News
New
The new A&M System Video Guidelines are now available on the A&M System site at http://www.tamus.edu/marcomm/?p=12994. These guidelines set minimum production quality standards that can be exceeded by the guidelines of our member institutions and agencies. Videos that do not meet these standards should not be posted online or to social media channels such as YouTube or Facebook. We will be asking the System Communications Council to ensure that the following next steps are implemented prior to our System Communications Council call in June:
- Share these guidelines with all appropriate employees at your campus or agency
- Post a link to these guidelines on your website (i.e. brand guide, web standards)
- Provide branded video templates for your University or agency as part of your brand guide (Example: See TAMU video templates at bottom of page: http://brandguide.tamu.edu/electronic-templates.html)
- Assign someone in your Marketing & Communications Office to be responsible for making sure marketing and promotional videos meet these standards before they are posted online or to the main social media channels of your university or agency
If you have any questions, please contact Diane McDonald (mcdonaldd@tamus.edu).
As many of you are familiar, UPCEA is a leading organization in online, professional and continuing education and policy making. The ever-increasing importance of digital technologies at our institutions sparked the creation of an UPCEA document called “UPCEA Hallmarks of Excellence in Online Leadership”. You will notice some early endorsement of this document from ACE, NACUBO, NASPA, and QM. The document is available at: http://www.upcea.edu/files/Hallmarks%20of%20Excellence%20in%20Online%20Leadership%204_6.pdf According to this report, “these hallmarks suggest those truly daunting aspirations necessary to make online education worthy of the highest ideals of higher learning” and they intend to “help first-generation leaders in this field so online education can assume its rightful place in what makes universities excellent, respected, and essential to their communities.” If you have any questions, please contact Yakut Gazi (yakut@tamu.edu).
The TAC 216 Companion Guide Development Team has started its work and is interested in project management templates/dashboards that you may be using at your campus or agency. Whether your templates are on the back of an envelope or are formalized dashboards, we’d like to hear from you.
Please answer the questions in the sent document. When finished, save the document with your name in the title and return it to llenser@tamus.edu. Please don’t spend more than 10 – 15 minutes answering these questions. Your reply is requested by APRIL 20. If you have any questions, please contact Leslie Lenser.
A recent article published in Forbes was about Texas Higher Education. TAMUC and their partner, Columbia Advisory Group, built the interface between student and LMS systems to allow their systems to provide 7 week terms in support of the program. For TAMUC, it was Banner and eCollege. You can read this article at: http://www.forbes.com/sites/tomlindsay/2015/04/05/a-texas-solution-to-the-nations-college-debt-crisis/.
In Process
The draft of the security policy refresh is being re-written based on comments from OGC. That re-write will be sent back to OGC in the next two weeks.
System-Wide Contracting News
New
OWT-TEN Technologies provided the System Office a demonstration of its digital signage/wayfaring solution. The solution is built on a platform developed out of Palo Alto, CA that is being used in many major hospitals and universities. If you are interested in seeing a demo of the product, please contact me directly.
In Process
The evaluation team has narrowed the Open Records Management System respondents to two finalists. The evaluation team will scheduling demonstrations of the two finalists and will be seeking out users of this process to evaluate the finalists.
Procurement is finalizing the RFP for Member Governance, an RFI for a replacement of Maestro, and the RFP for digital mobile application development/support.
TAMUS is finalizing the RFP draft for Banner Services. It is also working with Procurement an amend the contract to provide for RFP evaluation assistance.
Repeats
Siteimprove checks web pages, every five days, for spelling, grammar, broken links, and accessibility. The cost is 54 cents per web page per year. Any Members interested in adding this service need to contact me directly.
The System-wide agreement with Cisco WebEx allows Members to purchase licenses for their entire faculty/administrators at the low cost of $1.44/month/license.
Syncplicity licensing is available for all Members.
Projects
New
Workday provided a response to TAMUS’ request for concessions. A second meeting with Workday will be scheduled for this week.
The TAMU Dollar Data Center evaluation team will be notifying respondents to the first component (data center build out) of the decision this week. Work will begin on evaluating the second (compute and storage) and third (managed services) components this month.
In Process
Utilities & Energy Services is working with Agrilife to serve as the pilot of Cisco EnergyWise.
SCIO Trips/Visits
- San Antonio (April 14th)
- Corpus Christi (April 15th)