CIO's Update
Greetings and welcome back! I hope that all of you had a restful break. I am really excited to begin the upcoming semester. The Department of Information Technology has been working hard to improve the infrastructure and provide technology that is ubiquitous, seamless, and transparent for the CSUDH community. Outlined below are a few projects that we have been working on in the past few months.
Smart Classrooms
The Instructional Technology unit has been very busy creating 20 more smart classrooms that will be brought online during the semester. With the addition of these new rooms, CSUDH will have nearly all of our classrooms technology-enhanced! This is a great accomplishment, and to my knowledge, no other CSU is near this capacity for smart rooms.
PC Power Management
We coordinated with Southern California Edison (SCE), IBM Big Fix and the Chancellor’s Office in deploying Big Fix power management software for university-owned computers. Long term power management will provide annual savings on power costs for the CSUDH campus. Through a grant, CSU Dominguez Hills will receive the basic power management software at no cost. Additional services such as remote desktop software deployment as well as asset inventory will also be supported at no cost. The estimated SCE rebate to CSUDH for this software is $36K.
Blackboard 9.1 Upgrade
We provided overall leadership in the upgrade of the Blackboard Learning Management System. This upgrade was necessary for offering our campus an Accessible Technology Initiative (ATI) compliant learning management solution. This update offers wiki and blog capabilities that faculty and students have been requesting.
Green Data Center Completion
We received $118K from SCE for reducing CSUDH’s data center electrical carbon footprint through the completion of the Green Data Center project. This project facilitates cutting edge technology in the form of thin client technology as well as virtual computing lab capacity.
Faculty Digital Media Training Lab
The new Faculty Digital Media Training Lab will be in place sometime in January or February. The Instructional Technology unit has been working with Adel Van Arsdale, Dean Sandra Parham, and Network, Telecommunications, and Help Desk Services (NTHDS) to convert LIB A213 (across from the entrance to the new North Library entrance) into a faculty training lab. This will be a dedicated space for demonstration and training on a variety of classroom and learning system technologies such as Blackboard, Camtasia, Elluminate, Interview Stream, Dragon Naturally Speaking, wikis and blogs, social networking/communities of practice, audience response ("clicker") systems, interactive white boards, interactive tablets, and prototypes of other new technologies being offered that may be able to improve pedagogy, student learning and retention.
Faculty PC Rollout
The Lab and New PC Technology Group is currently rolling out 55 Windows7 laptops to faculty members in the following departments: College of Business Administration and Public Policy, College of Professional Studies, College of Arts and Humanities, and College of Natural and Behavioral Sciences. Twenty laptops have currently been rolled out. The project is scheduled for completion in June 2011.
MyCSUDH Portal Enhancement
We’ve added a "Library" tab to the MyCSUDH portal. This enhancement offers students the capability to access library resources from within the portal, making it much simpler for them. An interesting statistic on the MyCSUDH portal is that it has been accessed by 20,205 applicants, 24,111 students, 639 instructors and 212 employees over the past six months.
As you work through the semester, if you have any questions, comments, or compliments regarding information technology on campus, please do not hesitate to contact us at (310) 243-3720.
