A Year in Review
2014-2015
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learn
The SAS Mission
agile
creativity
collaborate
The SAS division is most directly and visibly aligned with UCI’s mission of enhancing student and faculty
academic and life experience. Our guiding principle as a division is that the Student and Academic
Services Division, or SAS, consists of all centralized IT Support for the campus faculty and student
communities. SAS acts as a fast moving, nimble technology partner in conjunction with the evolving
needs of faculty and students.
The SAS team is comprised of various OIT groups that primarily focus on student and faculty-supported
technologies and services, as well as technology that supports staff who work closely with both groups.
Introducing new ideas, methods, or products involves innovation and creativity. Members of SAS work
jointly with other groups within OIT, UCI, UC, and other institutions of higher education to achieve cre-
ative results. Being agile and quick acting in response to fast-changing technologies and fostering learn-
ing, which leads to growth, are both part of the core principles of SAS. It is these principles that allow us
the opportunity to more efficiently and effectively serve our users and customers.
Shohreh Bozorgmehri
Director, Student & Academic Services Division
Office of Information Technology
UC Irvine
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OIT
Research Computing
SAS
Campus “HPC”
Cluster Grows
in Use
Over ten years ago, a dozen trusting faculty
members joined the Office of Information Technology and the School of Physical
Science in the construction of the campus’
first ‘community condo’ computing cluster
conservatively called the ‘Middle Performance
Cluster or MPC’ whose purpose was to bridge
the gap between what a research group could
operate on its own and the large, national supercomputer centers. The computing system
contained a few hundred computing devices
and was primarily used by the traditional users
of computation – physical scientists.
Flash forward ten years and as with many aspects of IT explosive growth is the norm—
Now rightly called the ‘High Performance Cluster or HPC’, the consortium of faculty
has grown to 55 research computing groups
with over 6,000 computing ‘cores’ and over 1,000
Terabtyes of storage making HPC the largest
computer at UCI.
Nearly 500 campus users
actively use the system in
research areas such as bioinformatics and genomic sequencing that were unheard
of in the past.
One aspect of HPC that makes it nearly unique among similar clusters at other universities is our ability to
harness almost all of the available computing cycles of the system. Unused computing cycles ‘owned’ by a
given faculty ‘Partner’ can be used by other partners when not in use allowing the system to harness almost
twice the computing power of the system as compared to other ‘condo’ systems. Combining this feature
with the large size of the cluster allows a wide variety of researchers – including newcomers to high performance computing - to both solve problems and analyze data critical to their research efforts.
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OIT
EduTech
SAS
Virtual Computer Labs Come to UCI
UCI has a long history of provided computing laboratories for the campus instructional needs. While more and more students come to UCI with their own desktop or laptop computers, we continue to see instructional efforts require the use of
computers and specialized software that must be provided in a classroom setting. But given campus space constraints the
growth of spaces for scheduled computer classroom access has been limited, especially for drop in space where students can
complete assignments or projects.
A solution to this dilemma has been the development of virtual
computer labs based on the concept of virtual desktops or
virtual computers where a central computing server provides
applications to end user who are often remote from campus.
Recently, UCI has completed a collaboration with Cal State Fullerton (CSUF) to provide the “VCL” service to UCI. CSUF
has been operating the service for several years while working with the VCL developers at North Carolina State University
since the inception of VCL.
A pilot project has just completed where faculty users of OIT’s “hard”, i.e., physical labs located across campus and their
students were invited to use VCL in support of their classwork. The project was to test how well the service would work
albeit provided from a data center in Fullerton, how well the interface and tools would operate for end users, and how useful
the service would be within these classes. In total over 20 classes, hundreds of users, and 3000 sessions occurred. The project
was such a success that the service is now planned for deployment to the general undergraduate student body at UCI in the
Fall. The VCL service is being financially supported by the e-tech fee assessed to undergraduate students at UCI.
2014 Pilot Project:
20 3,000
Classes
Virtual
Computer Lab
Sessions
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OIT
EduTech
SAS
Classroom Technology Refresh Project
Classroom Technology Support (CTS) maintains the equipment in 131 general assignment SmartClassrooms and a variety
of other spaces. Through the eTech Initiative, annual funding was established to “refresh” the existing technology on a five
year cycle. As a result, each summer CTS staff (with assistance from Facilities Management, OIT, and other vendors) replaces
equipment and makes upgrades to roughly 1/5th of the classrooms.
The scope is adjusted yearly as technology advances and the needs of room users’ change, but the goal is to provide as
uniform and useful a set of tools as possible across all the classrooms, allowing instructors to use a variety of rooms while
maintaining a consistent experience. Some changes are made to solve a known problem, update components that are up to 9
years old, or keep up with technology trends, while other scope is driven by faculty survey responses and one-on-one discussion with faculty or technical support staff.
From July-September 2014, CTS completed year 3 of the refresh cycle, gutting and re-wiring 24 classroom lecterns and adding
new side shelves to expand the workspace in 111 classrooms. New computers with digital outputs and widescreen monitors
were installed. HDMI laptop cables and blu-ray decks were added. Document cameras and gooseneck microphones were put
into most rooms larger than 50 seats, and wireless microphones were added to rooms larger than 120 seats. New projectors
and screens were installed, and all rooms had their speakers re-wired to stereo. All video & audio switching gear was replaced,
as was the control equipment. For the first time power controllers were installed for the lectern equipment and projectors (allowing CTS staff to quickly and remotely cycle power to devices), and cameras were installed above the lecterns to aid in rapid
troubleshooting of help-desk calls.
In June 2015, CTS began work on year 4 of the refresh cycle: 24 more classrooms including challenging spots HH 178 and
SSH 100 where Facilities Management and other vendors were called in to help improve visibility from some audience seats.
To solve a big problem with slow machines in some rooms, additional computers were purchased and installed in all remaining
refresh rooms, effectively accelerating the refresh cycle for those devices to 4 years. A new vertical sliding whiteboard is set to
be installed in SSH 100, as are new electric screens in many DBH rooms. The rest of the scope will largely follow the same set
of enhancements installed during Summer 2014.
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24
classrooms
refreshed
Summer
2014
classrooms refresh
in progress Summer
2015
Refreshed Classrooms
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OIT
EduTech
SAS
Learning Management Platform Upgrade
and Integration Project
Spring Pilot
Considering for the Future of Instructional Technology at
UCI with the One Year Canvas Pilot
Info:
270
Classes
125
75
5,853
Instructors
TAs
Students
The Academic Web Technologies team (AWT) builds and maintains UCI’s homegrown learning management system (LMS),
the Electronic Educational Environment (http://eee.uci.edu), and is currently managing a one-year pilot of a popular commercial LMS, Instructure Canvas.
The Canvas Pilot is an opportunity for instructors, teaching assistants, and students to use Canvas in their courses and participate in a formal assessment of the value and usability of Canvas as a potential addition to the instructional technology ecosystem at UCI.
To support the Canvas Pilot, AWT built a data management utility to synchronize our campus Canvas environment with instructor, teaching assistant, student, course, and enrollment data for participating courses. AWT also implemented integrations
between the Canvas Pilot environment and MyEEE, with EEE teaching assistants management, WebAuth (UCInetID login),
and the University Registrar’s WebGrades final grade submission tool.
AWT staff have historically provided full support for the EEE website, including training workshops and just-in-time assistance via email, phone, and in-person consultation. AWT is providing the same level of direct support to the instructors,
teaching assistants, and students participating in the Canvas Pilot, with behind-the-scenes escalation to Instructure and coordination with Instructure’s support, engineering, and product management teams.
Throughout the Canvas Pilot, the AWT team is conducting assessment activities to gather data that will inform a recommendation for the next directions in instructional technology at UCI. Assessment activities include pre-, mid-, and end-of-quarter
online surveys for all participants, optional student focus groups, instructor meet-ups, instructor panels, and collaboration with
Professor Albert Kobsa’s Human-Computer Interaction students for formal usability review of the Canvas software.
The AWT team maintains an informative Canvas Pilot website designed to keep all faculty, students, and stakeholders up-todate with assessment results summaries and other data as it becomes available. For more information, visit:
http://sites.uci.edu/canvaspilot/.
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OIT
EduTech
SAS
Supporting Academic Programs with
Flexible, Online Forms in EEE Scout
Academic Web Technologies launched EEE Scout, a new web application for the campus that facilitates the creation of online
web forms to collect and review information in support of academic activities.
To date, ​131 forms have been published and 2,489 responses have been submitted. Scout has been used to digitize previously
paper student hiring processes, peer tutor recruitment, peer academic advisor recruitments, workshop signups (previously
handled by emails), event signups in the Paul Merage School of Business, proposal submissions, the C
​ hancellor’s Illuminations
initiative with over 20 responses, Humanities Commons proposals with over 150 responses, course prerequisite clearing, and
gathering information to help incoming transfer students register for classes in the School of Physical Sciences
Scout users have sent Academic Web Technologies valuable feedback including feature requests to help guide ongoing Scout
development, and praise, describing Scout as “easy to use,” “very useful and helpful tool that makes our lives a lot easier,” “
straightforward and easy to navigate”, and “user friendly.”
Academic Web Technologies continues to enhance Scout with new features and functionality in response to campus feedback.
For more information about the latest updates to EEE Scout, visit https://help.eee.uci.edu/scout/updates/.
Providing Technology Training with EEE
Workshops
Each quarter, AWT facilitates a variety of in-person workshops focused on topics related to instructional technology. In the 2015-2016 academic year, topics included EEE tools, information sessions about the Canvas
Pilot, Google Apps @ UCI, i-clickers, and good security and privacy practices online.
Workshop attendance
Fall 2014
Winter 2015
Spring 2015
42 attendees total
(8 faculty)
33 attendees total
(10 faculty)
23 attendees total
(5 faculty)
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OIT
EduTech
SAS
LARC Summer Session Tutorials
The DUE Data and Development team (DDD) provides
a wide range of web application development and data
support to the Division of Undergraduate Education
(DUE) and to the undergraduate population in general.
Before the summer of 2014, students who wanted to sign up for the Learning and Academic Resource Center’s
(LARC) summer tutorial sessions had to walk over to LARC’s offices in the second floor of Rowland Hall and stand
in line, with cash or check in hand. On a regular basis, LARC Operations Manager Ron Mudd then had to hand carry
all payments across Aldrich Park to the Campus Cashier. The enrollment method had changed little since the 1980s
and hundreds of students each summer were inconvenienced by the process. A couple of years ago, one student who
was en route from South Asia during the enrollment period actually had their mom go to LARC to sign up for them.
Other students who could not visit the office during the enrollment period were simply unable to enroll and often
missed out on the opportunity to attend summer tutorial sessions.
In spring of 2014, the DDD team learned about this problem and proposed an on-line solution: they could repurpose an existing web-based sign-up application to handle summer tutorials. The first meeting with the client was held
on April 22nd.
Two months later, the project was complete.
By 8:00am on June 23rd--the first day of Summer Session I--160 students had
already signed up online for their tutorials. Instead of carrying payments on
foot, billing information would be delivered digitally to Campus Billing Services.
LARC’s front office was pleasantly quiet that morning.
The Director of LARC, Tracie Welser, summarized the human impact of the project: “Signups has saved LARC
many hours of staff time and streamlined a once difficult process, making summer tutorials more accessible to students who were previously unable to register in person.”
(photo: LARC's
8 staff and peer tutors)
OIT
Applications
SAS
Academic English Reports
design
build
deploy
hours saved
per
quarter
20 hrs
70-80 hrs
Just before fall 2014, DDD was asked to analyze and automate several key tasks within Academic English program.
The DUE Data and Development team (DDD) analysts
quickly discovered that at the beginning of every quarter,
Academic English staff were painstakingly reviewing the
course enrollments of over a thousand international students, to ensure that all students were enrolled correctly.
Students who were misenrolled had to be notified as soon
as possible so that they could switch into the right Academic
English class. With only a few staff members, Academic
English was struggling to keep up with this enormous
administrative task each quarter. Because the process was
so slow, many students were not informed until two or three
weeks into the quarter, forcing them to play catch up and
greatly jeopardizing their performance in the class.
(photo: The Humanities Instructional Building, the home of the
Academic English Program)
The DDD team went to work, using a home-grown rapid
reporting and messaging application called DREM to build
data queries that automated the laborious process of identifying and contacting misenrolled Academic English students.
The project took less than a month and fewer than 20 hours
to design, build and deploy. Eunice Choi, Academic English
Program Manager, estimates that the queries in turn have
saved her department an estimated 70-80 hours per quarter.
Most importantly, students were are now being contacted
in the first few days of the quarter, greatly increasing their
chances of success in their courses.
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OIT
Applications
SAS
Building a Lasting Engagement with the
Alumni Association
In February 2014, the Chancellor & Provost IT (CPIT) team met with the Alumni
Association to develop and implement a new system of cap and gown purchases.
Traditionally, graduating students would attend a Grad Expo event where orders and
payments would be placed. The process was slow, the laptop rentals necessary to place
orders were costly, and the existing web application did not adhere to the latest PCI
Data Security Standards. For 2015, the Alumni Association wanted to improve the
customer experience and present a positive image to soon-to-be alumni.
CPIT evaluated various credit card terminals compatible with their existing set of
iPad minis and engaged with OIT’s IT Security and Network Engineering teams to
discuss requirements and capacity. The existing web application was redeveloped from
the ground up, resulting in a new, mobile responsive web app that could be used for
ordering and administration. Isolated credit card terminals for payment processing and
a dedicated printer for order confirmation and fulfillment by Jostens completed the
system.
Grad Expo was scheduled for the last week of April, so the project had a firm, unmovable deadline. In the end, the project was a success. The new system sold more cap
and gown packages than any previous year, while also maintaining dependable uptime.
The system was so successful that even Jostens had mentioned interest in using it for
other campuses.
250
Orders/Hour
at Peak
5,670
Total Orders
262
Memberships
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OIT
Applications
SAS
Promoting Inclusive Excellence
through UCI’s Diversity Opportunities
ADVANCE Diversity Opportunities Online Application
UC Irvine is committed to promoting diversity, equality, and inclusion. Connecting people to initiatives that promote
these principles can be a challenge. Developed during 2014 by the SAS Chancellor & Provost IT team, the UC Irvine
Diversity Opportunities database serves as a centralized location for initiatives and programs with a focus on diversity.
The database houses information on a myriad of on-and-off campus activities, ranging from research to mentoring,
and from teaching to community outreach. It’s a useful tool for faculty, staff, and students wanting to explore how they
can contribute to inclusive excellence during their career at UCI. And it connects users with the wide range of initiatives and programs already available.
Those hosting an event may submit a Diversity Opportunity to the database for potential participants to learn more
about the event while those looking to be a participant may use the database to find a program that interests them.
Opportunities are categorized by location, frequency, type of activity, and target population, which can be searched,
filtered, and sorted.
SEVIS
Student and Exchange Visitor Program
SEVIS, or the Student and Exchange Visitor Program, is a federally
mandated program that tracks and monitors exchange visitors carrying
F, M, and J Visas while they visit and participate in the U.S. Education
System. Using International Student & Scholar Management software
by Ellucian, Student Affairs IT works closely with the International
Center to report on approximately 1000 international exchange visitors, 582 research scholars, and 10 professors to Homeland Security.
In addition to managing SEVIS, Student Affairs IT also builds custom
web applications for the International Center to help create a paperless
process for incoming students, replacing the previous system of manual
administrative data entry.
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1,600
1,600 data records for International exchange visitors and International research scholars &
professors from 130 different disciplines are reported to Homeland Security by Student Affairs IT.
OIT
Applications
Digital Signage System
SAS
The Financial Aid office, Student Center and Events Center, Biological Sciences, and Environmental Health and Safety are just a few of
the departments currently utilizing the Student Affairs Information
Technology Digital Signage System. Born from a humble system of
just five displays, our system has grown to approximately 40 digital
displays utilized by twenty different departments campus-wide.
22 different departments
across campus utilize Student Affairs’ digital signage
technology and support.
Our Student Affairs VM system allows us to virtualize our server for
easy central management, allowing our clients the convenience of
administering their own content through our web based system. Their
content is then pushed out to our displays, where a small PC on each
unit ensures that content is always running, even when connectivity to
the central server is lost. From basketball games and event photos, to
conference room scheduling and wayfinding, SAIT’s scalable signage
system has become a staple at UC Irvine.
Commencement Ticketing and Tools
During the 2014 commencement when President Obama spoke, Student Affairs IT developed an anti-ticket fraud
system that allowed commencement staff to deactivate tickets that were illegally sold.
Issuing commencement tickets to students for family and
friends has traditionally been problematic. Different schools
allocate different students a different number of tickets
based on seats available and the size of the graduating
class, all of which results in an administrative headache.
However, a new system developed by Student Affairs IT
has introduced a set of tools and applications to simplify
and streamline the process. Our system identifies a student,
determines which ceremony they are in, and enables them
to print their own allocated number of tickets. For our PhD
candidates, we have developed a separate system to allow
them to request which faculty member they want to “hood”
them during the ceremony. Faculty members can log in and
see how many requests they have received, who submitted
the request, and allows them to accept or decline.
600
Over 600 clubs and organizations with
individual website and email accounts
are supported by Student Affairs IT.
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OIT
UC Recruit
SAS
Partnering with UC Berkeley
to develop and
Recruit has served as UC’s academic applicant tracking system since 2013.
deliver the UC
UC Recruit facilitates the hiring of top talent, which directly influences UC’s position as a premier research university. UC Recruit also ensures compliance with
AP Search
state and federal regulations.
application Historically, UC Recruit had little support for planning a recruitment or processing approvals that takes place during the recruitment process. This year, the UC
Recruit team partnered with Karie Frasch from UC Berkeley’s Faculty Welfare
and developers from UC Berkeley’s Information Services & Technology department to bring their “AP Search” application into the 10-campus UC Recruit
platform.
This partnership is a great example of leveraging the strengths of the 10 campuses. By expanding a best-of-breed application in use at one campus to the
entire system, UC realizes significant cost savings and economies of scale. With
oversight from the UC Recruit Governance Board, the team developed key enhancements to encourage broad adoption across the system.
UC now benefits from recruitment best practices such as defining applicant
evaluation criteria up front, helping to avoid potential selection bias. Flexible
approval processes encourage compliance with relevant policies and regulations,
promote a diverse workforce, and support our goal of inclusive excellence.
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The SAS Kick-off breakfast, Nov 21, 2014
Making connections. Sharing talents. Cementing collaborations.
Su Wang holds a monthly
PHP programmers meeting attended by AWT,
Academic Applications
Development and staff
from Student Affairs.
OIT assists Student Affairs with
desktop rollouts in Wellness,
Health & Counseling Services
and now provides desktop support for the cluster.
Academic Personnel and Academic Affairs developers pair with
each other regularly to cross-train and conduct code review as
part of the Software Develoment Life Cycle.
Jeremy Thacker
regularly provides “Agile
Reading Room”
email hightlighting articles
about Agile development so that
others can benefit
from it.
Members of SAS regularly
present on a variety of technological topics at higher
education and industry conferences such as
UCCSC, Educause, and WordCamp.
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SAS is a division of the Office of Information Technology.
Without OIT’s infrastruture, the success of the projects that
are highlighted in this document would not be possible.
Projects in this document were selected by a committee
comprised of SAS leadership.
Contributing authors (in order by pages):
Shohreh Borzorgmehri, Allen Schiano, Eric Rupp, Kelsey
Layos, John Remy, Albert Chi, Victor Pham, Kevin Ansel, and
Max Garrick.
Layout and Design: Kim Gerrard
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