Last month, ITS announced that the university will retire BlueJeans effective May 1, 2021. To prepare for this change, ITS has begun work on the steps needed to replace BlueJeans with Zoom in ITS-supported applications, including Canvas. As part of this process, BlueJeans integrations in Canvas will no longer be available starting Tuesday, January 12, 2021. Users will… Read More »
MRequest (FootPrints) is a web-based service that allows central tracking and management of customer support and other issues. It is slated to retire on December 17, 2021. More than 20 U-M schools, colleges, and major administrative units use the service. While primarily used by campus IT departments, campus units have discovered other uses for MRequest (FootPrints) as well. For… Read More »
The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) and Information and Technology Services (ITS) recently partnered with Microsoft Azure to offer cloud computing credits to U-M faculty members for both research and teaching projects. Congratulations to the following faculty members who received awards for their projects. Emily Mower Provost, associate professor of electrical engineering and computer science, College of… Read More »
While preparing for the fall term under the COVID-19 pandemic, the university recognized that the student experience on campus in the 2020–21 academic year would be very different than a regular term at U-M. To support students on campus, the university launched a new web-based space reservation system and app for the Ann Arbor campus called Study Spaces… Read More »
The Academic IT DevOps team from Health Information Technology & Services (HITS) recently deployed their first containerized vendor applications to Google Cloud Platform (GCP) through MCloud. By the end of December 2020, it will be supporting thousands of users and over 500 departmental solutions, including Jenkins, GitLab, Michigan Medicine HR Service Desk, and the Data Office Service Desk. These applications… Read More »
The Division of Public Safety and Security (DPSS) and Information and Technology Services (ITS) have partnered to improve the UM Emergency Alerts system for all University of Michigan campuses. On October 19, the university introduced a new enrollment page, alerts.umich.edu, where students, faculty, and staff can go to verify or update their preferred mobile number to receive UM Emergency… Read More »
Academic library service portfolios are mostly a mix of big to small strategic initiatives and tactical projects. Some are well-defined development projects with a fixed timeline, while others are ongoing support and legacy systems needing IT resources in order to update and sustain them. The needs and aspirations of the service and programmatic areas of the library are… Read More »
Open OnDemand (OOD) is a tool that brings to researchers and students the power of Great Lakes, the university’s flagship open-science, high-performance, computing cluster. Open OnDemand is a way for researchers and students to use a web interface to access the Advanced Research Computing – Technology Services (ARC-TS) Great Lakes and Lighthouse High-Performance Computing (HPC) resources. Because users… Read More »
The Michigan Institute for Data Science (MIDAS) and Information and Technology Services (ITS) have partnered with Microsoft Azure to offer cloud computing credits to U-M faculty members for both research and teaching projects. Research. Submit proposals for research projects in any discipline that fit one of the following categories: The research project is new and can take advantage of… Read More »
Visitors to Wolverine Access experienced a new gateway to university systems and resources beginning September 27. The new Wolverine Access makes it easier to find and “bookmark” frequently-used tools and resources within the U-M digital universe, has a mobile-friendly design that is easy to use on all devices, and is built on a more modern and secure platform… Read More »
After supporting the move of students, faculty, and staff to remote learning and working, Ross IT developed plans for a “public health-informed” return to campus for the fall semester. Ross IT engaged with the Ross community to prepare how to transform the classrooms to meet the hybrid academic requirements. The approach involved three principles for design: consistent, standardized,… Read More »
Supporting student motivation and self-regulation through online tools has become more important than ever with the shift to remote learning for fall, and My Learning Analytics (MyLA) is ready to help. Designed by U-M faculty Stephanie Teasley and Matt Kay from the School of Information and Stuart Karabenick from the School of Education, in collaboration with Information and… Read More »
As summer wound down, campus got ready for the fall semester at UM-Dearborn. An Emergency Operations Center directive necessitated restricting campus access to only those students with an on campus class—around 15% of our schedule. To do this efficiently and minimize health risks by reducing time standing in line, we turned to technology. Our reporting tool, WebFocus, produces… Read More »
In this time when so many of us are working and studying remotely, we are increasingly reliant on our home internet service and the WiFi networks within our homes. ITS Network teams, Neighborhood IT, and campus IT partners developed a set of resources to help members of our community improve their home networking experience.
In spring 2020, ITS deployed Zoom videoconferencing to campus and later added large event support, captioning, and PHI-compliant Zoom for Health. Since then, adoption of Zoom has grown exponentially, while the use of BlueJeans has fallen significantly. Additionally, Google Meet and Microsoft Teams are available as part of the U-M academic collaboration suite at no additional cost and… Read More »
For ITS Infrastructure teams the Labor Day weekend was not a holiday — they were working down to the wire, fighting through bad weather in Ann Arbor to complete work on North Campus to complete a much needed network upgrade to Northwoods IV & V whose apartments are home to many U-M graduate students and their families. This… Read More »
Dependence on the U-M Network has always been strong, but this term it will be used in locations, and ways not seen before. With COVID-19 concerns at a high level, the university has come up with creative ideas to assist our faculty and students, and decrease density in buildings, by creating new outdoor spaces for students to work… Read More »
The pandemic has created new and unique challenges for students. To support a culture of caring and to create safe computing options, ITS developed a new laptop loaner program called “Sites @ Home.” The program provides the best that ITS has to offer: Campus Computing Sites with access to specialized software, a Windows PC, and computers with higher… Read More »
As the next step in a public health informed return to service, Tech Shop now offers at-the-door pickup for online orders, in addition to a variety of shipping options. Online orders can be placed at techshop.umich.edu. This service will be available by appointment at the Michigan Union location. Service hours are 9 a.m. – 6 p.m., Monday through… Read More »
Make your U-M Gmail even more secure Information and Technology Services (ITS) is happy to announce that effective immediately, students, staff, and faculty have access to a new email security tool — Virtru. (Note: Michigan Medicine provides a similar capability for their email service). With Virtru, you can send end-to-end encrypted email to any address, prevent a forwarded email… Read More »