Category Archives: EMU Technology

Pajamas and online learning

Posted on May 23, 2011 by | 3 Comments

There’s an interesting little piece in Inside Higher Ed called “Are Pajama-Clad Women Enticing Students to For-Profit Higher Ed?” It’s about Capitol Hill web site/newspaper article where Senator Dick Durbin is criticizing these ads that show an attractive young woman in pajamas and in bed encouraging people to sign up for classes at “for profit” online universities.

I certainly agree with that criticism.  Online classes tend to be sold online either as something you can easily do while nearly asleep (I’ve seen ads depicting students on the bed, on the couch, in the tub, etc.) or while on the move (these same ads depict other students walking around and doing classwork on their cell phone, on the subway, etc.)  This just perpetuates the idea that online classes are some sort of extra thing that can be done on the fly, which is of course not the case.

Of course, I will admit though that I have been known to do some online teaching in my pajamas, though while seated at my desk in my home office.

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Posted in EMU Technology, Faculty Life, In the media..., Student Life

iPads almost as popular as beer among college students

Posted on May 14, 2011 by | 5 Comments

As both an iPad and beer enthusiast, I thought Inside Higher Ed’s “Mixed on Media” interesting.  It’s mostly about how electronic textbooks are still not catching on, though tablet devices like the iPad are.  The story about this survey leads with news that the percentage of students reporting that they’ve rented textbooks is about 24%, but electronic textbooks are still not popular.  An interesting quote from the middle of the piece:

E-textbooks, meanwhile, have continued to lag. Only 5 percent of the survey respondents said they purchased access to an e-textbook this spring. Two percent bought e-textbooks for more than one class. The most common reason for going electronic? “My professor required me to.”

Tablet computers, and especially the iPad, have nonetheless seized the cash and imaginations of students. As far as cachet, the Apple device is not quite as “in” as beer — but it is neck-in-neck with coffee, according to the survey, which polls students on a broad range of media and “lifestyle” tastes. More relevantly, the iPad is just as “in” (Student Monitor did not qualify the term) as laptops, even though 87 percent of respondents owned a laptop while just 8 percent owned an iPad. Nearly half reported being “interested in purchasing a wireless reading device,” with 70 percent of those students saying they had their eye on an iPad.

In fact, various forms of technology nearly swept the top trends on college campuses, with “drinking beer” the only non-tech interruption in a top 5 dominated by Facebook, iPhones, text messaging, and laptops. (“Working” and “going to grad school” were considered less “in” — though to the extent that the term might be interpreted as an observation of what is cool and/or new, that might not come as a surprise.)

I don’t think this survey asked “why not buy etextbooks,” but I’m pretty sure the answer is “because I can’t sell them back.”  As for the iPad thing:  I’m surprised by the number of my students who have them this term compared to fall and even early winter.  I hardly saw one on campus in the fall and none in the classes I’m teaching, but I’m seeing students sporting iPads all over the place now.

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Technology, In the media...

How satisfied are you with Emu Mail?

Posted on April 29, 2011 by | 3 Comments

I thought I’d post about this here because EMU’s email system has been one of the “hot topics” here at EMUTalk.org, particularly when it fails:  faculty, staff, and the like at EMU should have received an email guiding them to a survey about satisfaction with EmuMail okay, EagleMail.

Personally, I am “somewhat satisfied.”  On the plus-side, it works fine.  On the minus-side, it doesn’t always work as Merit has had some kind of annoying outages.  I realize that’s not EMU’s fault, but still.  And also on the minus-side is it isn’t free, which would have been the case had EMU gone with Google and its suite of software (email, plus robust and useful things like docs, sites, calendar software that’s useful, etc., etc.), though there are some problems with Google that are less than obvious to the everyday user problems with this set-up.  Google and Banner (which is the software that runs stuff like my.emich) don’t work well together, for example.

Still, free is free.

Incidentally, given the way that the survey is set up, it would appear that there are still a lot of people who are not aware that you can access your mail by skipping my.emich and going directly to mail.emich.edu.  Really?  Is that still news?

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Posted in EMU Technology

“Students’ personal information improperly provided to third party, Eastern Michigan University says”

Posted on March 11, 2011 by | Leave a comment

From annabor.com, “Students’ personal information improperly provided to third party, Eastern Michigan University says.” There was an email sent around to people about this earlier in the week, too.  The only two things I’ll say here is I agree with two of the comments on this thread:  this sort of thing, while still not “common,” is probably the way most “identity theft” happens nowadays.  It’s certainly a bigger risk than someone going through your garbage.

Second, good security begins on the user-end, so keep track of those passwords and credit card expenses!

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Posted in EMU Technology, In the media..., Security and Safety

“Fixing” EmuMail (sort of)

Posted on December 15, 2010 by | 2 Comments

Here’s a message sent from the Provost’s office from Chief Information Officer Carl R. Powell about EmuEagleMail’s poor performance as of late and the solution:

For the past month or so, all of us have had problems with EagleMail.  Either you get a “server busy” message or your Internet sessions lock up.  Fortunately, we believe we have identified the root of the problem to be the use of course calendars in the upgraded Zimbra 6 environment.  So, after Fall grades have been submitted by faculty next week, we will be deactivating the course calendar feature in EagleMail.

Faculty who were using course calendars in Zimbra are encouraged to use the university’s eCollege learning management platform.  To request an eCollege course shell (or for training on eCollege), please contact elearning@emich.edu.

Now, I don’t use the calendars on the mail software for anything and I have no idea how big of an impact it has on the campus community at large.  And I also certainly do not know what the technical issues were here with Zimbra and Merit and whoever else.  Still, it seems to me that “elimination of a feature” and a “fix” are two different things– well, unless we’re using the word “fix” in the same way we use it with pets.

Maybe these calendars will come back in the winter term?

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Posted in EMU Technology, Faculty Life, Student Life

“Wendy Brown on Online Education”

Posted on November 19, 2010 by | 5 Comments

A loyal EMUTalk.org reader sent me this link and suggest I share it here:  “Wendy Brown on Online Education,” which was published on the University of California (Berkeley) Faculty Association web site.  Brown is the Emanuel Heller Professor Political Science and clearly no fan of online teaching, which has been a controversial topic out in the UC system as of late.  I think her opening paragraph gives a sense of where she’s coming from:

I have many thoughts about the differences between the virtual and live classroom.  Differences between, on the one hand, classes featuring professors with an avowed point of view, modestly attuned to the abilities of their students, working closely with their GSIs, and, on the other, authorless curriculums with instructors of record and hundreds of low-paid teaching assistants.  Differences between, on the one hand, students in a hushed auditorium, shorn of electronic connections and other distractions, listening to a line of Shakespeare, a measure of Chopin, a  principle of physics–taking them apart together to discover the kernel of their brilliance–and, on the other, a student staring at the line, the measure, the principle on a MacBook, perhaps at a Starbucks with email and facebook portals open, perhaps at home flanked by children whining, bosses calling, friends texting.  Differences between, on the one hand, a provocative lecture on the Bill of Rights followed by a discussion with the students about whether the First Amendment can distinguish between speech and action and whether the Second is more fundamentally about individual rights or states rights, and, on the other, students contributing to “on-line threads” on these topics.

The problem I have here is Brown’s set-up: I think she’s making many assumptions about both online classes and face to face classes that are fundamentally flawed and pretty dang elitist too.  But it’s still interesting reading.

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Posted in Blogosphere, EMU Technology, Faculty Life

“Batten down the hatches”

Posted on October 26, 2010 by | 1 Comment

This in from Geoff “Geoff” Larcom:

The National Weather Service is advising that a “high wind event” will likely occur today from 10 a.m. to 9 p.m.  During a high wind event, DTE is likely to experience problems. For EMU, this translates to the potential for electrical blinks or even loss of DTE power.

The Heating Plant electrical generator can only protect about 50% of campus from loss of power. It does provide a dampening effect to the blinks. However, Physical Plant advises computer users to take precautions to save data often in order to avoid loss of material. The University does have two DTE power feeds with automatic transfer between the two feeds, so it is expected the any loss of power would be brief.

Specifically –  A HIGH WIND WARNING is defined as “an expected wind event with sustained winds of 40 mph and gusting winds near 60 mph.  The potential exists for southwesterly wind gusts in excess of 60 mph immediately along and behind the cold front that will pass through the area.

I wonder which 50% the campus generator protects…..

Well, computer users, save often.

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Posted in Buildings and Grounds, EMU Events, EMU Technology

I suspect the IT Labor Day picnic has been disrupted

Posted on September 5, 2010 by | 2 Comments

September 6 Update: The latest sent around by Walter Kraft on this:

As we reported yesterday, an investigation is underway into a breach of security in an EMU server that controls my.emich passwords and Banner Self-Service PIN codes for students and employees.  The area that was compromised did not contain social security numbers or birth dates, or personal banking information.  It does contain login information, though, that could allow access to employees self-service information, including direct deposit information.  We consider this unlikely given the complexity of the area breached and the manual process required to access this data, however we are issuing this advisory as a precaution given the possibility.  Employees with direct deposit are advised to monitor their accounts for unusual activity.  If unusual activity is discovered, please contact your bank immediately, as well as IT staff.

As of this morning, there are no reports of unexpected user issues.  IT is continuing to investigate the situation.  EMU DPS also has been notified and has opened an investigation in the event that criminal activity is uncovered.  The IT Help Desk staff and IT system administrators will continue to monitor system access logs and report any unusual activity to the IT security team.  If you have any questions or suspect unusual activity, please contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@emich.edu or at 734-487-2120.  IT has brought in several additional staff today in order to respond to phone calls and questions.  Phone calls will be taken from 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. today, with staff continuing to monitor email inquiries through the evening.  The IT staff will continue to work through the holiday weekend on this issue, and will provide further updates as necessary.

I’ve noticed nothing odd yet….

A little ominous:

First, I (along with everyone else at EMU, I presume) received this email from VP for communications Walter Kraft:

An investigation is underway into a breach of security in an EMU server that controls my.emich passwords and Banner Self-Service PIN codes for students and employees.  The breach occurred Friday at about 11:30 p.m.  System irregularities were initially discovered yesterday by IT staff.  Further investigation today revealed a security breach.  The area that was compromised did not contain social security numbers or birth dates.  It is possible that banking information for employees with direct deposit could be accessed in the area involved.  We consider this unlikely given the complexity of the area breached, however we are issuing this advisory given the possibility.  We understand and appreciate that this is a serious matter.  IT is continuing to investigate the situation and has enlisted an external data breach consultant to assist with the diagnosis and remediation of the security issue.  EMU DPS also has been notified and is opening an investigation in the event that criminal activity is uncovered.  The IT Help Desk staff and IT system administrators will continue to monitor system access logs and report any unusual activity to the IT security team.  At this point, there are no reports of unexpected user issues.  If you have any questions or suspect unusual activity, please contact the Help Desk at helpdesk@emich.edu.  The IT staff will continue to work through the holiday weekend on this issue.

Shortly after I received that message (6:06 PM on September 5), EMU’s Emu Eaglemail went dead.  Hmmmm…..

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Posted in Administrator Life, EMU Technology, Faculty Life, Staff Life, Student Life

Is anyone else’s EMU Email wonky right now?

Posted on September 2, 2010 by | 19 Comments

Maybe it’s just me, but my EmuMail (aka Eaglemail) is working a little weird for me right now. It says I’ve got 23 unread messages in my inbox (I see none) and that I have 311 draft messages (waa???) Anyone else getting anything odd like that?

As far as I can tell the email still works; it’s just a little schizo.

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Posted in EMU Technology

Are college students shifting to the Mac?

Posted on August 5, 2010 by | 2 Comments

This is a bit of a tangent I suppose, though it might be interesting here, especially for the “IT” inclined.  According to this AP article that is about downgrading Microsoft stock, Apple is taking a heavy bite out of the traditional dominance of Windows.  Here’s the relevant quote for here, with the line about students:

Increasingly, companies are giving their employees a choice to either use Microsoft Windows PCs or Apple Inc.’s Macs, the analyst said. And, increasingly, employees are choosing Mac over Windows. To boot, Chowdhry said 70 percent of college freshman are entering school with Macs, up about 10 percent to 15 percent from a year ago.

Now, I found this article on the fantastic blog Daring Fireball, and as John Gruber wonders, I have no idea what these statistics are based on.  But I will tell you this: in my own teaching, I see more and more students showing up with Macs and/or with “Mac savviness,” meaning that I rarely get students who encounter Apple computers in a lab who complain about that anymore.  Furthermore, I don’t know anyone– faculty, staff, student, “real person,” etc.– who ever switched from Apple back to Windows, at least switched back voluntarily.

It’ll be interesting to see what first year students show up with at EMU this fall, and it will also be interesting to see what our own DoIT! folks think, since they tend to be a “Boo Mac, Yea Windoze” sort of lot.

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Posted in College Fun, EMU Technology, In the media..., Student Life