Author: Andrew Ruether

Academic Technology, SPEED Program

SPEED Project Wrap Up for Summer 2017

Andrew Ruether

At the end of July, ITS and Library staff and student workers completed another set of Swarthmore Projects for Educational Exploration and Development (SPEED). David Molina Cavazos ’20 worked with Assistant Dean Liz Derickson and Associate Director of Client Services Erin Massey, to create firststeps.swarthmore.edu, a site that Swarthmore students and faculty advisors can use to explore majors.  Each page contains data collected from alumni to provide guidance on what students do after graduation, sample career paths, and student narratives.  The Dean’s Office is using First Steps to assist with course advising this year. Kate Collins ’18  collaborated with Math Professor Elizabeth Drellich to … Continue reading SPEED Project Wrap Up for Summer 2017

Academic Technology, Accessibility, Moodle

PDF Accessibility Checker Announced

Andrew Ruether

Swarthmore College ITS has completed preliminary work on software to check PDF files for accessibility across many campus systems.  The software examines PDF files to look for readable text as well as title, language, and outline metadata which indicates how easy it is to access the contents of the file.  We’ve also written a Moodle plugin to provide information to faculty on the accessibility of all the PDF files in their course.   This information will be accompanied by instructions for how to get help to remediate the files. We anticipate the software will be running on our Moodle site for the Fall … Continue reading PDF Accessibility Checker Announced

Academic Technology, Faculty/Staff

Research Data Backup

Andrew Ruether

It’s the start of research season at Swarthmore and faculty and students will be working hard writing, collecting, and calculating all kinds of data.  How can you keep your research data safe? Fortunately, ITS provides a variety of backup solutions depending on your specific needs. Product Optimal Use Case CrashPlan All your data fits on your office or lab computer. Google Drive and AODOcs All your your data doesn’t fit on your computer or you want to archive rarely used data and remove it from your computer Your data needs to be shared with collaborators iRODS Large data sets or complex storage … Continue reading Research Data Backup