FAST FIVE for the week of September 22, 2013

News:

Online U: 

The University of Fredericton has completed its first full year using WebEx (from CISCO) to deliver all its live, online courses to students. uFred delivers all its course content and lectures exclusively through through this system. The University held over 1,000 live, faculty-led classes in the 2012-13 academic year and all of the classes were recorded and made available to students and faculty for future use. WebExclusive

Text messaging: 

Centennial College has a new free text messaging services for students. The system is delivered through Galaxy Text and standard message and data rates may apply for text message alerts and announcements sent to, or from, the service. Users are guaranteed to receive no more than two messages per week and the vendor commits to keeping all contact information confidential. Student texting

Digital signage: 

The University of British Columbia has a Digital Signage Program managed under the direction of UBC IT and Communications & Marketing. The system is designed to provide the visual and technical architecture required to share diverse messaging consistently across the University from a central source. This integrated system provides the functional capacity to deliver campus updates and emergency information. UBC signs

eCommunications:

The University of Toronto is launching a project consultation process with faculty and staff for eCommunications. Over 105,000 students and alumni have successfully migrated to the Microsoft eCommunications cloud services and the institutional tools available to most faculty and staff now lag behind those cloud services.  The University's Information and Technology Services group has begun examining the potential of extending such eCommunications tools to their full community. UofT Microsoft consultation

LMS for Med School:

The UBC Faculty of Medicine IT group has successfully transitioned to the new MEDICOL (Medicine and Dentistry Integrated Curriculum On-Line) learning system this August. This new system provides access to all resources and curricular materials for learners, faculty, and staff affiliated with the MD undergraduate program. Key features include a portal, a learning management system, and a learning object repository. In addition to designing and setting up a new system, the project team migrated all of the existing content and documents for Years 1 to 4 of the MD undergraduate program. MedIT implements new LMS

Question:

Has IT lost its relevance in higher education? In a recent IT conference several speakers expressed concern that the constantly declining budgets in higher ed IT are a sign of declining relevance to their institutions. Do you agree or disagree? If you agree, what would you do about it?