January 2020 IT Projects

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Classrooms for the Future

Classroom reassessments have been completed for Summer 2019 upgrades. Classrooms that were upgraded over winter break will need to be reassessed over the next few weeks. As the overall project nears completion, the CFTF project team will prepare final reports for each of the campuses relating to work that has been accomplished, updated assessments, maintenance recommendations and suggestions for future upgrades.

A USDA RUS grant has been awarded to the University of Maine System in the amount of $500,000. This money will be used to convert both video conferencing and instructional TV 20th century distance education systems to a new 21st century web conferencing solution. 62 sites, centers and campuses across the State of Maine will receive upgraded equipment as a result of this award. The scope of this work will fall under the CFTF project.

Discoverer Migration

A Discoverer Usage Report has been generated by the project team and will continue to be monitored. There are currently 28 Discoverer users, and a project update was sent to all users. Of the 28 users, 14 are considered “power users” and meetings will be scheduled with each of them to discuss next steps for transitioning off Discoverer. 

The Power BI Premium license was purchased and a third party consultant, Blue Granite, will assist with implementation. We anticipate this work to be completed by early March.

LMS Brightspace

The Spring 2020 Brightspace Live Course pilot successfully launched on January 21st and includes 88 courses from 4 campuses. In preparation, faculty training and communication on participating campuses, as well as pilot support models and subsequent training, were developed and deployed.

Additional recently completed activities include:

  • Configuration of single-sign on and vanity URL (courses.maine.edu) 
  • Successful completion of 15 third-party integrations with Brightspace, with seven additional integrations in progress
  • Deployment of Brightspace test environment
  • In-depth D2L Instructor Tools training of faculty cohorts from UMA and USM
  • Migration of initial set of courses from Blackboard to Brightspace
  • Introductory consultation with D2L Support Manager re: Admin and End-User Support processes and guidelines

UMPI and UMFK Salesforce Project

The Salesforce CRM instance went live on November 18, 2019 for the UMPI and UMFK campuses. The Salesforce Marketing Cloud build is about 80% complete. Next steps include Marketing Cloud training with anticipated go live by February 14th.

UMS Wireless Infrastructure

Work on this project continues with the final $2M in upgrades scheduled for 2020. At the conclusion of this project, a total of 73 academic buildings and 17 residence halls will have been updated over a four-year time span. This represents approximately half of the UMS facilities, while the other 50% will still require significant investments to meet modern day expectations.

 

Zoom Videoconference

TMS continues to be used for some centrally-scheduled (primarily UMA) courses until the conclusion of the Spring 2020 semester, at which time TMS will become unavailable for use. Transition to using Zoom via the codecs or web conferencing room systems has occurred for other classes, as well as all UMS meetings. 

The most recent phase of Tier I staff training was completed on January 17th, including the release of master user guides and room-specific documentation. FX/ VSX hardware replacement installations are nearly complete, with only the UM President’s Executive room requiring additional work.