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Several new Distance Education classrooms are scheduled to come online during the next year. Distance education classrooms are equipped to facilitate interactive communication between an instructor at one site and students at two or more sites.  Despite the fact that there can be hundreds of miles between origination and receive sites, faculty and students can see and hear each other and conduct class with few concessions to the use of technology. The new rooms will be located at several sites across the U campus and at two Academic Outreach and Continuing Education (AOCE) off-campus sites. 

Two of the new Distance Education classrooms were funded, in part, by Electronic Classroom funds. One is for the College of Education and will be located in Milton Bennion Hall. The second is for the College of Science, Department of Physics. It will be located in the James Fletcher Building.  A third Distance Education room used primarily by the College of Nursing is being moved to the Health Science Education Building and upgraded with partial funding from the Student Computing Advisory Committee and Electronic Classroom funds to augment college funds.

Additionally, the College of Social Work, the College of Engineering, and AOCE are planning to bring Distance Education rooms online this year. 

Equipment in distance education classrooms includes one or more cameras; sound equipment including microphones and speakers; and a computer which can be used to integrate PowerPoint presentations, spreadsheets, and audio visual materials.  An electronic document camera is used to integrate other visual materials such as pictures in books, models, etc.  Ceiling-mounted projectors allow instructors to show instructional materials from the origination site to distance students.  Other projectors or wall-hung monitors at the back of the room allow the presenter to see what the class is seeing or view images from the distant sites while facing the students at the origination site.
Distance education rooms can be configured so that the equipment can be run by the instructor or by an assistant who is directed by the instructor.

Each of these rooms will meet the technical specifications required to interface with the statewide distance education network operated by the Utah Education Network (UEN).  Training and operational support is needed to use these rooms and there are nominal fees for using the UEN system.

While the installation of distance education components into classrooms is either fully funded or heavily subsidized by the colleges and departments that house and use these facilities, a few of the rooms are available for use by organizations at times when classes are not already scheduled.

If you would like to know more about existing distance education facilities on campus, or would like to consider installing distance education capacity in a department or college scheduled room, call or email Helen Lacy (phone: x1.7042; email: helen.lacy@utah.edu).

Better Cell Coverage on Campus Coming Soon

After two years of negotiations with cellular service providers, AT&T will be the first of the major carriers to take advantage of a distributed antenna system (DAS) to improve campus cellular telephone coverage.

In the past, cellular service providers have expressed interest in placing large cellular towers on campus.  In one case, a company wanted to place a tower on the soccer practice field.  Besides the obvious esthetic impact and real estate problems, cellular tower coverage can be uneven because signals are weakened by distance and blocked by building structures.

Two years ago, OIT entered into an agreement with NextG Networks to improve cellular phone coverage on campus through the implementation of a Distributed Antenna System (DAS).  DAS systems provide better coverage by placing several low profile antennas on buildings situated around campus.  Besides improving cellular coverage, DAS systems do not use valuable campus real estate, are less visible, and make better use of power, air conditioning and other campus resources.  The antennas are engineered to improve indoor and outside coverage.

AT&T and NextG Networks will initially place up to 6 antenna nodes on campus.  The count and location of the antennas is flexible and may be adjusted to maximize indoor and outside coverage.  We are very encouraged with test results that show enhanced coverage for the targeted areas.  The project is under way.  Completion is expected before the end 2008 with other vendor agreements and antennas to follow.

The U's WebCT Service now Hosted through UEN

The U’s WebCT service is moving to Utah Education Network (UEN)-hosted servers starting this fall term. The U will be joining Utah State University, Utah Valley University, and several other institutions that have already migrated to this state-wide consortium.  On August 16, 2008, the hostname webct.utah.edu will start redirecting users to the UEN-hosted system.

The look and feel of WebCT will not change, but hosting with UEN should provide better performance and better administrative and reporting capabilities, and more opportunities for collaboration and sharing with other institutions in the Utah consortium.

The Technology Assisted Curriculum Center (TACC) will continue to support faculty during and after the transition. Users will continue to use their uNID and password to log in, as the UEN system will still authenticate using OIT’s servers.  Questions can be directed to webct-admin@lists.utah.edu.

PAN Forms now replaced with ePAFs

by Starlee Holman, ACS

On May 27th, with the help of Administrative Computing Services (ACS), HR implemented he electronic Personnel Action Form (ePAF) and has received great feedback. Not only will the ePAF eliminate 29,000 paper PAN forms each year, but it will also bring the processing time down considerably. To process a PAN form in the past took up to two weeks, but with ePAF it can take as little as one day.

Training on ePAF was held through June 6th. HR will continue to accept the paper PAN forms through July 18th to help everyone through the change.

With ePAF, HR and department payroll reporters now have a quick, clean and precise application to work from. The systems involved make sure the personnel data is complete and correct, and the individual can start receiving the benefits of being a University employee, literal and figurative, almost immediately.

For more information on ePAF please visit www.hr.utah.edu/hris/ePAF.