GLASGOW KELVIN COLLEGE BOARD OF MANAGEMENT
LEARNING AND TEACHING COMMITTEE
ICT PROJECTS PROGRESS REPORT Report by ICT Technical Manager
19/02/15
1. Introduction
This report seeks to provide members with an overview of the key ICT Services projects that have been progressed pre and post-merger. Members will recall that several of these projects were set out in the Merger Business Case and supported by the ICT Transformation Fund. It also seeks to highlight the impact that these developments have had for learners and on teaching.
2. Infrastructure Projects
2.1 From vesting day, a Wide Area Network (WAN) has been active which connects all 5 campus networks. This was a result of planning in the lead up to merger to ensure a similar connectivity experience for all staff and students regardless of their campus location. This WAN enables students and staff to login to a PC in any campus and access their files, email, virtual learning environment (VLE), and intranet. It supports flexibility in working and provides a consistent experience across the College. It has also been a key enabler for other projects, for example it has allowed the network to be utilised for voice and data which has subsequently enabled the ICT team to centralise network resources and reduce costs.
2.2 Significant progress has also been made with the integration of the legacy phone systems and circuits. There were broadly three phases to the telephony integration projects:
Connecting the three legacy systems together for merger allowing staff to have extensions for internal call routing (pre-merger);
Replacing the legacy systems with one unified and resilient modern system (post-merger); and
The migration, currently in progress, of the legacy telephony circuits onto a new, resilient circuit delivered via the College’s internet line. This will reduce the College’s outlay on telephony circuit costs by £15-20K per annum.
The system supports several features that are useful in a multi-campus environment including, being able to ‘logon’ to a phone in another campus to access your DDI and emailing voicemail messages to users.
2.3 The introduction of a Wi-Fi Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) system which allows staff and students to self-register their personal devices using their College network credentials has proved to be significant for learners. Modern day education requires learners to be online more often than not, this system removes connectivity barriers which is key within the digital age. There have been over 4,500 unique mobile devices registered by Staff and Students across the 5 campuses and Learning Centres since August. This shows that the system is used extensively and supports learning by providing easy connectivity access for students. Furthermore, the system is secured by it requiring students to enter their network logon credentials – this allows ICT to report on web usage for governance and investigation purposes.
2.4 The team introduced the latest server virtualisation technologies into the Springburn Campus which had been selected as the College’s primary data centre. This provides ICT with a base to deliver a flexible and responsive service – it holds the computing power behind key services such as VLE’s, the College intranet, file servers, web services, Student Records and other key business processes.
2.5 By using the newly installed virtualisation technology key services are replicated from Springburn (Primary Data Centre) to City (Secondary Data Centre). Failover can be invoked if Springburn is the subject of a disaster recovery situation – testing shows that key services (Moodle, Student Records, Payroll, HR system, file servers) will be resumed within 1-2 hours of a failover scenario. This provides the College with assurances that the ICT services will be able to react to the loss of the Springburn data centre and quickly restore service.
2.6 ICT Technical Services have been working in partnership with the GHA/Wheatley Group and City Building to upgrade and extend the John Wheatley Learning Network (formerly Glasgow East Learning Network and renamed to reflect the funding provided by the Wheatley Group). In the last 12 months, 5 sites have been refurbished and 5 new sites brought onto the network. The network has been designed to provide as similar as possible a learning environment to that within the College. Learners can use their College account and password to login to a learning centre PC or a College PC and are provided with similar resources regardless of where they are located. Services such as Wi-Fi BYOD, printing, Audio Visual equipment and Office 365 services are all available on-campus and within learning centres. This supports a smooth transition in a learner’s journey from outreach to campus learning or vice versa.
3. Collaboration Projects
3.1 Over the summer of 2014, the team migrated over 2,500 PCs and laptops onto a new Glasgow Kelvin Active Directory domain. This was key to all services becoming fully integrated – allowing one authentication system, one email system, systems management, etc. This then acted as the springboard for several other projects to move forward.
3.2 The ICT team migrated around 750 staff Mailboxes to Microsoft’s Office 365 based email system throughout July. At the same time, Student’s email services were moved to Office
365 to provide a common platform for collaboration between staff and students. The key points and benefits of this are:
a) All 365 services are cloud based which allows the College to provide every learner (including outreach students) with an email account and associated services; b) Staff and Learners share the same directory and access to similar resources – this
provides collaboration opportunities;
c) Students and Staff are also provided with 1 Terabyte of cloud based storage via Office 365’s ‘OneDrive for Business’ application;
d) Instant Messaging and Desktop Conferencing through the Lync client;
e) Office Professional Plus for all Students (and now all staff). This is a physical copy of Microsoft Office which students can download and install on 5 devices (laptop, PC, iPad, Mac, etc) free of charge;
f) ICT Services provided training and user guides to assist with the migration; and g) The 365 services are fully accessible from outside of College and on most portable
devices (iOS, Android, Windows) and are secured by using the College username and password.
The introduction of Office 365 has allowed the College to offer a range of services to students that were not available before. It has provided absolute flexibility for students and staff to learn, teach and collaborate whether on-campus or offsite, whether on a desktop PC or on a mobile phone.
The fact that students can download 5 copies of Microsoft Office for free for use across their devices removing a potentially major expense for many students.
There is still a need for further training and support for staff to ensure that the College realises the full potential of the 365 services and the ICT team has started to host training sessions to help with this. Microsoft are continually adding new features and software to the suite which provides exciting opportunities for all involved.
4. Team Developments
4.1 Following the appointment of the ICT Technical Manager a staffing structure was developed to bring the three legacy ICT teams together in a form that was suited to supporting a larger, multi-site College. This structure was implemented by summer 2014. A copy is attached as the appendix to this report.
4.2 Training has been, and continues to be, provided to support staff in the significant change of technology from their previous roles. This is proving to be invaluable in managing successful change within the College.
4.3 A large part of the ICT Support service is managed and controlled from a web based ICT Service Desk which was introduced in August. This allows users to request assistance, raise faults and easily obtain feedback on the progress of their ticket. It has become a key system in the operations of the College with over 3,000 tickets raised since August 2014. To further underpin the impact provided by the Service Desk, a centralised helpdesk phone system was introduced which is manned from 9AM – 5PM every week day. This allows users to access
support in the event of emergencies or when there is a fault which significantly affects teaching (i.e. a Smart Board not working in a class full of learners) and requires a rapid response.
5. Business and Information Services
The ICT Services team also support the development of College Business and Information Services which are normally presented via the SharePoint Intranet. In particular:
5.1 a new Individual Learning Plan (ILP) has been created which links to the new Active Directory and Student Records systems. The ILP underpins the College approach to
individualising services and support for learners, bringing together learner goals, programme and attendance details, and records of attainment and achievement;
5.2 an automated Account Creation system has been developed which: o interrogates Student Records for new enrolments;
o creates Active Directory user accounts, file home folders, email and other Office 365 accounts automatically; and
o publishes student account information to SharePoint to allow Lecturers, Support for Learning, and Library staff to obtain the information immediately when it becomes available;
5.3 the SharePoint system also allows lecturers and Library staff to reset students’ passwords to allow learners to get online quicker if they have forgotten their credentials;
5.4 an integrated helpdesk system has been developed for the Administration team which allows staff to easily obtain administrative support and which supports the multi-location and sub-team structure of the Administration Department; and
5.5 the ICT team also played a significant role in the successful migration and introduction of business critical systems including:
a. the migration of Cintra database (HR System from Easterhouse to Springburn), including the publishing of Cintra application to provide access to staff;
b) the introduction of a new Student Records system, including the server builds, designing the system to provide additional security to the system, installing SSL certificates and the publishing of the application for users of the system; and
c) making infrastructure changes to support the secure introduction of a cloud based Finance system. A VPN tunnel between the College and the Sun system was created to provide onsite access to this system.
6. College supporting projects
In addition to undertaking the headline projects listed above, the ICT team have also responded to support many smaller projects and partnership working. These include:
a) West Campus moves – Moved the Art Department from Springburn to the West Campus;
b) moved the Engineering team from the City Campus to Springburn including the setup of several CAD labs;
c) anew lab was setup in City to fill the void left by the CAD PCs moving; d) Engineering department and support/estate moves; and
e) Springburn library and classroom additions as a result of the Estate changes.
7. Recommendations
Members are recommended to note:
a) the extensive range and volume of work carried out to provide the right level of infrastructure to support the new College – including a WAN, integrated telephony system and a WiFi service available to all students;
b) the introduction of the Office 365 technologies providing significant benefits for learners and enhancing opportunities for learning;
c) the establishment and integration of the ICT Technical Services team to provide effective services to learners and staff;
d) the customised software developments designed to support the College learning, teaching and guidance arrangements; and
e) the range of other College projects that have been effectively supported by ICT services.
8. Further Information
Further information can be obtained from Andy Laszlo, ICT Technical Manager, [email protected], Alan Inglis, Vice Principal,[email protected], or from Alan Sherry, Principal,[email protected].
