Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

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Instructional Support

OIT Does That? Classrooms and Labs

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OIT manages smart classrooms and computer labs to enrich the educational environment for our students and to provide resources to instructors.

Classroom technology is assembled and maintained by the OIT Classroom Technology Support (CTS) team.  They are responsible for 130 general-assignment smart classrooms. CTS also provides a will-call equipment rental service to the campus.

OIT Instructional Lab Support (ILS) supports 6 instructional lab classrooms, 5 drop-in computer labs, 2 staff training labs, and the virtual computing lab.  They also manage the printing management software and printing release stations in the computer labs and mobile printing.

Together, CTS and ILS ensure that hundreds of computers and other devices are functional, updated, regularly replaced, and ready for a range of instructional and training needs.

CTS and ILS work on behalf of instructors, departments, schools, clubs, and off-campus groups, and collaborate with a variety of teams on classroom, lab, or learning-space related projects.  Examples include:

Have questions about what we do, or what we can do for you? Feel free to contact our management team directly, or contact the CTS smartclassroom help desk (smartclassrooms@uci.edu, x48833) or the OIT help desk (oit@uci.edu, x42222).

Virtual Computer Lab

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VCL
UCI students, especially in the sciences and engineering, need to learn and use very high-end and often expensive software.  Buying a copy of each package for every lab computer at UCI is not feasible, so how can UCI offer this essential learning aid?

In collaboration with CSU Fullerton, UCI has made a virtual computing lab available.  Using a student’s own computer as the gateway, she or he can run packages such as ArcGIS, Matlab, and SPSS remotely.  These packages are fully licensed, and full-featured, but by fluidly sharing licensing and computing capacity, this service is provided at the fraction of the cost of a local, equally well equipped computer lab.  Additionally, this solution offers freedom of location and 24/7 service.

Canvas Pilot Update & Instructor Panel

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Canvas2015Canvas 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 website.

Pilot Instructor Panels – First-Hand Perspectives from Participating Instructors

On May 6th and June 2nd, OIT hosted the first two sessions of an ongoing series of Canvas Pilot instructor panel events featuring updates on the project’s progress.  The events featured first-hand perspectives from instructors using Canvas in their courses, including Kim Edwards (Chemistry), Miryha Runnerstrom (Health Sciences/Public Health), Ted Wright (Cognitive Science), Rose Jones (Academic English/ESL Program), and Nancy Aguilar-Roca (Ecology & Evolutionary Biology). The Distance Learning Center provided videography services and recordings of both events are available on the Canvas Pilot website.

Instructors – Create your Fall Canvas course space today!

All Fall 2015 quarter instructors who would like to participate in the Canvas Pilot can now create their own Fall 2015 Canvas course spaces. Currently, this process supports course spaces that include just one section. For other course space options, contact the EEE team or check back later in Summer; we’ll be adding more options to the self-service course space creation tool over the coming months.

Additional Updates

Recent work in the Canvas Pilot has included enabling Turnitin.com integration with the Canvas environment, which allows instructors to more easily work with the two systems, and improving handling of the integration between the Canvas API and custom data management utility. The results of pre-quarter instructor and student surveys, designed to gather brief, general information about participants’ expectations and prior experience with Canvas are now published. Spring assessments surveys are wrapping up in late June and the results will be posted when complete.

Instructional Spotlights on EEE

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EEE Instructional Spotlights

Are there innovative examples of teaching with technology that you would like to share? Perhaps an instructor created a unique assignment that helped students learn the concepts. Maybe you saw an interesting use of technology in the classroom or on a course webpage.

The new ‘Instructional Spotlights’ on the EEE homepage have so far featured the Schools of Biological Sciences, Humanities, Physical Sciences and Social Science, and we are always looking for more examples to share!

New and enhanced features on EEE

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The Office of Information Technology has been hard at work making improvements and adding functionality to the Electronic Educational Environment (EEE). The development team has modernized the look and feel of EEE, enhanced the mobile version, and made a significant number of functional updates (selected updates described below).

EEE Homepage

In addition to the enhanced features on EEE, you can access official UCI photos using the newly released MyPhoto functionality. Instructors and students can click on ‘Classmates’ on MyEEE to access the photos, which are made available based on user-preferences. For more information, please see https://eee.uci.edu/help/policy/tools/#photos

EEE also has a new YouTube channel, which contains a growing number of videos focused on new and existing functionality of the system.

Instructors, staff and students at UCI continue to use EEE in innovative ways and provide us with feedback about how to improve or expand the system. Your input about new features and enhancements, or questions about how to use EEE are welcome!

https://eee.uci.edu/contact/

EEE Mobile

  • Released ‘My Grades’
  • Released ‘Room Finder’
  • Released ‘Contact Us’
  • Enhanced view of classes for Summer Session courses
  • Provided an introduction to EEE Mobile at https://eee.uci.edu/help/mobile/

DropBox

  • Released ability to download a custom zip file, which includes only selected files
  • Provided a manifest file for each zip download, which facilitates recording of assignment scores in GradeBook
  • Increased default individual quota for all users from 3 GB to 5 GB

Help Documentation

EasyWebsite

  • Added capability to provide non-enrolled students with access to a restricted website
  • Automatically display the total number of times a document in a ‘Class Files’ section has been downloaded
  • User interface updates to increase the speed of page loads and mitigate against accidental site deletion

MyEEE

  • Provided CSV download of classes
  • Updated ‘Ask a Librarian’ Chat Widget

Quiz

  • Provided functionality to require students to agree to an ‘Academic Honesty Statement’ prior to taking quiz
  • User interface updates to instructor quiz views and scoring interface and mitigate against a student closing a window and losing responses

MessageBoard

  • Enable hidden identity, in addition to anonymous and identified
  • Allowed group UCInetIDs to create and administer messageboards
  • Provided input-checking to provide users with more immediate feedback when attaching files to posts