Information Systems Connection

The market for Learning Management Systems (LMSes) in small higher educational institutions is changing. Proprietary products like Blackboard and Jenzabar’s eRacer are being supplanted by the open source products Moodle and Sakai. Vendors of proprietary LMSes are finding it difficult to compete with the features, flexibility and value provided by open source offerings.  Information Systems has prepared a case statement for changing from Blackboard to Moodle for our future LMS.  Click here to access the case statement.

On most work days I can honestly say that I begin my day thinking “How lucky can I be?”  Our work is purposeful and hopefully transforming for our students; and the campus community is appreciative of the effort the Information Systems department team members put forth to ensure that the best technology we can afford is available and running well.  But every now and then something happens Read the rest of this entry »

Information Systems conducted routine maintenance on core servers and network equipment. During the outage, network services was limited or unavailable. This included, but was not limited to, email, file server access, wireless, SIS, myEMU, Blackboard, and copying and printing.

UPDATE 2:00PM – Some issues developed during the last hour of these maintenance procedures. All technology services should be availabe EXCEPT e-mail. We now estimate that e-mail will return to service around 3:00pm today (Saturday, 11/21).

On Tuesday, October  20, a major failure of the EMU e-mail system occurred which required Information Systems to take the entire e-mail database off-line from about 8:30am to 4:00pm while repairs were made to the database.  The root cause of the problem has since been traced to a procedure used by Info Systems technicians during an upgrade to the EMU network the previous Saturday, October 17. Read the rest of this entry »

In an effort to find a good balance between accessibility and security, Information Systems has created a new system for guest network access.  University guests who would like network access will now need to be sponsored by an EMU employee using our new web application. This account information will be valid for one week and may be used only by the guest to whom it was issued. It may not be shared. Read the rest of this entry »

A number of universities have been hit with “notices” being sent to e-mail users saying that they need to click on a link or reply to the e-mail to “reset” their accounts.  I am quite certain some EMU e-mail users will be receiving these dangerous messages.  Our e-mail filtering software catches some, but not all of these messages.

THEY ARE PHISHING SCAM MESSAGES AND NEVER COME FROM THE EMU INFORMATION SYSTEMS DEPARTMENT! Read the rest of this entry »

Our User Services team is becoming aware that mobile computing devices are being acquired by EMU employees in rapidly increasing numbers. This article is intended to provide some insights into the challenge this presents to us and what we can/cannot do at the present time. Read the rest of this entry »

Information Systems is offering training to interested parties. These sessions are being held Thursday afternoon, August 20, 2009.  Each session will run around 45 minutes in length. All sessions will be held in the Strite Conference Room in the Campus Center. Read the rest of this entry »

There will be a period of ID Card Amnesty now until September 4^th at 5:00pm. Students with damaged and broken ID cards can turn them in and have them replaced for free! Lost ID cards will be replaced for only $10. After September 4^th the rate returns to $25 for lost, damaged or broken ID cards.

Be sure to visit Learning Resources in the Library if you need a new ID before September 4^th to take advantage of this special offer.

Microsoft Office 2007 has been available for some time for installation on EMU faculty/staff Windows computers via EMU Applications, but less than 40 computers have it installed. We’d like this number to be higher, as Microsoft now only offers limited support for Office 2003. Read the rest of this entry »