Breakout Session 1
- Android Accessibility (Presentation)
Brandon Werner, ITS
The presentation will discuss mobile accessibility and the Android mobile platform. This includes assistive technologies such as: screen readers, screen magnifiers and other tools, as well as the history and descriptions of how these tools help people with different disabilities. A demonstration of software functions will also be provided. - Getting the most out of the Michigan IT Symposium (Hands-on Training)
Erik Hofer, School of Information; Dima Tawakkol, ITS
Gain easy and immediate tools for meeting new people at IT Symposium and building your relationship network. In this hands-on session, participants will learn specific networking techniques (Relationship Mapping, 4I’s, etc.) directly from the Michigan IT Leadership Program (ITLP) that can be applied today. - Using HPC clusters the easy way with ARC Connect (Presentation)
Mark Montague, Research Computing Consultant, LSA IT
Learn about HPC clusters, how they differ from HA clusters, and why your faculty and students may want to use them for research and instruction. You can easily get started using HPC clusters with the web-based ARC Connect service, without Linux command-line knowledge. We'll take a look at interactive scientific notebooks using Jupyter, interactive development of statistical code using the R programming language, and remote desktop sessions that enable real-time interactive graphical collaboration between researchers using desktop scientific computing applications such as MATLAB. - Preparing for Student Tech Needs (Birds of a Feather Session)
Jeff Wright, Director of IT for Student Life Auxiliaries
With students bringing all manner of technological devices to campus along with a broad spectrum of experience with technology, how do we prepare to serve students effectively? - CTools 2 Canvas: Reducing the Transition Effort for Faculty (Presentation)
Victoria Green, Business Systems Analyst, ITS; John Johnston, Business Systems Analyst, ITS; Jennifer Love, Business Systems Analyst, ITS
In Fall 2016, Canvas replaced CTools for use in classes. Instructors gained a host of new features, but also had to learn a new system and processes. ITS partnered with academic units to reduce the effort for instructors, including in-person consulting, supported content migration, graduate student assistance, cross-campus collaborations. Learn how they did it and get ideas for your own projects. - Export Controls: Safeguarding Research for Global Collaboration (Birds of a Feather Session)
Kevin McLaughlin, Data Security Analyst Intermediate, CoE; Faye Ogasawara, IT Manager, CoE
This networking session is designed to allow those in IT who have researchers who are foreign nationals, travel internationally with data or collaborate with others who are not in the United States, to share their knowledge and methods in order to improve processes at the University. - Partnering To Increase the Value of Information Across the Institution (Birds of a Feather Session)
Kyle Kerbawy, Enterprise Data Architect, HITS; Fusen Li, Director Data Management Services, HITS
This facilitated discussion will focus on the local (school/college/unit) requirements for data and information consumption via U-M Medical School use case examples, with detail on how these requirements have been met historically, and how they may be met in the future.
Keynote Panel
- Moderator: Tim McKay
Dr. Tim McKay is a data scientist; an astrophysicist; Arthur F. Thurnau Professor of Physics, Astronomy and Education; and director of U-M's Digital Innovation Greenhouse in the Office of Academic Innovation. - Brenda Gunderson
Dr. Brenda Gunderson is Senior Lecturer in Statistics, in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts. - Aaron Ridley
Dr. Aaron Ridley is Professor of Atmospheric, Oceanic and Space Sciences at the College of Engineering and Faculty Advisor for College of Engineering Honors Program. - Alberto Figueroa
Dr. Alberto Figueroa is an Edward B. Diethrich M.D. Associate Professor with a joint appointment in Biomedical Engineering and Surgery. - Richard Tolman
Dr. Richard Tolman is a Sheldon D. Rose Collegiate Professor of Social Work.
Breakout Session 2
- Diversity in IT: Challenges, Benefits, and Solutions (Presentation)
Jeanne Mackey, Instructional Designer, ITS; Monica Hickson, Instructional Designer, ITS
Research shows diverse teams are more innovative, dynamic, and productive when the organizational culture is truly inclusive. Co-creating an environment where everyone feels welcome and respected can be challenging. Inspired by President Schlissel's Diversity, Equity & Inclusion initiative, this interactive session will show how to recognize and overcome unconscious bias and increase your cross-cultural savvy and communication skills. - Share and Discuss Helpful IT Professional Organizations and Associations (Birds of a Feather Session)
Lisa Callihan, IT Customer Experience Manager, LSA IT
If you are interested in furthering your career, joining a professional organization or association is a good start. In this session we will share information regarding different IT organizations and how they have benefited your position at U-M. - Introduction to Docker: A Hands-on Workshop (Hands-on Training)
Chris Kretler, Business Analyst, ITS Teaching and Learning; Bob Killen, Research Cloud Administrator, Advanced Research and Computing, ITS
Docker provides a lightweight and portable environment that packages an application, its dependencies and optionally its configuration, into a re-distributable image and execution space. Attendees will learn the basics of Docker: the architecture, how it works, and why it's useful. Attendees will learn to deploy both single and multi-tiered applications, and advanced topics such as HA will be discussed. Attendees should install Docker on their laptops prior to the session. - Enterprise CRM at Michigan (Presentation)
Haley Gould, Enterprise CRM Solution Architect, ITS
CRM can help you overcome traditional data and business process silos, reduce administrative burden, and renew focus on your strategic initiatives. We will discuss current campus initiatives, specifically around business cases, integration, and architecture. Network and form alliances with others who have similar needs and interests as we build this community of practice. - Applying Evidence-Based Instructional Design Principles to Create and Publish Content in Canvas (Presentation)
Chris Chapman, MA, UMMS
Learn how to apply evidence-based, instructional design principles to the design of learning experiences in Canvas. A select set of learning principles will be presented and discussed including pre-training, segmenting, personalization, and spaced repetition. Discuss Canvas modules, quizzes, and My Media. See examples of lessons created by Medical School faculty. You will gain a basic understanding of how to create and publish instructionally sound learning modules in Canvas. - Share Your Research Data with Deep Blue Data (Presentation)
Nabeela Jaffer, Analyst/Project Manager, Digital Library Applications, Library IT; Amy Neeser, Research Data Curation Librarian, Library Research Data Services
Deep Blue Data accepts deposits from all disciplines and supports the preservation and access of interdisciplinary research. Researchers can deposit their own work; Library IT is adapting the Agile methodology of collaborative efforts between the stakeholders and IT core team. This ongoing project is an attempt to follow the iterative software development methodology instead of traditional waterfall approach. Deep Blue Data is based on open source Hydra software, Sufia, which is a Ruby on Rails repository solution. The ProjectHydra community was founded by few institutions, and has expanded to more than 30 partners all over the world. Hydra/Sufia is under development, which poses a challenge for our repository development. While customizing Sufia, we have to keep in mind not to diverge from the open source community. By adopting agile practices and working closely with the Hydra community, we can overcome this challenge.
Breakout Session 3
- Communicating IT Changes, Big and Small (Birds of a Feather Session)
Jessica Rohr, Marketing Comm Specialist, Sr, Facilitator, ITS
Communicating these changes in advance and with appropriate support is essential to making IT work at U-M. From deans to key administrators, communications staff and instructional designers, communicating IT change is part of your world. Come talk to others around campus about what works in their area and what doesn't! Swap success stories and lessons learned with others facing the ongoing challenge of communicating to people at the right time, in the right medium, and with the right amount of information to make any IT change—big or small—a success. - Hadoop, Spark, and BigData—What they mean, common open-source platforms for BigData analytics (Hands-on Training)
Brock Palen, Associate Director ARC-TS; Matt McLean, Big Data Administrator, Adv Research Comp Tech Srv
In this session Advanced Research Computing — Technology Services (ARC-TS) staff will provide an introduction to Hadoop, Spark, and Hive. Users will require a free Flux account for the hands on portion. Prior Linux command line proficiency is recommended. - What will IT for Students in Higher Education look like in 5 years? (Birds of a Feather Session)
Don Lambert, Manager of CAEN Student Computing Environment
This is not your father's laptop. Many of our students today have a laptops, but prefer to carry a tablet or cell phone. How will new portable devices and wearable devices impact our environment in the next 5 years. - What will come after PDFs? A digital library of computable health and biomedical knowledge objects in support of a Learning Health System (Presentation)
Allen Flynn, Research Analyst, Department of Learning Health Sciences, UMMS; Carl Lagoze, Professor, School of Information
There are many articles about health available as online PDFs. What we collectively "know" about health is now much more than we can systematically apply. We need to improve health IT infrastructures—including updated publishing pipelines—to rapidly make actionable health knowledge computable by encoding it, and ensure it is also findable, accessible, interoperable, and re-usable. We recently developed a prototype for a new kind of digital library to hold and serve health and biomedical knowledge objects. Every knowledge object contains a snippet of code, and all objects are built and described using rich, relevant metadata to support their discovery. See a brief demo of the new digital library, followed by Q&A. - A University-Wide Electronic Research Notebook at U-M (Presentation)
Stephen M. Gendler, PhD, HITS; John P. Herlocher, HITS
An Electronic Research Notebook (ERN) will soon be available at no cost to U-M researchers. This cloud-based application is for data scientists and wet-lab researchers who wish to replace paper lab notebooks. It allows inter- and intra-lab sharing of procedures and results with an audit trail. Data entered into the ERN can be hidden but not deleted, which is essential to guaranteeing the integrity of scientific data collection. Features and benefits of ERNs will be demonstrated and discussed.
Special Presentation
CODE Debugging the Gender Gap: Film Screening & U-M Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) Panel Discussion
- Latisha Cunningham, Diversity, Equity, Inclusion, and Culture Officer, LSA
- Elizabeth Ann James, Program Associate, LSA
- Robert Scott, Director of Diversity Initiatives, Michigan Engineering
- Trey Williams, Assistant vice Provost for Equity, Inclusion, and Academic Affairs
- Moderated by Kat Hagedorn, Head of Digital Content & Collections in Digital Library Platform & Services and Meghan Musolff, Program Manager for Library IT Services, Training & Assessment, U-M Library
Tech jobs are growing three times faster than our colleges are producing computer science graduates. By 2020, there will be one million unfilled software engineering jobs in the USA. Through compelling interviews, artistic animation and clever flashpoints in popular culture, CODE documentary examines the reasons why more girls and people of color are not seeking opportunities in computer science and explores how cultural mindsets, stereotypes, educational hurdles and sexism all play roles in this national crisis. Expert voices from the worlds of tech, psychology, science, and education are intercut with inspiring stories of women who are engaged in the fight to challenge complacency in the tech industry and have their voices heard. CODE aims to inspire change in mindsets, in the educational system, in startup culture and in the way women see themselves in the field of coding. Immediately after the screening, there will be a discussion with University of Michigan representatives responsible for working on diversity in IT.
Breakout Session 4
- Unifying IT Strategy Across Campus, One Bite At A Time (Presentation)
Luke Tracy and Dan Kiskis, Office of the CIO
An exploration into six IT units across the Ann Arbor and Academic Medical campuses coming together to craft a bite-sized strategy in support of the IT Strategic Plan. We will also share how critical members from non-IT areas of the University were consulted and involved in this light-weight process. The resulting strategy for collaboratively providing a comprehensive platform of solutions for the long-term storage for data as a result of research will be our destination at the end of this exploration. - Get a Head Start with AWS with M Cloud AWS Integrate (Hands-on Training)
Joseph Lubomirski, ITS Infrastructure
The ITS M Cloud AWS service aims to ease your path to the cloud by delivering access to critical infrastructure like Active Directory, Kerberos, internal networks and DNS while at the same time helping to secure your account with guardrails like vulnerability scanning and setting up smart defaults for commonly used AWS services. - Facilitating Innovation at the University: A Use Case (Presentation)
Chris Kretler, Business Analyst, ITS Teaching and Learning; Kris Steinhoff, Lead Developer, Digital Innovation Greenhouse
Docker provides an entire environment for applications to run in, including dependencies, configuration, and is unchanged as it is deployed from development to QA to production. Development teams can flexibly choose the language and libraries they require without fear of conflicting with other hosted applications. Learn more about the underlying technology, the effort to deliver this platform and how DIG is using this technology to innovate in the spaces of Data Analytics and Teaching and Learning. This type of platform will be of interest to campus groups who develop their own software. - ExamScan: Digitizing Handwritten Exams for Storage, Distribution to Students and Future Research (Presentation)
MaryBeth Stuenkel, IT Program Manager, ITS; Victoria K Green, Business Systems Analyst Senior, ITS; Monica Dressler, Director of LSA Instructional Support Services
ExamScan helps ensure academic integrity, manage the exams, and save time by utilizing a combination of ITS areas: Teaching and Learning for service delivery, Document Imaging for scanning exams and Infrastructure for storing and managing access to scanned exam files in Box. Come hear about the service and find out if it s a good fit for your needs, or just to hear about how ITS works to combine a variety of technologies across the organization to address needs on campus. - Staff Performance Evaluations Online: Taking The Paper Out Of Paperwork (Presentation)
Brian Greminger, Director of Applications Services, Ross School of Business
Paper-based processes for staff evaluations are cumbersome, time-consuming, and painful for both line staff and managers. Using an online system not only provides a better user experience for everyone, but also increases compliance rates, improves goal accountability, and allows for instant statistical analysis. - Research Grant Reporting Compliance Through Strategic Database Implementation (Presentation)
Faye Ogasawara, IT Manager, CoE; Rick Baker, Research Operations Manager, CoE; Shun Han, Applications Programmer, CoE
The Climate and Space (CLaSP) department in the College of Engineering works with significant amounts of research grant funding, all of which require current and accurate budget reporting. The department uses electronic approval for time sheets and purchases to significantly reduce the amount of printing and time wasted looking or waiting for an appropriate person to approve a transaction. See demonstrations and hear about the administrative staff workflow and database requirements gathered to produce a suite of databases to meet research sponsor requirements. - Software Licensing: Challenges and Opportunities (Birds of a Feather Session)
Matt Walters, Service Owner for Enterprise Software Asset Management, ITS
Managing software licenses wisely is a critical compliance activity and potential source of cost savings, but can represent a major administrative burden especially in a time of shrinking IT resources. Join us at this software licensing birds of a feather session to talk about the challenges we are facing in our departments, share best practices, and look for opportunities to collaborate across campus.