AnnouncementsThe Technology and Learning Faculty Grant Program Awards Eight Faculty ProposalsThe Technology and Learning grant program offers competitive funding to Pepperdine's full-time faculty members to support and encourage innovation in the field of technology and learning. Eight proposals submitted in January were recommended for funding by a committee comprised of faculty from all five schools of Pepperdine. This program was established by the offices of the Provost and the Chief Information Officer, and is administered through the Technology and Learning department.

The following proposals were funded for a total of $60,942:

Professor Proposal Title School

Dr. Anthony Collatos

Dr. Charla Griffy-Brown

Dr. Owen Hall

Dr. Lincoln Hanks

Dr. Tim Lucas

Dr. Stephen Parmelee

Dr. Garrett Pendergraft

Dr. David Smith

21st Century Teacher Education: A Case Study of How Technology Can Foster a

Community of PracticeGSEP

Toward a Framework and Strategy for Academic and Learning Analytics to Enhance

Enrollment and Student SuccessGSBM

Pepperdine Faculty Collaboration Network GSBM

Korg Group Education Controller 3 Seaver

The Role of iPads in Constructing Collaborative Learning Spaces Seaver

A/V Equipment for Film Studies Seaver

Enhancing Student Learning Through Social Elements and Game Mechanics Seaver

Implementing Box: a Cloud-based and Interoperable File Management Solution GSBM

To learn more about the Technology and Learning Faculty Grant Program, please visit http://community.pepperdine.edu/techlearn/get-involved/grants/default.htm.

1 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, February 2012

Information Technology Activity and Status Report

February 2012

Contact InformationTechnology

IT Help Desk

Available 24 hours a day, 7 days a week

(310) 506-HELP (4357)or (866) 767-8623

Technology and Learningfor Faculty

http://community.pepperdine.edu/

techlearn/

Chief Information Officer

(310) 506-4173

IT Website

http://community.pepperdine.edu/it/

News

Information Technology Welcomes David Yoon to the IT TeamPepperdine's Information Technology (IT) recently welcomed David Yoon to the IT team. David Yoon serves as senior technologies analyst to the Drescher graduate campus. In addition to assisting students, faculty, and staff with general technology support questions, Yoon hopes to focus on the implementation and training of new technologies within the classroom. He brings with him more than seven years of technical production expertise. Prior to working at Pepperdine, Yoon organized music festivals along the southern and central California coast. Yoon is also a proud Pepperdine alumnus. Please welcome him back to the Waves community.

IT Help Desk Reaches a Closure Rate of 86 PercentIn January 2012, the Information Technology (IT) Help Desk resolved 86 percent of technology issues without having to assign the request to a local Pepperdine support group. This is 33 percent higher than the IT in-house help desk did in the past. Pepperdine University has had a help desk for more than 20 years to assist students, faculty, and staff with technology issues. The in-house help desk was operated from 8:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m., Monday thru Friday, by as many as eight IT staff members. Even after extending the hours into the evening and to Saturday, staff were not available when students, faculty, and staff needed help.

In 2008, Pepperdine outsourced the help desk function to Datatel+SGHE, previously known as SunGard Higher Education, which operates in Orlando, Florida, and Rochester, New York. Datatel+SGHE serves as a technology help desk to more than 100 educational institutions. Over the first three years, Datatel+SGHE, has resolved an average of 80 percent (nearly 15,000 out of 18,000) of the issues called in to the Help Desk every year.

It is important for IT to use the Help Desk to take technology request calls because they are equipped to handle the more than 22,000 calls made every year. It is also important for the Help Desk to make sure they know exactly to whom they are speaking so they can track the status of technology requests.  The Help Desk is available to take calls 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. Because of the Help Desk’s successful handling of technology requests, IT staff has had more time to focus on technology initiatives such as improving the Internet infrastructure, offering faculty peer-to-peer workshops and seminars, bringing collaborative technologies such as Sakai and iPads to the classroom, and installing Cisco telephones for faculty and staff.

Like any service, the Help Desk is not perfect; however, thanks to feedback from the annual TechQual+ survey and the Help Desk ticket surveys, the IT staff is working on better IT website self-help documentation and other services that will give the Pepperdine community alternatives to calling the help desk. For example, the IT website (http://community.pepperdine.edu/it) contains information about resetting your own password, setting up your mobile device to receive email, and accessing Pepperdine network resources from off campus.

The IT Help Desk will always serve an integral role in allowing IT staff to assist its Pepperdine partners and colleagues achieve their strategic University goals.

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Information Security Tip of the Month - Set a Strong PIN or Passcode on Your Mobile DeviceMany of you have a personal laptop, tablet or smartphone that you use to access email and other password protected University and Internet resources. Typically, your device remembers those passwords for you. This is very convenient. However, if someone picks up your device, they also have access to all those password protected resources and maybe the passwords themselves. This can lead to confidentiality violations or even identity theft. To protect against this possibility, set your device to lock after a maximum 15 minute timeout period and set a strong personal identification number (PIN) or password on your mobile devices and computers. Setting a strong PIN or password is mandatory if your personal device is programmed to access University confidential information, such as your work email. More information on PINs and passwords can be found at mypassword.pepperdine.edu.

Read the 2012 Information Technology Annual ReportIn January 2012, Information Technology released its 2011 IT Annual Report. This report features stories of how IT continues to partner with schools and departments to introduce new technology services to the campus community. A few highlights include the Technology and Learning Faculty

conference, new smart classrooms at the School of Law and School of Public Policy, and a feature on IT's Audio Visual Technologies team. Download the 2011 Annual Report to read these and other major accomplishments from the IT department.

Updates and UpgradesEIS Helps Streamline the Academic Catalog Revision ProcessEnterprise Information Systems (EIS) worked with University Registrar (UR), Integrated Marketing Communications (IMC), and representatives from all Pepperdine schools to improve the process through which edits and updates are made to course descriptions in the University's Academic Catalog. Team members including Lisa Welch (EIS), Ronit Weiss (EIS), Novita Rogers (EIS), Lesbiz Tovar (UR), and Roshie Hu (IMC) worked together to streamline the process by creating the ability to export course data from the PeopleSoft system and import it directly into the Academic Catalog during the annual revision process by University Publications and/or the University Registrar. Pulling this information directly from PeopleSoft helps to ensure the integrity of the University's catalog data as well as simplify the annual catalog revision process. This project went into production in December 2011 and Seaver College has already benefited from the team's innovative work.

EIS Improves Access to the SOC Database for Student AffairsEnterprise Information Systems (EIS) staff member Dustin Luck worked with Mark Davis from Student Affairs (SA) to provide better access to the Students of Concern (SOC) database application for SA staff. The SOC database is where SA staff keep notes on students that may be encountering life changing experiences or need simple advising in their college career. This database is very instrumental in improving a student’s experience at Pepperdine.

3 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, February 2012

Prior to the improvement to the database, the SOC application was written in Microsoft Access, which was very cumbersome and only allowed one person to access the database to make updates or run reports. In order to make the database more secure, reliable, and accessible, the decision was made to rewrite it as a web application with a structured query language (SQL) database back-end. Student Affairs users who work with SOC can now access the information on-demand rather than through reports run and distributed by a single person. They can also update the records as new information becomes available rather than sending everything to a single person who must make the updates.

EIS Provides Better Notice of Outages and Links to Other Resources on WaveNet Login PageIn early February, IT staff including James Ballacchino, Felix Baronikian, and Shu Chi Liou, and Kyle Dusek from Integrated Marketing Communications worked to redirect all WaveNet login traffic to a central location. This redirection takes users to the main login page of WaveNet, which will serve as a place to help IT communicate important maintenance or outage information as well as provide links to other important technology and school related resources.

In the 2011 TechQual+ survey Pepperdine students, faculty, and staff let IT know that they would like to have better notifications about upcoming maintenance or system outages to WaveNet. Prior to this redirection project, there were two entrances to the WaveNet system, the first is the WaveNet link on the Pepperdine University main page (www.pepperdine.edu) this link takes you through Pepperdine’s Central Authentication Service (CAS), the University’s single sign-on gateway for access to all Pepperdine University web-based applications, and into WaveNet. The second entrance to WaveNet is at the WaveNet main page (https://wavenet.pepperdine.edu). IT uses this main page to post important messages about the WaveNet system. Now, when you visit www.pepperdine.edu and click on the "wavenet" button it will take you to the main login page for WaveNet, to continue into WaveNet from this main page click on the "login" button and sign into CAS. To view the new page, click here.

Network Engineering Prepares Campus for Collaborative Communication SystemOn December 16 and 17, Information Technology’s Network Engineering team, Rita Schnepp, Vic Suphasiri, John Figueroa, and Z Kasilag, performed a major upgrade to the University’s telephone system. This upgrade provided the foundation for using new iPhone and iPad mobility features for teaching and learning on our campus infrastructure. The upgrade also assist in introducing a new Cisco “Group Chat” feature for Cisco’s Unified Personal Communicator (CUPC) and Jabber users. Group chat allows a large team to quickly collaborate with one another via ‘chat’ using a simple “drag and drop” technique.

This upgrade is part of the multi-year project to replace the University's existing telephone system with a new platform from Cisco that merges voice, video, and web conferencing. To learn more about the Cisco Telephones click here to visit the project homepage http://community.pepperdine.edu/it/services/phone/cisco/.

Future PlansTechQual+ 2012 Survey to be Released this March This March, Information Technology will release the 2012 TechQual+ survey to a randomly selected group of faculty, staff, and students. TechQual+ is a national higher education survey instrument, which measures community satisfaction with university technology services. More information about the TechQual+ survey instrument is available at www.techqual.org. Results from this survey are used to develop technology strategies, assess priorities, and monitor the effectiveness of technology services.

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Past TechQual+ surveys have led to IT initiatives including significantly upgrading wireless capabilities at all Pepperdine campuses and providing improved notifications of outages and downtime.

EventsFaculty Speaker Series ResumesIn fall 2011, the Technology and Learning group launched a faculty speaker series. This series of workshops helps Pepperdine faculty see what technologies their colleagues are using in the classroom and gives them a chance to learn from the experience of their peers. The spring 2012 schedule is now available.

• March 14 - Using Technology to Put Students at the Center of Learning. Dr. Michael Shires of the School of Public Policy will discuss how he uses technology to increase student engagement in the classroom. Register now.

• April 4 - Photoshop for Faculty. Ms. Hong Kha of Seaver college will share tips on using Photoshop to create powerful images for presentations and learning activities. Register now.

To watch recordings of last year's events, please visit http://community.pepperdine.edu/techlearn/teaching/speaker-series/

PeopleSoft and Simpler Training Now Available to Pepperdine Staff and FacultyPeopleSoft and Simpler training for the months of February and March are now available. These classes are a great opportunity for you to brush up on your skills and review important policies and procedures. To register or view the class schedule, visit the IT Training Calendar. For questions contact Len Krukowski at leonard.krukowski@pepperdine.edu.

Benchmarks and AccountabilityHelp Desk Statistics for December 2011 and January 2012 During December 2011, there were 1,016 requests for support managed through the Help Desk. Of these requests, 57 percent were resolved within two days and 94 percent were resolved in fewer than five days. The average wait time for individuals calling the Help Desk was 59 seconds. Eighty-two percent of requests were resolved by the Help Desk on the first call.

During January 2012, there were 2,135 requests for support managed through the Help Desk. Of these requests, 61 percent were resolved within two days and 94 percent were resolved in fewer than five days. The average wait time for individuals calling the Help Desk was 68 seconds. Eighty-six percent of requests were resolved by the Help Desk on the first call.

Online RequestsIn December 2011, there were 136 additional requests for support managed through online web request forms. The top two types of online requests were: network resources (38) and departmental telephone service (35).

In January 2012, there were 226 additional requests for support managed through online web request forms. The top two types of online requests were: Audio Visual (68) and Network Requests (43).

Help Desk User Survey Results Through an automated feedback process, all Help Desk callers have the opportunity to complete a

5 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, February 2012

web-based satisfaction survey. In December 2011, 127 (13 percent) of 955 survey requests sent to customers were submitted.

In January 2012, 223 (12 percent) of 1,844 survey requests sent to customers were submitted. The four-question survey uses a “1 to 5” sliding scale with “4.00-5.00” equal to Excellent.

Month OverallSatisfaction Competency Customer Service Resolution

Timeliness

November

December

January

4.70 4.81 4.53 4.76

4.58 4.70 4.43 4.62

4.62 4.65 4.51 4.68

How to Subscribe to this Report. If you would like to be added to the distribution list for this report, please contact Tiffany Yu, communications specialist, at tiffany.yu@pepperdine.edu. The Monthly IT Status Report archive is available online at http://community.pepperdine.edu/it/about/status-reports.htm.

6 Information Technology Activity and Status Report, February 2012