With the new appointments in the Technical Services Unit, more accommodation needed to be found to house them. More appropriate accommodation for existing staff was also required, so the growth in number has spurred us on to reorganise current arrangements.
The Help Desk team are in the process of moving to the new comedu helpdesk area. More TSU staff will move into the area as the ICT project winds down later this year, and as the space can be properly fitted out for their occupation.
Now that some of the Division’s facilities are more available for students, printing to printers in a number of labs needs to be reconsidered. Currently in a number of students labs printers are available to service in-class printing needs free from the normal student printing charges. Now that the students who use the spaces can access them while the buildings are open, they now also have access to free printing here as well, contrary to University policy that says all students should be charged the same for printing across the campus.
Should the printing remain free, where experience has shown students become aware of the facility fairly quickly and printer use (and Divisional costs) increase dramatically, or should printing be charged for in these facilities?
Over the class-free period work was completed on the installation of the CardAX access system to teaching spaces in Building 5 and Building 9.
Although it is still early days yet, so far the installation, commissioning and operation seems to have gone smoothly, although there are some teething problems.
Some students where unable to access spaces where their unit number had been left off a list provided to Security, and one staff member with an old staff card was unable to access a room until his card was replaced with the new type. Some individual student cards did not operate the doors when the cards of others enrolled in the same unit worked: cards that fail need to be taken to Security for examination.
Some lecturers are still using keys to enter doors where the staff card should be used, and propping doors open. This defeats the purpose of the system somewhat: if there is a problem with access using a card (staff or student) that should work on the door, the issue needs to be taken up with Security.
Course Convenors should contact Security before the beginning of each Semester to advise them of who requires access to which spaces over the coming Semester. Requests should be provided for each space where access is required: listing staff names and staff id numbers, and unit numbers of students requiring access to the rooms (or names and student id numbers where there is no unit number applicable). Security should also be advised of any limitation on access, otherwise access will be provided during building opening hours, for the whole of the Semester.
Recent staff changes have again highlighted the difficulty posed by people advertising their individual email addresses for official purposes. When the staff member leaves or moves to another position, official email may be lost or delayed.
While there is a project currently running in the University to develop a schema for so-called generic email addresses (position@canberra.edu.au rather than firstname.surname@canberra.edu.au), the variety of purposes requiring generic addresses makes it difficult to develop a working schema, let alone manage one effectively.
All marketing and promotional materials (especially printed materials) should contain generic email addresses where possible. Contact the cehelpdesk in the first instance for advice on how to obtain and manage generic email addresses.
ICT Services has advised that the comedu Divisional Web pages (not the Schools, but the Divisional pages) will be able to be included in the UC Web Content Management System in the near future.
Any comments of the existing pages are welcome to inform us of how the migration is handled: whether the existing pages are more or less moved to the new system or changes are made in the structure and content.
One item of concern is the Majors and Minors section of the existing site. It will be difficult to update and transfer that part of the site in its present form so it may have to be dropped. University approved majors and minors are published on the University website, but it appears at this stage they can’t be displayed by Division. Is this a suitable alternative?
