TechNews

Use of UC Davis Canvas continues to expand. During Summer Session 2, ninety-seven instructors are using the initial, limited version of the new learning management system (LMS) to teach 90 courses enrolling 2,750 students.
 
That’s up about 50 percent from Summer Session 1, when UC Davis Canvas debuted as the eventual replacement for SmartSite. The campus is transitioning to UC Davis Canvas during 2016-17, and SmartSite will remain available for teaching through spring quarter 2017.
 

UC Davis Police report that a hate message appeared in several campus printers Monday night. The incident re-emphasizes the importance of securing printers against unwanted traffic from the Internet.

In March, an outside source sent hateful messages to UC Davis and other universities via unsecured printers. The campus is investigating the source of the current message.

​TechNews, where Information and Educational Technology posts news about campus tech for non-technologists, is the latest IET website to get updated. On Aug. 2 IET modernized its design and restored a subscription-only, Monday-morning email of TechNews headlines.

The change was one of several IET website updates released Aug. 2. The TechNews change is the most visible.

The move to UC Davis Canvas has begun. Sixty-one instructors have taught with it during Summer Session 1, and the numbers will only grow from here.

The campus is moving to the UC Davis Canvas learning management system (LMS) during 2016-17. Canvas is replacing SmartSite, which will remain available for teaching through spring quarter 2017.

UC Davis email services were disrupted this morning by a faulty networking device in a Microsoft data center. The disruption has prevented some people from accessing their uConnect Office365 accounts, which include UC Davis email, calendar services, and Office web applications.

UC Davis faculty and graduate instructors now have a new resource to support them as they teach with technology, whatever their level of experience. It's called EdTech Commons.

The online hub debuted in mid-May. Academic Technology Services (ATS) and the Center for Educational Effectiveness (CEE) worked with faculty to create a resource that's clear, direct, easy to navigate, and focuses on meeting the requirements of UC Davis instructors.

App developers from throughout UC Davis are invited to attend two days of training at the end of July on secure application development.

The Information Security Office (ISO) is organizing a mix of lectures and labs that will focus on the Open Web Application Security Project (OWASP) Top 10 security risks. The training has room for 120 people, and the ISO will cover their registration fees.

Instructors who want to learn about teaching with UC Davis Canvas, the new learning management system (LMS) at UC Davis, have an excellent opportunity to do so this Thursday, June 16.

From 9 a.m. to noon that day in room 2102 of the Student Community Center, instructional technologists from Information and Educational Technology (IET) will lead workshops that will provide an overview of Canvas, explain its features, answer questions, and help instructors set up their courses.

This summer is still a good time to switch to eduroam for UC Davis wireless access, although moobilenetx--the service it is replacing--will be around awhile longer.

Here are the updates, as of noon May 27, on events and developments related to the continuing outage of SmartSite:

Here are today's updates on events and developments related to the continuing outage of SmartSite:

The SmartSite outage continues. UC Davis is actively working to resolve the situation, and is proceeding as if the vendor that hosts SmartSite will not be able to restore access by the end of the quarter.

This is the update for May 25:

SmartSite, the learning management system for most of UC Davis, continues to be offline. Scriba, which hosts the service for UC Davis, has not updated the campus on when the service will be available.

Scriba took the system down for emergency maintenance on May 20, said it would be restored by 11 a.m. May 23, and has not explained why the outage continues.

UC Davis is taking these steps as of today, May 24:

Scriba, which hosts the SmartSite learning management system for UC Davis, missed its deadline of restoring the service by 11 a.m. today after taking it offline late on May 20 for emergency maintenance.

As of 1:30 p.m. today, Scriba had not said when it expects SmartSite to be restored. UC Davis is pressing the company for answers, including when it will implement its backup restoration plans if the outage continues.

Scriba, which hosts SmartSite for UC Davis, told UC Davis Thursday afternoon that the company is taking SmartSite offline this weekend for emergency maintenance. SmartSite will be unavailable from 9 p.m. Friday, May 20, until 11 a.m. Monday, May 23 (all Pacific time).