News

Faculty, students, and staff are invited to participate in a free monthly "Security Series" of workshops developed by Security Operations and Services and ITS Training Services within Information Technology Services.

 

Each month, topics will alternate between those of interest to a general audience and those targeted to IT professionals. The series is designed to help a general audience gain a better understanding of safe computing and how to protect their personal and professional online information and identities. IT professionals will learn how to apply specific technology-based security solutions to their network infrastructures.

 

Following are the details and registration links for the next three workshops. Each will be offered from 3:30 to 4:30 p.m. both face-to-face in 508 Rider Building, University Park, and via a Meeting@PennState desktop videoconference.

 

February 22 (general audience)

Security Series: Protect Your Social Networking Profile

Social media is everywhere. Services like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn allow you to communicate on a whole different level. However, there are plenty of concerns about the security and privacy of these sites. Is your data secure? Are you sure those pictures you just posted can only be seen by your friends? Join us as we discuss how to stay safe when using social media and some precautions you can take with your security settings that will help keep your data private.

Face-to-face https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110969

Meeting@PennState https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110970

 

March 20 (IT professionals)
Security Series: Mod Security for Web App Filtering

Mod Security is an Apache module that evaluates HTTP requests and blocks malformed and malicious requests. The engine has a very robust and flexible filter language, and can be applied differentially within Apache directives. System administrators who manage web servers can expect a brief overview of this tool.

Face-to-face https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110983

Meeting@PennState https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110982

 

April 17 (general audience)
Security Series: Defy h4CK3rs. Buy with confidence. Bank online with authority.

Learn how to conduct secure online transactions as we explore simple methods to protect your financial information from prying eyes. Avoid lines! Engage the power of your money through 24x7 online banking. Gain more personal time and expand your options through buying products from online merchants as easily as walking into a retail store.

Face-to-face https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110985

Meeting@PennState https://register4its.psu.edu/Public/ShowDetail.asp?scheduleid=110984

 

To learn about additional security topics, anyone with a Penn State Access Account can access a series of short video tutorials by logging on to ANGEL at http://cms.psu.edu/, then enrolling in the group entitled "Information Security and You: Learn. Know. Protect."

Registration is now open for technology workshops offered throughout spring on topics including Access, Excel, PowerPoint, ANGEL, InDesign, Photoshop, a variety of Penn State's administrative computing topics and more. Many sessions are also offered live through Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) in order to give more members of the Penn State community the opportunity to attend via the web. For more information and to register for training, visit http://its.psu.edu/training/. Those who would like to receive monthly emails highlighting additional learning opportunities may sign up for Training News by sending a blank email to l-training-news-subscribe-request@lists.psu.edu.

Penn State faculty, students, and staff can take advantage of a variety of learning opportunities to be offered from January 2-4, in preparation for the spring 2013 semester. Topics include Access, ANGEL, Excel, Prezi, Yammer, VoiceThread, and more. These sessions will be offered live through Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) in order to give more members of the Penn State community the opportunity to attend via the web.

Please visit the ITS Training Services online catalog and click "Winter-Fest" in the black bar at the top of the page to view all available sessions.

by Jennifer Montminy, communications intern for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Innovation, progress, and improvement continue to be the staples of ITS Training Services at Penn State. In the 2011-2012 fiscal year, this 14-person unit reached more people and provided more services than ever before. The ITS Training Services team offered 697 training sessions and reached a total of 7,798 participants, an increase of over 1,000 participants from 2010-2011. Combined, the trainings logged a total of 19,291 participant training hours, an increase of over 3,500 hours from the previous year.

Each of the three training session types--scheduled offerings, Training on Demand, and vendor training--that ITS Trainings Services offers saw increases almost across the board, again, in both number of programs offered, and number of attendees. The unit offered 11 new scheduled training sessions and 35 new and revised training materials, addressing new technology needs in the Penn State community. From the scheduled training sessions, a staggering 96 percent of participants rated the overall training experience as "Excellent" or "Good" and 92 percent of participants stated that they planned to use the skills they learned within the next three months. Also, by offering scheduled training sessions during academic breaks--a time when attendees often have increased availability--the unit was able to reach 277 participants, including 195 graduate students.

In addition to face-to-face training sessions, ITS Training Services also offered 133 training sessions via Meeting@PennState, powered by Adobe Connect. With this service, they were able to reach 886 participants University-wide, more than a 30 percent increase in number of participants reached by this medium last year. Again, participants reported being extremely happy with the training: 90 percent of evaluation respondents claimed that these sessions were "About the same as the face-to-face sessions" or "Better than the face-to-face sessions," and only 5 percent reported audio problems. This method of training reached participants at 24 Penn State locations beyond University Park and saved a reported 17,000 miles of travel.

Training on Demand (TOD) sessions, which allow faculty and staff at all campus locations to request training for their group, unit, department, or classroom, demonstrated remarkable growth, with a 50 percent increase in the number of sessions requested and over a 40 percent increase in the number of participants. At University Park alone, 90 TOD sessions served 956 faculty and staff members while the Technology Learning Assistants (TLAs) supported an additional 67 faculty requests (a 26 request increase from 2010-2011). An additional 77 TOD trainings sessions, including 7 presented via Meeting@PennState, powered by Adobe Connect, were offered at 19 campus locations and totaled 938 attendees. In order to reach more students, the service provided 116 training sessions in the classroom, reaching 2,797 students University-wide.

Through vendor training, ITS Training Services provided both for-fee offerings--with negotiated discounted University rates--and free offerings by vendors with whom Penn State has license agreements. The unit worked with 5 different vendors--Adobe, HDI, Learning Tree International, lynda.com, and Net Objectives--building both relationships and opportunities with these companies.  The 10 for-fee courses that were offered to 176 attendees saved the University $170,000. Additionally, by partnering with Learning Tree International to supply participants with discount vouchers, ITS Training Services saved Penn State staff over $40,000 this year through the 44 vouchers that were used. Combined, ITS Training Services and their vendor agreements saved University IT Professionals more than $210,000, bringing the total that the program has saved the University since 2009 to $400,000.

One of the largest of these vendor agreements that ITS Training Services manages is lynda.com, which continues to grow as an extremely important training tool across the University. This year ITS Training Services made a huge upgrade to lyndaCampus, which, in addition to the many tutorials offered by lynda.com, provides support for personal profiles, certifications of completions, and movie bookmarks. The number of unique of lynda.com users increased 24% from last year, jumping from 8,440 unique users to 10,748, and an outstanding total of 20,097 hours of training were completed. This service strategically allowed the unit to offer fewer courses on Microsoft Office and Adobe CS and focus more on developing training for University-specific applications.

In addition to the many increases in training session offerings and attendees, ITS Trainings Services also demonstrated their commitment to progress in every aspect of training through their extensive development projects and initiatives. The unit collaborated with several other units within and beyond ITS to produce various new training materials and eLearning modules on Penn State tools. ITS Training Services launched new initiatives, including developing training for the Identity and Access Management project as well piloting a new consultation-style service called Tech Tutors, aimed specifically at reaching students. The unit worked closely with the Center for Workplace Learning & Performance--partnering on specific programs, partnering on tool implementation, and investigating opportunities to incorporate presentations at new employee orientation sessions.

The unit also played a major role in the Oracle calendar migration, training and supporting faculty and staff as they began to use the University Collaboration Suite as a University-wide common good service. Additionally, members of ITS Training Services took on an important role in exploring ways to improve accessibility of training materials, with many unit members sitting on external committees tasked with examining different aspects of accessibility and University requirements. The unit continued to develop iStudy tutorials, hosted the Penn State Network of Trainers Summer Event, evaluated vendor registrations systems, and more.

ITS Training Services also worked to become an ever more active and visible part of the Penn State community. Announcements and information, regarding class enrollment and otherwise, were posted to 14 different locations including e-mail lists and websites. The unit participated in several events to reach over 1,600 faculty, staff, and students and worked with the Office of Human Resources to provide 25 service overview presentations as a part of the New Employee Orientation Program, reaching nearly 500 new staff and faculty.

Overall, ITS Training Services accomplished a year of significant achievement in both the depth and breadth of their work, growing in almost every aspect of the department. In addition to the impressive hard metrics related to their training offerings, the unit has demonstrated widespread innovation and dedication though collaboration initiatives, new materials development, and direct responses to the needs of the Penn State community. It is not a stretch to say that everyone from IT professionals to faculty, staff, and students, are in capable and caring hands with the trainers in ITS who through their own innovation, progress, improvement, continually ensure the same for those around them.

The full report is available on the Teaching and Learning with Technology website.

"While he did not find that music teacher job, Bixler did find an opportunity to play trombone with jazz legends Maynard Ferguson and Count Basie."



Brett Bixler, a lead instructional designer in ITS Training Services, was once a music man. In high school and college, he played trombone in the marching band. After giving serious consideration to becoming a musician, Bixler decided that life on the road was not for him. "The musician's life is pretty rough," he said. "You're always living out of a suitcase."

Instead, Bixler pursued an undergraduate degree in music education from Susquehanna University, later working at a furniture factory while he looked for a job as a music teacher. While he did not find that music teacher job, Bixler did find an opportunity to play trombone with jazz legends Maynard Ferguson and Count Basie. "They were coming to the [Williamsport, PA] area doing a tour, and a lot of times those guys will hire local talent for their pit crew so they don't have to travel with one," said Bixler, who was hired to play in that manner.

As a central Pennsylvania native, Brett went on to pursue both a master's degree and a doctorate from his stomping ground at Penn State, but not before he would spend two years as a teenager in Singapore, where his father was transferred as the head of maintenance for a factory that produced microwave tubes. "I got to see a lot of different landscapes, meet new people, and experience new cultures. It was all very exciting," he said, taking the opportunity to also mention the bowling prowess he was able to hone during his time in Singapore.
 
In the 80s, Bixler enrolled in a master's program in curriculum and instruction and graduated in 1985. In 2007, he received his doctorate in instructional systems from Penn State after defending his dissertation on the use of prompts in online learning. He began working for Information Technology Services (ITS) Training Services in November 2010 and before that had worked in the Education Technology Services unit where, in 2005, he created the Educational Gaming Commons. Prior to his employment in ITS, Bixler worked for the Royer Center for Learning and Academic Technologies and the Institution for the Study of Adult Literacy--both Penn State organizations.
 
Penn State may be in the genes of the Bixler family, as both of his daughters chose to follow in his academic footsteps. His oldest daughter graduated from Penn State in 2011, and his younger daughter will start her junior year in the fall. Brett said, "I think Penn State is a great place. You can get almost any type of degree here that you want."

Outside of his work at Penn State, Bixler likes to garden and to read. He reads a lot of science fiction and fantasy, but, in line with his work, he also enjoys reading about current technology trends. Bixler's passion for technology crosses the line from professional to personal pursuits with his hobby in video games. He likes role-playing games the best. As for his musical roots, Bixler hasn't completely lost touch. He still participates in music programs through his church. 

Registration is now open for technology workshops offered throughout fall on topics including Access, Excel, PowerPoint, ANGEL, InDesign, Photoshop, Blogs at Penn State, a variety of Penn State's administrative computing topics and more. Many sessions are also offered live through Meeting@PennState (powered by Adobe Connect) in order to give more members of the Penn State community the opportunity to attend via the web. View the full list of courses and complete registration by signing in with your Penn State Access Account user ID and password. Those who would like to receive monthly e-mails highlighting additional learning opportunities may sign up for Training News by sending a blank e-mail to l-training-news-subscribe-request@lists.psu.edu.

By Paige Cooperstein, communications intern for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Thanks to a Stall Stories advertisement in spring 2011, Zach Chandler, then a Penn State junior, decided to become a Technology Learning Assistant (TLA). TLAs primarily serve faculty who request help with ANGEL or other technologies needed to run their classrooms. Last semester, Information Technology Services (ITS) Training Services launched a similar service, called Tech Tutors, for the student population.

Spearheaded by Glenna Emel, instructional designer in ITS Training Services, and Heather Huntsinger, information technology trainer in ITS Training Services, the student Tech Tutors service launched in pilot mode at the start of the spring 2012 semester. This year the program will be headed by Nathan Culmer, also an instructional designer in ITS Training Services. Culmer has spent the summer working hard to secure a new location for Tech Tutors in the Knowledge Commons in Pattee Library and also to create new signage, expanded opportunities, and a much larger team of trained Tech Tutors.
 
To kick off the service last year, Emel and Huntsinger pulled Tech Tutor candidates from an already strong body of TLAs, giving these students the opportunity to apply for the new student oriented positions. Chandler jumped at the chance, looking forward to using the skills he had acquired through the TLA program to help his fellow students.
 
Chandler, along with tutors Lauren Hoyt, a junior in public relations, and Justin Menapace, a 2012 graduate in the College of Information Sciences and Technology (IST), kicked off the service as the first student Tech Tutors. To promote awareness and identification, each wore a purple shirt with the words "Tech Tutor" prominently displayed on the back.
 
TheTech Tutors were stationed in several labs across campus where they worked one-on-one with students who needed assistance using technology to complete their course assignments. According to Emel, next year's Tech Tutors will reside solely in two places: 201 Pollock and study room 122 in the Knowledge Commons in Pattee Library from 11:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m., Monday through Friday. "What we found was that having Tech Tutors in different locations at different times of the day made it challenging for students to keep track of where they were at any given time," said Emel. She feels the single location will make it easier for students to remember.
 
Hoyt, who also joined Tech Tutors through the TLA program, will be the only returning Tech Tutor in fall 2012. As a freshman, the integration of business into technology drew Hoyt to the IST major before she settled on public relations. While in the college of IST, a professor recommended the TLA program to Hoyt.
 
As a psychology major, Chandler didn't know technology by trade, but he had a little background knowledge from working in his high school's technology department and taking software application classes there. Chandler said he felt comfortable as a Tech Tutor because of the resources made available to each tutor. "We had training packets with step-by-step instructions for us to learn programs on our own, but I also saved my binder full of exercises from the [original TLA] training course," Chandler said.

Hoyt added lyndaCampus as a resource. This online training library is free to currently enrolled students, as well as active Penn State faculty and staff members who may log in via lynda.psu.edu with a valid Penn State Access ID and password to access training in anything from 3D and web design applications to business administration programs. Tutorials come in the form of how-to videos broken into brief chapters. In the student section of the site, users can even add courses to their profiles, prioritize their work, and track their training progress.  

Chandler felt he had the most to learn about the Adobe suite of programs, and he turned to lynda.psu.edu to learn them. He was also pleased to find he could help students even with the basics of Microsoft Excel. Chandler described one Tech Tutor session in which a student was trying to integrate two web databases into a single Excel spreadsheet. Some people in the student's group had logged the same information on both websites using different e-mail addresses, so the student didn't immediately catch all of the duplication.

"I got out a notebook to draw her a diagram of the problem," Chandler said. "She had already done most of the work to fix the problem herself, but she didn't have the complete concept. She just needed a new approach."

Hoyt also helped a lot of students with Excel. She said a professor had directed students in his class to go to Tech Tutors for extra assistance with their course work, fulfilling an intended goal of the service. "We want the Tech Tutors service to be used by faculty who need to point their students to additional learning resources to complete course work and also by students who opt to seek help on their own," said Emel.

Outside that class, Hoyt tutored a girl who needed to learn Excel for a summer internship. The two of them made an appointment to work together since the student's schedule could not accommodate Hoyt's walk-in hours. At the end of the session, Hoyt left the student with some how-to pamphlets and directed her to lynda.psu.edu as a further resource. "We don't want to just tell students what to do and not have them learn anything," Hoyt said.
 
In Chandler's experience, his work as a Tech Tutor focused on providing students with the right approach to their technology goals. Over the course of the spring semester, he said he worked with five or six different students.
 
Andrea Amato, a 2012 graduate in engineering, found out about Tech Tutors through a Penn State engineering newsletter. She worked with the Tech Tutors five times throughout the semester.
 
Another engineering major, sophomore Kamila Dagilova, worked with Tech Tutors to help her set up her personal web page on Penn State's server. Dagilova wrote in an e-mail, "Initially I planned to build the site by writing code in a notepad, but the tutor recommended me to try Dreamweaver." She added that her experience was successful due to her tutor's quick responses and willingness to look up the answers to her questions.
 
Jenna Hammond, a 2012 graduate in marketing, also visited the Tech Tutors repeatedly--eight to ten times, she estimated. "I had been having a lot of trouble using Dreamweaver for my ART203 class," Hammond wrote in an e-mail. "I had asked for help from the ITS desk [lab consultant] in Pollock, and they are the ones that referred me to Tech Tutors."

Hammond hadn't been aware of Tech Tutors before asking for help from the ITS lab consultant, but after she searched online for Tech Tutors to discover the schedule and location, she was hooked. She wrote of her experience with tutor Justin Menapace, "Justin did a great job of explaining and helping me without making me feel clueless (even though I was!)."
 
Getting to know these other students was Hoyt's favorite part of being a Tech Tutor. "I really liked interacting with other people," she said. "I learned a lot from them. I didn't know much about their classes, but I could learn and help them with the technology at the same time."

Menapace created and maintained the Tech Tutors presence on Facebook and Twitter. All the tutors, as well as Emel and Huntsinger, served as admins to post updates to the Facebook page. This year, Jennifer Montminy, a senior English major will be the driving force behind the social media presence, working with the new team of Tech Tutors to keep their sites fun, helpful, and up-to-date. Montminy encourages people to follow Tech Tutors on social media, "We are working on a lot of really cool things, from posting great tech tips online to fielding questions and feedback via Twitter and Facebook."
 
The Tech Tutors service currently operates during fall and spring semesters, but students who would like to become Tech Tutors may apply at any time. ITS Training Services accepts applications on a rolling basis. To explore all training opportunities for students, visit http://its.psu.edu/training/students/.
 
Related links:

Learn more or apply

Tech Tutors on Facebook

Tech Tutors on Twitter

lynda.com video tutorials

by Jennifer Montminy
Communications Intern for Teaching and Learning with Technology

Over a decade ago, Lead Instructional Designer in ITS Training Services, Brett Bixler, interviewed and questioned faculty across all Penn State campuses in an attempt to discover what parts of college curriculum students struggled with the most. The product of this research was the start of iStudy, a series of 12 tutorials focused on helping students develop skill sets that faculty found to be the most lacking. Designed to enhance study skills, life skills, and career skills, iStudy tutorials provided training on time management, test anxiety, note taking, research, and more.

Today these tutorials, now 27 in number, still work toward the same goal of improving the ways students think, learn, and work, but with more material, increased interaction, and improved accessibility. Bixler has spent the last year and a half revamping this important resource, taking the always strong, though admittedly sometimes dry content and filling it with more images, questions, quizzes, comics, and more. The tutorials will be re-launched this fall--the final step in the transformation of a great teaching tool into an invaluable one.

Through a multiple-unit effort across Penn State, accessibility features have been incorporated into the iStudy tutorials in efforts to ensure that people with visual and hearing impairments can use the materials. Previously available for use only through Penn State's course management system, iStudy tutorials will now be directly accessible via http://istudy.psu.edu and available for use by students and faculty at Penn State and across the world. Bixler hopes the fact that the resource is now readily available to all interested learners will allow a greater number of students to benefit from the tutorials.

However, even with this improved availability, the role of faculty in turning these tutorials into the valuable teaching aids they are meant to be remains incredibly important. Each tutorial features an instructor page at the end of the lesson that provides recommendations for ways that faculty and instructors can incorporate the tutorials directly into course material. If instructors don't have room in their curriculum or the tutorials don't align with their materials directly, they can still do a large service by recommending the site to students in their classes. 

Bixler stresses the importance of awareness when talking about these tutorials. He believes that "if a student were to take all the tutorials, they would be a better learner," but in order for that to work, they need to know the tutorials are out there. By listing the link under the resources section on a syllabus, mentioning it in class, or including the link on their ANGEL course pages, faculty can help spread the word.

Students have an almost overwhelming amount of information constantly at their fingertips, but sometimes the critical link that students are missing is not what to learn, but how to learn it. By targeting essential skill set areas, these new-and-improved tutorials provide students with the guidance, support, and tools they need to succeed at Penn State and beyond.

Faculty and staff using Penn State's University Collaboration Suite (UCS) may benefit from the resources developed by ITS Training Services that are designed to enhance people's experiences with the tool. In addition to providing face-to-face and other scheduled training sessions, we've developed a collection of Quick Start Guides and web-based tutorials for Penn State faculty and staff to use as self-guided learning resources.

Quick Start Guides are one-page documents intended to acclimate new users to the UCS system right away. Web-based tutorials are two- to five-minute videos demonstrating the use of UCS features and tools not generally covered during a hands-on training session.

To access UCS Quick Start Guides, visit the handouts section of the ITS Training Services website at http://its.psu.edu/training/handouts and scroll to the University Collaborate Suite section.

To access UCS web-based tutorials, visit the class recording and video tutorials section of the ITS Training Services website at http://its.psu.edu/training/learnonline and scroll to the University Collaboration Suite section.

Students at University Park may apply to become Tech Tutors to help other students use technology to complete course assignments and to provide faculty members with assistance on technology-related teaching, learning, and class management topics. Tutoring areas include Access, Excel, ANGEL, Blogs at Penn State, PowerPoint, Visio, basic computer skills, e-mail and file organization, creating web pages, and more. Tech Tutors gain one-on-one consulting experience and build communication and organizational skills while enhancing knowledge of technology. Applications are currently being accepted for the fall 2012 semester. For more information, view the job description and application process below.

 

Tech Tutors are responsible for providing individual technology support to faculty and students in a variety of settings. This position is also responsible for developing training materials as needed and may be responsible for delivering training to groups of students. Experience presenting technical content to non-technical audiences is preferred. Excellent verbal and written communication skills required. Ability to learn technology skills quickly required. Position will begin at the start of the fall 2012 semester. Applicant should be prepared to present a 10-minute training session to ITS Training Services staff. Minimum availability of 10 hours per week required. Please submit a cover letter and resume to L-Student-Trainers@lists.psu.edu and direct questions on the application process to ITS Training Services at 814-863-9522.