Academic Technology, Classroom and Conferencing Technologies, Faculty/Staff, Moodle, Software, Workshops and Training

What’s New in Academic Technology for Fall 2015

ITS has spent the summer improving our core services and implementing new projects to help with your teaching and research. Today, we’d like to call your attention to some of the additions and changes that you might not have heard about.

Classroom A/V Updates: Media Services has updated many rooms this summer. (19 classrooms even have wireless projection capability!) For the full list see the “What’s New in Classroom AV” blog post: https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/its/blog/2015/08/26/whats-new-in-classroom-av-fall-2015/.

SensusAccess: Accessibility of course materials is essential to make sure that all students can participate fully in the academic program. SensusAccess is an online service which converts text and image-based documents into different accessible formats (searchable PDFs, audio, Braille, or e-text). Convert your files at http://www.swarthmore.edu/academic-advising-support/convert-inaccessible-course-material  

GitHub Enterprise: GitHub is the leading software version control service. Swarthmore now has a local GitHub Enterprise installation for managing, reviewing, and collaborating on code or documents. Learn more at our GitHub Enterprise documentation page (https://kb.swarthmore.edu:8443/display/ITSDOCS/GitHub+Enterprise) or visit the site at https://github.swarthmore.edu.   

Academic Technology Fall Bag Lunch Workshop Series: You and your students may be interested in our new lineup of workshops including 3D Printing, Git/GitHub, Amazon Web Services, Social Media for Organizations, Collaboration Tools, and Poster Design. Workshops will be held on Fridays from 12:30-1:30PM. Watch for upcoming announcements.

Course Section Over/Under enrollment tool: Our colleagues in Administrative Information Systems wrote a report to make it easier to balance over-enrolled course and lab sections. You can select an over-enrolled section and see if students are free during the under-enrolled sections.  Request access to the system at help@swarthmore.edu.  

Moodle Update: We upgraded to Moodle 2.8 this summer. Improvements include the gradebook, text editor, and quiz tools. See our blog post for links to the full list of new features: https://blogs.swarthmore.edu/its/blog/2015/08/11/new-features-in-moodle-for-fall-2015/.

If you’d like to learn more about any of the projects we’ve listed, please email help@swarthmore.edu or get in touch with your Academic Technologist: Michael Kappeler (Humanities), Doug Willen (Social Sciences), or Andrew Ruether (Natural Sciences and Engineering).