension, the Distance Leanring Center, and Summer Session around participating Summer courses (both online and on-the-ground).