%PDF-1.3 1 0 obj << /Type /Catalog /Outlines 2 0 R /Pages 3 0 R >> endobj 2 0 obj << /Type /Outlines /Count 0 >> endobj 3 0 obj << /Type /Pages /Kids [6 0 R ] /Count 1 /Resources << /ProcSet 4 0 R /Font << /F1 8 0 R /F2 9 0 R /F3 10 0 R /F4 11 0 R >> /XObject << /I1 56 0 R >> >> /MediaBox [0.000 0.000 612.000 792.000] >> endobj 4 0 obj [/PDF /Text /ImageC ] endobj 5 0 obj << /Creator (DOMPDF) /CreationDate (D:20250728114259+00'00') /ModDate (D:20250728114259+00'00') /Title (Report 07-2025) >> endobj 6 0 obj << /Type /Page /Parent 3 0 R /Annots [ 12 0 R 14 0 R 16 0 R 18 0 R 20 0 R 22 0 R 24 0 R 26 0 R 28 0 R 30 0 R 32 0 R 34 0 R 36 0 R 38 0 R 40 0 R 42 0 R 44 0 R 46 0 R 48 0 R 50 0 R 52 0 R 54 0 R ] /Contents 7 0 R >> endobj 7 0 obj << /Length 7444 >> stream 0.702 0.800 0.816 rg 34.016 34.016 543.969 723.969 re f 1.000 1.000 1.000 rg 45.266 96.368 521.469 650.366 re f 0.773 0.773 0.773 RG 0.75 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 45.641 96.743 520.719 649.616 re S 0.773 0.773 0.773 rg 61.016 112.118 m 550.984 112.118 l 550.984 112.868 l 61.016 112.868 l f 0.200 0.200 0.200 rg BT 61.016 693.716 Td /F1 14.4 Tf [(THE \(RO\)BOTS ARE HERE)] TJ ET 0.400 0.400 0.400 rg BT 61.016 664.909 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [(Posted on )] TJ ET BT 104.045 664.909 Td /F3 9.0 Tf [(January 01,1970)] TJ ET BT 173.588 664.909 Td /F2 9.0 Tf [( by )] TJ ET BT 188.096 664.909 Td /F3 9.0 Tf [(IT Communications)] TJ ET 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 61.016 637.420 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(For decades sci-fi movies have told us robots will take over the world one day. We don't have )] TJ ET BT 61.016 626.431 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(to prepare for a robot war just yet, but they are part ofour lives. We just don't realiseit.)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 61.016 606.442 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Bots)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 RG 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 605.291 m 79.025 605.291 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 79.025 606.442 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [( have been in the news recently; some, )] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 237.605 606.442 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(like Tay)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 237.605 605.291 m 268.610 605.291 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 268.610 606.442 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(, for the wrong reasons. But why all the )] TJ ET BT 61.016 595.453 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(fuss suddenly?)] TJ ET BT 61.016 575.464 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(One of the reason is the swiftimprovement of the artificial intelligence technology bots are )] TJ ET BT 61.016 564.475 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(powered with.Key Silicon Valley players Facebook, Google and )] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 318.128 564.475 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Telegram )] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 318.128 563.324 m 358.637 563.324 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 358.637 564.475 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(have been at the )] TJ ET BT 61.016 553.486 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(forefront of these developments. At Wednesday's F8 conference )] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 319.865 553.486 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Facebook)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 319.865 552.335 m 359.384 552.335 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 359.384 553.486 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(announcedthat )] TJ ET BT 61.016 542.497 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(were adding various bots, including a CNN bot, to their )] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 281.111 542.497 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Messenger)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 281.111 541.346 m 325.625 541.346 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 325.625 542.497 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [( app.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 522.508 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Most of us don't know what a bot is and what it does. Even though it sounds suspicious, a bot )] TJ ET BT 61.016 511.519 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(is merely software designed to automate and complete simple and repetitive tasks you would )] TJ ET BT 61.016 500.530 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(usually perform yourself.For example, adding appointments to your calendar or making )] TJ ET BT 61.016 489.541 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(reservations, ordering food, etc.If you were living in America, you'd be able to use the)] TJ ET 0.980 0.980 0.980 rg 404.897 498.332 0.000 0.000 re f 91.031 477.719 125.559 9.158 re f 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 404.897 489.541 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Taco )] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 404.897 488.390 m 427.406 488.390 l S BT 61.016 478.552 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Bell bot)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 477.401 m 91.031 477.401 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 91.031 478.552 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(to order and pay for your meal.)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 61.016 458.563 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Chatterbots)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 457.412 m 107.537 457.412 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 107.537 458.563 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(or chatbots are used in messaging apps and to simulate conversationsvia )] TJ ET BT 61.016 447.574 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(auditory or textual methods. They are designed to engage in small talk and ideally they should )] TJ ET BT 61.016 436.585 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(convince the person on the other end thatthe program is human.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 416.596 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Large international companies Lloyds Banking Group, Royal Bank of Scotland, Renault and )] TJ ET BT 61.016 405.607 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Citron all use automated chatterbots. They canbe used to answer basic customer enquiries, a function a call centre )] TJ ET BT 61.016 394.618 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(agent might normally deal with, or to acquire information.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 374.629 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Other bots can help you schedule meetings by e-mail. The bot is added to your e-mail thread and continues the )] TJ ET BT 61.016 363.640 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(conversation needed to schedule a meeting.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 343.651 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Unfortunately, bots can be used for malicious purposes. For example, posing as a human in chat rooms to tempt users to )] TJ ET BT 61.016 332.662 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(divulge personal information.They can be found onYahoo! Messenger, Windows Live Messenger, AOL Instant )] TJ ET BT 61.016 321.673 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Messenger and other instant messaging protocols.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 301.684 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Next time you send a chat message to someone at a call centre, you might be talking to Amy, the bot, not Amy, the )] TJ ET BT 61.016 290.695 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(human. We can confirm that all our own IT Service desk agents are 100% human.)] TJ ET BT 61.016 270.706 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(More recent articles on bots \(and robots!\):)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 61.016 250.717 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Shopify acquires Kit, the artificially intelligent marketing bot)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 249.566 m 295.106 249.566 l S BT 61.016 239.728 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Hitachis cute new customer service robot seeks out lost customers)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 238.577 m 328.604 238.577 l S BT 61.016 228.739 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Fear the future: Donalddrumpfbot coming to Facebook Messenger)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 227.588 m 324.635 227.588 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 324.635 228.739 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [()] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 61.016 217.750 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Facebook's David Marcus explains how bots are going to change Messenger)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 216.599 m 367.367 216.599 l S BT 61.016 206.761 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(This personal shopping startup just launched one of the first Facebook Messenger bots)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 205.610 m 407.687 205.610 l S BT 61.016 195.772 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Facebook launches Messenger platform withchatbots)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 194.621 m 276.107 194.621 l S BT 61.016 184.783 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(Microsoft created a bot to auto-caption photos and it's going hilariously wrong)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 61.016 183.632 m 368.879 183.632 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 307.399 164.794 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [([SOURCES:)] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 359.410 164.794 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(http://www.recode.net)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 359.410 163.643 m 446.449 163.643 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 446.449 164.794 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(, )] TJ ET 0.373 0.169 0.255 rg BT 451.453 164.794 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(http://www.wikipedia.org)] TJ ET 0.18 w 0 J [ ] 0 d 451.453 163.643 m 548.482 163.643 l S 0.153 0.153 0.153 rg BT 548.482 164.794 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [(])] TJ ET BT 545.980 146.305 Td /F4 9.0 Tf [()] TJ ET 0.400 0.400 0.400 rg 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Deliveries and hardware support during lockdown

Monday, September 21st, 2020

Even though Information Technology has been fully operational during lock down, most of our support is done remotely.  Some of our staff are in office on a rotational basis making hardware repairs and receiving deliveries possible.  However, we are still adhering to Covid-regulations and contact with staff are limited to the absolute necessary.

Stellenbosch campus:

  • Currently no deliveries are made to clients by IT.
  • Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursdays:   Suppliers deliver equipment to our offices.
  • Collection of equipment (new or repair) on Mondays to Fridays between 8:30 and 16:00.
    IMPORTANT:  If you have placed an order and it has been delivered, you will receive an automatic message from our system when the order has been processed, however this does not mean you should come to the offices and pick up your equipment. We will send you an email with a specific date to pick up your order.  (Example of email) 
  • Device repairs:  If you have equipment which needs to be attended to, log a request as usual and a technician will contact you where after you will receive an email with a date and instructions on when to bring the equipment to our offices and again when to pick it up.

Tygerberg campus:

  • Wednesdays:  Deliveries from Stellenbosch campus to Tygerberg
  • Pickup of new orders:  You will be contacted by a technician with a specific time for collection. 
  • Device repairs:  The same as Stellenbosch campus

For any enquiries, please log a request on the ICT Partner Portal. Please remember to provide a cell phone number where we can contact you.

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Developing a stronger support base for Learning Technology Systems

Wednesday, September 9th, 2020

Over the past 6 months, the Learning Technologies teams (IT & CLT) have had the responsibility of ensuring that all students and staff are effectively supported on SUNLearn, SUNOnline and associated Learning Technology Systems. These efforts have included increasing the number of support agents, working collaboratively with Faculty representatives and Blended Learning Coordinators, and using available data to understand where the need lies with the University community.

This past weekend, the call centre dedicated to SUNLearn and other learning technologies, was upgraded by the IT Microsoft Specialists. This upgrade now allows staff or students to select either “General SUNLearn support” or “SUNLearn Assessment” support as the reason for their call. Assessment queries are diverted to more senior support officers before being routed to the rest of the team should the senior staff be busy on another call. This change is in response to recommendations from the University Ombudsman, the Business Continuity Committee for Online Learning, and, as a result of quality assurance mechanisms and monitoring on the LearnHelp service desk.

New support officers are currently undergoing intensive training in preparation for support during examinations and assessments scheduled from October. At the same time, the 2nd and 3rd level support teams for Learning Technologies in IT are preparing for annual upgrades and completing final testing schedules for any issues that may have come up in the past 3 months. All in all, a very busy time ahead!

As you head into preparation periods for end of year assessment and activities, please reach out to the support team with any questions you may have.

Support hours are as follows:

Monday – Friday: 08h00 – 22h00
Saturday: 08h00 – 16h30

Learning Technologies Service desk
Learning Technologies Call Centre: 021 808-2222

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Reminder to enrol for MFA

Tuesday, September 8th, 2020

Last month we told you about the planned implementation of MFA (Multi-factor Authentication). Thank you to the 28 671 staff and students who have already enrolled to use MFA.

If you are still unsure what MFA entails, here is some information

Although we have not activated MFA yet, soon all staff and students will be required to use multi factor authentication when using any of the Microsoft 365 applications (Outlook, Sharepoint Online, OneDrive for Business, etc.) to protect their information university’s network. If you haven’t enrolled yet, we strongly advise you do so as soon possible by following these steps.

If you have any questions first consult our FAQs and if this does not answer your question, please log your request on our ICT Partner Portal and a technician will contact you. If you have any questions you would like to add to our FAQs, you’re welcome to send an email to help@sun.ac.za and we’ll add them to the list.

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Microsoft Teams empowered students and staff to study and work from home

Thursday, August 6th, 2020

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:

Microsoft Teams Unique Active Users at start of lock down

< 9000

Microsoft Teams Unique Active Users at 24 June

25500

 

Teams user activity report

Date Range: 27 March 2020 – 24 June 2020

Messages

Channel Messages

Number of unique messages that users posted in a team chats during the specified time period.

191 064

Reply Messages

Number of unique reply messages that users posted in team channels during the specified time period.

121 874

Post Messages

Number of unique post messages that users posted in a team channels during the specified time period.

44 750

Chat Messages

Number of unique messages that users posted in a private chats during the specified time period.

697 543

Urgent Messages

Number of urgent messages that users posted in a chat during the specified time period.

63

Meetings

Meetings Organised

Number of scheduled meetings users organised during the specified time period.

60 136

Meetings Participated
Number of scheduled meetings users participated in during the specified time period.

65 095

Group Calls

Number of group calls that the user participated in during the specified time period.

17 035

Calls

1:1 Calls

Number of 1:1 calls that the user participated in during the specified time period.

45 457

 

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]

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Supporting online exams during lock down  

Thursday, August 6th, 2020

 An extraordinary effort was made in a very short time by, amongst others, IT, CLT, Scheduling Office and blended leaning coordinators into ensuring that the mid-year exams could proceed despite lock down, switching from mostly paper based to fully online. The preparations included:

  • Establishing an extended CLT support team for students and lecturers, to handle the increased volume of support calls,
  • Extending the hours where support is available to 22h00 and Saturdays,
  • Training lecturers and support staff,
  • Preparing training and information documentation on online exams,
  • Revising the exam schedule to stagger the starting times by 15 minutes to reduce the impact on the system,
  • Allowing 30 minutes extra time for exam submissions to counter any potential technology issues with submitting the assessments,
  • Upgrading the SUNLearn infrastructure to cope with the increased load,
  • Preparing an Outlook calendar of exam times, for information purposes, for co-coordinating support and for predicting load on the systems, and
  • Arranging laptops and data for students without these, who had to learn and write exams remotely.

A big thank you (appreciation) must also be given to the lecturers, who in a very short time had to convert courses and exams to this emergency fully online mode. Almost everybody had to sacrifice their Easter holidays to get ready for teaching and examination during lock down.

The exams have been running smoothly to date, with some of exceptions:

  1. Several changes had to be made to the way exams were set in SUNLearn, particularly where students experienced problems or the SUNLearn system was placed under extremely heavy load. Many lessons had to be learnt about which methods do not work well. Guidelines had to be updated continuously as we became aware of the impact of practices. Examples are:
  • Quiz questions should be set one question per page, to allow more frequent saving (on every change of page)
  • Documentation such as example spreadsheets, or documents, may not be encrypted with passwords and the documents may not be set to open in the same window as the assessment. The preferred method is to release the document outside the actual assessment
  • Turnitin should not be used where originality cannot be tested, for example in images.
    • No changes should be made to assessments once the assessment has started.
  1. The SUNLearn system experienced very sharp load peaks on three occasions, on 16 and 20 May, as well as on 15 June. These spikes were so sudden that it was impossible to detect them early enough for proactive actions. The provisional findings are that the peaks were caused by SUNLearn assessments which had been set sub-optimally. The findings were then used to improve the guidelines for online assessments.
  2. Students on occasion had difficulties logging into SUNLearn. The support teams and support documentation have provided temporary workarounds, but a permanent solution has since been developed.
  3. Students have at times had difficulty in submitting their assessments. The 30 minutes extra time was intended to allow for this, but many students abuse the extra time as writing time and then struggle to submit at the last minute.
  4. There are indications of fraud during the online exams. This must be further investigated.
  5. The support infrastructure and teams where not always ready to cope with the volume of support calls. The team has been expanded and priority exam service desk queues have been created.
  6. Support staff had to work under extreme pressure and at times had to endure abuse from students, and even from parents of the students.

In the bigger picture, we believe the University did well to switch to the emergency fully online mode. We will however not rest on our laurels but strive to further improve the processes and systems.

[ARTICLE BY Johann Kistner and Lianne Keiller]

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