Tuesday 20 August 2013

IT Services Newsletter #45


A massive thank you to everyone who has been involved either directly or indirectly in the run up to A Level Results, Clearing and Confirmation.  It has been a great team effort.  We can now look forward to the start of a new term and the enrolment of all our new and existing students. No time to breathe (yet again!).  I hope that in amongst you are finding time to take some well deserved annual leave.  I have had the good fortune of a mountain biking trip to the French Alps with my youngest son (including visits to various excellent hospitals!), and a fantastic week touring around the Lake District to celebrate our Silver Wedding Anniversary. 

A Level Results, Clearing and Confirmation
Attached to this newsletter is the technology status report produced for the second of the daily management meetings which are reviewing the whole clearing and confirmation process.  You will see that there is a significant amount of technology being used in lots of different ways to connect with potential students and assist the information and administration involved in securing a place at University. I have been here long enough to remember the days when we used to have a motorbike courier drive down to Cheltenham to pick up a “music paper” listing of A level results.

Overall the University went into Clearing with places which it needed to fill in order to meet its HEFCE targets.  By lunchtime today, the University had sent out 18% more offers compared with the same point in 2012, and had received broadly the same number of telephone calls although a massive increase in the number of visitors to websites, social media interactions etc.  Currently the top referrer on the marketing analysis is Facebook.  Academic Schools are currently positive about the final out-turn - forecasting that we will be either on target or possibly above, and this includes a current increase in the average tariff (grades) of incoming students.  We have also had a number of positive  comments e.g. from Life Sciences:  “It has been pretty stressful for us and having the technology work well has made it much easier”, and from Head of Admissions Particularly wanted to thank the team for the outstanding work on the telephony systems and service which appear to have made a significant difference to operations this year”

Staffing news
There have been quite a few staff announcements in the last month.  I hope you are keeping track of the moves and changes which have now reached 55 in the last five years (Staff Newsletter #1 was back in August 2008).  There have been an awful lot of staff changes over this period!  The latest organisation chart for IT Services is always available here.

We have continued to work with some great students in 2013 and as you know Kash and Dan have continued working full time with us over the Summer.  We have managed to make such a good job of Kash’s education and career development that he has now landed a consultancy role with Microsoft UK.  Congratulations to Kash on a fantastic opportunity.  We have also enjoyed working with Alex who is nearing the end of his internship and Salar who has just joined us for cluster checking.  We have also been pleased to work with Khaled who is a first year Pharmacy undergraduate who has helped developed AboutUoB and assisted with our student storage discussions.  One of our highest priorities is to improve the student experience, and getting input from students helps inform our future direction.  Khaled responded in an email:  “It is a tremendous pleasure to be able to work with people where the opinions of students are valued and taken in to consideration.”

Wi-Fi Update (The Cloud)
The Cloud is the free Wi-Fi service we provide primarily for our visitors and external guests to the University.  It is the same service you will find in some pubs (e.g. Weatherspoons), retail sites (e.g. Superdrug), leisure facilities (e.g. Lords Cricket Ground) etc with thousands of hotspots and millions of UK registered users already.  We have a connection to the service via the academic network JANET.  The annual stats for Bradford University for May 2012 to May 2013 have just been released.

There were a total of 21,000 Users who between them opened up a total of 120,000 Sessions.
There were a total of 7.3 Million Mbytes used over a total of almost 11 Million Minutes.
The average dwell time was 90 Minutes per Session.
User Activity in May 2013 was, on average, over 104% up when compared to User activity in May 2012
iPhone and Smartphone users on average spend 80 minutes online per session - Laptop users spend on average 134 minutes online per session                                                       
Mobile Phones accounted for 66% of all the sessions opened in May 2013

Wi-Fi Update (Eduroam)
A team has been reviewing the Eduroam documentation.  A mobile web page has been designed with links to the new automatic configuration files (aka CAT files) which will be available as well as the main web pages.

More detailed instructions have now been provided for Windows 7 ( and we are in the process of doing windows 8).  If you haven’t already switched across to Eduroam for your Wi-Fi service on campus this would be a good time to try out the documentation and provide feedback if you encounter any issues.  There are also various suggestions about updating the Wi-Fi signage around campus to reflect Eduroam and so we will be looking at replace the existing signage.  In a related development we are working on signage which incorporates both QR codes and Near Field Communications (NFC) for our PC cluster facilities in the first instance, with a plan to roll-out the new technology to a range of signage and facilities in due course once we  have a proven solution.

Wi-Fi Update (New Wi-Fi Installations)
Here's a roundup of various wireless installation jobs.
1) JBP Building: Installation of extra units to take account of unexpected concentration of usage on floor 2 is complete. There are now 31 basestations covering JBPB.
2) Pemberton Building: As a result of survey work an extra five units have been procured and installed, taking the total for that building to eight. There are no longer any known blank spots.
3) Heaton Mount:  As a result of survey work on both parts of Heaton Mount. The bedroom installation is complete;  we put 12 extra units in taking the overall total to 15. In the other part of Heaton Mount (the 'house') there are five extra units.
4) Student Central:  An extra nine units which takes the overall total to 16.
5) Norcroft Conference Centre:  This will be the location of the latest Team Based Learning (TBL) room and has taken the total to five basestations.
6) STEM and the re:centre:  There are 12 basestations to cover both of those buildings.

Microsoft Office365 successfully upgraded
Blink a few times and we find that the Microsoft service has been upgraded again.  This is becoming more “business as usual” as we also had an upgrade in May.  At the end of  July the service was further enhanced to the very latest software releases incorporating further Exchange 2013 features.  Further details are posted here.

Re-implementation of the Student Information System
A SITS (Development) Programme Board has now been formed and met for the first time to take forward the development and improvement programme for the Student Information System (SAINT).  The sponsor is going to be me (at least until someone more worthy comes along).  The first meeting focused on the roles and responsibilities of the Board and considered a comprehensive programme workbook which had been prepared for sign off.  We discussed the initial project activities and setting in place a process to deal with pre-requisites and enablers identified during the system review.  It is likely that this project will involve many of us in IT Services over its development cycle.

Hold the Date - Microsoft Windows 8 Tour
Here is a date for your 2014 diaries.  We are jointly hosting with the Student Union a week-long event on campus which is based around Microsoft technologies.  Microsoft will be on campus from Sunday February 9th (setting up) and for the following week through February 14th in both the Richmond Atrium and the Student Central where they will be showcasing latest technology, software, games, tablets etc. branded bikes roaming campus to publicise etc.  We are investigating whether alongside this we can promote and support/advise on a range of Microsoft technologies which IT Services provide including Office365 and the Microsoft Academy learning support.  It may also be combined with a student-led GameJam which is a week-long gaming development event that the students are organising in conjunction with SCIM and the Video Games Society.  One of the key mobile development platforms which we use in SCIM (Unity) supports the Windows 8 platform.

Technology Submissions to the Investment Plan
Thank you to those of you who took time out to attend one of the three internal briefings on our IT/Technology submissions to the investment plan.  We completed the necessary planning template and submitted into the process.  If you would like to see the latest version of the investment plan with respect to technology or missed the briefings let me know and I will circulate.

And finally….
As usual, this is just a quick snapshot of some of the projects and activity which might be of interest. There is, as always, lots of other activity happening, so apologies if your work wasn’t included – please let me know for the next newsletter.

Saturday 10 August 2013

Hebden Bridge strikes again

We just returned from a jaunt around the wonderful Lake District revisiting some of lovely destinations from 25 years ago. Along the way we came across one of those travel magazines promoting places to visit. As usual our home town was getting plenty of positive press.