IT Newsletter Students T3

From the Director

Over the last few years IT at UNE have been working hard to replace and reconfigure our IT systems to provide our students with the best IT environment for studying and research. In fact we have invested over $18 million into our IT services demonstrating UNE’s commitment to offering the best on-line IT services. We are now looking to develop the next IT strategic plan and we want you to tell us what it should look like. What should we be focusing on from a technology perspective to ensure you can best achieve your academic goals? What applications or IT services do you want to see provided by IT? Please give this some thought and send me an email- directorIT@une.edu.au, or join us at some face-to-face and on-line focus groups (with free pizza) to thrash out the future technology roadmap.

Our IT service team are top of their game and have been voted number one for IT service to students by you, in four of the past five years (2011, 2012, 2013 and 2015). We narrowly missed out on this title last year so the team dug in for 2015 and our result has improved by 7 percent with 87% of UNE students stating they are very satisfied with IT services. A big thank you to everybody who completed the survey and supported us. We know that technology is very important to your success and studying with the best university IT services is a great step to ensuring your future academic and research aspirations are achieved.

Finally, I would like to let you know that UNE Skype for Business for students was launched last month (November). You are the first students in Australia to be provided with Microsoft Skype for Business by a university. Demonstrating UNE’s commitment to being the best on-line university! Now you can call, video call, instant message, collaborate on documents with UNE staff and students with no additional call charges other than the use of an Internet connection. This is a very powerful application and we can’t wait to see you make full use of it – Happy Skyping!

Skype for Business is Here!

In the trimester break UNE launched Skype for Business for all our students.

Skype for Business (also known as Lync on Macs and mobile devices) is part of the Microsoft Office suite and is a communication and collaboration tool that lets you use your computer or mobile device to make phone calls, instant message, video-chat, have ad-hoc or scheduled online video meetings/webinars, share screen and content with other students and staff at UNE. You can use your UNE Skype for Business to call your lecturer or UNE Administrative staff without incurring additional call costs to you from any appropriate Internet connected device.

If you already have Microsoft Office installed (either the free student license available to UNE students or your own paid version) it is likely that you already have the Skype for Business (Lync on Mac) client installed on your computer and will be able to log-in right now.

No more @une for Student Emails 

In late 2012, UNE introduced Microsoft’s Office365 email system to all students with an @myune.edu.au email address. Prior to that date, student email addresses had an @une.edu.au suffix.

To maintain backwards compatibility for existing students, we kept the @une.edu.au suffix working for all student email addresses.

We are now going to DISCONTINUE support for @une.edu.au student email addresses. If you have been a student at UNE for more than 3 years and are still using your old @une.edu.au email address in some context (including login to Facebook or other non-UNE systems) please make sure you change to your current @myune.edu.au over the next few weeks.

Soon, emails to studentusername@une.edu.au will no longer be automatically forwarded to studentusername@myune.edu.au – instead the will bounce back to the sender.

IF YOU ARE ONLY USING YOUR USERNAME@MYUNE EMAIL ADDRESS YOU ARE NOT AFFECTED BY THE CHANGES.

Minimum Computer Requirements 

The minimum system requirements for a computer for your studies can be found at http://www.une.edu.au/current-students/support/it-services/hardware

The currently supported operating systems are  Mac OS10.8 (or higher-we recommend 10.9) or Windows 7, Windows 8.1 or Windows 10.

We recommend that you have at least two browsers (out of Internet Explorer, Safari, Firefox and Google Chrome) installed on your computer as not all websites are compatible with all browsers and it is sometimes necessary to switch browsers for certain pages.

Please note that Microsoft Edge (on Windows 10) is not currently supported and incompatible with some UNE systems such as Moodle. Please use Internet Explorer as an alternative on Windows 10 or another compatible browser such as Chrome or Firefox.

Protect your computer 

As a UNE student, you can download a free copy of Sophos Antivirus for your computer. If you don’t have any antivirus software currently installed (or a running a free version or one that has expired), we strongly recommend that you download  a copy to protect your computer and, more importantly your data.

This is especially important if you are living on campus or are planning to visit UNE and connect to the UNE network—having current antivirus software running is a prerequisite to connect to our wireless (or wired) network.

You can find more info and a download link at  http://www.une.edu.au/current-students/support/it-services/antivirus

NVIVO

Interested in NVIVO stats software? UNE has a site license for students—available from  http://software.une.edu.au/une-only/Nvivo/