In response to the declaration of a national state of disaster on 15 March, Information Technology immediately started preparing emergency remote online learning technology contingency- as well as work from home plans, to prepare for off-campus operations – and the possibility of a national lockdown, which was later announced by the president from midnight on Thursday, 26 March 2020.

Students

There are 4678 SUNLearn users who have activated Office 365 user profiles from within the Learning Management System. Academic Staff have used Teams to create class group channels where conversations and online meetings are hosted with tutors and lecturers. An example of where this is working well is in Economics 114. This is a class with 1752 students enrolled in the module. It has been sub-divided into channels by the module team each with its tutor. The tutor hosts the channel and from what we can see, has been very active in communicating with students.

The added feature of having each module now linked to an Office 365 group creates a data set, which to date we have not had available anywhere else, i.e. knowing who the lecturers are that are attached to specific modules and specific student groups.  As each Team is activated on SUNLearn modules, an Office 365 group is automatically created. The lecturers become owners of the team and students become members of that team. Once a lecturer or student is no longer a participant in a SUNLearn module attached to an MS Team, they are automatically removed from the Team.

Staff

Office 365 overview / training sessions and assistance for Staff, with the focus on Microsoft Teams and associated applications, intensified, in order to assist users and environments, who had not at that stage adopted these new Software-as-a Service tools, to be prepared for the sudden work-from-home situation.

The challenge for staff was to rapidly adopt new ways of working and acquire knowledge and skills to utilise Microsoft Teams, in order to stay operational, while working from home.

Information Technology’s Service Desk and Office 365 specialists made a large effort to assist and support users. A portion of the staff population was very eager to take advantage of the Office 365 capabilities and went to great lengths to help themselves, by making use of the following comprehensive Microsoft Teams and other Office 365 Help & learning sites:

Microsoft Teams help & learning

Microsoft 365 Training

Planner Quick Start

OneDrive help & learning

OneNote help & learning

The usage of Microsoft Teams increased exponentially since the national lock down came into effect. Statistics from the Microsoft Teams Administration Centre for the University are as follows:

Teams Daily Active Users:

Teams user activity report

Date Range: 27 March 2020 – 24 June 2020

Using Microsoft Teams, staff were able to adopt excellent new ways of work, e.g. to conduct and record online video meetings, conferences and even oral examinations. The use of Microsoft Teams also enhanced team productivity and -collaboration. It enabled staff to make Team calls, have online discussions and co-author documents in real time. It also allowed staff to chat and check-in with colleagues, just to say hello.

Microsoft Teams also allows for collaboration with guests, outside of the University.

Staff have quickly learned to use all the above features – meetings are well organised and structured and they are also making good use of the content management and workstream collaboration features.

Microsoft Teams has improved over the past three months and the following additional features were added, e.g.:

Raised Hand feature

Download attendance reports

Use of Live Captions in Team Meetings (transcribing spoken English to text)

Microsoft Teams can now show 9 participants simultaneously in video meetings.

Stellenbosch University is participating in Microsoft’s Technology Adoption Program for Teams, whereby the limit of number of people in a Teams meeting were raised to 350 – this limit will be further increased in the near future.

According to Gartner, organisations that fail to exploit new digital tools paradigm and foster workforce digital dexterity, are at a substantial risk of falling behind.

The national lock down forced a dramatic change in our normal operations, but also provided an excellent opportunity to accelerate digitalisation, including the adoption of Microsoft Teams and associated Office productivity tools, to substantially improve productivity and outcomes for the university.

We are transitioning to the digital workplace!

[ARTICLE BY Bernard Heesen, Johann Kistner and Lianne Keiller]

Back in May we advised against using Zoom for official university matters. The reason for this decision was the severe lack in security on the Zoom platform and the subsequent multiple public security breaches which were experienced in many high profile meetings, including in government. 

Since our previous communication regarding Zoom security issues, Zoom quickly tried to clean up its act.

But the question remains, is Zoom safe to use?

Unless you’re discussing University secrets or disclosing personal health information to a patient, Zoom is fine to use. For school classes, after-work get-togethers or even workplace meetings where routine business is discussed, Zoom does not pose a high risk.

If you are joining external meetings invitations on Teams, Zoom or other platforms you should use good security practices and not share any sensitive information if you are not sure who is on the meeting with you.

Information Technology recommends the use of Adobe Connect and Microsoft Teams for meetings and online learning. These are currently the only two products that can rely on IT support. These platforms provide staff, students, and external users with access to a full stack of unified communication tools from standard devices or browser. 

We still recommend that staff, as far as possible, use the standard software we support. This enables us to provide better support, lower licensing costs and providing integration with institutional system. When adopting software as part of the institutional standard set, good fit with the University technology ecosystem is also considered. If the standard software is not adequate for your needs, it will have to be motivated and the cost will be for the individual or department’s cost. In this case the Zoom license will therefore also be at the user or departments own cost.

If you want to use Zoom for a specific use-case, you must request a consultation session with the Unified Communication Team and see if it is feasible. You can do this by logging a request on the ICT Partner Portal.