Perry Samson, a professor of climate and space sciences and engineering, has been teaching at U-M for 38 years. In his early teaching years, Samson thought that getting through a lecture without students asking many questions was a sign of a job well done. Samson says he has since come to realize that silence in class often indicates student… Read More »
Duo Security—an Ann Arbor-based company launched by two U-M alumni in 2009—is at the forefront of a fledgling wave of early-stage technology startups that have chosen to take root, not in the San Francisco and East Coast technology hubs, but within Metro Detroit. “Ann Arbor is our home,” Dug Song, one of Duo Security’s founders, said in an October,… Read More »
U-M alum and CNN health correspondent Sanjay Gupta is returning to Michigan to support an effort to bring new ideas and tools to health communication. The Gupta Family Hackathon of rapid innovation happens March 23-25 on the U-M Ann Arbor campus. The marathon event brings together bright minds from the worlds of health, digital technology, design, communication, and… Read More »
The CA/Browser Forum is a group of SSL certificate authorities and web-browser developers who work to set standards for SSL encryption. A new CABforum rule going into effect March 1, 2018 will shorten the maximum lifetime of SSL certificates from all commercial certificate authorities. After that time, certificates obtained via the ITS “Web Application Sign-up Page” can have… Read More »
Reinventing Urban Transportation and Mobility (RITMO) aims to revolutionize public transit through an online app that turns transportation into an on-demand service. RITMO, partnering with Ford Motor Company, will allow students, faculty, and staff to use on-demand shuttle transportation linked with the U-M bus system. Pascal Van Hentenryck, a professor at the College of Engineering who leads the project, hopes… Read More »
A series of training workshops in high performance computing will be held Feb. 12 through March 6, 2018, presented by CSCAR in conjunction with Advanced Research Computing – Technology Services (ARC-TS). Introduction to the Linux command Line This course will familiarize the student with the basics of accessing a–nd interacting with Linux computers using the GNU/Linux operating system’s Bash shell,… Read More »
Rolling out what it’s calling a “street view for cyberspace,” Censys—a tech startup based on technology developed at the university—has launched a commercially available version of its internet-wide scanning tool. Based on technology developed in the lab of computer science and engineering professor J. Alex Halderman, Censys continuously scans the internet, analyzing every publicly visible server and device.… Read More »
Online courses can open up a world of knowledge to anyone with an internet connection, benefitting students who have limited access to educational resources. But mounting evidence suggests that online education could hurt less proficient students who are most in need of skilled classroom teachers. In a recent article for the “New York Times,” Susan Dynarski, professor of education, public… Read More »
Thanks to the many volunteers across our community, Michigan IT programs have grown considerably since we launched the concept in 2013, and we want to share what’s next for Michigan IT in 2018.
Over 560 IT staff from U-M’s four campuses filled the Michigan League this past November to develop skills, form and strengthen working relationships, and showcase how their work contributes to moving U-M forward as part of the 2017 Michigan IT Symposium. After the event, 216 attendees provided their feedback on what worked well and what they’d like to… Read More »
Does your department website contain a quiz or survey tool to collect data? If so, there’s a good chance that quiz was created with UM.Lessons and will need to be moved to another platform over the next several months. Here’s a quick way to check: search your HTML code and URLs for keywords=lessons.ummu.umich.edu. UM.Lessons is an online quizzing tool… Read More »
The William Davidson Institute has created a “virtual exchange” of young people across cultures and continents in an eight-week challenge of social entrepreneurship.
Among the 25 leading research institutions that make up the Unizin consortium, the University of Michigan is recognized as a leader in the field of learning analytics research and development. This distinction contributed to U-M being asked by Unizin to lead the design and development of the Unizin Data Platform (UDP), a cloud-based infrastructure for delivering learning analytics… Read More »
ITS is extending its funding of U-M SignNow through FY19. What this means for users is that ITS will cover per document transaction fees and support costs through June 2019. Department shortcode charges for using U-M SignNow will not begin until FY20. ITS Infrastructure made the decision to extend funding based on two factors: a later than anticipated… Read More »
With one calendar year under its belt, the Enterprise Identity Access Management (EIAM) program reflects on its 2017 accomplishments. Launched in January 2017, the program coordinates and unites IAM efforts for all U-M campuses—Ann Arbor, Dearborn, Flint, and Michigan Medicine—to improve the technology and administrative processes that allow authorized individuals to access U-M resources. Below is a partial… Read More »
Because of the exceptional efforts of the Women in IT Community of Practice, the University of Michigan, and Thomson Reuters, elementary school students in Ann Arbor Public Schools got an introduction to coding during the 2017 Hour of Code event, November 27–December 8. The result of their combined work: 80 volunteers signed up to support 72 volunteers assigned to… Read More »
Proposals for Enriching Scholarshop presentations are still being accepted until Monday, February 5, 2018. The Enriching Scholarship team welcomes past presenters to submit, and are also interested in hearing from new voices. If you’ve never presented before, sharing your experiences can bring a valuable new perspective to our community. Presentations can range from a 5-10 minute lightning talk… Read More »
A town hall and interactive session will be held to discuss the new Web Platforms service being developed by ITS for the university community. This event will take place on Wednesday, March 7 at 2:00 p.m. in the Great Lakes Central Room, Palmer Commons. Members of the university web developer community and those who have an interest in… Read More »
In an effort to further secure and reduce the complexity of U-M networks, ITS Infrastructure has worked for the past year with unit IT representatives to change the IP addresses of U-M’s domain name system (DNS) resolver servers from public to private. The goals of the project were to: Improve security by reducing internet threats that exploit DNS resolvers.… Read More »
The Andrew File System (AFS)—a central file storage, sharing, and retrieval system that U-M websites rely on—will be relocated to new data center on February 24.