• 81% of college students use technology every day to prepare for class.
• 74% of faculty say they incorporate technology into almost every class, but only 45% of students say technology is fully integrated into their curriculum.
• 52% of students report using social networking sites for educational purposes while 14% of faculty say they use social networking site for educational purposes.
• 67% of faculty say they are satisfied with their technology professional development, but 45% of students rate faculty lack of tech knowledge as the biggest obstacle to classroom technology integration.
• 32% of students and 22% of faculty strongly agree that their college/university is preparing students to successfully use technology when they enter the workforce.

That’s where IT has traditionally delivered technology orientation to faculty and staff. At the end of the parade.

New UM employees endure a mind-numbing blizzard of bullet points about benefits, policies and paperwork during Human Resources’ 90-minute orientation program. Shoehorned in at the end–when brains and bladders are bursting–are a dozen departmental representatives, each with 90 seconds to cram in PSAs about their programs and services.

That’s the extent of a new employee’s formal introduction to campus technology. It’s barely worth the stuff in the wheelbarrow. We need to do a better job. It’s time for us to get on a horse and ride.

IT, with input from colleagues, is designing a two-hour introductory course to help new faculty and staff get off to a good start with campus technology. We plan to offer the course at least once a month beginning in August. We’ll also reconsider the collection of short courses we offer throughout the year that provide specific skills training. And we want to beef up online training and tutorials so continued technology training is accessible and convenient for employees.

Thanks to everyone who helped us with our survey and especially those who participated in our follow-up focus group. Keep your ideas coming.

Feeling dumb
Looking stupid
Showing ignorance

Breaking a computer
Crashing a system
Violating a policy

Not knowing who to call for help
Not having anyone to call for help
Being a burden on the person I call for help
Being mocked and ridiculed behind my back by the person I called for help

Adware
Malware
Spyware

Phishing scams
Malicious spam

Security breaches
Identity theft

Screwing up
Not keeping up

Not doing a good job
Losing my job

University employees shared these technology-related fears during a recent focus group. What causes you stress and frustration? What are the solutions? I’ll share more ideas from the focus group later this week.

We’ll send one printed version of Bits to each department. Those should arrive today or tomorrow. But most of the distribution will be done by linking you to a PDF version.

If you have story ideas for future issues of the newsletter, please let us know.

Our message to UM students and employees is simple:

Never respond to email asking you to provide personal information

The University of Montana will never ask you for personal information by email

How you can help

Campus departments can help with this campaign in a couple ways. The first way is to adhere to the promise that you will never ask students or employees to provide personal information by email. The second way is to help us spread the word. IT has posters, table tents and PowerPoint slides in a variety of designs to communicate the message. If you have bulletin board space, a computer monitor that displays public announcements, or some other channel of communication, and you would like campaign materials, let us know.

The purpose of the blog is to announce the release of new channels, provide tutorials on more complex OneStop applications, and notify users of maintenance issues, bugs, etc.

OneStop News items are displayed in the left column of all OneStop pages below the Quick Links. You can also subscribe to the feed through your favorite RSS feed reader.

Conference blogging helps you remember and reflect on new ideas. It also benefits your colleagues who couldn’t attend the conference.

Are you heading to a technology conference soon?  Volunteer to blog. We’ll provide the space and the support.

In 2001, spam made up just five percent of the total volume of email messages worldwide.

By the end of 2007, spam accounted for more than 90 percent of all email received by large enterprises according to ProofPoint.

The onslaught of spam coming into University of Montana email systems is even more severe. One day last week—a typical weekday—1.8 million spam messages were blocked as they entered campus. Another 3,600 messages were delivered to recipients tagged as possible spam. These days, only about three percent of the messages that come to campus ever reach an end user.

“We’re tightening it up [spam blocking] as much as we can without blocking legitimate emails,” says Tom Travis, director of IT central systems. “We’re cutting it close to the boundary.”

Travis says campus email users may have experienced increased spam in their inboxes between late November and early February. Hardware problems compromised spam-blocking efforts during that period. By February, IT had restored spam and anti-virus services to full operational levels. Travis is confident that the spam blockers are now protecting email users from junk as best they can.

How does spam blocking work?

Spam blockers use a number of mechanisms to identify junk and virus-laden email. One method is rate control. Too many emails coming from one location raises a red flag. Emails with bad recipients also indicate a possible spam attack. The University also subscribes to a service that does pattern matching for spam, which includes recognition of sender addresses that have been blacklisted.

What can email users do?

Even with the best spam-blocking technology on the front line, the average email user can expect to receive hundreds of spam emails in their inbox every month.

“We educate our end users that if they get spam, right click on it and add it to your junk email list,” says Robert Logan, a systems administrator in the College of Forestry and Conservation who runs a Microsoft Exchange email service.

A right click on a message in Microsoft Outlook reveals a number of options for dealing with spam under the “Junk E-mail” menu item. If you click on “Junk E-mail Options”, you can set the level of junk email protection you want (left).

In GrizMail, which uses Outlook Web Access (OWA) as its email client, users can click on “Options” on the bottom-left of the screen and scroll down to the “Privacy and Junk E-mail Prevention” section.

Travis advises email users to be smart about what email messages they open as well.

“Email users need to develop the ability to detect suspect email,” he says. “You can look at email headers for some clues if you have suspicions.”

For more information about spam and tips for how to protect yourself, visit this Spam at The University of Montana page. You can also seek help from your desktop support person.

What were the biggest technology-related hurdles you faced when you arrived on campus? What do you wish you had known earlier? What’s the best way for you to learn technology?

 We’re interested in your ideas and experiences.

If you are intersted in participating and perhaps sharing in the cost, please let me know. If there is enough interest, we will register for the webinar and arrange a central location for UM participants.

Here’s a description of the event from Stamats:

Web 2.0 is significantly altering the higher education marketing landscape. As a social and cultural phenomenon, it’s transforming nearly every aspect of digital communication, from Web site design and content creation to search. This session will clarify the phenomenon and its ramifications, and explore the 2.0 tools, strategies, and tactics colleges and universities should add to their marketing, recruiting, and advancement arsenals.

• The similarities and differences among the key social media platforms and technologies
• The rules for engagement that underlie any effective 2.0 strategy
• How to build your own 2.0 community and be part of existing communities
• How to integrate 2.0 prinicpals and tactics into traditional marketing

Also, if you would like a basic introduction to Web 2.0 and its impact on The University of Montana, Nick Shontz from the IT web group and I have developed a 20-minute presentation that we would be happy to deliver to any department or group.