McElhaney to replace Falls as computer lab manager

25th March | No Comments | posted by vegger | in About IT Staff and Student Workers

 

Starting April 1^st, faculty members who have questions about technology in their classrooms will be interacting with a different person than they would have before. Justin McElhaney, currently computer support analyst II for IT, will replace Steven Falls as IT Operations computer lab manager.

The computer lab manager is the person responsible for taking care of all the computers, virtual desktops and projectors in technology-enhanced classrooms and computer labs.

According to Chris Golden, Director of IT Operations, the computer lab manager also makes sure that

“students are using what the teachers are teaching”

when it comes to technology.

That means that students and teachers are using the same programs with the same updates on their computers, so there isn’t a disconnect that inhibits the learning process.

Golden said that that fact makes the staff move something faculty would want to know about.

As for students, they will now simply owe the efficiency they experience when they sit down at one of Lee’s computers to a new man.

IT continues to innovate university website

26th February | No Comments | posted by vegger | in About IT Staff and Student Workers, For Students, Faculty and Staff

If you thought that innovation was over for the university website when IT launched the revamped version in August 2012, think again.

Changes are in the works that will simplify the user’s online experience and make the website a more effective tool.

The biggest change, according to Nate Tucker, Director of IT Systems, is the approach to web development.

Instead of having two separate webpages – one old, and one with all of the new changes – the development transition will be more fluid.

“We’re creating more of an evolving website instead of taking a stop-and-go approach,” Tucker said.

Click here to see the current developing website.

One important difference users should expect to see that will help them connect and interact with the website is the incorporation of RSS feeds from the university calendar and news updates page.

“You’ll be able to get the RSS feeds on your personal calendar or on your mobile phone if you want,” Tucker said.

Another user-friendly update is the conversion of the calendar from a list form into a visual of an actual calendar.

The most recent change, however, involves elements Tucker refers to as banners and real estate, both of which have different meanings in the web design world than they do in other areas of life.

Online banners don’t wave in the wind like their cloth counterparts do, and Lee’s online banners are no different.

The banners on Lee’s website are text and graphic combos that highlight, and may provide links to, other areas of the site that users are likely to find interesting or to want more information about, such as the Frontline program or Lee Day.

Lee’s banners are currently located in a stationary line towards the bottom of the homepage above the “quicklinks” section.  The banners do not appear when users click on links to other pages of the website.

But with this next development, the banners will rotate one by one in the bottom right-hand corner of every webpage on the site, replacing the flame from the university logo.

“The banners will help utilize the real estate on the web page,” Tucker said.

The real estate Tucker is talking about isn’t concerned with selling a house for a better price or surveying land to get an accurate measurement; it just means the available space on a webpage.

In addition to helping the website use available space in the best possible way, Tucker said that the banner rotation “provides more visibility for current events.”

And there you have it. IT is committed to promoting innovation, one step at a time.

Facebook page gets 15,000 “thumbs-up”

19th February | No Comments | posted by vegger | in For Students, Faculty and Staff

Last week the Lee University Facebook page surpassed 15,000 likes: a milestone for the page.

That means that over 15,000 people (15,079, as of right now) have clicked the button on the page indicating that they are fans of, or are interested in, Lee University.

The amount is over triple the number of Lee’s undergraduate enrollment.

Bryan College, another private Christian university in the area, has an enrollment of about 1,400, and its Facebook page has around 4,000 likes.

Compared to a nearby public university, the University of Tennessee at Chattanooga has an enrollment of about 10,000 students, with more than 12,000 likes on its Facebook page.

But, according to director of IT Systems Nate Tucker, who manages the Facebook page, “there are a lot of current students who still haven’t “liked” Lee.'”

That’s something that the administration sees not as a discouragement, but as a challenge.

Vice president for enrollment Phil Cook posted on the Facebook page, “15,000 likes…nicely done! Here’s to 15,000 more.”

 

Check-ups prevent system crashes during registration

18th February | No Comments | posted by vegger | in For Students, Faculty and Staff

Registering for classes can be a stressful time for Lee students.

While still bearing the weight that one semester entails, students must begin thinking about the next one: the classes they need to take, the times that they need to take them, and how to work everything else in their schedule around them.

If the system students use to register for classes crashes in the middle of the process, the stress is likely to increase.

This is a problem Lee used to have, but thanks to Performance Health Checks done by IT Systems, they don’t have it anymore.

“[A few years ago], we were having outages in the middle of registration. That’s where we were,” IT Systems database administrator Chad Matthews said.

Matthews said that technological systems, just like people, need periodic check-ups.

Whereas people need a doctor, technology needs Performance Health Checks. While seeing a doctor can keep you from getting sick, the Performance Health Check keeps Lee’s systems from having the technological equivalent: a system outage.

According to Matthews, the goal of the check is essentially to “stress the system out” by simulating what it would be like if all students were doing class searches at the same time. (Class searches are the most time-consuming part of registration).

“It’s similar to a stress test you’d have in a physical examination [at a doctor’s office],” Matthews said.

By pummeling the system with information to compute and tasks to accomplish, IT is able to examine which parts of the system are slowing the process down.

This way, they can fix the individual components without having to buy completely new hardware (unless new hardware is the only thing that will solve the problem).

“The ideal thing is to have someone go in as if they are the only one in the system,” Matthews said. “We don’t want anyone to have to wait. We want them to get exactly what they want.”

These advances in the registration process don’t just help students; they also help the university itself by providing a good first impression for freshmen.

Matthews claimed that a freshman who experiences too many problems when they first come to a university may become too frustrated and want to leave.

“They’ll go somewhere else,” Matthews said.

Performance Health Checks help keep the system in shape so that Lee can attract new students and satisfy the ones it already has.

As Matthews put it, “We are making sure we can handle as much as possible.”