Projects

Project Summary

Effective July 1st, 2018, the UW System merged UW Colleges' 13 two-year campuses with the UW System's four-year comprehensive and research universities. Per the restructure, UW-Rock County has become part of UW-Whitewater, going by the name, UW-Whitewater at Rock County. 

The objectives of this restructuring include:

• Maintaining and expanding access to higher education by offering more general education and upper-level courses at the integrated branch campuses.
• Identify and reduce barriers to transferring credits within the UW System Maintain affordability by continuing current tuition levels at the branch campuses post-merger for general education courses.
• Further standardize and regionalize administrative operations and services to more efficiently use resources.
• Leverage resources and shared talent at our institutions to get more students into and through the educational pipeline, better aligning the university to meet Wisconsin's projected workforce need.

As part of this system-wide restructure, ICIT has several projects and initiatives in development designed to help UW-Rock County students, faculty and staff transition into the UW-Whitewater ecosystem. The goal of these initiatives is to provide organizational effectiveness through reliable technology & customer-focused service. This means creating a consistent experience for all UW-Whitewater at Rock County students, faculty and staff.  

Current initiatives include (but not limited to):

• Merging UW-W at Rock County students into the UW-W lifecycle.
• Developing the UW-W at Rock County website. (Completed)
• Transitioning email accounts, shared data and network files to to UW-W.
• Transportation to and from UW-W and UW-W at Rock Country campuses. Transportation is provided by two buses which include built in Wi-Fi networks. (Completed)
• Learning Management System support for UW-W at Rock County through Canvas.
• Emergency Communication through the InformaCast App. (Completed)
• IT Security training for UW-W at Rock County faculty and staff. (Completed)

What's Next?

ICIT will continue to provide high-quality support and customer service throughout the restructuring process. The goal is to complete the restructure transition by summer 2019.   

Project Summary

In the Spring of 2018, ICIT and UW-Whitewater launched a partnership with Involvio. Involvio is a mobile application designed to aid students with regards to campus resources, local events, calendars and academic success. The goal of the project is to help students become more organized and involved with the UW-W community, make campus resources readily available and create a student success network. Involvio will be able to leverage numerous campus resources and integrations including the Canvas Learning Management System, campus calendars, student organizations and Webex. Involvio will help students stay more organized and aid in their overall success at UW-Whitewater. 

After a brief pilot rollout, Involvio is now currently live. 

What's Next?

Additional functionality will continue to be added to the Involvio App including; a check-in function, attendance tracking and one-touch video for virtual office hours.  

Project Summary

The goal of the project is to improve the experience for student and administrative users, and maintain pace with PeopleSoft releases. The result will be a modern, flexible and reliable set of IT tools. The project will be executed in phases:

Phase 1 - Upgrade OS and PeopleTools - Completed
Phase 2 - Customization Analysis - Completed
Phase 3 - PeopleSoft 9.2 upgrade - Completed
Phase 4 - Oracle Upgrade - Completed

Update: In July of 2018, ICIT successfully upgraded to PeopleSoft 9.2. The project was completed after more than 18 months of preparation, planning and execution. Benefits of the upgrade include: 

• A reduction of more than 30 customizations leading to more efficient customer support.
• The Oracle 12.c database upgrade allows for a more stable, secure and robust environment. 
• The Campus Solutions 9.2 upgrade now enables a fluid-ready interface.

What's Next?

The next steps will be to start the fluid interface conversion. This will result in a dynamic, user-friendly interface for the UW-W community.

Project Summary

In an effort in increase enrollment and promote UW-Whitewater, student Chris Skrandzius working alongside ICIT created a project targeting search engine optimization through Google Maps. The project's purpose was to claim official UW-Whitewater locations when searching through Google. By claiming these locations, people are now able to review and rate specific locations on UWW's campus such as dorms, departmental buildings, dining centers and events. These SEO features will allow current and prospective students, faculty and staff get an accurate understanding of the UW-Whitewater campus and brand.

What's Next?

The next phase of the project will be to expand additional map directories such as, Apple Maps, Waze, Bing and Garmin.

Project Summary

In the Fall of 2017 ICIT transitioned from the print management client Pharos to PaperCut. The initial rollout of PaperCut focused on student-facing printing in all general access labs. PaperCut is a simplified printing solution that provides a wide variety of reports including environmental impact and user print data. PaperCut has provided a stable print management system and has cleaned up older issues left by Pharos.

The transition of PaperCut to the student print management software was completed in the Summer of 2017.  

What's Next?

The next step will be to transition the faculty print management software from iPrint to PaperCut. The implementation is planned for Summer 2018. www.uww.edu/icit/services/printing-students#tab_Description

Project Summary

In the fall of 2017, ICIT introduced Citrix Virtualized Applications. Citrix is a tool that provides easy access to virtual applications across campus. These applications can be accessed from anywhere and they eliminate the need to download an entire virtual desktop. Citrix provides a streamlined process for instructors and students to access course software during class time without the need of a physical lab. Students and instructors can access the virtual library of apps from their own computers for easy and seamless collaboration. To get started, please go to: https://www.uww.edu/icit/services/virtual-lab

What's Next?

ICIT is currently working on adding additional apps to the virtual suite. These would include Adobe Creative Apps such as: InDesign, PhotoShop and Illustrator. 

Project Summary

The goal of this project is to successfully transition from UWW's current Learning Management System (LMS) Desire2Learn, to Canvas. The Canvas LMS is an online learning platform used to deliver online courses and enhance traditional, face-to-face, and hybrid/blended courses. Canvas will provide "anytime, anywhere" access to course materials, such as syllabi, readings, and multi-media files, as well as course tools such as electronic drop boxes, ePortfolios, online quizzes, and grades. The current timeline for the transition points to Fall 2018 as the earliest opportunity to migrate courses to Canvas. For more info, please visit the Canvas Transition Portal. 

Project Summary 

In 2017 ICIT began piloting a communication and collaboration tool called Cisco Spark. UWW was chosen to be one of only 30 organizations worldwide, and the only one in the Midwest, to participate in the Cisco Spark Meeting Room Pioneer Program, designed to provide key customers with early access to a new and innovative product. Recently, Cisco Spark rebranded as Webex Teams and was rolled out campus wide.    

Webex Teams is a communication and collaboration tool that provides seamless engagement for students, faculty, and staff via an application that can be downloaded to a computer, mobile device, or accessed via we browser. Webex Teams is ideal for projects that require continuous team engagement, context, and persistent history, such as committees, course group work, student organizations, department projects, and more. Webex Teams simplifies collaboration by incorporating three ways to interact in one location: video meetings, group messaging, and file sharing. 

Learn more and get started with Webex Teams here: www.uww.edu/icit/services/webex-teams

Project Summary

In the fall of 2017, ICIT's Web Team began work on a project dedicated to updating custom .NET applications. A .NET application is a non third-party custom web application.  The design, technology, and functionality of these applications had become outdated so the Web Team, working closely with each application owner , rebranded, refreshed and reworked each application to make sure they were running efficiently and effectively.

The project resulted in several updated .NET apps including:

Change of Status application - Working with Continuing Education and HR, the Web Team added summer contracts to the change of status process, eliminating the paper process. Faculty and Staff can now acknowledge their summer contracts online without a scanner or fax machine. The system is able to track contracts and speed up the approval process and lag time.

What's Next?

The next phase of the project will target employment applications.  Currently, HR is manually maintaining an email list of potential job applicants. Moving forward this June each list will be maintained within a listserv and automatic emails will be sent to each list with relevant current job openings.