Michigan IT Symposium 2019 View Other Sessions

Our team undertook the retirement of an 18-year-old application (OSC) written in deprecated code. We would like to present on the uses of Django/Python, why customers should and can use our product, and how customers can join Information Systems and others in ordering and reporting through the SRS.

I never thought of myself as a mentor until I did! When the University of Michigan IT Mentorship program opened up, I applied. This year is my third volunteering as a mentor through the program. Each year is different. I'll describe the learning process, getting the most out of the program while helping your mentees, working on trying to overcome the Impostor Syndrome, and why you should think about becoming a mentor or a mentee.

I encourage an interactive discussion and breakout groups. I'll also ask for suggestions on best mentoring practices, formal, and informal, and being in a dual mentee/mentor role.  

Containerization is a virtualization method offering several benefits over bare metal and virtual machines. As environments are “contained,” each can have specific libraries — or different versions of the same library — that are unique to each application, without conflicting with other apps on the same host. This reduces deployment-stage errors, increases the portability of applications from on-premise to the cloud, between cloud vendors, and more.

Many university groups are using containers for production applications. Who are they and what are some of the use cases they are meeting? This session will be a discussion panel of some of those using containers in production

To ensure that the university has the network it needs to remain a leader in data intensive science, attract the best faculty, students, and staff and enable the next generation of research, ITS Infrastructure Networking group is transforming and revolutionizing the university’s network architecture. The measured annual growth rate in internet traffic of 31% inbound / 22% outbound, means network capacity is currently doubling about every 3 years. Internal flows between data centers for research needs are taxing the limits of the current firewall and deployed IPS solutions.

The networking team is working on deploying network border infrastructure security based on LBL ZEEK; validating different vendor solution for the future core network; reducing manual, repetitive network administration work through automation; deploying network metrics framework and developing and, in collaboration with the academic, research and administrative units, establishing effective network governance processes.

With this presentation, the ITS Infrastructure Networking group will provide an overview of all the in-flight and planned initiatives that will support further advancements of the U-M teaching and research mission.

The Office for Institutional Equity (OIE); the University Library; Information Technology Services (ITS); the College of Literature, Sciences, and the Arts (LSA); and other campus partners are piloting the Universal Design Online Content Inspection Tool (UDOIT) in Canvas, in order to address more content accessibility issues earlier in the course creation process. UDOIT, in conjunction with the Canvas learning management system, can help to inform institutional strategy and best practices related to making learning materials more accessible for students with disabilities.   

Every term thousands of documents are uploaded to the university’s learning management system by faculty for students to read as part of their coursework. Many of the learning materials go unexamined for accessibility barriers. UDOIT provides an automated solution for ensuring that common pitfalls are caught and corrected, or simply avoided (e.g., missing alternative text for images or well-formed HTML pages for screen reader support). While faculty generally seem interested in ensuring their course materials are accessible, we face the challenge of scaling meaningful support for faculty when proactively doing accessibility work.   

Our goal is to establish a higher standard of accessibility in learning materials at U-M so that students with disabilities face less barriers to learning. Localized training materials will be created that will support faculty and staff self-service use of the tool. A pre and post scan of a representative sample of select courses will be conducted. Data from the scans will help inform our strategy for addressing accessibility in courses across the institution.

Research takes place all over campus. For the ISR, it’s our primary mission. As a result, we are responsible to both our funders and faculty with what happens because of that research. Many of our grants require us to track publications that their money/data produced, both inside and outside the Institute. Currently dozens of departments individually track those publications, and there is plenty of inefficiency due to the overlap of those departments’ faculty. 

 This project has three objectives:

1. Allow for an easy ingest, via manual and/or automatic means. 
2. Create a review process for duplicates and annual review for faculty
3. Generate useful output for reporting (faculty(e.g., CVs) and funders(e.g., data publication lists)). 

Tracking does not stop at the walls of the ISR though, but goes with access to our data into the world. Not only can this project benefit the ISR, but the U-85M academic community as a whole by creating a cohesive, accessible environment for the broader use of everyone. Building this as a tool that benefits everyone requires input from multiple areas, and I believe the symposium’s Sandbox & Innovation Session provides the perfect environment to make this discussion effective and relevant.

Have you ever wondered what the Michigan IT Hacks with Friends event is all about? It is a special event each year where designers, developers, documenters, and supporters get together and build prototypes of applications that solve problems. Do you have any ideas for applications that would improve your work life, helping with the mission of supporting research, teaching, or administration? Please join us for this break-out session, where we will remagine and reinvigorate the purpose and structure of the Hacks with Friends event.  We will discuss how we can be more inclusive of participants from all members of the U-M community, as well as potential changes to the name of the event, categories of prizes awarded, and how pitches are conducted prior to the event.