J-Term & Spring Courses Now Available in Canvas

The Academic Technology team is pleased to announce all courses for the upcoming J-Term and Spring terms are available for use in SMU’s new cloud-based learning management system (LMS), Canvas. While courses are still available for J-term and Spring term in Blackboard, Canvas will be replacing Blackboard as SMU’s LMS for all online, hybrid, and enhanced instructor-led courses. Still operational during J-Term and Spring semester, Blackboard will be completely phased out by June 2016.

Questions can be directed to the OIT Help Desk. SMU’s Canvas service also offers additional 24/7 live chat or phone help for the Canvas system simply by clicking on the question-mark icon in the Canvas toolbar. This can be especially useful for quick questions! Canvas Guides are also available to find answers to common questions.

Log into Canvas using your SMU username and password at http://smu.instructure.com/.

More information about Canvas resources, FAQ’s, how to get started, or find information on an attending an SMU Canvas workshop or scheduling 1:1 consultations for course-building assistance will be available soon at the OIT Canvas Service Page.

Cox Infrastructure Project Update

As part of the IT Initiative and overall vision for IT Shared Services, several operational services will be unified within the existing University services. This will allow the local Academic Leads to focus on IT vision, strategy and best practices in partnership with the Dean and their faculty. The following Cox services are designated for unification: networking and security appliances, wireless, VPN, and Active Directory.

Network maintenance has been underway for several weeks upgrading the various network switches and Wireless Access Points throughout the buildings. The team has also reviewed many of the servers hosted in Cox to determine the migration strategy. Several services were decommissioned as they were no longer in use. We have also completed the testing phase of migrating the Cox workstations to the SMU domain.

We are now ready to begin the migration of the Cox computers to the SMU domain. This will allow Cox faculty and staff to login to their workstations using the SMU ID and password thus eliminating the extra set of credentials. Each individual will be notified of the date of their scheduled migration. Cox faculty and staff should NOT attempt to login with their ID prior to the migration date.

Additional instructions will be provided with the migration schedule. For more details on the Cox infrastructure project, visit http://www.smu.edu/OIT/Projects/CoxInfrastructure.

Get up to $15,000 in research grants at MRweek™

Qualtrics Behavioral Research Grant Qualtrics is offering students and faculty grants ranging from $5000 to $1500 as part of the MRWeek™. If you are not familiar with MRWeek, it’s touted as the “largest market research event in the world.” This free five-day conference connects you with industry leaders, peer review sessions, Q&A forums and content downloads – without leaving the comfort of your own home or office. You will be able to learn the secrets of these top-tier market researchers though online webinars.

From Qualtrics:

At Qualtrics, academic research is at our core. It’s how we got our start, and there’s nothing we love more than empowering researchers and seeing the insights they’re able to uncover.

As a part of MRweek™, we’ll be giving students and professors an opportunity to apply for a Qualtrics Research Grant.

MRweek takes place December 7-11. It’s completely free, online, and the perfect chance to both fund and spark the study you’ve been wanting to conduct.

Three winners will be chosen and awarded with grants ranging from $5,000 to $15,000.

Register & Apply

Cheers,
Qualtrics Team

Lynda.com’s New Course Page: What to Expect

As you may have heard, SMU recently began offering full Lynda.com access for all students faculty and staff. Already, hundreds of you have logged on and began learning new things! As Lynda.com continues to improve, they have recently announced that as of November 30, they will be gradually rolling out a new look for their courses. To keep you in the loop, here are a few of the differences you can expect once the new format hits your account.

Download-View-Offline-tip

If you need to download exercise files, add a course to your playlist, or if you would like to share the course with someone, all of these options have been moved to the top right of the screen so they are more easily found. Don’t forget that there is now an option to download courses for offline viewing!

Lynda.com has also added keyboard shortcuts to make navigating a course easier, which means you can focus more on learning! A detailed list of the shortcuts can be found by clicking on the icon next to the share button in the top right corner.

Video transcripts have always been a great way to keep track of where you are in a course and can also help if you simply want to read the directions given. Now, Lynda.com allows you to type notes alongside the transcript totally within the course, so you don’t have to have a separate notepad.

With these new features, Lynda has made it even easier to work within their courses! Again, it’s all free for students, faculty and staff, so log in and learn.

Single Sign-On is Here

Tonight, we enabled Single Sign-On (SSO) for my.SMU and employee.SMU. This allows you to move freely within the same browser session between my.SMU and services such as Concur, lynda.com, or Canvas. We have created a video to help demonstrate using Single Sign-On with our web services. Continue reading Single Sign-On is Here