The staff of the Office of Information Technology (OIT) will be using the next six weeks to perform updates and enhancements to a variety of areas around the campus. Please make note of the following planned maintenance items, as some of them are potentially service-impacting.
- Keep your campus PCs powered on during Thanksgiving Break (11/26-30): During the Thanksgiving break, OIT will be deploying a set of Windows 10 patches that will take a long time to install. If your computer is powered on during the Thanksgiving holiday, these patches should install gracefully without interrupting your normal activity.
- Hybrid Classrooms: OIT will be working to specially outfit two teaching spaces to support hybrid, synchronous teaching. If you are teaching a hybrid synchronous course in the spring semester and would like to use one of these spaces, please contact the Teaching and Learning Corner via helpdesk@clarkson.edu for a consultation.
- Classroom Lecture Stations and Computer Lab Computers: The computer labs and classroom lecture stations will all be re-imaged before December 12th. Due to hardware limitations, there will only be software updates made where necessitated by licensing requirements (SolidWorks, Symmetry and STAAD Pro); there will be no additions of software for the Spring semester and all other existing software will remain at their current versions. We encourage faculty to use the time between December 13th and January 13th to test any critical classroom software to ensure it is working as expected.
- Technology Loans: If you have borrowed items from the faculty tech loaner pool, please plan to return them before December 1st so that we can prepare to re-issue them to other faculty in the new year. If you need to borrow a 2-in-1 convertible tablet, webcam, microphone, or other piece of technology to support your teaching in the spring, please contact the IT HelpDesk to place your request. ‘Renewals’ of existing loans will be considered if sufficient equipment is available. Items being returned can be dropped off at the IT HelpDesk on the second floor of the ERC.
- Moodle Update: believe it or not, there is only one week each year where we have no classes in session on any of our academic calendars. That week always falls between Christmas and New Years. During that time this year our technical staff will be performing Moodle upgrades (we are moving from version 3.6.9 to 3.9.2). This upgrade should not impact any course development work that faculty plan to do during the break period, but please note that Moodle will be unavailable on December 29th from 4:00am – 7:30am while the upgrade is being performed. Please watch your email for further details on the new features and tools available in the new version.
- Holiday Closure Support: during the University’s extended “closure” we will not be routinely staffing the IT HelpDesk. Instead, callers to the IT HelpDesk will be provided with an opportunity to escalate high-priority technical issues impacting a large portion of the campus to an on-call IT manager who will coordinate an appropriate response. Emails to the IT HelpDesk will be monitored for critical items and routine requests will be responded to after January 1st.
- Classroom Technology: AV staff will be working in classrooms to make adjustments and fixes to all known audio, video or computing issues prior to return of class. If you are experiencing any technology related issues in the classroom, please report them to helpdesk@clarkson.edu.
If you have any questions or concerns, please feel free to contact me directly.
Joshua Fiske
Chief Information Officer and Emergency Response Coordinator
OFFICE OF INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY
Old Main 2301
8 Clarkson Avenue, Box 5585
Potsdam, NY 13699
Office: 315-268-6718
jfiske@clarkson.edu