Themes Summary

Electronic Communications Top Ten Themes

November 2005

A multi-collegiate team, known as the Electronic Communications Core Team, was created in July 2005 to evaluate the current and future state of electronic communications on campus. The core team conducted more than 30 interviews of various types with faculty, staff, and students. Based on those sessions and the work of the core team, these top ten themes describe campus attitudes about electronic communications.

Top Ten Themes

Email has become the most important means of electronic communications, even more important than the desk phone.
People want to easily send, receive, share and save large files and need robust tools for managing those files.
Members of the campus community want less spam.
Some people want additional security, and some indicate problems with existing security practices.
The campus community has strong and varied opinions about calendaring. Some view group calendaring as critical, some see little need for it, and some are opposed to it.
People want fast and responsive access to their email system from wherever they read mail.
The standard University email address (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu) is important. Most people agree that off-campus routing is necessary.
Many members of the campus community prefer freedom of choice when selecting their personal computers and the applications that run on them.
Some welcome advanced electronic communications, but others are less tolerant or desiring of it.
There is a need for more education about the proper and effective use of electronic communications.

Related Links

“Cheating going high tech” – The Daily Iowan
“Teens and Technology: Youth are Leading the Transition to a Fully Wired and Mobile Nation” – Pew Internet & American Life Product
Email Policies at Other Universities

1. Email has become the most important means of electronic communications, even more important than the desk phone.

A. Email must work well for people’s needs. The email system must:

- Be reliable.

- Be fast and responsive.

- Provide adequate disk storage.

- Be easy to use.

- Provide a way to easily access and customize email lists.

Comments:

· Email is more important than my office phone.
· Email is essential to getting my job accomplished. If I can't use email, I might as well take a vacation day.
· I need to be able to use email lists to communicate with large numbers of students.
· Email is the critical service now. Do it right.
· Email is the primary and most effective method of communication with off-campus students, particularly those in other time zones.
· Student email should be as reliable and easy to use as faculty/staff email.
· Fail safe email to students would be ideal.
· We want email to be available 24 hours/day, 7 days/week.
· Email usage has caused a dramatic reduction in our postage expenses and phone calls.

B. Users consider the current Blue Cluster/Eudora/Webmail system to be extremely reliable.

Comments:

· I have kept my email account on Blue because it is rock-solid reliable.
· Regarding the Blue Cluster, if it works, don't fix it. It works.
· During the ten years that I have used the Blue Cluster it has been very reliable.
· I am a very satisfied customer of Blue/Eudora. Please do not remove it.
· We love Blue/Eudora. We do not want to change, and we appreciate the stability of the Blue system.
· I think ITS should upgrade the Blue Cluster and continue to run on Linux or Unix.

C. Some said that their local departmental email service was unacceptable and that they prefer that their email be managed centrally by Information Technology Services (ITS). Others said that they were happy with their local service and would not want their email to be managed by a central organization.

Comments:

· We really want ITS to manage our email service instead of the campus unit that is doing so now. We absolutely need a reliable email service, and we are not getting it today. ITS has proven that they can provide a reliable email service.
· We like our departmental administrators and they provide great email service for our department. We are not interested in moving to a central email service.

2. People want to easily send, receive, share and save large files and need robust tools for managing those files.

Comments:

· The 5 MB limit offered by the current email system is atrocious.
· Attachments are a problem, especially images. I want an easy way to move large files (10 MB – 100 MB), around campus and off campus.
· 5 MB of disk storage is way too low. Engineering majors at Iowa State University have quotas of 250 MB.
· There are better ways than email to share large files. Because some people never erase email, the big attachments quickly fill up available space. In those situations, email doesn't seem like the right method of sharing files.
· Undergraduates are forwarding their email off campus because ITS doesn’t provide enough disk storage.
· Some classes require students to create and exchange large documents, for example 40 MB of scanned, handwritten documents.
· We need better desktop search tools and email search tools.
· The more messages you have, the harder it is to search them.
· Providing more disk storage seems like a good idea, but it does bring with it the need for better methods of finding and sorting emails.
· The growing popularity of digital media will result in the need to share increasingly larger files.

3. Members of the campus community want less spam.

A. Most people believed that the spam filtering processes put into place last year significantly reduced the amount of spam. They would like to see spam reduced even more.

Comments:

· We have received much less spam since the spam-blocking software was installed at the email gateway.
· We need increased spam filtering.
· Can ITS filter automated voice mail messages?
· There is a growing amount of spam on the telephone.

B. Some people feel that University-generated bulk email is spam.

Comments:

· Can the University reduce the amount of bulk email that it generates?
· Some students routinely delete University-generated bulk email without reading it.
· The amount of University-generated bulk email could potentially be reduced by providing a student portal.

4. Some people want additional security, and some indicate problems with existing security practices.

Comments:

· As ITS offers more electronic communications options, such as Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs) and other mobile devices, ITS needs to offer more security resources.
· Data security on PDAs and laptops is a big concern.

A. Some people expressed a desire to send encrypted email and attachments, though some people have also had problems with encrypted attachments.

Comments:

· I find it difficult to share encrypted files. I can not send them via email because our anti-virus practices cause them to be dropped at the email gateway.

B. The campus wireless network is not as secure as it should be and is difficult to configure.

Comments:

· The UI wireless service needs stronger encryption. The University should be using WPA because it is stronger than WEP.

C. HIPAA (Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996) and FERPA (Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974) compliance must be considered when writing/modifying all policies and selecting electronic communications systems.

Comments:

· It is difficult to monitor the contents of email and instant messaging, including compliance with HIPAA and FERPA requirements. If external agencies require more stringent compliance, the University will be hard pressed to respond.

D. Virus protection continues to be important.

5. The campus community has strong and varied opinions about calendaring. Some view group calendaring as critical, some see little need for it, and some are opposed to it.

A. Middle-level administrators consider group calendaring critical to their job. Some faculty feel that limited group calendaring would be useful. Some students would use a group calendar.

Comments:

· An electronic calendar is a life saver.
· I have grown accustomed to using an electronic calendar and have come to depend on it.
· The administrators are happy with Outlook/Exchange.
· The team should promote email and calendaring in terms of the administrative advantages.
· We have a small number of faculty that would like to be able to schedule our students out of the normal class time.
· A few faculty who are on administrative committees use group calendaring.
· In an ideal campus setting I would like to let students find out when I am free this week and pick an available time slot for an appointment.
· A few faculty want to schedule with students they advise or student employees.
· A couple students like being able to schedule meetings with fellow students and their co-workers.
· I believe the MBAs would use group calendaring because they have such a problem scheduling their group meetings. I also believe that since many MBAs are coming back to school from working in industry, they regarded moving from Outlook to webmail as a step backward and not similar to email used in the business world.
· I would like my students to have access to their manager’s calendars for scheduling meetings.

B. Some faculty, staff, and students see little need for group calendaring.

Comments:

· So far the paper system has worked best for a calendar.
· Only one person in my department uses an electronic calendar.
· I do not want others to schedule on my calendar.
· There is no need for this department to electronically calendar with students at this time.
· The calendaring functionality is useful, but faculty do not see its value.
· Faculty are not knocking down our door wanting calendaring.
· Very few faculty use our current calendaring system, and it is highly unlikely that behavior will change.
· Many staff members (e.g., custodians, food service employees) probably have little need for calendaring, faculty would not be receptive to calendaring if it were mandated, and the majority of students would probably not use an electron calendar.
· I do not know if students would use a group calendar. They use instant messaging for scheduling with their peers.
· Only some students want an electronic calendar.

C. Some faculty and staff are opposed to group calendaring for themelves or their students.

Comments:

Some staff want face-to-face interaction with students for effective appointment filtering.
Given that students are not great at responding to email and voice mail, some are skeptical that students would honor appointments made on an electronic calendar.
As a faculty member, I fear being tracked, especially via my personal calendar.
If I were forced to use an electronic calendar, I would mark all of my time as “not available.”
The department chair refuses to use calendar software.
An electronic calendar is a vast irritation.
As DEO I used Exchange, although no one scheduled me for meetings. I was glad to get back to Eudora.
I wish to say emphatically that faculty do not want to calendar with students (or really anyone).
A whole lot of faculty do not want to use calendaring and are just getting comfortable with Eudora.
Looking for free/busy time via Outlook or Entourage is like playing battleship. I am not sure we have the right solution, let alone moving the students to it.
We have a small number of faculty that do not want to use group scheduling.
Many faculty do not want students to see their calendars, nor do they want students to be able to put appointments on their calendars.
Some people just do not like Exchange and do not use it.
Scheduling office hours in advance might discourage the students who prefer to drop by without an appointment.

D. Personal calendars of all sorts are important to a broad segment of campus, though many of those calendars are not electronic.

Comments:

· Some people want to import and view academic events and academic calendars, exam schedules, etc.
· Some want to synchronize an electronic calendar with their mobile devices.

6. People want fast and responsive access to their email system from wherever they read mail.

Comments:

· People need to be able to easily read email from more than just their local machine.
· Faculty do a lot of work at home. Some work over slow dial-in connections.
· I use Remote Desktop from home and it works great. It is just like being at my office workstation.
· Remote desktop can be irritatingly slow and screens sizes may be incompatible.
· Travelers need good access to email; webmail is not acceptable because attachments do not often work well.
· Remote access is critical. However, some must use Webmail or the Outlook Web Access at home because ITS does not provide authenticated SMTP or their home machine does not support a current operating system.
· Webmail is slow and it has been hard to send messages from time to time.
· I can access my account on Blue easily when I am traveling on business and it "never" goes down.

7. The standard University email address (firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu) is important. Most people agree that off-campus routing is necessary.

A. Faculty and staff want verifiable email identities. Students appreciate the professional-looking address that includes the University name.

Comments:

· Staff and faculty cannot identify the individual sending email that comes from, for example, santaclause@hotmail.com, a return address from email forwarded and replied to off campus.
· Professional looking addresses are important to students, especially when applying for a job.

B. People request lifetime email routing, using firstname-lastname@uiowa.edu or firstname-lastname@alumni.uiowa.edu.

Comments:

· The University must address the issue of lifetime email routing now.

C. Some would like to ensure delivery of important University email by prohibiting off-campus routing.

Comments:

· I would like to disallow email routing because of the lack of assured delivery, but I do recognize that disallowing email routing is not a viable option.
· It is a good idea that we are modifying the email policy to state that students who forward their email off campus do so at their own risk.

D. Some distance learners, international students, and professional students often need to use off-campus routing of email.

Comments:

· We have no problems with students forwarding email off campus.
· Email routing can cause delivery problems and confusion over return addresses, but probably is a necessary evil, especially for our students that read their email at their place of employment.
· Some route email to a different email address to decease the number of email accounts they have to check each day.
· ITS could optionally list a second account for email routing.
· If email is received from a non-University address, provide the University address automatically within the header.

8. Many members of the campus community prefer freedom of choice in selecting their personal computers and the applications that run on them.

A. Many do not want ITS to dictate the technology, including client or platform, that they must use.

· People want a flexible system that supports a range of users.

Comments:

- Be flexible; acknowledge that there are a range of users.
- Select a solution that will work well in the future.
- We cannot legislate faculty behavior. Provide the tools and make those tools as flexible as possible.
- We should offer group calendaring just to those that need it and want it and keep basic email for others.

· People that use Eudora do not want to change and believe that Eudora is easier to use.

Comments:

- Eudora is so wonderful, so user friendly; values the simplicity and plainness of Eudora.
- Eudora is great.
- I use Eudora and think its function/format best suite the way I use email.
- Some faculty are still just trying to learn to use Eudora. It would be cruel and unusual punishment to force a new email client on them.
- The Eudora directory is perceived to be more robust and easier to use.
- It is perceived that Eudora works offline and Outlook does not.
- Outlook as a tool is exceedingly complex (and powerful). Many/most Eudora folks are likely to freak out.
- Many of my colleagues are attached, as I am, to Eudora, and are concerned that the department will at some time require us all to use Outlook.
- There are so many features in Outlook that people get lost.
- I am an Outlook convert by force but I still use Eudora at home.
- Eudora makes it easy to create mail lists. [I] did not know that Outlook has that functionality.

· The Mac community wants support and equity with the Windows platform.

Comments:

- Using Outlook on a Macintosh is problematic.
- Whatever solution is chosen, it should support Macintoshes.
- Mac users are still struggling on Exchange. It doesn’t work.
- We are having consistent recurring problems with Mac users when scheduling meetings.
- I use Mac/Entourage. I always have to have my Windows laptop open to sync with my PDA.
- I work on the Mac in my office and Windows at home. I am not at all happy having to use both Outlook and Entourage.
- Please be sure that any new system will work with Mac OS 9.

· The Linux community wants support and equity with the Windows platform.

Comments:

- Solution should bring feature equity to different systems/platforms (e.g., work same, with same feature set on Mac, Windows, Unix, Linux).
- Outlook features do not work well on Macs or Linux.
- I would like to see more support for operating systems other than Windows. ITS should support open source software whenever possible.

· There is some amount of strong anti-Microsoft sentiment on campus.

Comments:

- It seems that the University is really trying to push people off Eudora and onto Microsoft Outlook.
- Only people who have to use Microsoft Exchange use it. I refuse to use Exchange.
- Faculty fear that they have become a commodity of Microsoft.
- Look at open source for security reasons. Microsoft products are less secure than open source offerings.
- Please choose something open source and standards-based.

· The complexity and feature set of Outlook/Exchange is not needed by many of our faculty, staff and students.

Comments:

- Most people do not need an electronic calendar, so do not make everyone use a complex and expensive service.
- If we do not need the calendar, we do not need the expensive system; we do not need bloated software with a lot of unused features; we need a smoothly running system.

· ITS must continue to support POP and IMAP protocols.

Comments:

- The solution with email is simple: it is a protocol issue. If the calendaring solution supported a standard protocol, everyone would be happy.

B. Some IT support people want ITS to limit the variety of technology supported.

Comments:

· As a taxpayer, it annoys me to have two different email systems.
· In a perfect world, I would put everyone on Outlook because it is easier to support one system.
· I would rather see everybody on campus switch to some other system than continue with two email systems.

C. Integration of major campus web services (e.g., ICON, ISIS, Student Information System, etc.) is important.

Comments:

· We would like to merge email into ICON.
· Ideally, we want a seamless integration with the university email system and other links (the library, ISIS etc.).

9. Some welcome advanced electronic communications, but others are less tolerant or desiring of it.

A. Some feel that technology is too pervasive and is used inappropriately.

· Some people feel that face-to-face interaction with students is more beneficial than electronic communications.
· Some faculty would like to jam instant messaging, cell phones, etc., in classroom to limit distractions and cheating.
· Webcams are banned in residence halls.

Comments:

· Email can be read so many ways; we need face-to-face contact so we can see reactions.
· Technology can hinder face-to-face communication and, in some ways, may be detrimental to our educational obligation to build face-to-face communications skills
· Faculty need uninterrupted time to do their work.
· Faculty productivity will suffer if faculty cannot limit electronic intrusions.
· The University is never going to be able to keep up with the latest and greatest technology and we should not try.

B. Funding for electronic communications should be primarily used to support academic/institutional purposes, though the line between social use and academic/institutional purposes may be blurred.

Comments:

· Some felt that people would not use the University email if only University-related content were allowed.
· As soon as you try to divide email into UI account and a social account, the system falls apart.
· If we meet institutional needs, we can also meet personal needs.
· The business function of the University has to be the number one priority. We have some obligation to considering the enrichment of the student’s social experience, but not at the expense of satisfying our business needs.

C. Using a portal might improve the University’s ability to communicate with students.

Comments:

· We need one place (i.e., a portal) to “bring it all together.”

D. Some staff use Instant Messaging for intra-office communication, but IM is not universally accepted by either faculty or students.

Comments:

· Most faculty do not like Instant Messaging because it is a nuisance and interrupts their work.
· Students consider it “so high schoolish” but still want the virus protection.
· Many faculty want to turn off the IM/pager function in ICON immediately.
· Most faculty would not want students to use IM with them.
· Where IM is used, select and support one program.
· IM is just one more method of communication, but it will never replace office hours.

E. Some administrators and faculty use mobile devices that allow them to read their email and/or check their schedules.

Comments:

· The email/electronic communication solution should support synching with PDAs.
· Students had little interest in reading email or surfing the web via cell phone.
· ActiveSync with my small phone has been great because I use a group calendar.
· My PDA is key to what I do.

F. A few are intrigued by the idea of integrating voice and email as well as the possibility of having video conferencing on every desktop.

G. Many requested improvements to the UI wireless services including expanded coverage, better security, and easier setup.

Comments:

· Wireless networking is difficult to configure on our campus.
· I tried to configure my laptop to use the UI wireless and not only did it not work, I found that I could no longer use wireless anywhere.
· It has been over three years now that the University has had a wireless system and there still is no way I know of for Linux users to connect with it.

H. The campus community said nothing about blogging except that some user education might be needed.

10. There is a need for education about the proper and effective use of electronic communications.

A. The University needs to offer education about the proper use of electronic communications, particularly in the areas of e-risks, e-etiquette, and use of personal web space.

Comments:

· If you have political aspirations, be careful with your electronic presence.
· The University should educate students on the risks of using Facebook.
· The University should establish a policy on whether the University will base hiring decisions, scholarship decisions, admission decisions, etc., on Facebook and Internet-available information.

B. The University needs to offer education about the effective use of electronic communications particularly in the areas of searching/managing email, accessing email offline from various clients, setting up spam filters, and using mobile devices.

Electronic Communications Core Team

Lance Bolton, ITS-Campus Services
Diana Harris, Engineering IT
Rex Pruess, ITS-Systems & Platforms
William Scheidecker, Student
JJ Urich, Computer Science IT
Joel Wilcox, Student Information System
Mark Young, Faculty

Interviews, Focus Groups, Presentations, & Open Forums

The Electronic Communications Core Team met with the following organizations and groups.

Date Organization or Group

1. 07-29-2005 Campus Information Technology Leaders (CITL)

2. 08-15-2005 Registrar’s Office

3. 08-17-2005 Admissions

4. 08-22-2005 Office of the Provost

5. 08-23-2005 Central Mail Services

6. 08-26-2005 Campus Information Technology Leaders (CITL)

7. 08-29-2005 Department of Residence Services

8. 08-31-2005 Iowa Courses Online (ICON)

9. 09-06-2005 Academic Advising Center

10. 09-07-2005 Faculty Focus Group (Engineering & Political Science)

11. 09-07-2005 Student Technology Advisory Committee (STAC)

12. 09-08-2005 College of Liberal Arts and Sciences Information Technology

13. 09-13-2005 College of Business

14. 09-14-2005 Open Source Presentation

15. 09-15-2005 Registrar’s Office Web Advisory Committee

16. 09-19-2005 Microsoft Presentation

17. 09-19-2005 Student Forum I

18. 09-20-2005 Mirapoint Presentation

19. 09-20-2005 Student Forum II

20. 09-21-2005 Faculty/Staff Forum I

21. 09-26-2005 Internal Audit Department

22. 09-27-2005 Faculty/Staff Forum II

23. 09-27-2005 School of Music Faculty Meeting

24. 09-28-2005 Division of Student Services

25. 09-28-2005 Academic Technologies Advisory Council (ATAC)

26. 10-03-2005 Liberal Arts Deans Student Advisory Committee (DSAC)

27. 10-05-2005 College of Public Health

28. 10-10-2005 Faculty/Staff Focus Group I

29. 10-11-2005 Faculty/Staff Focus Group II

30. 10-11-2005 ITS Directors

31. 10-13-2005 Information Technology Advisory Committee (ITAC)

32. 10-21-2005 Campus Information Technology Leaders (CITL)