The University of New Mexico

UNM Collaboration Tools and Support Standard

By recooper | Published:
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    • April 22, 2016 at 3:42 pm #722
      recooper
      Participant

      The purpose of a standard for collaboration tools and support is to facilitate cost-effective, secure, consistent and manageable computer-assisted academic and administrative collaboration at UNM and in our global context.

      Attachments:
      1. Collaboration-Tools-Standard-v4.pdf
    • April 25, 2016 at 10:55 am #726
      erooney
      Participant

      Should the Collaboration Tools Standard and Inquiry Tools and Analysis Standard be rolled up into a standard that encompasses the purchase of tools and products in general? Rather than write multiple standards for classes of tools, would it make sense to have this standard apply to software/service purchases in general and encourage departments/decision makers to take a look around and scan the environment before making purchases for tools that may already exist on campus.

      To ease the search process, is there a catalog of software/tool purchases made on campus that includes the product, a description, cost, a point-of-contact at the department making the purchase, UNM IT security approvals, etc.?

      Thanks,
      Rooney

      • May 6, 2016 at 11:24 am #742
        zurn
        Keymaster

        Hi Rooney, thanks for the suggestion (and thanks to Aaron Baca on the Analysis tool side of things for helping with this answer!) The Standards cannot be rolled-up, because of the way they are framed, i.e. each has to stand on its own, primarily because of the difference in scope, functionality, features, etc. of the tool sets defined in each Standard.

        I do like your suggestion where you state: “encourage departments/decision makers to take a look around and scan the environment before making purchases for tools that may already exist on campus.” which I believe is implied throughout the document, but perhaps could be more clearly stated.

        We know Purchasing does the kind of review that you describe wherever possible to help with the search process, but we don’t have much direct information. We can follow up with Purchasing to find out more about that process.

    • May 3, 2016 at 8:51 am #734
      elisha
      Participant

      This is not a standard as it is written. Shouldn’t a standard describe aspects of the service beyond a requirement to use it? e.g. Collaboration tools should work well on multiple platforms, should have certain security or scalability features, should be tested for usability, integrate with business and learning systems, compete with best-of-breed solutions, etc. If I read it correctly, this is just a document that states a requirement for users/departments to use o365/Lync, and it is a good example of the fundamental flaw in this whole standard/SLA process.

      The approach is inverted. Centralization of some services could be a good thing, but the best way to get there without impacting quality of service would be to engage current service providers, faculty, staff and students to find out what they need and can afford. If you start there, and then design a service to meet those needs that includes documentation development, support planning, it shouldn’t take much to convince departments to use it.

      • May 6, 2016 at 11:50 am #743
        zurn
        Keymaster

        Thanks for the feedback. Even though the first item under “Selection of systems…” does imply a preference towards existing systems, there are several more items on the next page that are similar to some of your suggestions for evaluating tools, particularly in the area of security and scalability, which we have addressed in the “Technical support of tools” section. Your suggestions for specifying cross-platform compatibility and integration with other systems are good ones and I think we can incorporate those into the final document.

        • May 6, 2016 at 4:15 pm #752
          elisha
          Participant

          Thanks, Steve. Intending no disrespect, my main concern with the standard is that I think there is a lot of hard earned wisdom related to managing and supporting collaborative technologies that it would be good to write into a standard. As it relates to web conferencing, Extended Learning has been managing and supporting these tools for well over a decade. Through pilots of multiple systems and feedback from faculty and students contacting the support desk, we have learned a lot about specific points of usability, bandwidth scaling for delivery to remote areas, support requirements, and specific features that are needed for teaching and learning. The ability to create breakout rooms, support inline polling and chat, application sharing, whiteboard functions, content archiving and export, and integration with an LMS for authentication and authorization are all things that we’ve spent a lot of time refining. I think we could have a very productive collaborative process with you that would result in a useful standard. I’m just not sure how to do that over the discuss site, because I think there is enough to think through that it merits some time sitting down and developing it together.

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