Enterprise Collaboration Software

After four years of discussions, some progress on an Enterprise Collaboration Environment.

At its meeting on Thursday 17 August 2006 the University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) endorsed the recommendations of an Acumen Alliance consultancy report that concluded that Microsoft Exchange and Microsoft Sharepoint Portal Server are the best functional fit for the University to support email, calendaring, contact lists, task lists and file sharing as an enterprise-wide system for staff.

UIMSC has established a working group consisting of the IT Managers of the Academic Divisions and some ICT personnel to prepare an implementation plan.

The Division of Communication and Education has been using Exchange for email for a number of years now, so the transition from a Divisional-supported email system to a University-provided system should not be too problematic and require little adjustment if any for most staff in the Division. Existing Outlook and Entourage users should experience no differences after some settings are adjusted.

The movement of the calendar from the Oracle system to Exchange will require more work especially with staff training and support for those staff who don’t currently use a Calendar, or don’t use Microsoft Outlook or Entourage as their email client. In the longer term to move to Exchange Calendar across the campus should provide a much more integrated system for managing scheduling and communication than the current environment allows.

Implementation and use of the Sharepoint document sharing system is an unknown quantity at the moment since it is a completely new system for the Division. Certainly an ongoing commitment to training and support within the Division will be required if document sharing is to be used actively and appropriately in the Division.

The email and address list stage of the project at least should be in place by the end of this year.

Blackboard Patent

It's amazing what the US Patent Office (and IP Australia) will patent these days.

Blackboard Inc., owners of the Blackboard and WebCT Learning Management Systems, has been issued a patent by the US patent office “for technology used for internet-based education support systems and methods. The patent covers core technology relating to certain systems and methods involved in offering online education, including course management systems and enterprise e-Learning systems.” [http://www.blackboard.com/company/press/release.aspx?id=887622]. A corresponding patent has been issued in Australia, among other places, and patents are pending in a number of other territories. MyClasses, Drupal, Moodle, and Sakai are examples of LMSs that the Division uses or has expressed an interest in using which may infringe Blackboard’s patent.

With the University currently in the process of reviewing its LMS options, it may be constrained in its choice of systems by the Blackboard patent. Blackboard has already filed a Patent Infringement Notice with one of its competitors, Desire2Learn, and may pursue its rights against other LMS developers both commercial and open source.

In the past patents like the Blackboard one issued by the US Patent Office have been overturned on appeal, especially where “prior art” exists. BlackBoard CEO, Michael Chasen, is himself quoted as saying “We [Blackboard] certainly did not invent e-learning or course management systems.” [http://www.downes.ca/cgi-bin/page.cgi?topic=8], so it is unlikely that the patent will stand. In the meantime, though, it may complicate the University’s procedures in updating its current WebCT LMS.

eduRoam

Why can't you log on when visiting another another educational institution?

eduroam, or Education Roaming, is a system for allowing education users visiting other educational institutions to log on to the local computer network using their username and password from their home institution. eduroam is available in Australia, most European countries and Taiwan. Dr Robert Fitzgerald from the Division’s School of Education and Community Studies raised the issue of whether the University of Canberra is a participant in the scheme, but it appears no-one has asked before.

eduroam Australia is managed by AARNET, Australia’s Research and Academic Network, and has a wireless focus, allowing users from participating institutions to access each others’ wireless infrastructure with their home credentials. In the ACT, the Australian Catholic University, the Australian National University, CSIRO’s Division of Forestry, and AARNET itself all provide eduroamers with access to their networks.

Executive should ask the University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) to investigate whether the University of Canberra should join the scheme.

Colour Printing in the Division

Colour printing is becoming increasingly common, but can we afford to offer the service in the Division?

Depending on the printer and other variables, colour printing costs upwards of 15 cents per A4 page for toners, compared with 1 to 3 cents for black. Options for colour printing in the Division are limited to a few printers purchased to satisfy specific requirements, and one with Alan Nicol that can be used on a cost recovery basis by staff in the Division with requirements for colour printing. The Curriculum Resources Centre has colour photocopying and printing, but there is no mechanism in place to charge for printing so colour printing is not available to staff. Tourism has a colour MFD with rights to print in colour managed by the section.

Alan’s colour printer is out of warranty and should be replaced, although when he leaves at the end of this year the Division will need to decide what if anything to do to support colour printing beyond the end of the year.

Mechanisms to manage colour printing effectively do exist, but implementing them in our environment (Divisional and University) may be resource-intensive. With the Executive’s approval, the Technical Services Unit will investigate options for providing colour printing to the Division on a manageable basis with the printing costs to be borne by individual Schools or Centres, or by the Division.

Microteaching rooms bookings

Trying to organise appropriate access to Divisional resources

Students and staff in a number of units have been using the Microteaching rooms in Building 5 for many years for recording presentations and interviews. In 2004/5 the rooms were upgraded using funds from the DEST Infrastructure Grant for the National Institute of Language Learning (NILL) with better quality video and audio recording equipment, SmartBoard electronic whiteboards and video projectors.

School of Education and Community Studies students recording presentations and interviews for assessable work are the most frequent users of the rooms. School of Languages and International Education staff and students also book the rooms for presentation work in regular tutorials, although it is unclear whether they use the video and sound recording capabilities and other specialist facilities in the rooms. The SmartBoards in these rooms are used also in the Information Technology and Education unit to familiarise prospective teachers with the sort of equipment they will have available to them in classrooms when they graduate.

Student bookings are managed through the use of booking sheets in the anteroom outside the Microteaching rooms. The rooms are also included in the University timetable system as Divisional rooms, and can be booked through Syllabus+.

Recently the rooms were block-booked through Syllabus+ for the ACT Department of Education and Training to conduct interviews with prospective teachers. Students who had booked the rooms for video recording using the booking sheets were unable to use the spaces and emergency arrangements had to be made elsewhere in the Division to accommodate their requirements. Also some tutorials are booked into these rooms on a regular basis, but the facilities are not used during the tutorial much if at all. While the rooms are occupied by tutorials, students wanting to use them for their assessments can’t get in, increasing the pressure on the use of the rooms (towards the due date for assignments it is often impossible for some students to make a booking in the rooms at all).

With the increasing pressure on the use of the specialist facilities of the rooms, bookings for the rooms should be removed from Syllabus+ and only used for the specialised purposes for which they were designed.