I.      Announcements

  • Welcome stenographer Debbie Suggs.
  • Welcome Jillian Warren as the incoming ITAC coordinator beginning in the fall.
  • We are starting a new initiative called "Field Trip Fridays" to learn about faculty research and explore  the range of IT services available to support research. OIT would like to test this to see how it would work starting as a pilot program with ITAC representatives.

Discussion

Attendee comments were positive and indicated this was a fabulous idea that would help OIT have a better understanding of what the researchers are trying to do and to help them accomplish them. Attendees were encouraged to reach out to interested colleagues who might benefit from this type of engagement to get on the list now or for future visits. 

II.     Agenda Items

4:05- 4:20 – Construct 3D Follow-Up: Evan Levine, Chip Bobbert (10 minute presentation, 5 minute discussion)

What it is:   Construct 3D 2017 is a national conference on digital fabrication focused on “3D printing” for higher education, K-12, and community education.  The conference was held at Duke May 5-7, 2017.  Evan will provide an overview of the conference. Presented by Chip Bobbert, Digital Media Engineer.

Why it’s relevant:  Construct 3D aims to bring together educators from a broad range of contexts to exchange ideas and innovation – to accelerate adoption and exploration of 3D printing and opportunities to shape the implementation of 3D printing in education in the future.

This was a project 10 months in the planning and originated from attendance at a Maker Faire conference. There was a realization that there was no conference that focused on 3D printing across the educational spectrum (higher education and K-12). The actual conference was held May 5-7, 2017 and there were 255 registrants from as far as Hawaii and 124 presentations were submitted. In the end, the original site of the Technology Engagement Center was not large enough and the conference was moved to the JB Duke center.

One thing unique that the organizers did was to set up sponsors for this event and one sponsor in particular had a unique approach in that they wanted to teach training classes and to pay for sponsorship seats without requesting prominent signage. The attendees filled up the center with 100 participants at each of the training sessions and the sponsors ran mirrored sessions on Friday and Sunday which was a preferred (weekend) schedule for the K-12 attendees. 

The evaluation feedback was very positive with 75% of respondents indicating they would absolutely attend again and almost no negative comments. There were complements on the conference and the venue and facilities and several peer institutions indicated interest in hosting next year. Some of the key moments included a demonstration by an ITAC faculty member of his use of 3D protein modeling to a crowd of participants. Thirty-two articles were written about the event and there was a lot social media feedback.

Planning conferences was new to a lot of the organizers and they indicated it was a great learning experience with successes and considerations along the way.  Many lessons were learned and will be carried forward to the next Construct 3D or other conferences Duke OIT organizes in the future.

Special recognition went to Chip Bobbert and Christine Vucinich who did much of the work for OIT to make this conference successful. The organizers expected "Construct 3D" to be a big deal and it was. They concluded this was a big way to put Duke on the 3D printing map and assert the leadership Duke has in this area in a visible way. 

Questions

Q: How did the organizers get vendors involved?

A: There was initially a need to actively reach out to vendors. Registration started slow but as more people signed up, sponsors became interested and wanted to be involved. After that, most of the effort went to managing vendor expectations and maintaining a standard level of vendor participation for a given sponsorship level.

Q: Does Duke have a standard agreement for vendors when it comes to this type of event?

A: The planners indicated not that they found. Learning efforts including setting up Duke fund codes for the conference and getting Duke set up as a vendor in the sponsor's financial systems.

Q: OIT was the leader here but did we learn from others that enable us to be better?

A: OIT was able to learn about the integration of design in the 3D process. We tend to act as technologists but designers care about appearance and function that are marketable. K-12 has managed to integrate this technology into the curriculum. 

 4:20- 4:40 – Duke Learning Technology Workshop, Michael Greene (10 minute presentation, 10 minute discussion)

What it is:  The Duke Learning Technology Workshop covers developing, managing, and using educational technology (EdTech).

Why it’s relevant: The goal of the workshop is to address current issues, best practices, build out conceptual models, and collect examples of real-life use cases in the use of EdTech by IT architects, educational technologists, faculty, and software engineers from many universities.  Michael will provide an overview of the workshop.

CIT hosted a 1 day and 2 day event over 3 days called "The Learning Technology Workshop." This event was modeled after one at Brigham Young University in February called the "University API Unconference". At the "unconference", the attendees suggested what to talk about and those parties interested joined in the discussion. The organizers aimed to have fifty percent Duke and the other fifty percent be external users, with a third day for the Duke attendees to review the experience and answer the question "What did you learn?". 

Around 50 people attended the event which was the number they hoped to achieve. There was a mix of instructional designers and developers as well as a few faculty from Duke and other institutions. Several ITAC members attended part or all of the unconference. The sessions were wide-ranging on the first two days; for Wednesday, an outside facilitator was brought in to guide the Duke  participants in visioning involving learning at Duke in ten years and what kind of projects could help us get there.

Questions

Q: What is a "unconference"?

A: Attendees interested in a common theme get together but there is no set agenda as defined by a planning committee. The people who attend make the agenda as they go along.  

Q: Michael Green asked those in the room who attended the unconference how they felt about the experience.

A: Several attendees responded positively, including seeing what other schools are doing in the learning technology space, thinking about "componentized learning systems" rather than monolithic learning management systems, supporting more dynamic “drag and drop” creation of web pages and automation of content loading into repositories or LMSes. 

Another set of takeaways related to the LMS as a drop-off point for academic materials, including making it easy for students to access the material regardless of whatever tool they choose to use. This includes the importance of having a system where students could deliver the work upon which they are being assessed, with an entry date and gradebook where everything that happens with the grading is documented there. Everyone wants improved gradebooks.

Small sessions were interesting and discussions addressed how we work with institution to support the teaching and learning space. Where does learning take place?

Q: What were the specific strategies or goal statements that came out of the 3rd day of the unconference? 

A: Further time is needed to fully round out the ideas that came out of the working groups but there were two strategies that could be discussed.

  1. There was a possible evolution for the Duke Digital Initiative as well as LearnTech (focus on learning technologies).
  2. There was a reaffirmation that Toolkits is still a useful idea but it needs a better user interface and perhaps content authoring components. 

The other approaches are still being organized and will be shared at a future ITAC.

Q: Is it still a "learning management system" if it uses components? 

A: Perhaps it does become more like an ecosystem (LMSes) or suite of services  (LMSS) or framework.

4:40-5:00 – East Campus Access Experiment, Joe Gonzalez (10 minute presentation, 10 minute discussion)

What it is:   A new contactless “tap” technology was installed in all the dorms on East Campus in 2016 that allows students to enter simply by tapping their DukeCard to the reader.  Residents in Giles also tested electronic, hotel-style locks on interior residential rooms.   Incoming freshman received new contactless DukeCards for use throughout East Campus that can also be swiped at all locations.

Why it’s relevant:   HDRL manages the facilities operation of all university student residences.  These responsibilities include all long-range planning, renovations and major projects, managing housekeeping and maintenance efforts, and ensuring that all residence options are safe, secure, comfortable and well maintained.  Joe will provide an overview of the project from a Housing, Dining, and Residence Life perspective and provide some insight into future projects relating to the integration of technology and residence life.

Last summer the Giles residence hall was renovated which was an opportunity to use the facility as a pilot program for electronic locks which has been in the planning process for a year and a half. There were areas of hesitation. How quickly will locks get system updates applied and grant access to a user? What about battery life and how often will they need to be replaced? Will users frequently be locked out because they don't have the access token with them? That was one of the reasons users were able to use both cards and wristbands giving them two options for access.

The program was implemented in August of 2016 and despite early issues related to the short timeline between implementation and opening day, the project went well overall. For example, some students arrived as much as three weeks early. The locks were not ready so physical keys had to be located for these early arrivers. The keys then had to be retrieved once the system was operating. Arrangements were made for IT staff to be onsite at the opening of the residence hall. This was critical to this working as well as it did.

The students seemed to enjoy this approach instead of keeping keys. The card option felt more cutting-edge. After a few weeks, the issues were minimal. Lockouts also appeared to be fewer than keys because users tended to have their ID cards with them which was not true of keys. Battery life was not as long as promised (two years) so the lock batteries will be replaced annually as a precaution.

The wrist bands were included as option to reduce student lockouts. Duke was unique in giving these out relative to other universities. This was a case of "convenience" versus "needs" and because the wristbands were prone to misuse the conclusion was the bands wouldn't be used in the future. 

They are expanding the program in August to Pegram, in January to Trinity on East Campus, August of 2018 Crowell Quad, August of 2019 the new Hollows building, and the renovated Craven. All will have electronic locks so within two years they will have moved from a pilot with a relatively small door total to a much broader program. There are still a lot of doors using keys but things are moving quickly.

Questions and Comments:

Q: Are they thinking about rolling this out to academic buildings?

A: These electronic locks would be cost prohibitive for individual offices so those will remain keyed for now although the tap locks are being used in exterior office buildings. It is also important to note that replacing physical locks when a student loses the key is expensive while electronic locks can be reprogrammed and over time may provide financial savings.

Q: Did the users enter PIN codes at lock?

A: Users were assigned PIN numbers which could be changed. There was an early technical issue identified the afternoon of opening day related to leading zeros  but this issue has been resolved.

Q: What happened if a student gave the PIN number to someone else? Could this person get in?

A:  Entry into the room required both the card and the PIN but a person with both the card and PIN, they would gain access to the room. 

5:00- 5:15 – AirWatch Mobile Device Management, Billy Willis (10 minute presentation, 5 minute discussion)

What it is:  The growing number of mobile device models, platforms and operation system versions available creates new and complex mobility management challenges.  Accessing Duke resources from a mobile device can introduce threats to information security. 

Why it’s relevant:  AirWatch Mobile Device Management provides a simplified, efficient way to securing to access to Duke resources regardless of the type of device, operating system, and platform.  Billy will provide an overview of how AirWatch will be implemented in Duke Health.

Mobile devices can be a significant pivot point in vulnerability on the network. Both wired and wireless devices will need to be registered before they can access the Duke Health network by the time this is fully implemented.  The need for this type of service is not limited to patient health information and research data is vulnerable to ransomware attacks. The work is starting internal to DHTS but communication has been an issue since misinformation leads to paranoia and references to "Big Brother" continue to be a challenge. 

There are distinct communities that have their own needs. With caregivers, it's about PHI and making sure they have the correct tools with secured access, including in cases when a user hands over a device to the person on the next shift ; these are also called "fleet" devices and they are managed by DHTS - they are not BYOD (Bring Your Own Device). 

For patients, they need access to personal content but not anyone else's. Data cannot carry over from one patient to another and a lot of precautions are taken to make sure this doesn't happen. Devices are completely wiped between patients. 

For ancillary staff, give them access to what they need to do their jobs but not beyond it such as social media applications. Common themes across all types of users are data safety, loss prevention of the device, and security holes patching and updating.

Tools and acronyms in this marketplace include "MDM" (mobile device management) and "EMM" (enterprise mobility management). Device ownership matters as well. If it is a Duke-owned device (fleet), full control is exercised over this device. For personal devices, the Duke software footprint is very small and what can be seen and managed is communicated to the device owner. 

Projects:

  • "Epic’s Mychart Bedside" is a patient-engagement program where the patient gets an Android tablet. The patient is the primary user of the device but nurses are secondary users in that they manage the charging and assigning of the tablet and the retrieval of the device after the patient is finished. This program is successfully running at two hospitals but not yet at the third.  The tablets had the Epic app installed with the built-in applications hidden. Additional applications have gradually been added after thorough vetting. 
  • "Nursing Rover" is a rugged Zebra Motorola Android fleet device project including an Epic module for mobile devices which allows the nurses to add data for the patient record without bringing up a full computer. These include a barcode scanner, phone, messaging, websites, etc. These devices are medical grade so they are durable and can be cleaned.
  • "BYOD": This is a change from using ActiveSync device restrictions to duplicating the same restrictions via the new AirWatch tool. AirWatch is being used as the gateway to get to mail, the network, Epic, and other provider apps. There is support for a limited list of employee-owned devices.                    
  • "Rover Phlebotomy": The staff who perform blood draws are using iPod Touches with one app that they cannot exit. They login and it shows their work list for the day. This is an example of a device that has been severely limited and shows the range of control available with AirWatch. 

How does AirWatch do this? AirWatch includes a dashboard platform indicating the number of enrolled devices, when they were last seen, what platform and operating system is running, etc. Profiles are created for each thing you want managed (ex. wifi profile, PIN code requirements).  For example, "fleet" devices policies are in one branch and single user devices in another. There is a test environment for those who are interested. 

Everyone seems to understand the need to tightly configure and control the Duke "fleet" devices. But BYOD management is a pain point. There is an app that launches with a banner screen that communicates what will be managed and the requirements .

Questions and Comments:

Q: What types of devices would patients be given?

A: Tablets such as iPads or Android. The app "MyChart Bedside" works with Epic and gives charts, communication capabilities, and some messaging with the doctor. These are run on devices provided by Duke Health. 

Q: Email is currently only Office 365. Will that be restricted by policy?

A: When the "gate is closed", users will not be able to add email on a personal mobile device without enrolling into AirWatch. Activesync does give the option to remote-wipe but this affects the entire device while AirWatch could just address the Duke-specific data. 

Q: Is AirWatch on BYOD for patients as well?

A: No, this is for employees only.

Q: Does AirWatch provide a specific email app or does the user launch those included on the device?

A: The user will be able to use the native mail application on the device. There will be a Duke App store included with the product that will install all the things they want to deliver including the configurations specific to Duke.  The email appears native on the device. Depending on the user settings, there could be two different mail folders in the app (personal and Duke). 

Q: A large number of Duke users forward their email. What will AirWatch provide for this?

A: The Health system users have not been able to forward email for quite a long time and this is not changing, even for Duke Health faculty. This is enforced technically and there are scripts running to check for rules acting as forwarding replacement and disable them.

Q: What is the timeline for rolling this out?

A: They are offering BYOD to the Health System as a whole starting in July, 2017, with complete deployment by the end of year.

Q: Will campus be able to use the Outlook mobile app? 

A: Yes, hopefully by the end of year.

Q: What impact does AirWatch have on alumni?

A: The alumni are not part of the Duke Health system including School of Medicine. The alumni account doesn't have access to the Duke network or infrastructure. 

Q: There are hundreds of apps being developed for Epic. Does this kind of security make that more difficult?

A: No, they are separate things. FHIR ("fire") is a new emerging protocol to allow the safe exchange of medical data in different categories. It is supposed to be consumable by users an app-store model.

5:15- 5:30 – Ivy+ Updates, Joe Lopez, Charles Francis, Chris Meyer (10 minute presentation, 5 minute discussion) 

What it is:  Representatives from Ivy League schools meet on an annual basis to discuss and share information in various areas.  Topics range from overall university directions, budgets, projects, online learning tools, networking and security, and daily operations.

Why it’s relevant:  Sharing experiences and discussing challenges with our peers helps to provide a collaborative environment where ideas are formed and problems are solved.  Attendees will share experiences from the conferences held in Spring 2017.

Major themes from Spring 2017 Ivy+ Admin Systems (provided by Chris Meyer)

Toured MIT’s Atlas Service Center which is one-stop shopping for HR, IT walk-up, and campus card.  Offers services such as Campus ID cards, add money to your campus card via TechCash, pay parking tickets, passport photos, online submission of I-9 forms, new employee orientation, and computer repair and loaner services.

The CIO at MIT spoke with the group about MIT’s strategy to reshape the future of IT through web scale data (Hana Cloud Platform) and Application Integration Platforms (MuleSoft). 

Cloud first strategy – Some schools pushing out to the cloud either migrating on-premise administrative systems to a hosted solution or Software as a Service ; a couple of schools are getting out of the data center business altogether. 

User Experience and Interface – in the era of postmodern Enterprise Resource Planning Systems schools are improving the user experience through more modern UI’s built using SAP Fiori, PS Fluid (enhanced use of cascading style sheets (CSS3), HTML5, and JavaScript).  Some schools deciding to customize the front-end versus using delivered designs and be constrained to a more modern yet “vended” look and feel.  Shortage of UX/UI designers appears to be a limiting factor at most schools for the customized approach.

API’s – Many schools are using Enterprise Service Bus (communications infrastructure between applications using a Service-oriented architecture) such as Mulesoft or Kong to integrate modernized front-ends with back end core systems. 

Reporting / Data Analytics and Governance

  • Tableau is firmly entrenched at most schools and use of Microsoft Power BI is gaining for data visualization and analytics. 
  • Data governance and reluctance to share data continues to be a challenge at most institutions.  Issues of trust and ownership e.g. what are you doing with my data?
  • The Administrative Systems Ivy+ group is forming a constituent group around Data Analytics and Governance to increase communications and collaboration.

Customer Relationship Management - Schools are implementing CRM for undergraduate admissions prospecting and recruiting and other uses.