Welcome back to our “new normal!” We have learned many lessons over the past 18 months about the intersections of technology, teaching, and working, and many of those lessons are informing the changes you will see this fall. In other areas, meanwhile, things will look more like they did pre-pandemic than they have for the last year.
Below you’ll find information on four different areas in which ITS is a partner:
Learning Spaces: read about changes to classrooms since Spring Term, including a new page which lists all the technology available in classrooms across campus.
Student Laptops and Software: news about Adobe Creative Suite, Zoom licenses and the laptop program.
Academic Technology: new workshops were recently held. If you missed them, you can catch the recordings on your own schedule.
Centralized Printing Budget: new ways to budget for printing, as well as a focused effort on reducing the environmental impact of printing, are laid out in the section on printing.
Selecting a tab below will reveal the news for that section.
Computer labs on campus have been returned to full capacity and the social distancing restrictions have been removed. In addition, the RemoteLab has been updated for the academic year. We continue to maintain a list of all the programs installed in the labs and on the RemoteLab computers.
As part of the refresh of Laird, faculty and other users need to bring their laptop to connect to the classroom technology — the “Bring Your Own Device (BYOD)” model — in all classrooms in Laird. We are happy to provide training to anyone who would like it.
All the LDC classrooms got new classroom electronics. Due to supply chain issues, however, we will continue to use the existing projectors for fall term.
More than 30 classrooms are equipped with cameras and microphones to facilitate Zoom usage. Although we had planned to remove the Logitech MeetUp cameras over the summer due to their somewhat unreliable nature, the uncertainty of the pandemic caused us to re-evaluate that decision, and they have been left in place for at least Fall Term. For further information on how each classroom at Carleton is equipped, please visit the classroom technology page.
Adobe Creative Cloud is once again available for student academic use. If you are teaching a course or have a student work position that will require your students to have access to some or all of the Adobe Creative Cloud Suite, please contact the Helpdesk and let us know the details so we can grant licenses to your students. Because we have a limited pool of licenses, we will reclaim them after the term ends to free them up for the next term.
By default, students this year will get a “basic” zoom license, which means they will only be able to host meetings that are 40 minutes or less in length. This won’t affect how they participate in any meeting that a faculty or staff member is the host of, such as office hours. Students who need a “pro” license can simply contact the Helpdesk.
We are working to ensure all students have access to a laptop using a combination of grant funds and a loaner laptop pool. If you are concerned that a student doesn’t have adequate computing power, please contact the Helpdesk.
Academic Technologists continue to offer skillshops, classroom technology tours, and drop-in hours. We are also collaborating with the LTC on classroom simulation opportunities and workshops that explore continuing use of the technologies everyone has been getting more comfortable with.
ITS’s new classroom technology page has launched at go.carleton.edu/classroomtech with information about individual rooms and general instructions on technology use in these spaces.
As of July 1st, your department’s printing and copying expenses are no longer being charged to your department budget. You still request paper from Print Services, but those costs, along with the costs of printing, are being charged to a centralized budget which will be managed by ITS. Budget managers were notified of this change in May. Learn more about this change through this Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) document.
To keep printing at or below current levels, ITS will be working with the Sustainability Office to support transitioning our print reduction efforts from a financial incentive to an environmental incentive and to provide education and outreach on digital tools and best practices. Eight departments have volunteered for a pilot project this Fall.
There are four ideas guiding this change: 1) a recognition that printing and copying is a necessary function for the institution, 2) a belief that having departments pay directly for printing isn’t the only or most effective method for incentivizing less paper consumption, 3) an awareness that our current print budget accounting practices have become very labor-intensive to sustain and 4) an opportunity to reduce the ITS printing administration role (open due to a retirement) and redirect part of that position for growing needs, such as computational research infrastructure.