Monthly maintenance updates will occur on Thursday, October 17, 5:00 p.m. - 10:00 p.m. This includes our monthly mandatory security patches for all services. Users may experience intermittent downtime.
New Updates to OneSpace, UTM's Intranet Hub
UT Martin OneSpace is a one-stop source for all the internal information you need as part of the university community. Students, faculty, and staff can now login to https://onespace.utm.edu to access news, events, announcements, and links. A new navigation menu unifies all UTM OneSpace sites, allowing users to navigate between any internal UTM SharePoint site.
Required Security Awareness Training
As part of our ongoing commitment to ensuring a secure and safe digital environment, our Annual Security Awareness Training will be available October 1-31 to coincide with the 21st annual National Cybersecurity Awareness Month. An email will be sent Tuesday, October 1, with detailed instructions for accessing the training. This training is required for all members of our campus community as it helps us stay informed about the latest security practices and how to protect our institutional and personal data. Please refer to our Security Awareness, Training, and Education Program policy for more information.
Changes to the campus telephones are in process. Our current phone system is at the end of its life and is being replaced with a voice-over IP (VoIP) system from RingCentral. This system allows you to make calls over the internet and use your UTM phone number easily wherever you are. Some of the benefits are:
Simpler 10-digit dialing -- no more dialing 9 for an outside line.
Supports remote/hybrid work.
Supports multiple devices - computer, tablet, iPhone/Android app, or a desk phone.
Includes free domestic long-distance, voice mail, text messaging, and fax capabilities.
Phone service pricing will increase to 20 dollars/month for all lines when your department moves to the new system. While most of the campus has already transitioned to RingCentral, the remainder will move to the new system on Wednesday, October 9. User training is available in our Knowledge Base.
What's New in Canvas
For faculty convenience, the Assign To Window in Assignments, Discussions, and Quizzes, now appears at the bottom of the page, as well as at the top of the page.
When importing discussions from a previous semester, check your Discussion settings to ensure that threaded replies are activated as a preference. Canvas made a global change this fall that turned that option to "off" for classes, rather than retaining that preference from the previous semester. If you need assistance, contact the ITC.
Instructors may have noticed an Immersive Reader option in the top right-hand corner of their Canvas courses. The Immersive Reader is a learning tool from Microsoft that can help students understand course content more easily. However, it has some limitations: (1) the tool only works in Pages, and not Assignments, Discussions, or Quizzes, and (2) it only works with text and not videos
Tips for Online Tests
One of the best deterrents of cheating in online courses is using Question or Item Banks to randomize the questions that each student sees on a test. UTM ITS offers the Akindi Question Importer that will ingest a Word document of questions, along with designated correct answers, and distractors to build question banks quickly
Another deterrent is to limit the time to take the test to a reasonable amount based on the difficulty and number of questions
Good teaching practices advise instructors to allow students to see which questions they missed on a test and/or to see the correct answers. In online settings, however, showing the answers to students before everyone has taken the assessment can give some students an unfair advantage. An effective solution is to show the correct answers to all students for a limited time, but only after the availability of the test ends.
For more information about Canvas and best practices in online assessments, please contact the ITC at 731.881.7877 or at itc@utm.edu
New Features in Zoom Workspace
Zoom Workplace recently added new features to its online meeting application. Use these features for your online class sessions or recorded lectures.
New Whiteboards - An additional virtual whiteboard tool that includes added features.
New Whiteboards expands on the virtual mark-up tools available in Classic Whiteboards and adds additional features like formatted templates and the option for AI engagement. New Whiteboards can also be saved to the Zoom Cloud.
Access New Whiteboards from the desktop app or the web interface.
For more information on New Whiteboards, please explore this blog article.
Zoom Clips - Record, edit, and share short-form video messages via Zoom.
Available in the Zoom Workplace desktop app and the web interface.
Recommended for use for short, two-minute recordings that can include audio, video and share screen content.
The University of Tennessee provides access to many types of centrally funded research software for academic use. Centrally funded software is available only for educational and non-commercial academic research purposes and should not be used for commercial research. Locate license summaries in the installation documentation and the online software descriptions on the OIT Research Support Services (RCS) website.
