Category: Education & Outreach

Supporting Students with New Online Services and Upgrades

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The university’s fiscal year closed on June 30. A review of UFIT’s project portfolio shows many projects completed in FY23 designed to support student success. Among these, the following efforts show how UF prioritizes not just academic achievement, but accessibility, whole health well being, and financial aid support:

• Implemented Scholarship Universe, matching students to thousands of UF and non-UF opportunities, and helping students apply for and receive scholarship awards quickly and easily
• Developed an academic distress monitor that identifies undergraduates as early as week two of a term those likely to be placed upon academic probation or who might withdraw from the university
• Supported 71 Quest program faculty by developing Coaching for Student Success, a resource hub to connect advising and staff who support coaching in different capacities
• Implemented Graduway, a networking system allowing students to match up with mentors in UF’s network
• Launched Whole Gator, a mobile application to curate programs and information to maximize student wellness
• Advanced the Disability Resource Center (DRC) functions within Gator360. Advancements include a method for academic advisors to view students’ testing and academic accommodations created and managed by the DRC, giving academic advisors direct access to DRC accommodations data for the first time

Stay Up to Date on Campus IT

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UF Information Technology (UFIT) provides updates on social media about new services, enhancements to existing services, the HiPerGator supercomputer and the research computing ecosystem, IT training opportunities, information security issues impacting higher ed and their effect on Gator Nation, IT-based university policies, and special events on campus with a tech flavor.

UFIT maintains Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook pages. Multiple updates are posted weekly on each channel. There is also a @GoGatorsUFIT YouTube channel, with more than 120 videos and curated playlists for Gator students, staff, instructional faculty, and on HiPerGator and its support of UF research.

Have a question about a service or information posted on a UFIT social media channel? You are welcome to email UFIT’s communications group at it-comm@ufl.edu.

Student Computing Requirements for UF

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Computer access is integral to a student’s success. The University of Florida approved a Student Computing Requirements Policy to ensure students are prepared to handle their coursework.

The policy lists the following recommendations for students to consider prior to starting their academic career at UF:

● Processor: Current generation Intel Core Series (i3, i5, i7, i9) or AMD Ryzen equivalent
● Memory: 8GB RAM
● Storage: 256GB hard drive
● Camera, microphone, and speakers
● Wireless internet (WiFi)
● Windows 10 or Mac OS X 10.13 (High Sierra) or newer

Additional recommendations include:
1. Purchasing an extended warranty or accidental damage protection.
2. Not relying on a tablet, smartphone, or Chromebook as a primary device.

Students who prefer Apple devices should confirm that their academic program uses Windows-based applications and ensure their MacBook has at least 64GB available for installing Windows. UFIT also has a College Specific Requirements page that links to colleges with additional computing requirements. Students are advised to confirm with their home college for any updates to the minimum computing requirements, software apps required, or tech accessories to maximize their success.

Announced: 2022-23 Tech Fee Grants

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Under the guidance of the Student Technology Fee Advisory Committee members and faculty director Dr. Jeremy Waisome, eight proposals were recommended. VP & CIO Elias Eldayrie approved eight proposals for 2022-23 Tech Fee funding:

• Enhancing Access through Assistive Technology
• Enhancing Student Learning through a Campus-Wide Podcasting Studio
• uConnect: A One Stop Shop for the Future of Work
• FeedbackFruits Group Member Evaluation Tool: Facilitating Collaborative Learning at UF
• Enabling Interdisciplinary Advanced Sonic Instruction and Research
• Arts & AI Virtual Workstation Studio
• AI Education for Graduate Students at UF School of Architecture
• Enabling Stunning Student Astrophotography through Innovative Use of Technology

The Student Technology Fee Grants program funds projects proposed by faculty, students, and staff focused on enhancing campus educational technology services. The creation of the MADE@UF virtual reality lab, modernization of the Pugh Hall Ocora, and the expansion of campus 3D printing options are just a few of the previously funded projects. Please contact Technology Fee Advisory Committee Support Administrator Anne Allen with questions about the proposal and selection process.

Summer Tech Byte: Generative AI Prompts

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UFIT is continuing its online Tech Byte cooking shows this summer! Instructional designer Leslie Mojeiko and educational technologist Chris Sharp are back in the test kitchen. Or shall we say…tech kitchen!

Wednesday, July 26
2:30-3:30pm

Join UFIT’s Center for Instructional Technology & Training (CITT) for a fun, free event to learn generative AI “recipes” to enhance course design and teaching. Leslie and Chris will share tips for writing effective prompts for ChatGPT and AI image generators, and suggest ways how generative AI can help make class prep and assignment design more efficient. This one-hour cooking show includes demonstrations of AI in action. Register today and prepare to gather recipes for course preparation. You’ll leave this Tech Byte with your very own ‘cookbook’ to get started with “prompt engineering!”

Visit The AI Prompt Cookbook — Generative AI Recipes Designed to Enhance Teaching webpage for more information.

Just-in-Time Videos for Campus IT

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UF is a large and complex university with many technical services and providers across multiple campuses. While each college has localized information technology (IT) support and specialized equipment for their faculty and students, UFIT is the provider of centralized IT services. These services are often referrred to as enterprise IT, and a catalog of services offered is available at https://it.ufl.edu/services/. To help support your success at UF, UFIT has YouTube video channel playlists for instructional faculty and students. Each playlist has 20+ videos on a variety of topics, with more videos added each month:

● Gator Students Playlist

● Instructional Faculty Playlist

Development of a research channel is underway and planned for rollout this year. There are more than 130 videos currently available on the UFIT YouTube channel. Suggestions for additional “how to” videos are welcome! Please email them to UFIT Communications.

Building the State-of-the-Art Atlas Lab

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Social media is a primary channel for our civic and commercial dialogue, and a powerful communications platform in advertising, news, and public relations. To prepare students to succeed in that environment, the College of Journalism and Communications (CJC) has created the Atlas Lab to focus on better understanding this important field.

“Lon Vance and the A/V Design and Installations group brought our vision for the lab to life,” said Janet Coats, managing director of CJC’s Consortium on Trust in Media and Technology. “Lon helped us understand how the technology could be shaped to meet our needs, then helped us learn how to use it. Working with the UFIT team was a model of effective collaboration.”

The Atlas Lab is powered by sophisticated, AI-driven social media analysis tools. The technologies in the Lab provide students with real-world experience in data analytics, and researchers with a treasure trove of data to develop new insights for industry. To bring the data to life, students access dashboards with visualizations of how conversations are evolving and moving in real-time and customized to show many different views simultaneously. UFIT created a monitor wall (pictured) to surround students with a dynamic presentation of the data they are examining. The 46 monitors can be configured to show data dashboards, live television, and faculty presentations to create a fully immersive experience. Anyone with questions about the Atlas Lab is welcome to email Professor Coats.

Submitting Grades for Spring 2023

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The Spring 2023 grading period opens Friday, April 28, at 8:00 a.m. and closes Monday, May 8, at 12:00 p.m. There are many online resources available to help faculty and staff who enter final grades.

1. Use these instructions to finalize gradebooks. The instructions will help ensure that the grades displayed in Canvas matches what is sent to ONE.UF.

2. The UF Human Resources’ Grades Toolkit provides excellent instructional video and PDFs for faculty and staff who enter grades in ONE.UF and myUFL.

3. UFIT has a 50-minute webinar available that covers finalizing a gradebook and sending grades to ONE.UF through Canvas. Faculty and staff can also request a consultation with e-Learning Support staff for assistance with sending their gradebook to ONE.UF.

4. For questions regarding UF’s e-Learning environment, please do not hesitate to contact learning-support@ufl.edu. For questions about entering grades in ONE.UF faculty and staff should contact the Office of the University Registrar, grades@registrar.ufl.edu.

Introduction to Data Graphics and Analysis

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UF Information Technology is offering an eight-module course on R Programming this summer. All faculty, postdoctoral associates, TA’s, graduate students, and staff are welcome to enroll. The Summer 2023 offering of R Programming will take place May 15 to July 21. Enrollees must have successfully completed at least one graduate-level course in statistics prior to the May 15 training start. R Programming is offered in an online, self-paced format. The course is free but pre-registration is required. Visit the R Programming training page to register. The full syllabus for the Summer 2023 offering is also available on this page. The course’s eight modules are:

• Introduction to R
• Data Preparation
• Exploratory Data Analysis
• Mean and Median Comparison
• ANOVA, Correlation, and Linear Regression
• Multiple Linear Regression
• Proportion Comparison
• Logistic Regression

Anyone with questions about UFIT’s R Programming training is welcome to email the instructor, Dr. Jose Silva-Lugo.

Intern with UFIT–15 Paid Summer Positions

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UFIT has a year-round paid internship program for students to gain experience in a variety of IT fields. Internships are now posted online for Summer 2023: https://it.ufl.edu/internships/. Students do not have to be majoring in computer science or other technology-focused program to intern with UFIT.

Computer science junior Lauren Bartyczak (pictured), hopes her experience as an enterprise resource planning intern helps to launch a career in software engineering.

“This position has given me experience navigating and understanding a system much larger and more complex than anything I have encountered in school. Having to learn the system, and my role within it, in a short period of time is something I think will prove to be valuable anytime I need to learn a new skill for future jobs.”

Shaina Desroches, a digital arts and sciences in engineering freshman, interns with UFIT’s communications group. Her career goal is to work in user experience design and software development.

“This opportunity has furthered my understanding of how information about technology can spread. By creating information to target users, I increased the likeliness that users would interact with technology based off their response to media I created.”