In February of 2020, just before Campus shifted to remote work, an interdisciplinary group formed to learn about creating web mapping applications using the ArcGIS API for JavaScript. The idea: work on a project that meets the needs of a researcher, but also provides an opportunity to share and grow knowledge across teams, in turn allowing us to… Read More »
LSA Technology Services is pleased to announce that Amy Peters has been named our new director of research computing and infrastructure services, and joins the LSA Technology Services leadership team effective Monday, December 7. Peters was selected for the position from a competitive and diverse candidate pool after a comprehensive search that began in February 2020, but was… Read More »
Since late June, when the university announced its decision to have students on campus and enable a combination of in-person, hybrid, and remote classes, LSA Technology Services quickly took action to enable an unprecedented delivery of the LSA liberal arts mission. In two short months, we’ve invested, improved, and implemented technology and services to not only meet the… Read More »
In summer 2019, LSA Technology Services began investigating work management platforms (ticketing systems) as a way to enhance the customer experience. The LSA Technology Services team placed a high priority on increasing collaboration both internally and externally as they evaluated tools, vendors, and software solutions. The team sought out departmental partners across the college and worked with Information… Read More »
LSA Learning and Teaching Technology Consultants have shared tips for structuring course material in a way that feels grounding and reliable to students while teaching online. Consultants write that organizing materials and activities in Canvas can help both online and hybrid classes go more smoothly for both students and instructors. It’s important that students know where to find… Read More »
Course activities need to offer chances for students to interact with each other. One of the keys to successful online and hybrid learning is to create learning communities and collaboration. Simply posting course materials and videos won’t create effective learning experiences alone. Effective online learning starts when students engage with the materials and gain knowledge, but can only… Read More »
LSA Learning and Teaching Technology Consultants have shared advice for creating clear online assignments. They emphasize the importance of explaining an assignment’s context and defining its purpose, task, submission format, and success criteria. Read more on the full article.
Accessible materials are a good basic practice precisely because they are often easier for all students to understand and process. Creating accessible materials helps all learners in your course and provides them with equal access to course materials and learning opportunities. Digital accessibility like consistent semantic markup and clean links makes it easier for everyone to navigate and… Read More »
The Help Desk Institute (HDI) is an organization designed to support IT-focused service centers on industry standards, best practices, and service-oriented education. This award recognizes tier 1 support staff on: being well-rounded in technical aptitude, team orientation, customer service skills, and people skills having a positive attitude and enthusiasm being committed to sharing their knowledge and problem-solving techniques… Read More »
In response to feedback from faculty and students, LSA Technology Services has been increasing its support for digital scholarship and digital humanities by piloting services that offer new types of consultations, platforms, and community engagement. One of them, an integration between MiVideo and Omeka, improves streaming performance and increases storage capacity for video and other rich media content. Omeka is a… Read More »
Technology professionals do their best every day to deliver reliable and innovative services to faculty, students, and staff. Sometimes they work on their own, sometimes as a team, and often in collaboration with other campus IT units. The LSA Technology Services team rose to new heights in response to changes in the last half of March, from the… Read More »
Caitlin Dickinson, mapping expert LSA Technology Services, finds joy in learning and discovery, and in using tools to create maps that solve problems. In this MITN interview, she offers tips, tools, and best practices for researchers and fellow map enthusiasts. Tell us about your role as a Geographic Information System (GIS) consultant at LSA. I assist LSA faculty,… Read More »
Thanks to generous grants from LSA Technology Services, U-M film students now have the unique opportunity to get some hands-on experience with filmmaking. The Citizen Kane VR project lets students use VR technologies to reshoot a key scene from the classic film at the Duderstadt Center Visualization Studio. Developers in the Duderstadt Center Emerging Technologies Group modeled clip from… Read More »
Maria Cotera, associate professor of American Culture and of women’s studies, is one of the founders of the Chicana por mi Raza Digital Memory Project. Launched in 2009, the project aims to preserve records of self-identified Chicana feminists by conducting interviews and digitizing artifacts in their personal collections. The repository has collected about 150 oral history interviews and… Read More »
In 2020, we’ll feature a wider variety of leadership messages from across the Michigan IT community. This month, CIO of LSA and Michigan IT Steering Committee Chair Cathy Curley shares her perspective on the value of partnership and what’s next for the Michigan IT program.
LSA Technology Services contributed over the last several years to planning, designing, and optimizing the operations for the new LSA Addition.
This past September, LSA Technology Services launched a Liaison Pilot with roughly 50 units and 20 liaisons. The pilot was designed in collaboration with college leadership to implement changes related to how LSA Technology Services engages with units and leverages technology to positively impact their goals and needs. The pilot will continue through the academic year. What do… Read More »
Back in March, we reported about the iClicker Reef (AKA iClicker Cloud) pilot in LSA. Students in the pilot classes could access Reef through an app on their own mobile device instead of a dedicated iClicker remote to answer an instructor’s prompted questions. In addition to handling multiple choice questions, Reef allows students to write short responses and… Read More »
As the largest college on campus, LSA has hundreds of changes to courses and degree requirements every year—changes that must be coordinated between LSA departments and the Registrar’s Office. That process just became easier with the recent completion of the Course List Update project (CLU) led by Matt Olex, a senior application architect in LSA Technology Services. M-Pathways… Read More »
On October 15, LSA Technology Services hosted the second Technology Tools for Teaching event, where presenters demonstrated a variety of learning technologies. Over 100 participants visited 23 team stations set up in the Biological Sciences Building. LSA Technology Services partnered with Academic Innovation, The Center for Research on Learning and Teaching (CRLT), Information and Technology Services (ITS) Teaching and… Read More »