News for and about University of Portland faculty and staff.
According to information services CIO Curt Pederson, Ben Kahn (pictured) from academic technology services and innovations will be leaving his position at UP on October 8. “Ben will be extremely missed at UP,” says Pederson. “He has done a fantastic job during his time here in both his prior Moodle role and as interim director of ATSI. Please join me in wishing Ben well as he starts a new chapter in his career.”
For more information, please email pedersoc@up.edu.
Information Services has enabled Single Sign On (SSO) for Zoom.
Additionally, Zoom has announced important updates to security settings mandating the use of either the waiting room or a meeting passcode. We will be enabling waiting rooms as a default setting on Friday, August 14. We highly encourage you to get familiar with and start using these features on your own ahead of the change to maximize the security for your meetings and class sessions. Visit Zoom’s support site to learn more.
For questions or troubleshooting, ATSI can be reached via email at atsi@up.edu.
As part of our initiative to support hybrid and online learning, information services is providing Zoom Pro accounts for all campus users. Instructors or others with a need to hold remote meetings or classes will have the option to use Zoom Pro or Microsoft Teams.
A few reminders:
Academic technology services & innovation will be administering Zoom at UP. Please contact atsi@up.edu with any questions or concerns.
Benjamin Kahn, M.S.Ed.
Acting Director | Technology Solutions Architect
Academic Technology Services & Innovation | Information Services
University of Portland
Academic technology services & innovation will be offering a weekly series of “Wednesday Webinars” and “Moodle Mondays” to support faculty who are preparing for hybrid and online instruction this fall. UP faculty can find all session times, details, and RSVP forms on the Hybrid & Online Basecamp Moodle page.
For more information contact ATSI at atsi@up.edu.
Starting on Tuesday, June 16, you will notice some changes when logging in to TechSmith Relay, most notably a new name: Knowmia.
The good news, however, is that none of your video links or University of Portland’s TechSmith address (up.techsmithrelay.com) will be changing, so you will not need to update course pages or bookmark new links in order to access the items that you need. TechSmith Knowmia will also continue to be accessed by the same icon (simply called TechSmith) in your My Apps portal.
Where you will notice changes are the names and colors in places like email notifications, your landing page after logging in, and TechSmith’s own help pages. However, these will not affect the function of the product and you can continue using it as before. During their transition, TechSmith will also include the language “formerly TechSmith Relay” in communications and on sites to help alleviate any confusion.
Why are they changing the name you ask? In short, TechSmith hopes this name change will more fully reflect the purpose that their product has developed. Full information on the changes and the story behind the new name can be found in TechSmith’s announcement using this link.
Questions about using TechSmith? Contact academic technology services and innovation at atsi@up.edu.
Academic Technology Services and Innovation staff will be installing Moodle updates to make sure we have the latest security and bug fixes on Thursday, June 18, at 9 p.m. We expect to have Moodle available again by 10 p.m.
Please direct any questions or concerns to atsi@up.edu.
Machine (auto-generated) captions have been enabled on any new videos uploaded to UP MediaSpace, according to Ben Kahn, academic technology services & innovation. Captions can be toggled on or off by viewers with the CC button on the video player. A video owner can edit or remove the auto-captions by navigating to Actions->Edit->Captions on their media page.
The accuracy of these auto-generated captions is fairly high and ATSI staff hope they will make videos usable for all, however, auto-captions are not at the accuracy level required for accessibility under the Americans With Disabilities Act (ADA). As a reminder, if you are using video in a course or publishing a public video that needs to be accessible please contact atsi@up.edu to learn how to have a video asset captioned professionally.
The Academic Technology Services and Innovation team will be hosting a variety of Q&A sessions during the week of May 4. These sessions will address basics as well as lessons learned from the Spring 2020 term. To see the schedule of sessions, please visit the ATSI Training Calendar.
Additional questions about materials or resources? Contact ATSI at atsi@up.edu.
The academic technology services and innovation office has scheduled a brief downtime for Moodle upgrades on Friday, May 8, from 9 to 10 a.m. We’ll be getting the latest Moodle fixes in place and getting Moodle ready for an online summer semester!
Also, the course creation process for fall semester is underway and should be completed by the time you are reading this. If you’d like to have course sections combined please see our Request a Course Merge Moodle Guide.
Would you like to consult with an instructional designer or get additional training on Moodle to plan for fall 2020? Please contact atsi@up.edu.
The spring 2020 semester has been full of new experiences, innovation, and incredible teamwork by our campus community to make the quick transition to help our students complete their coursework remotely. As the term comes to a close, the Academic Technology Services and Innovation team would like to take a moment to look back on the lessons learned. How did things go? What resources would be useful to future online learning? Did you have an “a-ha” moment that might be helpful for others? Share your thoughts with us via the Online Learning Feedback Survey.
Thoughts or questions not covered in the survey? ATSI is here for you! Send us a message anytime at atsi@up.edu.