ITAC Meeting Notes  
March 21, 2024

Allen Building Boardroom

 

 Victoria Szabo:  Welcome back from spring break. Approval of ITAC minutes.

 

Tracy Futhey: Please send names of potential colleagues who might want to join ITAC. We are working with ECAC on this.

 

4:00 – 4:15pm – Sites@Duke Pro Updates, Ryn Nasser, Duke Web Services (10 minutes presentation, 5 minutes Q&A)

 

Victoria Szabo: We are going to have a hybrid meeting experience today. First, we will be hearing from Ryn Nasser.

 

What It is: Sites@Duke Pro is OIT’s enterprise Drupal platform, now well into its third year of widespread availability. The platform provides a flexible page layout builder and a modern visual theme, as well as integration with many enterprise tools, both Duke and third-party.

 

Why It is: This update will offer insight into adoption rates of Sites Pro, review major new features released over the last several years, and provide a glimpse of future plans.

 

Ryn Nasser: Today I will provide an update on the enterprise web-building service, Sites@Duke Pro, currently in its third year of deployment. The service was built for the Duke community, starting as a joint effort between Sanford and OIT.  The primary OIT teams focusing on the service has been Duke Web Services and CrUX (Creating and UX team).

 

The backend is Drupal, the frontend is a static rendering of the content customers build. A key element is the flexible page layout builder---content blocks---that lets clients take control of their content. The cost structure includes a one-time cost of $3,000, then an ongoing cost of $250/month. Services included are live Zoom training sessions and answering of questions as needed. Full accessibility review is conducted as part of the prelaunch process.

 

This is distinguished from Sites@Duke Express, which is a free, do-it-yourself website service. With Sites@Duke Express, there are 8,000 sites, encompassing our WordPress Network. Roughly 5,000 are course sites, and about 3,000 open to the public.


On the other end of the spectrum, we have custom, ala carte, websites. The cost can be all over the board, and includes research discovery, prelaunch and launch, and cleanup at the end.

 

John Board: The unit has to be involved enough in creating a lot of the content itself. They would have had to do this with an external site.

 

Ryn Nasser: Right. The numbers you see there under custom would have included the DWS team moving over some of the content, but not all the content. In the pro model, we don’t provide that as part of the stated costs, though we have engaged to do additional support agreements to help move content as needed from time to time.

 

One of the benefits of the model is that we can do whatever we need to the Drupal site and it’s not going to impact what the visitors see, for example if we need to put Drupal site in maintenance mode. The world is seeing the static rendering. 

 

Other benefits of the platform include user empowerment, with training provided for users along with extensive documentation. The CrUX team offers some optional packages for groups that don’t have designers but want to know what to do to make a site look good. There are also weekly office hours via Zoom, as well as a robust user community in MS Teams.
 

Since November 2021, we are up to 67 live sites.

 

Tracy Futhey:  You said 67 sites, going back to the graph, I can’t tell if it’s flattening out? Are your limitations in serving more sites about the bandwidth and capacity of the team to do the technical work? Are they more about the client side and the interaction needed there?

 

Ryn Nasser: Many of you are aware of the impending end-of-life of Drupal 7, and part of this was a way for sites to get out of Drupal 7. Drupal 7 was supposed to EOL last November. Even though it was extended to January 2025, we were still urging folks to get sites launched. Even those who weren’t designing new sites. Third-party modules, for example, were starting to get dropped for the Drupal 7 sites.

 

John Board: Probably fair to say there is a finite demand for sites that cost $2500 a year to run vs. free.

 

Ryn Nasser. Yes. For the future we are looking at 5-10 new sites per year, vs. the explosive growth over the last couple of years.

 

Evan Levine: We haven’t seen a ton of requests for new custom websites either. Maybe a sort of stasis.


Victoria Szabo: I feel like there’s a larger archiving and longevity issue around all of this.  What happens to old sites when they get taken down? People like me who keep things alive just because.

 

Ryn Nasser: It’s always been a question. Typically, we make a backup dump of the site and keep it in Box. We can bring back it back to life. There was at one point there was an idea you could send to the library and they would archive it somehow.

 

Tim McGeary: The Internet archive also offers a free tool to archive.

 

Ryn Nasser: That is often what we point people towards.

 

Chris Meyer:  If we didn’t have sites pro, you’d see a lot more people going externally to vendors which presents additional costs and security risks. There are some intangible benefits.  Great to provide this service vs. the stress of having to deal with a vendor.

 

Evan Levine: And accessibility is a big one of those intangible benefits. The ease of making sure these sites are compliant is significantly better than dealing with large outside sites.

 

Nick Tripp: Yes, and from the security perspective, we get to monitor sites, we are seeing all the logs. 

 Victoria Szabo: Next a zoom video from Stephen Toback, with a Bryan Center studio update.

 

 

4:15 – 4:35pm - Bryan Center Studio Updates - Stephen Toback (15 minutes presentation, 5 minutes Q&A)

 

What It Is: The Bryan Center Studios is the central place on campus for students, faculty, and staff of the University and Health System to visit to create media in a professional and supportive environment. 

 

Why It Is: As we celebrate our 2nd anniversary this Spring, we recently completed a renovation and expansion of facilities and services to accommodate the requests of our clients. We will take a live tour of the space via Zoom and give an overview of the facility and services provided.

 

Stephen Toback: Welcome to the Bryan Center Studios. We just completed a large remodeling, and I want to take you through that. We are in the greenhouse level of basement of the Bryan Center.

 

As you walk in, Mich Donovan’s office  (production and studio manager) - this is also the R&D studio where we can test cameras and different things. We have our producers here in hermetically-sealed containers where they can work. They provide support for users between 9 a.m. and 6 p.m. during the week, and that’s worked out really well.


Studio 1 is our major studio for our producers, but we’ve also opened it up for the rest of the Duke community. It’s used for video and photography,  and I will introduce Mitch Donovan here. Mitch, what’s new in Studio 1?

Mitch Donovan: A couple of things. Our major investment is a pair of Sony FX6 Cameras, both with full-frame sensors. They are a major request from videographers on campus. We have one that’s constantly setup here with the teleprompter, but we also have one that can serve as an additional camera for a secondary shot, or take it out for remote shoots.

 

[Steve introduces other members of his team to describe other parts of the Studio]

 

Michael Blair: In addition to these cameras, there’s a tripod system with cushions that can be easily raised or lowered.  New monitor and new teleprompter.  You can do call ups, so for remote conversations you can maintain eye contact with the camera. We have a new backdrop, have done photoshoots.

 

Devon Henry: This is Studio 3 where you can record directly to the camera or you can use programs like Camtasia or QuickTime to record directly to the Mac.  Here we have our lights up and our mike.

 

Stephen Toback:  Awesome. This is our main production camera and is a 4K camera.  This station over here is going to be for the teleprompter system. So people can put in their text, and do text.  Now to Studio 4, which has been busy off the hook, and our producer, Michael Blair.

 

Michael Blair: It’s one of our most-used spaces.  The basic functionality is the same, 4 microphones, a mixer.  We have a screen and camera system over here too, so you could record some video while recording a podcast. But primarily this is for remote guests.

 

Brandon Johnson: The hotel space has a multimedia-backed studio with Abelton Live, DaVinci Resolve, and Adobe CC. We have a scanner, printer, everything you need to do for your project.

 

Mitch Donovan: Studio 5 is a new studio, which we like to think of as a virtual meeting room. It can be reserved for a special Zoom meeting with just the right lighting, or if they have to connect with someone like CNN for talking with the news.  We’ve added signage and an SD card player so people can submit their logos.

 

Stephen Toback: That completes our tour. Any questions?

 

Victoria Szabo: How do people get access to all these resources?


Stephen Toback: If you go to the OIT website, and type in “Bryan Center Studios,” it takes you to our page and it tells you how to reserve a room and check for availability.  Studios 3, 4, 5 and the Hotel Space are available 24:7, if you have netid access. Now CNN and MSNBC are saying “just do it through Zoom” but we have good lighting and good acoustics here. You just invite the room through Outlook, for whichever studio you want.

 

Victoria Szabo: Next we are going to hear the student presentations on the state of IT.  We will start with undergrads, and then grads.

 

4:35 - 5:15pm - Student Presentations - State of IT -Andy Li, Arnav Jindal & Sam Carpenter (25 minutes presentation) Brandon Lê (15 minutes presentation)

 

What It Is:  ITAC Student Representatives appointed by the Duke Student Government will present on the state of IT from the undergraduate & graduate student perspective. Each year, our Student Representatives prepare and distribute a survey to their peers to gather this in  formation.

 

Why It Is: Feedback from the students allows IT administrators to hear firsthand the challenges that students face on a regular basis. This information can help set goals and priorities for various IT projects and initiatives. By presenting these viewpoints earlier in the spring semester, IT leadership can respond to the students’ issues and concerns before the end of the academic year.  

 

Andy Li:  For the past month, we’ve been conducting a bunch of surveys to different undergrads to try to understand how they feel about various IT services.

Arnav Jindal: To get responses, we used blasts, social media, and had a table at the Bryan Center. We got 113 responses. We got a good mix of demographics with the top majors representing.

For machine and operating system usage, iOS and Chrome the most popular. One of the interesting findings was that home devices (like Alexa) not used as much (only 16 percent.)  This could be because they can’t connect them to Duke Blue.

Andy Li:  Now to discuss some of the academic services that Duke provides.  With the Sakai to Canvas transition,

Canvas: A large number of students said they heavily preferred Canvas to Sakai so overall this has been a really successful decision and transition. The data responses do reveal some issues students have with Canvas, including frustrations that they have to go to the Duke site, then Canvas, then Shib to login. Students want the 24-hour notification before the submissions were due, like they had with Sakai.

DukeHub: Most students are satisfied with the features of DukeHub. Some frustrations were expressed with the course evaluation process, class search, registration, and financial aid page.  Two pieces of feedback on DukeHub: some thought the layout of the class search seemed like a waste of space, like a mobile app scaled up to desktop. The other piece is related to class registration. During the registration process, for example, you’ll register for a class with 50 available spots and as soon as you click “register” you’re number 10 on the waitlist and wondering how that happen.

Arnav Jindal: Students are satisfied with Duke e-mail and OneDrive, and satisfied with cloud storage in general. (Students say they wish they had Google services, though.)  Students are satisfied with the old version of DukeMobile, so hopefully the new version will be in an even better spot for next year’s survey. Students are satisfied with Box. 

Some students said they wished they could use an external third-party app to link the calendar.

Andy Li:  Next up we have Duke computers and virtual machines, overall pretty successful. Some comments about virtual machines crashing, especially in class settings like 250.

John Board: And the challenge is that many students only ever use them that one day. It’s the typical provisioning problem of how much do you keep around, and can you predict the peak?

Andy Li: For TransLoc, the biggest complaint was that it’s sometimes inaccurate, but overall students were happy with it.

Robert Wolpert: Why does it give incorrect information? Is it hardware or software?

Andy Li: We’re not sure.

John Board: it’s third party, limited control.

Andy Li: Pharos print and mobile print were some of the most problematic things seen on the survey.  Some students don’t like Pharos print. The biggest issues we are seeing is that it crashes, and is not intuitive for some students. Some issues not working with Androids.

Arnav Jindal: Some other feedback was that sometimes when you schedule the queue stuff and it doesn’t show up in the printer because it’s not connected to the Pharos server. Also on macs, that window to print, with your netid, doesn’t show up all the time.

Andy Li: 25 Live and Space finder: overall the students were OK with these.  The biggest complaint we got was that it was a bit confusing because of the different websites.

One of the big themes of this survey was “there’s a lot of great resources, but there’s too many resources.”  They would like them to be condensed.   

For Duo Push and Unlock, the comments were that they are great when they work. Duke Unlock randomly stops working. There was a “bad request” error in Chrome that I saw on a lot of the responses.

TV Boxes and Dorms: this was the only one we had more dissatisfied responses with than satisfied. They seem to be confusingly used, along with connection issues and missing remotes.
My suggestion would be to replace the TVS with the Airtable Systems like they have in Bostock Library.

John Board: is this a Student Affairs function?

Paula Batton: Some Student Affairs, some OIT. It’s a shared responsibility.

Andy Li: A lot of this does fall on the students for misplacing remotes.

Arnav Jindal: One of the other problems the TV boxes from the feedback is that they don’t know how to connect their own HDMI cables to the TVs. If there was an external outlet they could use for connecting consoles and laptops, that would be helpful.

Andy Li: For other services, students overall satisfied with Wi-Fi.  DukeBlue is performing great. One of the main issues for students was that DukeBlue was not auto-connecting. 

The zones we saw issue with include the East campus quad, outside spaces like Duke Gardens. BioSci 111 came up a few times. Some issues with the C1 Bus route.  Issues in a couple of the dorms (Eden and Wannamaker.)

Tracy Futhey: Thank you for that specificity. This helps us.

Andi Li: Of course. Cellular experience: Verizon seems to be struggling little bit, but most students happy. Zones with issues included East Campus, C1, and Smith Warehouse.  Students complain that connectivity on 9th street is awful.

For Mobile Duke Cards: A lot of the freshmen were complaining that they didn’t get a physical card. Only real complaints were issues with the vending machines.

Outdoor accessibility: Students were satisfied. Some complaints about not being enough outlets.

Arnav Jindal: Some of the classrooms, like the large auditoriums, also have a little bit of an outlet shortage.

Andy Li: Duke-licensed software and usage requests: most students are using Microsoft office and Adobe CC. The biggest request was ChatGPT 4. CanvaPro and SolidWorks were also popular requests.

For platforms, Discord and Teams were almost never used, with Slack, iMessage, and GroupMe being used.

For cybersecurity, half of students said they don’t know how to deal with issues. 1/6 said they didn’t care, while 1/3 said they took measures, mostly by using antivirus software and ad blockers. A few responses indicated they used their own VPNS.

Most students feel AI tools pose about a medium threat to academic integrity.

Arnav Jindal:  I’ve worked as a TA. and can attest to the fact that some students come in with AI-written solutions and expect the Tas to be able to fix them.

Andy Li: On how Duke can prepare for AI, there were two schools of thought from the survey. Some students talked about learning by working with AI, others learning despite AI. There were also a few students who were at this intersection of understanding the dangers of AI, but also understanding how to work with AI.  This feedback was the most beneficial to us, specifically the benefits, consequences, and conduct and how to use AI effectively. An AI ethics class was also highly requested.

Regarding the question “Where do you go for IT Help?,” most students indicted that they use Duke websites, and their friends.

The last question was around what is the most frustrating aspect of IT, and anything else that could be done to improve services. There were a lot of positive comments about IT, and that most things worked well enough. There were some frustrations regarding wi fi, Pharos Print, and DukeHub error messages.

There were 5 major takeaways from this survey:

  • Too many resources, students don’t know where to go.  Condensing of resources needed.
  • Consistency in performance with wi-fi, mobile carde, Duke Unlock, and Pharos Print
  • Training professors on how to use Canvas.
  • Impacts of AI. How we ethically navigate.
  • Login and bad requests, especially on DukeHub and Sakai.

Any questions?

Mark Palmeri: It looks like you got about 1 percent of the undergrad population.  How much of this is a certain slice of the undergraduate body vs. it should actually be extrapolated into the 6700s?


Andy Li: We feel it’s a good representation, among grades and majors. A lot of the key things are applicable to everyone at Duke. Some of the niche comments can probably be ignored. But the general themes—those are applicable to entire student body.

Arnav Jindal: We also talked to a lot of students in passing.  A lot of these Issues are prevalent.

John Board:  Also, 45% of all students have engineering or comp sci majors.

JoAnne Van Tuyl:  Along those lines, coming from the humanities.  These are tech-heavy majors I would think that would skew it.

Andy Li: Yes, when we were looking at the survey responses, a lot them were more technical responses because of the heavy comp sci and engineering prevalence.  But, we think everyone has to go through the same core processes. Key things are pretty consistent regardless of the major.

JoAnne Van Tuyl:   Coming from Languages, we’ve had to deal with Google Translate for over a decade.  It’s very easy for us to spot, even though we don’t have any detectors.

Arnav Jindal:  From talking to folks in the humanities, AI is mostly used as a tool to frame essays.

Ken Rogerson: For the AI stuff, it seems like you can ask it for computer code, or you can ask it to summarize ideas (I’m in Sanford.) Those seem like two very different things. I’m not sure if comp sci professors can tell if code is done by ChatGPT, but I can’t tell if my students have used ChatGPT to summarize ideas. I can probably tell if direct output from writing, but that rarely happens. Since they use it as a baseline, I’ve gone the way of embracing it.  But I’m wondering if you’ve made any distinction there?

Andrew Li: The theme we got from CS was that the more you rely on AI tools, the worse you become. You are kind of screwed as soon as the AI tool doesn’t give you the perfect response.

Ken Rogerson: But if you are desperate, and it’s 3:00 a.m. This is another conversation---

John Board: Yes, and we still have grad students to get to.

Victoria Szabo: lets come back to this. I would love to go in depth across the disciplines.

John Board: Dr. Brandon Lê.  Welcome back!

Brandon Lê: It’s great to be back! I’m a recently-minted PhD student and was the ITAC rep for the last 3-4 years. Today I’m giving you a rundown of a survey that was conducted over the last month, for the Duke Graduate and Professional Student Body. It had the same purpose as the undergrad survey.

I conducted this survey for the Graduate and Professional Student body. across 10 schools, with 133 respondents. Pratt, Med and Grad schools are well represented, as well as all the other schools. It’s a good breakdown. 

The first question---“How much technology do you use in your program?”---was to establish a baseline for what we should expect. Most said “yes,” a great deal. 

Most use personally-owned devices, with some Duke-owned devices. Most use Mac and Windows OS, of course, and for Mobile, more iOS than Android.  Linux use by those who are in computational and scientific research as well. Web browsers used are the “big four” ---Chrome, Safari, Edge and FireFox.

Regarding general applications and services, responses were mostly “very satisfied” or “satisfied” with their overall IT experience, similar to what was seen in 2023.

For wi-fi, e-mail, ePrint almost always being used by everyone.

For Sakai, Canvas, and DukeHub, they are used by those who are taking classes.

Box is being used by those who are often working large with data sets.

Similar to last year, not many people knew what “Kits” was, but numbers increasing.

People use Zoom for meetings.

Lots of people used licensed software.

There is still a small but recognizable contingent of people using computer labs, so keeping them is pretty important.

For services like the help desk and Co-Lab, responses depended on how much students sought those services.  For those that did, they really liked them.

We split the survey up into a mobile applications section. Most people use these daily—Duke Card, Due Mobile, and Duo. Some people do have problems with them, which I’ve outlined above.

You’ll get comments and specific issues with specific services. I highly encourage you to look at some of the supplementary files I’ve sent to the steering committee which they’ll distribute afterwards. Some of the comments: TransLoc continues to be a pain. Some comments about Duke Box and Mobile Duke Card.

The miscellaneous section has remained the same from last year.  People seem to really appreciate getting help from the OIT helpdesk and departmental IT support. A lot of people unaware of Co-Lab, but for those that know about it, they really appreciate it.

Software licensing gets good foot traffic.  

Teams and Slack are the big two for Duke Communications. GroupMe and iMessage for more informal communications.

For the answer “Is cybersecurity a concern for you,” a lot said “yes” and take preventative measures, some “yes” but don’t know how, and some “not really.”

There was a section on the Sakai to Canvas transition. Most people had used Sakai as a student or instructor. Most people didn’t have too many concerns with Sakai.  Most or all now use Canvas.  Most people responded “satisfied” or “neutral” similar to the responses for Sakai.

With Canvas, responses indicated that it’s a better UI than Sakai. Some instructors have difficulty configuring settings and navigating the site, echoing here what was said in the undergrad survey. More training is needed to better navigate Canvas. Some of the Sakai features are needed in Canvas, particularly the ability to send notifications and alerts for submissions and deadlines.

The last big section was on generative AI. If a respondent answered “No, I have no interest in using AI,” they would not see the follow up questions presented here.

Who is using AI?  Most in STEM fields, some in other disciplines. There is a pretty even balance between those who are using in the classroom space and in their research/scholarship space.
Most want ChatGPT 4.

I asked the question “What do you think Duke should do when implementing and regulating AI?” A lot of the responses focused on “please help me regulate in the classroom.” That some professors have a good policy which they’d like to see implemented in other classes. That Duke should host more conferences and meetings on AI.

For the general, open responses, I asked, “What did you like about your IT experience?”  There were a lot of positive responses, such as IT staff providing great support, and the availability of software.

For dissatisfied responses, there weren’t general underlying themes, only small things that have been pointed out. Thank you. Any questions?

Tracy Futhey: Really nice work, and congratulations on the defense and the next chapter of your life.

Brandon Lê: Thank you. I really enjoyed my time on ITAC.

John Board:  We are working diligently to find your replacement.

Victoria Szabo: Thank you for the discussion of AI, it’s really important.

Dismissed.