ITD Newsletter Volume 1, 2016

From the Director

We’re finished or so I thought! The last five years has seen a transformation in the information and communication technology at UNE. The investment and effort has been enormous as has been the improvement and increase in UNE capability as a result. UNE is a world leader in its technological capability. Now it’s up to our staff and students to show the world what we can do with it. This is a new paradigm in computing capability, we need to move on from bad experiences we’ve had in previous incarnations and as Nike say, ‘Just do it’.As we come to the end of this phase of work and we can see the light at the end of the tunnel, so launches the new UNE Strategic Plan 2016—2020 with a key strategy for Digital Dominance, so the light at the end of the tunnel fades and the next tunnel is coming into view! This is what we in IT live for, and we are very excited to have visionary leadership that aims to change the world and the way it’s educated. Anyone working with UNE or studying at UNE should feel proud and engaged by the opportunities this presents, and I expect some positive challenges along the way.

The ITD Management team is now working through the research for the next IT Strategic Plan, in order to map out the objectives to be achieved to position UNE as the digital leader. Significantly, it will be the use of technology that achieves digital dominance, so everyone connected with UNE has an important part to play in achieving this strategy, so please add your support. We would also like to hear your views on what we should do in ITD to make this strategy achievable for you. We are running a series of workshops that you can attend or you can email or phone me to share your thoughts.We have reached a couple of other milestones since the last newsletter, including the new video conferencing bridge coming into operation and the completion of the wireless network project.  These are big ticket items in the capability that they provide. The video conferencing bridge now allows us to integrate all of our video conferencing rooms, including telepresence with our Skype for Business environment, so wherever you are and however you choose to connect its an easy process. The wireless upgrade is the best currently achievable in terms of the technology, capacity, integration with our environment and coverage. If you’ve ever had frustrations getting wireless access at UNE then this should be a thing of the past. If you do encounter access issues its more likely to be your mobile device than our network, but if you do find a black spot let us know and we’ll fix it!

Finally I would like to congratulate the IT team on achieving the number one position for IT Student Support in Australia and New Zealand again in 2015. We have an amazing team that are very committed to providing the best possible IT services.Enjoy the Newsletter!

A winner with UNE students!
The ITD team at UNE has been recognised again in 2015 for providing the best IT support services to students in Australia and New Zealand in the annual IT Service Quality benchmarks. This is the fourth year that ITD has achieved this award in the past five years, narrowly missing out in 2014. As an online university this award signals to our students that UNE offers great services to maintain a high overall study experience.

Moot Court technology upgrade

Access to a Moot Court is a critical component of UNE’s Law degrees. When it first opened in 2005 the UNE Moot Court was among the best in the country – 10 years on, ITD have completed a full technology upgrade to bring it back to its class-leading status. The upgraded technologies include:

• 2 AMX touch panels – allowing full control and automation of the room from both the judge and presenter locations
• Two high-definition and high-brightness data projectors – allowing the room to operate in a standard “Moot” mode with a single screen on the side, or a “Tutorial” mode with both a side screen and a large front screen available
• Two high-definition controllable cameras – allowing simultaneous views of the judge and prosecutor/defence/witness, or presenter and students during video conferences and recordings
• Echo360 recording of all cameras and devices within the room
• Laptop connections points at the presenter and student tables
• High-definition document camera
• Upgraded network capabilities allowing support staff to monitor all equipment and provide live technical assistance for events and teaching activities

High-definition video conferencing using both a Polycom hardware codec and/or Skype for Business software – Allowing external students to participate fully in the Moot experience and join lectures and tutorials remotely Individual LCD monitors and desk microphones at the presenter and student tablesIR hearing assistance system

The AV team will run training sessions over the next few weeks to help all interested staff to become familiar with the new space:

Wednesday 17 Feb 2016 at 10:00am - 11:00am  and  11:00am - 12:00pm

Thursday 18 Feb 2016 at 12:00pm - 1:00pm   and   1:00pm - 2:00pm

Please let us know via email to av-support@une.edu.auif you plan to attend a particular session (individual sessions may be cancelled if no responses are received).

If you are unable to attend one of the above sessions, but would still like training, please contact us to arrange an alternate day/time: ph:02 6773 2489  or email: av-support@une.edu.au

Printing

As we are entering the second year of our new Fuji Xerox print fleet, it’s interesting to look back at the figures for printing. In 2015, a total of 950,000 print jobs/copies (yes, that’s nearly a million!) were made on the fleet of 135 printers, around 80,000 per month (this includes both staff and student printing).

25% of those print outs were in colour, 75% black and white.
That’s a huge amount of paper! What can you do to reduce it?

Think before you print.

Do you really need a print out? Can you read the document on screen and/or take it to your meeting on an iPad or tablet? Can you print only a selection of pages (eg just the relevant part of an email, not the whole trail or print 2 pages to a sheet)?

Use the my-prints print queue (aka Follow Me printing).

Make my-prints your default printer. It’s a virtual printer that holds on to your print job on the server and only sends it to a printer once you are in front of an MFD and have swiped your card. More secure and avoids the pile of uncollected printing next to every MFD.

Does it have to be colour?

A colour print out is nearly 10 times the cost of a black and white print out. Unless a document contains graphs or other information where colour is needed, does it really need to be in colour? Reducing the percentage of colour print outs would have a significant impact on UNE’s printing bill.

Online marking?

In 2015 about half of all assignments were printed – the other half was marked online. If you haven’t tried online marking, give it a go!

Fuji Xerox are offering training on the fleet at any point, either as an ad-hoc session by the FXA valet, Jason Dell, or as a more organised small training session one-on-one or for a group of people. If there are functions of the MFDs you’d like to know more about, get in touch with the IT Service Desk and we’ll pass the request on.

New parking app!
The Administrative Applications Team in ITD are pleased to announce the rollout of the UNE parking application. Work started in October 2015 using an Agile development framework. The application was released on Monday 1 February.

It was created in-house by a team of developers under the auspices of the FMS Parking Administration team. The application brings many benefits: allowing the creation of self-designed reports, keeping  applicants informed of the status of their application, and providing access to a secure payments gateway for both online credit cards and cashier-based payments.

All staff/students/contractors at the UNE Armidale campus will now be able to apply for a parking permit online using this system. The previous system was owned and operated by a third party and due to some major issues it was no longer available. Subsequently, the parking team came to ITD and enquired if anything could be built in-house. By developing the application in-house, it allows for a more dynamic response to meet the changing requirements of the FMS team.

UNE’s new wireless network

The Infrastructure Services Group within ITD has come to the end of the major infrastructure project to upgrade and expand UNE's wireless network.  For the first time UNE's wireless network is available at all UNE sites and in all buildings including residential colleges and regional student study centres. While 100% coverage of every room in every building may not have been achieved, we've come pretty close.

New cabling was run to each of the 1200 new Wireless Access Points (WAPs) to permit an aggregate data transfer rate of 1300 megabit/s from each WAP (assuming multiple users are downloading at the same time). Actual data rates achieved by an individual device will depend on how far it is from a WAP, and the age of the wireless
technology being used in the laptop, smartphone, tablet, etc.  Real world download speeds approaching 500
megabits have been recorded on a laptop connected to the wireless network.

The old wireless network, "UNEnet", has now been decommissioned to leave only the single wireless network "eduroam". The major benefit of devices being configured to use eduroam is that, as staff and students visit other universities, hospitals and research establishments, their devices will "just work" on the eduroam network that can usually be found in those locations.  The availability of eduroam is increasing globally, and can certainly to be found in just about every Australian university.

One advantage of the new high-bandwidth network is that students will be able to stream video-based teaching material (e.g. from Echo360) wherever they are on any UNE site, even in their rooms in the residential colleges.
For staff, a wireless network that covers pretty much all of UNE's premises means that their network-hosted
documents and other online resources are now available to them at all times.

UNE's new telephony and collaboration system, Microsoft's Skype for Business (SfB - formerly  Microsoft Lync), works well with the new wireless network - the latter has the capability to prioritise SfB data and thus minimise interruptions due to congestion with others using the same WAP.