Faculty Support Services at
Oakland University
Who am I?
 Shaun Moore, Manager of Support
Services. samoore@oakland.edu
 My primary job here is supporting
the various teaching with
technology tools we have.
 Employed at OU for about 8 years.
 Obtained my undergraduate
degrees from OU in English and
French.
What teaching with technology
tools are you using?
e-LIS Tools
 Moodle – OU’s Learning Management
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System, an open source platform.
ePortfolio – A second instance of Moodle
used for a portfolio system.
Scantron – Scoring Scantron sheets using
the ParSCORE software.
Elluminate – Online conferencing
software, used as a virtual classroom for
online courses.
Second Life – Virtual 3D world that OU
has purchased an island on.
i>clicker – Student Response System
software.
Moodle
 Moodle is integrated with Banner, our student
information system (SIS).
 Everyone logs in with their OU NetID, which is their
email name and password.
 All courses are created one month ahead of time.
Every course has a Moodle presence, so no requesting
is required.
 Teachers have access to Moodle one month before
semester starts.
 Students gain access one week before semester starts.
ePortfolio
 Also integrated with Banner, but no courses on this
server.
 Everyone logs in with their OU NetID.
 Every student and faculty have a portfolio “course”
created for them.
 Guest access can be given to anyone to view the
porfolios of the students and faculty.
 Other groups have spaces on this server as well, such as
committees and departments for meetings and file
sharing.
Scantron
 Scantron machines work with ParSCORE software.
 No integrated with Banner, so separate accounts must
be created.
 Courses are created by the faculty when they scan each
semester.
 Used for test, assessment and couse evaluations.
 Integration with our in house course evaluation
system.
Elluminate
 Provides a real-time, video-conferencing classroom
environment.
 OU users log in with their OU NetID. Outside users
can be given access as well.
 OU has an unlimited seat license, allowing us to do
things like virtual office hours.
 Sessions are created either in Moodle for the courses or
via a web form.
Second Life
 Hosted by Linden Labs, users create
accounts through Second Life’s web
site.
 OU purchased an island on the
Second Life server, and we hold
virual classes there.
 Areas can be designated private for
class needs.
 Decent video card and RAM needed
to run.
i>clicker
 Previous to purchasing i>clicker, OU
supported multiple Student Response
Systems (SRS).
 i>clicker software is installed on the
machine itself, or on a USB drive,
making it difficult to keep everyone up
to date.
 There is no integration with Banner,
but grades can be imported into
Moodle.
What are you doing to support
your teaching with technology
tools?
e-LIS Staff
 There are five full time faculty here, and two student
employees.
 Though we’re all technically support staff, the main
line of support consists of myself, Nic as my backup,
and the two student employees.
 With that number we support the few thousand full
and part time faculty we have, and the some 17,000
students.
e-LIS Face to Face Support
 Walk-ins are welcome from 8-5 Monday-Friday.
 Faculty Lab – 8 computers for faculty use. Can walk in
and work and get one of our support staff if they have
questions.
 Media Lab – A new PC and Mac are in the Media Lab,
used for recording help documents or lectures using
tools like Camtasia, Visual Communicator and iMovie.
 e-Learning Lab – Our 24 seat computer lab where we
hold workshops for all of the different applications we
support.
e-LIS Phone and Online Support
 Phone support 8-5 Monday-Friday.
Nights and weekends support for
Elluminate through Classroom
Support department.
 Made custom web forms that offer
24/7 support* for the different tools
we have.
 Integrated the help forms into Moodle
and ePortfolio.
 Created an application that allows us
to manage the help forms.
online@oakland.edu
 All help forms and communications through the e-LIS
Manager go through a single email address we have –
online@oakland.edu.
 Everyone in our department is sent a copy of what is
sent through online@oakland.edu to their individual
OU email account.
 Responses that go through that are seen by everyone,
so we’re not answering people two and three times if
people forget to carbon copy their answers.
Gmail Filters
 Not everything that comes to
me from
online@oakland.edu deals
with help issues. Filters are
necessary to keep my inbox
organized.
 The email that is generated
by the forms is really only a
reminder, as there is always
the record of it in the
manager.
e-LIS Manager
e-LIS Manager Architecture
 ColdFusion for the web
application.
 MS SQL for the back
end database.
Manager and Forms
 Each box on the manager’s home page has a form on
our site that users can fill out for specific help. We’re
currently using the following forms:
 Moodle
 Request Help
 Development Courses
 Faculty Test Accounts
 Archives
 Combined Courses
 Course Sharing Permission
 Faculty Guest Accounts
 Faculty Improvement Suggestions
 ePortfolio
 Request Help
 Request a Space
 Scantron
 Course Evaluation Header
Sheets Order Form
 Elluminate
 Request Help
 Scheduling Request
 Second Life
 Request Help
 i>clicker
 Roster File Request
Moodle Help Screen
Helpful Features
 Automated Messages - Pre-generated answers to our
most asked questions.
 Automated Responses – Certain forms allow for
automated responses, such as combined courses and
i>clicker roster file requests.
 Moodle Integration – Allows us to combine courses
and create them automatically in Moodle.
 Reports and Statistics – For all requests in system.
 Knowledgebase – Complied information on processes
and documentation for e-LIS.
 Web site and FAQ Management
e-LIS Helpdesk Statistics
About 9,000 help requests since 2001.
Elluminate Desktop Control
 Elluminate can be used as a powerful helpdesk tool,
thanks to the desktop control feature.
 You can get a user to join a session and request desktop
control. Elluminate works with PC, Mac and Linux, so
it won’t matter what OS you have and what OS they
have.
Future of OU Help
 Completion of general help landing page, including an
FAQ and links to help forms.
 Further integration with Moodle and e-LIS Manager.
 Online chat help using either Elluminate or TinyChat
that will allow us to support users who wish to quickly
get onto our site and get help. Both programs support
screen sharing, a vital part of helping us to see what
the problem is.
Questions / Comments