February 3, 2021
February Tech News Top News Spring network maintenance scheduled for March 6: EITS plans to conduct a network maintenance on March 6, 2021. Network maintenances are necessary to continue to support the network, allowing EITS to provide ample bandwidth and Internet capacity to the University in the future. We typically conduct large network maintenances twice a year, during which campus Internet and campus information systems are usually inaccessible. For questions, contact Jeff Farese at jeffrey.farese@uga.edu. IT Services in Action STF Wireless updates under way: EITS Network Infrastructure is in the process of planning and executing several network refreshes and redesigns. In January, technicians completed a network refresh and redesign on the Riverbend Research Lab North and South facilities. More work is planned for later this year, including a complete wireless redesign and equipment refresh on the four Forestry Resources buildings, as well as a replacement of wireless access points at the Veterinary Medical Center campus. Staff are also working on an ongoing project to supplement wireless coverage in buildings to support demand. EITS performs these refreshes to replace aged and under-performing equipment, in turn providing a better end-user experience. All these projects are funded by the Student Technology Fee, a fee that helps fund a variety of facilities and services on campus. To learn more about these projects, please contact Chris Fleming, cfleming@uga.edu. New widget offers tools to manage attendance: Instructors now have a new tool within eLearning Commons (eLC) to help manage face-to-face and online class attendance. The eLC Attendance Preference widget was created by the Office of Online Learning to better help manage attendance for the Spring 2021 semester. It is an optional add-on for use by instructors and can be used to assign attendance options, or to let students submit their own attendance preferences. The instructor will be able to see an overview of the options the students have chosen over the course of the semester with the tool. The widget resides on the course homepage, where instructors can view student choices, and assign or re-assign attendance options. The widget works with the eLC Quiz tool, with a single-question quiz for each class session. The Attendance Preference widget can also be used with the Gradebook. Using this, instructors are able to import the grades associated with attendance from the widget into their gradebook. Instructions for implementing the tool are available on the eLC Help site: https://help.elc.uga.edu/engaging_students/attendance_preference_widget/#Viewing%20 Attendance%20Choices. Zoom updates improve interaction during meetings: Zoom recently implemented several updates which improve the ability to interact during meetings. Participants can now
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