Category: FAQ

Please be assured that academic IT support will remain in place and will be able to assist you as it has in the past. Please see the following questions for more detailed information about this support.

Generally, the Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk will continue to assist the campus community by providing general information about, access to, and support for the following applications: Blackboard, Qualtrics, ExamSoft, WordPress, Sitecore, and various statistical applications (SAS, SPSS, Mathematica, etc.)

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) will assist and consult with faculty on the use of these tools to enhance course instruction, student engagement, and learning assessment.

Q1
Who should I call if I need help with Blackboard or Canvas?

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk will continue to provide information about and technical support for Blackboard. If you need assistance with copying content from one course section to another, merging sections, or have general “how-to” questions, the OIT Help Desk Consultants can assist you. Please call ext. 8HELP or email help@smu.edu.

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) will provide advanced training and guidance for faculty for the pedagogical use of Blackboard, such as building useful assignments, applying learning assessment tools, providing instructional design, using social learning features, and managing the integration of third party tools.

Q2
Who should I call if I need help with or information about Qualtrics?

Qualtrics is a Web-based online research tool, designed specifically to with conduct market research, customer insights, employee performance, event registration, institutional assessment, alumni outreach, academic research, and much more. All faculty, staff and students can simply login using their SMU ID number and password and begin using Qualtrics. There is no setup required.

For information, documentation and online training materials for the Qualtrics service, please visit http://www.smu.edu/BusinessFinance/OIT/Services/Qualtrics.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk will continue to provide information, ongoing support and access to Qualtrics services, including managing collaboration groups and troubleshooting technical issues. For additional questions on how to access the service, please call ext. 8HELP or email help@smu.edu.

Q3
Who should I call if I need help with ExamSoft?

ExamSoft is a test management application that allows faculty to administer a secured exam in class with laptops and iPads.

For information, documentation and online training materials for ExamSoft, please visit http://www.smu.edu/BusinessFinance/OIT/Services/ExamSoft.

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk will continue to provide information about ExamSoft, access to the service, user maintenance, and synchronization with Blackboard. Please call ext. 8HELP or email help@smu.edu.

Q4
Who should I call if I need a Zoom Video Conferencing account?

The Office of Information Technology (OIT) Help Desk will continue to provide information and access to the Zoom Video Conferencing service. Please call ext. 8HELP or email help@smu.edu to request an account or help incorporating the use of this Web-based tool in the classroom.

The Center for Teaching Excellence (CTE) will provide guidance for faculty in the use of Zoom to complement course instruction, enhance student communications, and provide for synchronous distance learning.

Q5
What should I do if I would like my students to create ePortfolios or use Web publishing in my class?

WordPress is the Web authoring /content management tool available to students for these uses.

Students, staff, and faculty may host academic, personal, and research sites at people.smu.edu. For more information on creating space on people.smu.edu (WordPress), please go to http://www.smu.edu/BusinessFinance/OIT/Services/WebPublishing#tab_tab2.

Q6
Who should I call to help me with technology questions or issues concerning the Audio/Video equipment installed in the classrooms?

Please continue to follow the same procedures that you have in the past for your area. For schools other than Lyle Engineering, Cox School of Business and Dedman Law, there is a special hotline (x8-8888) that directly calls the OIT Help Desk so we can dispatch support personnel. OIT will continue to provide support for faculty and emergency response for the use of technology in the classrooms and we plan to enhance the service going forward.

Most of the consultant-assisted projects in higher ed are initiated by universities responding to some level of financial crisis. While SMU has a slight structural budget gap (annual expenses exceed annual revenues), SMU’s leadership chose to be proactive by engaging the campus in a review of our organizational structure and business processes so that we could allocate resources more strategically to the core academic mission. We believe this is a critical and prudent set of actions that will sustain us during the uncertainties facing higher ed.

For the most part, funding reduced in the administrative areas of the University will be repurposed directly to teaching and research. Fewer positions, and importantly a commitment to contained position growth in the future, will result in savings. Savings will also be realized by more efficient use of space and energy and other costs associated with space as well as with the more efficient purchasing of furniture, fixtures, equipment and supplies and more strategic third-party spending. The end goal is an organization that is more productive, with fewer layers of management to better enable the flow of information and decision making, where employees are aided by best-practice business processes.

Success begets success. When SMU stakeholders see the results of a better organization both from repurposed and saved funds, we expect their participation and interest in SMU will increase, resulting in better and more qualified students, faculty, and staff and the ability to attract greater donor and grant funding. We also hope that reducing costs and enhancing revenues will allow SMU to be less reliant on, and more competitive regarding, tuition rates. So the expected outcome of OE2C is that we will be able to continuously advance the performance and standing of our university through the investments we will be making.

The Organization Design Initiative is designed to address staffing issues related to industry benchmarks, with a focus on reducing the number of layers between front line employees and executives and increasing the number of direct reports (or “spans”) for managers. For more information on spans and layers, see this explanation. This restructuring is meant to improve effectiveness throughout the University and repurpose funds from administration to further SMU’s academic mission. As other initiative committees continue to streamline processes, they may identify changes to other positions that make sense for SMU and will be implemented after the OE2C Executive Committee reviews and approves committee recommendations.

SMU’s contract with Christopherson Business Travel, the new travel management company, will not begin until June 1, 2015. Around that time, the installation of Concur should be complete and campus-wide training will be offered to all travelers to ensure a smooth transition. Through the end of May, all SMU travel should be booked using the current system.

SEE ALSO
– The Travel & Entertainment Initiative

As part of its severance package, SMU is legally required to provide individuals 40 years of age and older with certain information about the reduction in force and reorganization, including the job titles and ages of those selected and not selected for the layoffs. The information SMU provides is not personally identifying, and recipients of the information are required to keep it strictly confidential.