SEPTEMBER 2003

Web Site of the Month:
Workplace!

Human Resource's NEW
information site for faculty and staff.
Use your WebAdvisor username and password to log in.

Take our Web Survey!

Click on "Web Survey" from our main web page

Help us improve our CCU web site by providing your input.

WebCT News!!
We’ve reached a milestone this Fall with over 200 course sections using WebCT.

ITS Web Pages Get a New Look

In an effort to make our departmental web pages easier to use we have undergone a complete redesign. Instead of the customary "who we are" approach to web page organization the new focus is on "what we do". Please visit our new web site at Information Technology Services.

We also request that you complete our Technical Support Survey. This survey will help us improve our services to you. Please take the time to answer the brief survey as we welcome your input and comments.

The TEAL Center Opens in University Hall

Coastal Carolina University received close to $1.7 million in lottery funds last spring and we have been very busy over the summer putting those dollars to good use! We are proud to announce the opening of the TEAL (Technology in Education to Advance Learning) Center located in 221 University Hall. The Center is a faculty support and training center with staff available to assist faculty in incorporating all aspects of technology into their traditional classroom courses. This might include adding an audio or video component, creating a WebCT course, scanning images and documents or creating a faculty web page. In addition we are now offering courses using videoconferencing technology. Faculty and students no longer need to be in the same classroom to participate in the same course! The Georgetown Higher Education Center is serving as our first fully functional remote videoconferencing site. Plans are in the works for another site at the Myrtle Beach Higher Education Center. The TEAL Center is staffed with a team of technology professionals, graduate students and undergraduate students who are ready to assist faculty in all their technology needs. Nils Rauhut, assistant professor of philosophy, is director of the center. We are open into the evening and on weekends. We welcome you to stop by UHAL 221, call us at 349-2836 or visit our TEAL Center web site.

The Center is also the support center for all aspects of WebCT including training, administration and support. We have a Student Helpdesk available (349-2671) as well as e-mail support (webct@coastal.edu) for instructors and students.

Solutions for E-Mail Viruses and SPAM

The ITS Administrative Support Services team has been working diligently to implement an e-mail virus and SPAM filter solution. The Sophos application solution that is now in place contains several components. The Sophos Anti-Virus solution is a server resident application that checks all e-mail traffic that comes to our server. Messages containing viruses are deleted before they arrive in users' inboxes. Another product managed at the server level monitors, eliminates and notifies users of messages suspected of being SPAM e-mails. This program evaluates every e-mail message that is sent to our server (an average of 180,000 messages per day!!) and tags suspicious messages as SPAM. This is accomplished by first checking the sender's e-mail address against a list of known "SPAM-senders"! The second step checks for known SPAM properties which might include certain words in the subject header, telltale font attributes and erroneous dates. On the average this system tags 22,000 messages per day as potential SPAM messages. Some of these e-mails are automatically deleted from the system and the others are sent to users with the "{SPAM?}" notation in the subject line.

WHAT DOES THIS MEAN FOR YOU? As some messages tagged as SPAM might be legitimate we are leaving the option of deleting the messages to the user. If a message tagged as SPAM is actually an undesirable message you can simply delete it. If the message is legitimate you can choose to keep it. ITS is offering several options to users to help with the management of SPAM. Your IRC (Information Resource Consultant) can help you filter SPAM tagged messages into a separate e-mail folder on your PC. You can then go through these messages at your convenience. If you are getting messages from a legitimate source that are being tagged as SPAM please contact your IRC. They can evaluate the sender's information and provide information pertaining to why this is happening. In many cases the sender can be advised to change their font selection, signature line, wallpaper, etc..

Although we in ITS do our best to control SPAM e-mails users can also take measures to decrease the amount of unsolicited e-mail messages coming to their account. Read this informative article, Tired of Junk Mail! for useful tips on controlling SPAM!

A Network Built for Speed

Due to the extra bandwidth demand on campus (and off!) we recently increased our internet connection from 8Mb to 10Mb. In layman's terms: our internet connection is five times faster than a cable modem and three hundred times faster than a 56K dial up modem!

Wall 107 Student Support Window Closes

Over the summer the Wall 107 Student Computing Lab was relocated across the hall to Wall 108. As a result of this move it was necessary to close the Student Support Window that opened into the ITS Office in Wall 105. Student technical support issues including wireless and residence hall connectivity issues are now being handled through the Computer Assisted Instruction Lab in Prince 204.

Coming in the next edition of CyberCHANT . . .

Smarthinking, College of Humanities Piano labs, WebCT and Datatel integration and MORE!

Send e-mail to CyberCHANT Online!