Winter/Spring 2006

 

Welcome
Shawn Beattie, ITS, editor

Welcome to Augie Techknowledge from ITS, an e-newsletter to share "what's new" in ITS and provide useful tips and articles on Information Technology and Educational Technology at Augustana.  We hope you like it and find it useful.  The newsletter will be archived on the ITS web site at http://its.augustana.edu/techknowledge.  Enjoy! 


In this issue:
Augustana's Network Speed
Moodle
Datatel Update
Outlook shortcuts
Watch the new residence hall
More tips!

Augustana's Network Speed

Currently our Internet connection to the world is supported by 5 digital lines called "T1" lines. This provides a total bandwidth of 7.5 megabits per second. Each T1 line can handle approximately 1.5 million bits per second; a normal phone line using a conventional modem can typically handle 30,000 to 50,000 bits per second, making each T-1 line the equivalent of about 30 dial-up modems.  However, when distributed across as many as a thousand simultaneous users, even a fast connection can be quickly overburdened. You can see a constantly updated graph of network traffic by going to its.augustana.edu, then selecting the General tab in the left hand frame, then Network Status. You will see a chart like this:

Notice that the traffic generated by Augustana users, represented by the green line, at this point was "maxed out". When this occurs, web browsing can be sluggish and streaming audio or video can be interrupted.

Slow Internet connection speeds can be affected by downloads (music,video,etc.), virus attacks, or just a large number of users. The ITS department uses "packet shaper" hardware and software that allows us to analyze more specifically what is generating the traffic. At the point where the diagram above was generated, 93% of the traffic was simple web browsing. So why won’t our five T1s handle this? The number of computers registered on our network has doubled since we last added to our T1 connection. To address this, Augustana is adding two more T1 lines this month. We are currently waiting for SBC to complete the installation. Our connection will then be about 10 megabits per second, or the equivalent capacity to about 300 dialup modems.

Moodle 

Augustana College now has a course management software system. You can access it by typing moodle.augustana.edu into your browser.

 

 

There are about 34 courses listed in Moodle at this time. The instructors for these courses are using moodle to post documents pertaining to their classes, holding online discussions, giving online quizzes, etc. If you have never used Moodle logon using your Augustana username and password. If you are an instructor let Shawn Beattie know and he will give you faculty rights. This will allow you to create an online course.  

 This closeup of one topic with editing turned on shows the flexible way in which you can add resources or activities to a Moodle course.  The home site for Moodle, with an abundance of information to explore, is at http://moodle.org/.   A faculty guide for working with Moodle is also available on the web at http://its.augustana.edu/employees/edtech.php

If you would like to use Moodle and have any questions, contact Shawn Beattie or Gil Koenigsaecker

Datatel/AIMS update

Augustana College has begun implementation of an information management system produced by the Datatel company. This program will be known as the Augustana Information Management System, or AIMS.

Upon completion of this project, students can expect greater access, input and influence over their academic career. Advisors and faculty can expect real-time access to grades, classes and advisee schedules, allowing time for a more meaningful advisor/advisee or faculty/student relationship. Staff can expect greater access to information that is shared and managed by all areas of the College. This new system will mean that information that was stored in many separate databases will be consolidated. This will enable that information to be accurate across campus, usable in real time by different parts of the campus community, and provide a web access which was unavailable before. Our older legacy systems could not do this. The timeline for implementation is very extensive. First, it involves training for key campus community members. Over 100 days of training will be provided by Datatel over the course of the next 2 years. The system will ‘go live’ in modules. The finance module is scheduled to lead off in July of 2006, admissions in September of 2006, payroll in July 2007. This will be what Datatel calls the "vanilla" version of their system.

Once it has been up and running for year, a thorough analysis will be done to see what customizations may be needed for our campus situation.  More details on the AIMS project can be found at http://campus.augustana.edu/aims
.

Outlook Shortcuts

Everyone likes shortcuts!  Perhaps you teach a class and use an Outlook Public Folder, or maybe you would like to have a shortcut that jumps right to your personal calendar in Outlook?  Here's how!

1. Right-click on your desktop (or in the location where you want the shortcut) and choose New... Shortcut.
2.  For the item location, enter "outlook:" followed by the path in Outlook to the item.  Here are some examples:

outlook:calendar shortcut to your own calendar
outlook:contacts shortcut to your Outlook contacts
outlook:\\Public Folders\All Public Folders\Academic\CSTL CSTL public folder

If you have a folder that is buried within other folders, it may be easiest to go to that folder and look for the address in Outlook, and then copy and paste into the new shortcut location.


3.  Give your shortcut a name, and try it out!

Watch the new residence hall

Augustana's new residence hall is taking shape very quickly!  To check on the progress of the construction, a webcam was provided by the construction company and was placed at Andreen Hall.  If the new res hall has you excited, or you just like to watch large equipment - you can tune in online at:
http://campus.augustana.edu/webcams

More tips!

If you are printing webpages sometimes you don’t get the whole page, the right hand portion is cut off. If you go to File, Print Preview first then click the print button there it usually will print the whole page.  If not, you can click the Page Setup button (see below) and set the margins smaller, to say 0.25".  This will usually let you print the full page.

If you place photos in Word, sometimes the file size of the document can get very large. There is a compress image button in the Word picture toolbar you can use.

 

Happy New Year from ITS!

Visit us at http://its.augustana.edu