Parallel session 01:
Leadership & management
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

Parallel session 01: Leadership & management

IT Strategy in the Era of Digital Transformation: Case Higher Education

Pekka Kahkipuro

Paper #: 80 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Digital Strategies
Type: Scientific
Abstract: The role of IT strategy is changing radically with the progress of digital transformation. This is natural as IT is moving from a supporting role into the core of the business. Higher education is no exception: IT is now increasingly visible in everything that universities do.
There is a new set of expectations for a successful IT strategy in the era of digital transformation. Moving into the core of business requires a new approach in target-setting and in the way IT’s direction is defined. We briefly analyse the shortcomings of traditional IT strategies and how the additional needs have been addressed so far. While these approaches have allowed organisations to proceed with their digital development work, the outcome has often been an overly complex patchwork of strategy documents. To solve the issue, we propose a model where digital capabilities provide the underlying structure. This allows the inclusion of organisation-wide business aspects into IT strategy while keeping the role of IT clearly visible. The use of digital capabilities in the strategy blends the business with technology in a seamless way, just like in real life. Finally, we analyse how the new approach can be applied to the higher education sector. This demonstrates that the model works in practice and provides an example of using it in a complex and multi-faceted industry.

Transformation of IT at Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU)

Håkon Alstad, Jan Erik Eggan, Freddy Barstad

Paper #: 83 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Leadership and management
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: As a result of the merger between NTNU and 3 university colleges in 2016, all IT functions at NTNU was reorganized. All common services were moved to a central IT department. IT support for research activities remained only at 4 out of 7 faculties.
The Norwegian Government has initiated an efficiency program for the Public Sector , where the budgets are reduced by about 1% per year. As a result of this NTNU established in 2018, a digitalization program of approximately NOK 100 million every year until 2025, to ensure necessary digitalization of the university.
As of 1.12018, the IT department has too many man-years working in IT operation and because of shortage of qualified work force with the right skills needed for the Digitalization program and NTNU has been depend on hiring consultants in large numbers. To reduce the number of consultants a transformation program was initiated in early 2018, with the goal transforming the workforce to change from operation to digitalization.

Proposal for a digital maturity model for universities (MD4U)

Faraón Llorens-Largo, Rafael Molina-Carmona, Antonio Fernández-Martínez

Paper #: 26 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation
Type: Scientific
Abstract: As ITs become more important in organizations, there has been confusion between different related concepts: digitization, digitalization and digital transformation. It is important for universities to understand that the destination of this path is not simply their digitalization but to become true digital universities. We understand by digitalizing the use of information technologies to offer faster and more efficient solutions to existing business needs. However, digital transformation consists of both digitalizing and detecting the potential of a technology to drastically transform business processes or create new services or strategic business processes for the organization based on that technology. We propose a characterization of digital transformation on which our Digital Maturity Model for Universities (MD4U, from Spanish Modelo de Madurez Digital para Universidades) will be based, taking into account that the reasons we are going to provide and the definition of the model will be limited to the university environment, which has very specific and differentiated characteristics from the rest of the industry sectors.
The MD4U Model should help the university to assess the current situation for its IT, but also to identify the good practices that should be implemented to increase its maturity in the desired areas and thus move its resources from management or innovation to governance and digital transformation. We understand that in order to achieve this, the university must adopt an innovative attitude towards IT and assume the risks of being more cutting-edge than now in the implementation of new business processes based on technological trends.
Only universities that implement this type of strategy will be able to lead the digital transformation and gain a competitive advantage over universities that do not do so while maintaining their resources dedicated to non-strategic areas.

 

Parallel session 02:
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

 

Seeing the Universities’ digital environment through the eyes of staff and students

Ruth Drysdale

Paper #: 23 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Universities’ make large investments in digital environments as well as the physical campus, but how is it evaluated to enhance the overall student experience?
With emerging initiatives like Intelligent Campus and learner analytics, we need to ensure students and staff are aware of and engaged with the digital environment. In part, so they understand and consent to how data about them could be captured and used. Universities therefore increasingly partner with students when developing the digital learning environment, so it better meets their needs and provides the digital skills for the modern workplace. Understanding how students use technology and their attitudes towards its use in learning, is a good place to start. But do we really know how students are using technology to support their learning?
Whilst engaging students in the development of their digital environment is impressive, often it is not informed by local evidence. Jisc’s 2014-16 Digital Student project highlighted that consultations with students were often poorly designed, and that national surveys did not provide a coherent or detailed enough picture of the student digital experience either. The Jisc digital experience student survey was developed in response to this need.
In 2018, 83 UK institutions took part in our third digital experience student survey, gathering more than 37,000 responses. 12 Australian and New Zealand Universities also collected 21,095 student responses, throwing up some interesting comparisons. Last year Jisc also piloted a complimentary teaching staff survey that offers insights into their attitudes about their digital teaching environment. These student and teaching staff research-based questions provide actionable evidence locally and support meaningful comparisons within and across organisations to impact their digital strategies.
This session will share the outcomes of this research and offer delegates opportunities to compare the findings with their own student and staff experiences of the digital environment.

Digital Native Students’ learning expectations in Higher Education

Anne-Dominique Salamin, Nicole Glassey Balet

Paper #: 42 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Scientific
Abstract: This paper presents the results of a wide survey conducted in 2013, repeated in 2016, among 19,000 students at the University of Applied Sciences Western Switzerland (HES-SO), to better apprehend how students consider their training, their relationship to technologies and their expectations as “digital natives” students with regard to teaching. This bottom-up approach included digital native students’ expectations, needs and requests concerning tools and new teaching approaches. The result of the two surveys depicts the new student who enrolls into higher education institutions.

Digital university: student perspective

Anna Pacholak

Paper #: 84 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Scientific
Abstract: The paper presents a summary of the findings from the student digital experience insights survey carried out among students of the University of Warsaw in the summer semester 2018. It provides an overview on how students use technology at the university, for their own learning purposes and how they perceive the university digital provision as well as the digital teaching and learning on their courses.
The dataset is valuable in its potential to explore the digital experiences of students and in highlighting what exactly makes a difference to them. The findings of the survey are of use in identifying which areas of the digital education at the university should be developed as priority ones and deliver data upon which strategic decisions about digital improvements (including academic staff trainings and e-services) can be made. The findings obtained enable benchmarking for other HE institutions.

 

Parallel session 03:
Software developement (2 presentations)
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (1 presentation)
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

 

Virtual Campus Supported by Novel Efficient Knowledge Sharing

Arnt Richard Rørvik, Per Atle Eliassen, Jan Erik Garshol, Trude Eikebrokk, Gry Ane Vikanes Lavik

Paper #: 79 View extended abstract
Theme: Software development
Subtrack: Software for teaching, learning and assessment
Type: Technological
Abstract: Virtual campuses need efficient, user-friendly and seamless creation, search and consumption of open access and internal (restricted access) knowledge resources.
Today’s workflows typically create knowledge resources such as learning objects using standalone tools, subsequently publishing them separately to internal and external knowledge stores. Loss of productivity is an obvious disadvantage, due to manual re-entries, file copying and versioning woes across sources and destinations. Resources published in one or more Internet accessible systems are often lacking study information system (SIS) furnished metadata. Add to this differing metadata schemes and manual entries of storage systems and publishing targets. The resulting cumbersome and non-intuitive workflow and lack of relation between related resources published more than one place, hampers the production and sharing of resources.
NTNU and BIBSYS (now Unit) cooperated in bridging this gap in the DLR effort, taking care of both internal (eLS/LMS/eAS etc.) and open access publishing, while offering high productivity features. DLR has evolved from a simple open source tool with learning technology interoperability (LTI) support of eLSs, into a high-productivity tool facilitating both open and restricted access resources, with a uniform high productivity user interface experience with support for eLS-specific features. Multi-author versioning (in a forking fashion) can be supported, in addition to active resources (code checking, digital twins, simulators etc.) and single click automatic open publishing with a palette of preconfigured licenses (Cc etc.), DOI’s generated automatically and with optional moderation of open access publishing, to one or more open access systems. NTNU and BIBSYS have sponsored the initial development, with the Norwegian Business School (BI), and Oslo Metropolitan University (OsloMet) as well as the university of Bergen joining in to develop this as a vital learning object platform (LOR). The presentations of DLR will discuss some central use cases and features.

Uniform Gateway to Hybrid Virtual Learning Environment

Uldis Doniņš, Zigmunds Zitmanis

Paper #: 17 View extended abstract
Theme: Software development
Subtrack: Student Success Technologies, Next Generation Digital Learning Environments
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Riga Stradins University (RSU) is located at the capital of Latvia in Riga. RSU has 9100 students from that 25% are international students. RSU provide studies in the areas of Health care, social sciences and humanities.
At the beginning of 2018 the IT infrastructure consisted of Microsoft SharePoint 2010 as a student portal with some e-services, Moodle as virtual learning environment, ExLibris Aleph and Primo as a library systems, Nuance SafeCom as a printing system, and custom made Student Information System based on Microsoft Dynamics CRM and number of narrow purpose IT solutions.
The modern virtual study environment requires gateway, student portal that can be conveniently accessed from desktops, laptops, tablets and mobile devices. The gateway should serve different scenarios accessing resource from desktop and from mobile device. For instance, accessing LMS Moodle from desktop gateway should open web browser using single-sign-on leading to particular place in LMS, meanwhile while accessing LMS Moodle from mobile device or tablet should lead to Moodle app. More specifically – using deep links to open the right resource in Moodle app.
The challenge for the university is to provide uniform gateway from mobile, tablet and desktop to hybrid virtual learning environment that is mix of different services from all kinds of vendors.
As a demand came from the student union, our project approach was to involve student union in project execution. This resulted in fact that all questions that affect functionality or usability were discussed with student union.
The project approach was to use Agile, in all aspects of the project execution. The new solution is going to be launched on February 12 2019 – five months from signing contracts with suppliers. Next phase is to collect feedback from students and usage statistics from data warehouse and set objectives for the next project phase.

Subtitling video lectures using Miro Translate

Laura Cacheiro Quintas, Samuel Calegary

Paper #: 39 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: MOOCs & Online Education, Innovation in Learning Spaces, Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience.
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Miro Translate is a cloud-based platform that produces captions and subtitles for video lectures. This hybrid solution uses an Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) system to produce machine-generated captions and Neural Machine Translation (NMT) to elaborate machine-generated subtitles. Users have at their disposal a set of parameters and editing functionalities to adapt the target text to different quality standards and to the Deaf and Hard of Hearing regulations in force in Europe. Therefore, audiovisual content is accessible to non-native speakers and to people suffering from hearing loss or deafness.

 

Parallel session 04:
ICT Infrastructure & Security
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

 

Managing the cloud: The role of University’s central IT

Denise Dittrich, Thomas Eifert

Paper #: 14 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Cloud Computing & Services
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Supporting research activities at Higher education facilities comes along with many challenges, also for the IT infrastructure. From high flexibility and scalability on the one hand to reliability and integration in central university processes like identity and access management, research data management or accounting and billing on the other side, the range is open wide.
Research departments require highly flexible IT services. Cloud infrastructure services are one way to meet the institutions need perfectly. Simultaneously fulfilling the university’s requirements and regulations seems even more challenging.
By introducing cloud usage the face of the central IT, providing IT infrastructure for the university ever since, changes. Using this fact as a chance, one can think of ways to provide cloud services through central IT. This can be an instrument for connecting the challenge of managing the cloud for the university while transforming the tasks of a central IT.
Speaking in general terms this means that the central IT can be used as partner for the university’s institutions which offers consulting, IT services and support, regardless of the fact of who provides the services. By this means, on-premise services can reasonably be extended by cloud services.

HPC on the Cloud – A Norwegian Perspective

Nico Reissmann, Einar Næss Jensen, Jan Christian Meyer

Paper #: 25 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Infrastructure, Platforms & Networks; Cloud Computing & Services
Type: Technological
Abstract: Cloud computing (CC) has become a viable alternative for business and web applications. As vendors start to offer products with bare metal servers and high-speed interconnection, it also becomes increasingly interesting to the high-performance computing (HPC) domain. This paper presents our experience of matching Fram, Norway’s largest supercomputer, with equivalent Cloud alternatives. We compare the available features and necessary total cost of ownership (TCO) of Fram to four different products: Google Cloud, Amazon Web Services (AWS), Microsoft Azure, and IBM Softlayer.

 

Parallel session 05:
ICT in Research
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

 

The Jisc Open Research Hub and its role in open research infrastructure

Tamsin Burland, Dom Fripp, John Kaye, Paul Stokes, Tom Davey

Paper #: 41 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Open Science & European Open Science Cloud
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Recent national and international reports and mandates seek to promote an open research infrastructure which facilitates easy access to knowledge and information for all. For example, The UK Open Research Data Task Force report, released in February 2019, recommends user-friendly services for research data management and infrastructure to maximise interoperability and discoverability.
Jisc has built the Open Research Hub (JORH), which integrates a repository, preservation, reporting and storage platform. This cloud-based service is a community governed, multi-tenant solution for universities and other research institutions to manage, store, preserve and share their published research data. Based on existing open standards, the service’s open and extensive data model incorporates best practice from across the sector, including DataCite, CrossRef, CERIF, Dublin Core and PREMIS.
While the Hub was built to address the needs of research data curation, its adoption of open, best practice standards means it has the potential to allow the service to handle a much wider range of digital research objects, including Open Access articles, theses and software. The data model, rich messaging layer and an open API facilitate interoperability with other institutional and scholarly communications systems. This provides the potential for the Hub to underpin infrastructure capable of meeting the requirements of an ever-evolving open research agenda.
This talk will introduce some of the key initiatives seeking to shape open research infrastructure and discuss how the Hub’s current and future development is directed towards facilitating open research best practice. Consideration will be given to how the Hub either meets or can meet recent recommendations such as FAIR, Plan S, ORDTF and the COAR’s Next Generation Repositories.

Research data management incorporated in a Research Information Management system. A case study on archiving data sets and writing Data Management Plans at Radboud University, the Netherlands

Mijke Jetten, Ed Simons

Paper #: 35 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Opening Research Data
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Wouldn’t it be effective if a CRIS was to be transformed into a one-stop-shop for researchers, advocating the implementation of research data management (RDM) and the FAIR data principles? Such a CRIS would include data registration and sustainable data archiving, combined with the drafting and registration of DMPs as well as project registration, in addition to the more traditional CRIS services.
This paper will use Radboud University (Nijmegen, the Netherlands) as a good practice of the use of a CRIS in the research life cycle that institutes and researchers, including their research support desks, are dealing with in the FAIR data era. It will illustrate that both researchers and research institutes profit from a CRIS oriented approach to RDM and FAIR data.

Open Research Data: The current and future use of repositories by the Swiss research community

Markus von der Heyde

Paper #: 29 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Opening Research Data
Type: Scientific
Abstract: One way to share the results of scholarly production is to upload publications, in conjunction with the research data underlying them, into a data repository. As of 2017, the Swiss National Science Foundation (SNSF) has mandated making data from funded projects accessible. This provided a reason to examine the sharing and reuse behavior of researchers in the Swiss community in 2018. A “landscape survey” across the complete Swiss research community collected information from 2,384 scientists about their data sharing and reuse practices. In addition, a “repository survey” added the perspective of 208 international repositories and their plans for future development. The results were analyzed using statistical methods.

Generally, the motivation and concerns for data sharing and reuse in the Swiss community are not different from other scientific communities. Overall, about a third of the Swiss research community share data in repositories. The drivers of sharing and reuse that are summarized in this paper, in the sense of motivations and intentions to share and reuse, replicate the main findings in previous literature. We also compare and correlate these drivers with actual data reuse and sharing practice. The Swiss research community uses international repositories extensively: 75% are based in the EU or internationally. Switzerland provides institutional or financial support for only 13% of all repositories mentioned. Future requirements for services from the Swiss community are not yet met by the international repositories’ plans.

This paper focuses on recommendations to local support units and IT service providers at the university level. Suggestions for local measures as well as collaborative approaches are anchored in the results gained from the original data analysis. A change of perspective is the main point: If organizations encourage reuse of data, sharing will consequently rise.

 

Parallel session 06:
OpenX & Interoperability
Wednesday 10:45 – 11:45

 

Erasmus Without Paper Network — from development to production

Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz

Paper #: 15 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Standards & European Interoperability
Type: Technological
Abstract: EWP (Erasmus Without Paper) is the European project co-financed in years 2015-2017 by the Erasmus+ Programme, Key Action 3 (Prospective Initiatives — Forward Looking Cooperation Projects). EACEA has prolonged funding for years 2018-2019.
In December 2018, three years after the start of the first EWP project, in front of 350 participants from across Europe gathered in the University of Ghent, and many more following the event via live stream, the Erasmus Without Paper Network was officially launched (see https://www.erasmuswithoutpaper.eu/launch-conference). Teams representing SOP from Austria, QS Unisolution from Germany, SIGMA from Spain, MUCI from Poland, University of Ghent from Belgium, and University of Porto from Portugal conducted live demo showing exchange of mobility data between their Student Information Systems.
The event does not mark the end of the EWP project, but is the milestone turning the development stage into production. The most challenging activities are still ahead — industrializing the Network and its elements, integrating data transfer with business processes of student mobility carried at higher education institutions, increasing network coverage by accepting new institutions, supporting new partners in joining the network, on a political, organizational and technical level.
The aim of this paper is to show the EWP Network running in production and supporting student mobility in partner institutions. The components of the Network will be presented and their role explained. Planned tasks and activities of the Competence Center (CC) will be discussed. Directions of extension of the Network functionality beyond basic scenarios of the Erasmus mobility will be shown. Plans for the European-wide roll out of the EWP Network will be shared.
The ultimate goal is to show the benefits of the EWP solution and encourage higher education institutions to become part of it.

Automation of processes based on educational results

Geir Magne Vangen, Marte Holhjem

Paper #: 49 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Standards & European Interoperability – Student Information Exchange
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: In order to be able to automate processes one needs digital data. The absence of digital data prevents digitalization of processes, and until recently most input documentation has been paper based. With the launch of the Diploma Portal, citizens themselves can retrieve their own data and share them with desired recipients. This opens up for new possibilities.
Preventing fraud and a simplification of the data exchange has been the initial important achievements of the Diploma Portal. In the long term however, the goal of the portal and the EMREX network as a whole has been to help the consumers of these data automate their processes and give better services to the owner of the data.
When a student or former student uses the Diploma Portal to share their results, the receivers get them as structured data. Receiving standard structured data enables the automation of processes.
The Diploma Portal is a common service retrieving data from different sources when the data owner logs on. It is built using Scala, Docker and Play, offering rest based services for the systems providing result data.
The ELMO format is a common standard, also used in the Erasmus Without Paper network. As part of the EMREX network, partners from different countries have been able to express assessment from different education levels and education systems using the ELMO format. A common unified format is essential for enabling the receivers of this information to automate their processes.
A number of organizations are working on connecting their processes to the Diploma Portal.

IMS Europe – driving open standards in Europe

Nynke de Boer

Paper #: 70 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Standards & European Interoperability
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Higher Education institutions share a common need to allow for the secure exchange of data between systems and tools within their teaching and learning ecosystem. Getting systems to work together remains a significant challenge and investment. Without a set of coherent standards across the industry, integration remains the task of every individual institution, reinventing the wheel again and again.
IMS Global is the world’s largest non-profit educational technology collaboration with over 500 members. IMS Global’s view is that the full range of stakeholders in the education sector “own” the evolution of a generic educational technology ecosystem. These stakeholders realize that relevant standards are a necessity. IMS Global open standards enable a plug-and-play ecosystem that provides a foundation on which innovative products can be rapidly deployed and work together seamlessly.
Many initiatives from IMS Global are being developed together with Higher Education Institutions in Europe. There is increasing support for LTI Advantage, the next phase for the widely implemented Learning Tools Interoperability standard. A new community initiative called Edu-API was formed to establish a standard API for student data. SUNet from Sweden and SURF from the Netherlands play an important role in bringing this specification forward. Other initiatives are on digital credentialing, integrated analytics, and digital assessment.
In Europe, we need to make sure that we contribute to the standards by participating in the relevant IMS Global communities. This way, we can make sure European characteristics (like GDPR requirements) are considered during the development of the specifications. To ensure that European institutions and supplier organizations are well represented within IMS Global, the IMS Europe board was launched in early 2018.
In November 2018, EUNIS and IMS Global came to an agreement to collaborate. They will join efforts to disseminate standards, IT policies, and best practices for the use of information technology.

 

Campus for the future I:
The future starts now
Wednesday 15:00 – 16:00

Eleanor Magennis, Peter Schädel

We partner with Avixa to look at what we need to do now to prepare for the future:

• Eleanor Magennis will speak from an estates perspective on developing and delivering a vision for 2030.
• we will launch a new global experience design award for higher education

Come along to find out more!

No one can accurately predict the future but there are signals we can take into account. University campus master plans typically cover a 10-15 year timescale but the buildings we design are expected to perform for 50+ years. What are the signals and how can we future proof our campuses?

How do we prepare our students for jobs not yet conceived? How do we give them the skills that robots cannot learn? How far will virtual reality/ augmented reality impact our physical spaces? What will be the implications of 5G and beyond in terms of building construction and what allowance should we make for changing materials in the future?

What are the systems, data and ethical implications of creating a smart building sitting in a smart campus in a smart environment?

Eleanor will explore these questions using the format of user journeys set in the year 2030. These journeys have been used at the University of Glasgow to test and experience the buildings/ campuses being designed now and how we might answer some of the questions above and more we have about the future.

Peter will announce a EUNIS/Avixa collaboration on a new design award.

 

Parallel session 07:
Leadership & management (2 presentations)
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (1 presentation)
Wednesday 15:00 – 16:00

 

Generation Z – New communication habits
Special needs for service and communication in universities

Sarah Grzemski, Bernd Decker

Paper #: 54 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation, Digital Strategies
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: RWTH Aachen University’s digitization strategy considers the demands made on a university by digital transformation in research and teaching. In addition to the realization of new digital offers that are directly related to the spectrum of services offered by a university, the communication channels between service providers and their users must also be further developed. For this purpose, it is important to deal with the communication behaviour of those persons who are defined as target groups in a university and to react to new trends.
On average, people surf the Internet three hours a day nowadays and a third of this time alone is spent on the Social Web. Social media channels are the most frequently used channels and are an integral part of the everyday life of the so-called millenials (Generation Y). Studies show that the following Generation Z will focus even more on fast digital communication and information channels.
For the IT Center this means both, establishing additional communication and information channels and at the same time taking into account changes in routines and priorities on the part of the users. In 2015, these needs were met in a first step with the introduction of the IT Center Blog and the development and provision of chat support.
The User Satisfaction Survey 2017 clearly shows the wish that the IT Center will continue along this path and provide further modern social media channels for the provision of information and as a communication platform. The paper deals with the experiences and analyses of the introduction and use of current social media channels. The focus is on chat support due to the complexity of the application and the challenges for employees. Finally, an outlook is given on the planned extensions of the social media activities of the IT Center.

Next Generation By Design: The Next Generation Integration Scorecard project

Francesc Santanach, Timo Väliharju, Jeff Merriman

Paper #: 24
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation; Overcoming Challenges; Digital Strategies
Type: Technological
Abstract: With greater public understanding of the opportunities, limitations and risks associated with today’s most advanced applications, it is time to transform the current market options and lead the industry in a new direction that enables greater control to the consumer. We call this effort Next Generation By Design (NGBD). Our growing, international community is led by DXtera is promoting NGBD by tackling next generation challenges in Education. This presentation will share the vision, activity and projects of the DXtera and NGBD communities with a focus on Next Generation Integration Scorecard initiative.
Next Generation Educational Systems (NGES) depart from traditional, rigid systems toward ecosystems of educational applications and enterprise infrastructure that bolster consumer choice and broaden the marketplace. NGES place high value on the integrability of applications and systems in support of such choice. Integrability refers to how easy it is for one software application or system to make direct programmatic use of the underlying functionality of another application or system. It is also the key to designing next generation infrastructure.
The Next Generation Integration Scorecard (NGIS) is an instrument designed to help consumers of enterprise systems and educational software to measure the readiness of candidate solutions to meet the needs of NGES. It defines the broadest set of functional areas required supporting the processes of educational, and typically found in enterprise systems including Student Management Systems, Learning Management Systems, and Content Management Systems. NGIS takes a refined approach to functional organization aimed at identifying the discrete functions typically found in such systems.
An organization utilizing the NGIS for evaluating products or technologies can identify precisely which functional operations are required for a particular application and may define and apply a score-system for each. Results can be used to evaluate and compare software solutions.

Application delivery via AppsAnywhere (Software2)

Dieter De Gendt

Paper #: 5 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Technological
Abstract: As the largest university of applied sciences in Flanders with more than 14,000 students, Thomas More is committed to improving the student experience, and in that mission the university’s approach to IT service delivery is no exception.
Thomas More’s IT department faced a challenge common across higher education institutions with thousands of students; the delivery of all software needed – by both academics and students – to any computer device anywhere on campus, at any time.
Today’s students come to university with very different expectations than ever before, especially regarding IT and technology and its use in their learning experience. The proliferation of smart devices, ‘apps’ and indeed app stores has set a certain standard of anytime on-demand access; an expectation that extends to the provision of software at university, too.
The problem sounded simple but was in fact impacting the student learning experience. The specialist software applications needed by students – wide-ranging in nature due to the university’s applied sciences focus – were only available in specific computer labs in certain locations across campus, and only within a set period of time. So, in order to use the software needed to study and complete coursework, students had to go to these labs for access.
The university’s IT team went about searching for a technological solution to this challenge, with the goal of increasing access to software, rethinking the entire deployment model to let the applications follow the students instead. This in turn would have a positive impact on other parts of the student experience; enabling BYOD for certain applications, increasing student mobility, and transforming existing learning areas into multi-purpose spaces.
In this session Dieter De Gendt, Program Manager, will explain the IT department’s solution to this challenge, along with the approach and technologies used to improve student success.

 

Parallel session 08:
ICT Infrastructure & Security
Wednesday 15:00 – 16:00

 

Blueprint for an Open Source On-Premise Cloud Infra-structure to Serve as a Research Data Infrastructure for Universities

Raimund Vogl, Jürgen Hölters, Martin Ketteler-Eising, Dominik Rudolph, Markus Blank-Burian, Holger Angenent, Christian Schild, Stefan Ost

Paper #: 65 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Infrastructures for Research Data & Management
Type: Technological
Abstract: In response of the significant increase in the amount and variety of research data, the European Data Infrastructure (EDI) and the European Open Science Cloud (EOSC) foster persistent, highly available and compatible data infrastructures where data from various disciplines can be stored and accessed. These infrastructures should not only provide storage but also tools for processing and analysis. To prepare the implementation of such an extensive research data infrastructure for a group of five Universities, Münster University (lead of the consortium) has invested substantial manpower in developing a versatile, scalable and performance optimized hyperconverged deployment of OpenStack (cloud stack for virtual machines and Storage as IaaS) and Ceph (as underlying Software Defined Storage) using kubernetes as container orchestration engine on industry standard hardware. This is the first instant that advanced leading edge cloud technology like kubernetes has been put to use in any of the participating university IT centers and we see this as pivotal for out future approach to system architecture. The Open Source approach was adopted for cost reduction and sustainability. Remarkable is the approach to build on community versions of the Open Source software only, without vendor support. A scaled down pilot system has been operational for well over a year now, and demand for such an infrastructure is mounting from numerous research groups from a wide range of disciplines. Implementation of the full scale cloud system is planned for mid 2019. This is an update on the very preliminary report on the project given at EUNIS 2018.

On the Decentralization of IT Infrastructures for Research Data Management

Marius Politze, Thomas Eifert

Paper #: 57 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Infrastructures for Research Data & Management
Type: Scientific
Abstract: To be attractive for the users and offer benefit for researchers, central processes and offers so deeply integrated into the daily work processes of researchers like research data management, must actively deal with decentralization. Tailored, decentralized services and generic, centralized offers need to work together to support these processes. Two points of the research data life cycle are critical: the time of data archival at which all information about the data set should be available, and the time of data generation at which the information is available. A promising way to deal with this problem is to define technology-independent and process-oriented interfaces. Instead of specific formats and protocols, an independent and open specification is used that is oriented towards supported processes. Some existing services can be used to support decentralized scenarios with a central service portfolio. Putting theory into practice, implementations of the decentralized data life cycle at RWTH Aachen show how efforts create benefits, incentives and awareness for research data management.

Object storage backup for research and academic data: Discover how the University of Lausanne (UNIL) went beyond NDMP

Thibaut Lauzieres & Christophe Darras

Paper #: 88 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Object Storage Backup
Type: Technological
Abstract: The University of Lausanne (UNIL) in Switzerland is a higher education and research institution composed of seven faculties where approximately 15,300 students and 3,000 researchers work and study. UNIL is focused on several academic disciplines, especially Medicine, Life Sciences, Geosciences, Environment, Business, Humanities and Social Sciences.
UNIL has several petabytes of data stored in three data centers on campus. In 2015, the IT teams concluded that the current backup solution was unable to respect the available backup windows because of increasing data volumes and the growing number of files. Without backup, the only data recovery route would be from multi-site replications. This was deemed to be insufficient to safeguard data sets and data security in the event of a cyberattack.
More generally, unstructured data plays a rapidly growing role in the mix of generated data and consequently storage of data encapsulated in, for example, a structured database format is becoming less preponderant. Finally, Swiss law requires university research to have specific retention periods; this long-term aspect of data protection would be key to the success of the UNIL backup project.

 

Parallel session 09:
ICT Infrastructure & Security (1 presentation)
Leadership & management (2 presentations)
Wednesday 15:00 – 16:00

 

Implementing an Opensource Higher Education and Research ERP at the scale of a country or State. Case Study : The Malian Higher Education Information System

Jean Marc Coris, Stuart Mclellan

Paper #: 33 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: ERPs in Higher Education
Type: Technological
Abstract: The author will briefly present the Open Source Education and Research Integrated Management Software, Enterprise Resources Planning (IMS/ERP) “COCKTAIL+”. The focus will be on the case study of implementing the ERP on a nationwide scale in the Republic of Mali, West Africa.
COCKTAIL+ is a multi-establishment and multilingual integrated ERP for Higher Education and Research institutions. It was created by the founder member of the Open Source ERP Cocktail, used by more than 80 French Higher Education institutions.
COCKTAIL+ was developed for the French-speaking African CAMES (African and Malagasy Council for Higher Education) members. This approach for, and by the African States, offered an opportunity for a large-scale deployment at a national level.
In 2018 the UN Human Development Index ranked the republic of Mali 182nd out of 188 countries, (Norway being 1st, France 24th). Implementation of an ERP in one of the poorest countries in the world was not without challenges. The project was able to succeed because of the absence of a national Education & Research ERP solution, the pragmatism and motivation of the future users, the scalability of the proposed solution and the interest in a solution with low costs of ownership and implementation.
In 2017 CampusMali (the frontend inscription portal of the ERP), enabled 86.26% of the country’s 1st year student population to enrol online in Malian Higher Education institutions.

Key figures :

• 75000 students enrolled
• 3500 staff
• 12 public higher education institutions
• 15 private institutions (test phase)
• 35 000 neo graduates per year
• duration 4 years + 1 year extension: 2014 – 2019
• Funding: Netherlands 600K€, World Bank 150K€, French Embassy : 30K€

It is now acknowledged that the Malian Higher Education Information System is one of the most integrated, if not the most integrated, of Francophone West Africa.

IT Governance implementation in developing countries: applying the Spanish ITG4U framework to four Tunisian HEIs

Beatriz Gómez, Carlos Juiz

Paper #: 34 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Business Process Re-engineering
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: IT governance (ITG) is not a choice anymore since it is gaining more and more attention by board members in order to better direct and control their IT assets. To better align business needs and strategy with IT, several frameworks are raising trying to adopt best practices to obtain more value from IT. In the specific case of the universities, the adoption is still scarce, but efforts are increasing mostly in developed countries. Due to the specific situation and needs in developing countries, some adaptations are needed before the adoption of those existing frameworks. Under the scope of a project, we have developed four ITG frameworks for four different developing country universities, adapting the ITG4U Spanish framework to their aspects. In this work, we show the implications, similarities, and differences among universities from a developed country (Spain) and universities from a developing country (Tunisia).

Is there a Scandinavian model for MOOCs? Studying the effects of digital transformation in higher education in Norway, Sweden and Denmark

Cathrine Tømte, Vito Laterza, Rómulo M. Pinheiro

Paper #: 31 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation
Type: Scientific
Abstract: We study MOOCs in the Scandinavian context as a key empirical area to investigate some of the short and long-term effects of digital transformation in higher education. Several trends at play with MOOCs have broader relevance for other areas of higher education affected by digitalization. For example, through MOOCs, we can study the involvement of technology providers in higher education, and the changes these relationships bring to traditional learning. The delivery of MOOCs is linked to new forms of negotiations and tensions between academic, administrative and IT staff. Another important phenomenon is how these new teaching formats blur boundaries between HEIs and the broader society, and between formal and informal education. MOOCs can also shed light on the potential for pedagogical innovation at play in the broader field of digital learning (e.g. big data, learning analytics, flipped learning). At the EUNIS2019-conference we will present a work in progress that gives an overview of current studies on MOOCs in the Scandinavian countries. We critically assess these in the light of global developments (outside the Nordic region) and in the context of a broader, future comparative study on the topic.

 

Campus for the future II:
Approaches to developing staff and students’ digital capability
Thursday 09:00 – 10:00
Location: R2

Ruth Drysdale, Lisa Gray, Sarah Knight

We partner with Jisc to look at how we can ensure both staff and students have the capabilities they need to live, learn and work in an increasingly digital world.

Right across Europe governments, and agencies such as CEDEFOP and OECD, are highlighting the need to invest in building digital know-how and capability. The UK government expects that by 2037, 90% of all jobs will require some element of digital skills. Universities need to rise to the challenge of developing these skills in our students and this means ensuring our staff have the required capabilities as well.

Jisc has been researching approaches to better understand and support staff and student digital capability since 2008. In this interactive session we will share practical ideas and guidance for developing digital capabilities in individuals and in the organisation as a whole.

You will have the chance to

• explore digital experience insights surveys for teaching staff, professional services staff and students
• explore a roadmap for supporting students to improve their digital experience
• try out some digital capability games
• explore our discovery tool and associated dashboards

 

Parallel session 10:
Leadership & management
Thursday 09:00 – 10:00

 

Welcome Aboard! Supporting the Process of Integrating New Staff with Onboarding Tools

Dominik Rudolph, Christopher Burgholz, Raimund Vogl

Paper #: 13 View extended abstract
Subtrack: IT Workforce Hiring, Development & Retention
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The onboarding of new employees is a difficult and complex task because a lot of organization-specific information about workflows, contact persons and regulations has to be communicated. Nonetheless, universities often lack structured workflows for the integration of new staff, especially in the faculties. This leads to inefficient work processes, a high number of avoidable support tickets and frustration among the new employees caused by missing or incomplete information.
At Münster University, a task force is formed. The project has two different objectives: First, it aims to ensure that new employees receive the most important information directly and in a condensed and motivating form. Secondly, it aims to ensure that new staff and students make some important settings and acknowledge crucial rules.
To achieve the objectives, an onboarding portal is planned. The information is presented in form of an interactive drawing showing an office in which each object represents a relevant topic (e.g. a computer represents the university IT). The selection of topics is limited to the essentials, so that the portal remains manageable in terms of content. In this way, new employees know directly what is important and have a much easier start into their daily work at the Münster University than in the past. Some modifications of the portal are thinkable: In order to internalize the information, a classic e-learning approach could be chosen in which information units are activated one after the other (e.g. on a daily basis). This could be combined with gaming aspects in the sense of rewards for completed units.
Part of the onboarding portal is a multistep wizard, which addresses legal aspects, security aspects, and selected service information. During the process, users have to agree to the university IT’s terms of use, make some important settings and register for special services.

The recruitment challenge and the apprenticeship at IT-Centers of German universities

Kerstin Bein, Maja Ruby, Rainer Bockholt

Paper #: 28 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Apprenticeship is becoming increasingly important in the IT centers of German universities. This paper describes the strategy and the details of the apprenticeship concept in Germany in general and the universities in particular. Furthermore, it highlights the benefits of involving young people in our projects or day-to-day business and learning from their user behavior and experience, as so-called ‘influencers’. At present, apprenticeship is becoming a very important method of recruitment too – not only for the companies, but also for the universities’ IT centers.
The comprehensive training program and the extensive experience are summarized in a guideline [RB18] that was released recently from the ZKI working group. The overall guideline includes a 360° view of the apprenticeship. It comprises the framework and the complete life cycle of the apprenticeship, which is based on the practical experience and a set of best practice examples.
This paper also covers the diverse career options after a successful completion of the program, as well as the role of the apprentices as ‘trendsetter’ or ‘influencer’ and their active involvement in the projects.

Human Resource Development and Inhouse Staff Training

Inga Scheler, Hartmut Hotzel

Paper #: 36 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: This paper gives an overview of public employment and human resource development at German higher education IT centres and public funded research organizations, including an outlook on upcoming topics in this field. The Centres for Communication and Information Processing (ZKI, Zentren für Kommunikation und Informationsverarbeitung in Lehre und Forschung e.V.) as the German association of Higher Education (HE) IT centres and public funded research organizations is supporting all lead members managing the digital transition. ZKI-members represent all research driven universities, many of the universities of applied sciences and other kinds of universities. Lead members are faced to a massive change in employment structures and required staff skills. The characteristics of change are manifold. In the next chapters we describe the different basic conditions provoking this change and the way ZKI is supporting the HE IT centres in this shift.

 

Parallel session 11:
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Thursday 09:00 – 10:00

 

Why digital badges matter? (SRCE experience)

Sandra Kucina Softic, Tamara Birkic, Sabina Rako, Irena Jandric, Tona Radobolja

Paper #: 43 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Digital badges are becoming increasingly used in education as a tool to validate learning achievements. Whether to for informal educational content that enables in short period of time the acquisition of certain skills and competences. Or in formal education as micro credential, for extra-curricular training or a game element in the course. SRCE implemented digital badges in 2015 to enable participants to get credentials for completing training courses and to educate teacher about digital badge and how they can be used. In presentation gained experience and lessons learned on digital badges will be presented.

Finding a place to learn: A mobile study room guide with integrated room occupancy rate indicator

Ramona Renner, Steffen Schaffert, Bernd Decker

Paper #: 38 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Mobile Technology
Type: Technological
Abstract: An essential part of student life is to study for exams – together and alone. Many students look for a place to study on the university campus to be able to better focus or get assistance from fellow students. However, they have problems finding a suitable spot. Freshmen usually do not yet know common places to study and especially while exam preparation phases the demand for study rooms is high. At these times, students often do not find a place to study or have to invest a lot of time to find it.
At the request of our students and in cooperation with the students’ union executive committee (AStA), we have developed a solution within our university app RWTHApp, which tackles the issues above – a study room guide with integrated room occupancy rate indicator. It provides an overview of all official study rooms on campus and their features. It also displays an indicator for current and predicted future occupancy rates in a user-friendly way. Students can find study rooms more easily, plan meeting with fellow students beforehand and thereby collaborate better. They can better cope with times of high demand, because they know more places, in particular previously less known ones. This leads to a better overall occupancy rate of available rooms while resulting in more available seats in each individual room.

Impact of University Networking on Students’ Mobility and Motivation

Galia Marinova

Paper #: 51 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Student Mobility
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The paper presents the observations and research on the students’ mobility and motivation in the region on Central and Eastern Europe based on the case study of a CEEPUS (Central European Exchange Program for University Studies) network. The author is coordinator of the CEEPUS network CIII-BG-1103-03-1819 “Modelling, Simulation and Computer-aided Design in Engineering and Management” and the data and analyses in the paper are based on this experience. The network is in its third year and involves 32 academic institutions and 6 industrials from 15 countries from the region of Central and Eastern Europe, over the 16 eligible countries in CEEPUS program. The network in interdisciplinary and integrate academics in the area of electrical and mechanical engineering, architecture, information and communication technologies, mathematics and management. More information on the network and its activities can be found on the web site: ceepusmodcad.ubt-uni.net. Data are collected from the teachers in the network and Surveys on students’ interest and preferences are filled by the students in the network. A CEEPUS Leadership Academia for Students was realized in June 2018 in Maribor, Slovenia and the floor was given to students in the network, who developed and presented projects in international teams, on topics like students’ motivation to study engineering and management, the impact of mobility on their study and career plans, girls in engineering, etc. The quantitative data in the CEEPUS network and the students’ feedback from surveys, projects, presentations and discussions at the CEEPUS Leadership Academia are analyzed and some trends and good practices are given as confirmation of the strong impact that academic networking has on increasing students’ motivation and mobility.

 

Parallel session 12:
Software development
Thursday 09:00 – 10:00

 

The Process and the Success Factors in the Development of a New Nationwide Student Information System in Sweden

Mauritz Danielsson

Paper #: 6 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Agile Methodologies & Development Best Practices, including DevOps, Scrum & Continuous Integration
Type: Technological
Abstract: The Ladok Consortium is owned by 37 Higher Education Institutions and the Swedish National Board of Student Aid. The Consortium develops, maintains and operates a Student Information System for its owners.
The first Ladok system was built in the late 1980s and a second generation that used the same database structure was put in production in the late 1990s.
The first thoughts about a totally new system with a new database structure started in the autumn of 2007 but the Ladok3-project did not begin from the spring of 2012. The project was named the Ladok3-project.
This presentation will discuss the different phases the project has gone through, the experiences learned and the factors that made the project successful.
Some of the difficulties the project had to deal with were the vagueness of what is required of the system, in other words when are all of the institutions satisfied with the features of the system. Another difficulty was to compare the features from Ladok2 versus Ladok3 and problems transferring data from Ladok 2 to Ladok3. Finally, the Ladok3-project has been run as an agile project but the first assumption was that the system development should be complete before put in production.
Some of the success factors that will be discussed are the ways the difficulties overcome. One factor was the projects ability to adjust to new circumstances and another the Institutions attitude to the different phases of the project. The biggest change was when the project was divided into two phases and the development focused on the needs from one medium sized Higher Education Institution in phase one and a large Institution in phase two.
The Ladok3-project was finished in March 2018 and in December 2018 all of the Institutions had put the new system in production.

Distributed services and a warehouse as an ecosystem on science and higher education

Marta Niemczyk, Marek Michajłowicz, Jarosław Protasiewicz, Emil Podwysocki, Sylwia Rosiak, Łukasz Błaszczyk, Iwona Kucharska

Paper #: 22 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Enterprise Application Integration
Type: Scientific
Abstract: In this study, we demonstrate the concept of a new information ecosystem on science and higher education in Poland. We focus on a distributed architecture of services and a data integrating warehouse. The data warehouse is tailored to be well-suited to micro-services, the modern information system architecture. In addition, we show examples of descriptive and predictive analytics in the data warehouse, which assist policymakers in making decisions. The primary outcome of the study is a new architecture, which relies on combining the data warehouse and micro-services into one ecosystem of distributed services for science and higher education. We hope that our experiences and concepts will be beneficial to those who face challenges in redesigning of existing information systems.

NeIC’s CodeRefinery Project

Bjørn Lindi, Radovan Bast, Thor Wikfeldt

Paper #: 71 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Agile Methodoligies
Type: Scientific
Abstract: The Nordic e-Infrastructure Collaboration (NeIC) launched the CodeRefinery in late 2016 with team members from all Nordic countries except Iceland. The aim of the project was to develop and offer workshops in common software practices, especially how to collaborate with others when working with software source code and data. The target audience was researchers primarily at academic institutions in the Nordic region, in particular Post Docs and PhD-students with another background than computer science.
When the first phase of the project ended in September 2018, the project had organized thirteen 3-day workshops across the Nordic region (Denmark, Norway, Finland, Sweden and Iceland) with more than 400 participants altogether.
The workshops were very well received, providing an opportunity for many to improve their software skills. The workshop contained lessons for the individual (how do you track your changes), for the group (how do you cooperate when submitting/proposing code changes), and for the community (how do you share your work with others).
The long-term impact of CodeRefinery workshops was measured through a post-workshop survey which was sent out to all former participants 3-6 months after attending a workshop. The two graphs below show how former participants use various software development tools after attending a workshop (left), and how their code and collaboration with colleagues has changed (right). These results are based on 71 survey responses obtained to date — 48% of which are graduate students, 13% postdocs, 9% researchers, 9% assistant/associate/full professors and 19% other occupations (e.g staff scientists, scientific programmers).
The project have learned that here is strong need for software engineering skills across a wide range of scientific disciplines. This paper discusses Coderefinery’s experiences.

 

Campus for the future III:
Digital Learning Environments for the future
Plenary Panel
Thursday 10:05 – 11:00
Location: TBA

Sally Jorjani, Farzana Latif and Julie Voce

We partner with UCISA to look at how on-campus learning is supported by the digital learning environment (also known as virtual learning environment or learning platform).

We present a toolkit to support universities looking to review or replace their current learning environment. Our panellists Sally Jorjani, Farzana Latif and Julie Voce will share their experiences and answer your questions.

 

Parallel session 13:
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

Using technology in new learning spaces to create a common focus in collaborative learning

Guri Sivertsen Korpås, Trine Højberg Andersen

Paper #: 66 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Innovation in Learning Spaces
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: In the last decade, there has been an innovation in new learning spaces that are designed to support collaborative learning by use of technology. They help facilitating changes in the learning culture, and promotes student active learning. In these learning spaces, the goal is to have students actively working together and thereby learn together. The teacher’s role is no longer to give monologues but to guide and assist the students through the learning process.
One way of achieving a good learning situation is by creating a common focus for the students. This common focus can be created by use of technology in several ways. We have used interactive whiteboards and student response systems to achieve this. Either way, the technology gives access to the learning process and immediate information about the students’ learning outcomes and it serves as a meeting point between students and teachers.
In this presentation, we share our experiences from several innovative learning spaces at NTNU, and reflect on how technology supports collaborative learning and how this influences the teacher role as well as the student role.

A case study in learning spaces for physical-virtual two-campus interaction

Robin Støckert, Alexander Refsum Jensenius, Anna Xambó Sedó, Øivind Brandtsegg

Paper #: 81 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Next Generation Digital Learning Environments;Innovation in Learning Spaces;Supporting Active & Blended Learning
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) Teaching Excellence is an integrated and wide-ranging initiative aimed at helping NTNU to achieve its goal to providing education characterized by quality at a high international level. The initiative consists of a portfolio of development measures, with the purpose to develop innovative approaches to learning, teaching and assessment.
SALTO (Student Active Learning in a Two campus Organization) is one of the development projects founded for the period 2018-2020. The project is based on a study where the students are divided into two campuses. The aim is to develop effective pedagogy with activity at both campuses at the same time, with a particular emphasis on interaction, resource sharing and communication/collaboration. The project aims to allow students and teachers to explore educational, methodological, and technological solutions together.
A new joint master’s program in “Music, Communication and Technology” (MCT) between NTNU and University in Oslo (UiO), constitutes the framework for the SALTO project. The common pedagogy, technology and shared learning space between the two Universities, is hereafter defined as the Portal.
SALTO will utilize the MCT Portal as an arena/living lab to evolve and optimize student active learning scenarios. In this paper, we elaborate on the issues, challenges and potential with three different scenarios, which emerged during the first 6 months of the project:

1. The Opening Ceremony between NTNU and UiO, with a combo of talks and performance.
2. A live Christmas concert connecting two high schools 500 km apart (Trondheim-Oslo).
3. An intense cross-university course with a combo of preparations, lectures and hands-on exercises.

 

Parallel session 14:
Leadership & management (1 presentation)
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (3 presentations)
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

Guru Secure Exam Paper Management and Validation

David Molloy

Paper #: 72 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Business Process Re-engineering
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Processes around the production, review and distribution of physical examination papers can be problematic for institutions and these typically involve significant workload on both academics and administrators. In addition, traditional approaches commonly result in sub-standard quality output, poor adherence to deadlines, significant security vulnerabilities and a lack of institutional audit oversight. Standard practice in a number of countries sees additional, cumbersome, though valuable quality processes involving peer review of examination papers through the model of ‘External Examination’.
In this paper, the author describes how these challenges were tackled through the re-engineering of the examination business processes within Dublin City University (DCU). By identifying the end-to-end needs of all involved stakeholders, it was possible to design and build a bespoke examination and review system. This Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solution has managed all examination papers across DCU for the past four years and has seen external adoption in a number of third-party institutions.
Adoption of the new approach has resulted in a wide-range of benefits for institutions, including quality enhancement, document security, complete audit oversight, improved deadlines, lower workloads, more advanced paper archives, data protection compliance and novel new approaches around accreditation and institutional quality review.

Cheating Detection: Identifying Fraud in Digital Exams

Bastian Küppers, Julia Opgen-Rhein, Thomas Eifert, Ulrik Schroeder

Paper #: 52 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Assessment & Feedback
Type: Scientific
Abstract: Digital exams are more and more adapted in institutions of higher education, but the problem of preventing cheating in those examinations is not yet solved completely. Electronic exams potentially allow for fraud beyond plagiarism, because the usage of computers during the exam technically enables the students to communicate with each other or to access online resources. Therefore, possibilities to detect impersonation and prohibited communication between the students in-situ and a-posteriori are desirable. To implement these measures, several techniques from the fields of artificial intelligence and statistical analysis can be used. This paper describes the required conditions for both, in-situ and a-posteriori detection, as well as the techniques that can be applied.

Supervised Categorization of Open Response Feedback in Higher Education

Ville Kivimäki, Thomas Bergström, Jiri Lallimo, Alex Jung

Paper #: 18 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Assessment & Feedback
Type: Technological
Abstract: In higher education, course feedback from students constitutes a key data point for course development and teachers’ personal development. Typically this data consists of Likert scale questions and open response items. Likert-type data is rather easy to process programmatically. However, studies suggest that open response items written in natural language provide qualitative and situated insights for practical course development. In large-scale courses, processing open responses through human labour becomes unfeasible in volume, too complex by content and might lead to serious bias. In an age of quality assurance, tenure track systems and large-scale courses on digital platforms, teachers need more tools to process natural language data collected on their courses. In this paper, we introduce the concept of applying machine learning methods for classifying open response student feedback data in a higher education institution (HEI) context to support course development based on summative course feedback. We develop a model for data processing and apply it in Microsoft’s Azure Machine Learning Studio. For model validation, we use human-processed training data consisting of 1580 feedback items. We end up suggesting semi-structured formulation for collecting open response items as a part of summative course feedback, based on our findings and related literature.

Conduction of Exams: Analogous vs. Digital

Bastian Küppers, Thomas Eifert, Ulrik Schroeder

Paper #: 53 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Scientific
Abstract: Concerning both the formalities and the preparation, conduction and grading of the exam. As with digital exams, often security issues are mentioned as reasons against them. This paper focuses on the conduction of the exam and points out why digital exams cannot only provide a similar notion of security and practicality as analogous exams, but how digital exams can exceed the analogous variants of exams. For the course of the paper, exams for programming courses in a computer science study course as well as a math course will serve as an example to illustrate certain points.

 

Parallel session 15:
Leadership & management (3 presentations)
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (1 presentation)
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

Supporting System Accreditation through a University Wide Quality Management Dashboard

Uta Christoph, Marius Politze, Bernd Decker

Paper #: 55 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Institutional Analytics & Business Intelligence
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Since 2008, RWTH Aachen has committed itself to a guided, strategic development process to expand quality assurance in teaching. In its institutional strategy Excellent Teaching and in the Teaching Strategy funded by the federal-state program, RWTH set the particular goal of further developing quality assurance in studies and teaching. Additionally to these strategic goals RWTH is also concerned to meet the requirements posed by the Bologna Process.
In order to support the quality management process and system accreditation, RWTH established a quality management software, the data cockpit. Data cockpit is a SharePoint based web application that enables involved parties to maintain this continuous improvement process by setting quality goals and evaluating key performance indicators (KPIs) based on aggregated data from various existing source systems, as well as defining and tracing action measures and generating evaluation reports for external audits and follow up evaluations in the cycle.

Tableau vs Cognos: “ad-hoc” vs “enterprise” business analytics platforms – a view from a University analytics office

Keith Fortowsky

Paper #: 64 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Institutional Analytics & Business Intelligence
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The Institutional Research (IR) office at the University of Regina (Canada) has been a Tableau user since 2006 and is currently leading a new University-wide installation of IBM Cognos Analytics (version 11). Tableau and Cognos are, respectively, exemplars of tools to support “ad-hoc analytics” (Tableau) versus tools which are oriented to a more comprehensive “enterprise” analytics platform (Cognos).
Our in-depth experience with both Tableau and Cognos Analytics allows us to provide a hands-on comparison of both products, which will be of great interest to institutions considering either product (or both), or more generically, considering an ad-hoc tool (e.g. Tableau, MS Power BI, Qlik) versus an enterprise platform (e.g. Cognos, SAS, Information Builders).
In addition to our direct experience with these analytics platforms, we feel that we are at the vanguard of an emerging trend – a much more prominent role of IR offices in implementation of enterprise-wide data analytics. This is generally due to IR offices’ experience in bridging the gap between ad-hoc IR analytics, and the trusted enterprise data sources which are maintained by the Information Services (IS) department.
In our opinion, a proper comparison of Tableau and Cognos requires a comparison of the typical roles of IR and IS departments in a University setting, and how each product fits within these roles, in order to understand, plan and resource an integrated analytics platform that will support the campus of the future.
Keith Fortowsky has been Director, Institutional Research at the University of Regina since 2004. In June 2016 he was given the additional responsibility of Data Governance Officer. Keith has 30 years of experience working to extract consistent and coherent meaning from large corporate datasets.
www.linkedin.com/in/kfortowsky/

Towards a Lean Assessment Model for Evaluating the Maturity Level of Business Intelligence and Analytics Initiatives in Higher Education

Elsa Cardoso, Xiaomeng Su

Paper #: 86 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Institutional Analytics & Business Intelligence
Type: Scientific
Abstract: This paper aims to propose a lean and yet adequate maturity model that can be used by Higher Education Institutions to benchmark the maturity of their Business Intelligence (BI) and analytics systems. We will study the relevant BI and Analytics maturity models in literature, and based on this study, develop a lean assessment model that could then be used to benchmark European universities in the context of future activities of the EUNIS BI Special Interest Group (SIG-BI).

Letting Students Design their Own Dashboards -Learning Analytics from a Student’s Perspective

Alena Droit, Bodo Rieger

Paper #: 60 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Learning Analytics
Type: Scientific
Abstract: Learning Analytics (LA) can bring many benefits for learners, teachers and higher education organizations themselves. However, there are also many concerns, especially among students, who are the main target group and at the same time the main suppliers of the data. In order for students to use learning analytics services, which are often provided in a visual format, they should be involved from the start. This can reduce the risk of LA being rejected by the students and the LA dashboards can be designed efficiently and sensibly according to the students’ requirements. Therefore, we have conducted a study with 139 participants of a business intelligence course, which aims to provide insights for the development and implementation of LA at the University of Osnabrück, with the help of a questionnaire and a case study in which students were asked visualize learning data in a Tableau dashboard.

 

Parallel session 16:
ICT in Research
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

OMEGA-PSIR: An ecosystem for Building University CRIS Network in Poland

Henryk Rybiński, Jakub Koperwas, Łukasz Skonieczny, Wacław Struk

Paper #: 8 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Research Information Systems & Research Evaluation
Type: Technological
Abstract: OMEGA-PSIR is an institutional knowledge base system, developed by a team of Warsaw University of Technology (WUT) (Rybinski et al., 2015). Since 2013 OMEGA-PSIR has been used as University Knowledge Base. Its main idea was to integrate various university needs, therefore it was decided that the system should cover functionalities of Institutional Repository (IR), Current Research Information System (CRIS), and Research Profiling System (RPS).
Soon after installing the system at WUT, the system aroused interest among the Polish universities. Since 2015 the system has been adopted by 12 Polish universities. A special User Group has been launched for coordinating the system development.
In the paper we will discuss how this bottom-up initiative of the Polish universities may become a successful approach for building a network of the institutional CRIS systems, cooperating with the national CRIS system. To this end we will discuss functionalities of the system, in particular, we will show to which extent combining CRIS, IR and RPS makes OMEGA-PSIR so attractive to the universities. We also discuss how the low costs of the system deployments of at the universities can be preserved. In addition, we will present how the functionality of the system can essentially improve the data quality, and at the same time reduce the maintenance costs. An important factor concerning interoperability with other systems will be discussed. We will discuss various aspects of interoperability with global systems. We briefly present a kind of an ecosystem that has emerged around OMEGA-PSIR in the last few years.
Last but not least, it will be demonstrated how our approach can be applied/reused in other countries.

Bridge of Knowledge as the Internet platform for R2R and R2B cooperation

Henryk Krawczyk, Paweł Lubomski

Paper #: 32 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Research Information Systems & Research Evaluation, Opening Research Data, Open Access & Digital Publishing
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Research-to-research (R2R) and research-to-business (R2B) cooperation is analysed. The paper shows how IT technology can be used to support and stimulate it. In our university we proposed the two-step strategy. Firstly, we tried to improve collaboration among scientists in order to develop R2R activities. Secondly, we focused on R2B projects that stimulate the promising scientists to take part in various innovative activities carried out in cooperation with the industry representatives. Based on well-known good practices, to support such a strategy, a special Internet platform was designed and implemented. Its name is “Bridge of Knowledge”. The platform architecture, its functionality and some other aspects of the development process are described. The platform was developed and introduced at the Gdańsk University of Technology. It has been available online for nearly 2 years and has been attracting more and more new visitors and returning users. With the use of advanced analytic tools and on the basis of the organisation resources a few use cases of R2R and R2B cooperation were analysed and described.

The sciebo.RDS Project: Who says research data man-agement has to be complicated?

Raimund Vogl, Anne Thoring, Dominik Rudolph, Holger Angenent

Paper #: 12 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Research Management Services
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The sciebo.RDS project aims to create easy-to-use, integrated research data management workflows for scientists. Based on the established cloud storage service “sciebo – the Campuscloud”, we will develop tools and interfaces that serve this purpose optimally. In concrete terms, tools for creating data management plans, tools for data analyses, and repositories for long-time archiving have to be connected and integrated. The project is oriented towards specific use cases, especially from the humanities, and always closely aligned to the users’ needs.

Research Data management. What should the University Computer Central do about it?

Soren Berglund, Johan Carlsson

Paper #: 37 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Research Management Services
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The volume of research data within institutions are growing. A challenge is how to store data, retrieve data and manage data in a secure way. To rationalize research and data gathering, a vision of reuse of data is rising. This combined with a trend for Open Data and Data Access, is important for an institution to handle data in a controlled way. GDPR also puts constraints on how institutions can collect data and store it, and overall manage data in an ethical manner. Each researcher and the involved departments are in practice responsible for the data used in research. But in what way can institutional central computer centers contribute to successful data lifecycle management and processing of research data.

 

Parallel session 17:
Leadership & management (1 presentation)
ICT Infrastructure & Security (3 presentations)
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

Tightening the grip: Governance of information security in the higher education sector in Norway

Agnethe Sidselrud, Rolf Sture Normann, Tommy Tranvik, Sadia Zaka, Ingrid Olsen Fossum

Paper #: 58 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Identity & Access Management
Type: Scientific
Abstract: The Ministry of Higher Education in Norway introduces a governance model for sector governance of information security and data privacy in the higher education sector. UNT – The Norwegian Directorate for ICT and Joint Services for Higher Education and Research is responsible for the practical implementation of the model in the HE-sector. This paper presents the background for establishing the model, the main contents and the gains for the higher education institutions. The goal for the presentation is to share knowledge, best practice and inspire the various stakeholders to strengthen their focus on governance and leadership of information technology and data privacy on both the institutional and national level.

Framework for handling of ICT security incidents in higher education and research in Norway

Øivind Høiem, Rune Sydskjør

Paper #: 75 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: Information Security
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The purpose of this framework for managing ICT security incidents is to clarify the efforts of relevant actors to better enable public authorities in Norway to handle serious ICT security incidents that affect across sectors.
In this way, the framework should contribute to more efficient handling of serious ICT security incidents, from institutional level to political level, through good utilization of society’s total resources. It shall also contribute to creating a good situation overview through aggregation and coordination of information on all relevant ICT security events.
The lecture describes how this framework is implemented in the Norwegian sector for higher education and research.
In accordance with the Norwegian national strategy for digital security, the framework for handling ICT security incidents is based on the fact that sector-specific response teams should have a central role in incident management. The framework sets requirements for which tasks the response team must take care of and which characteristics the response team must have. Uninett CERT is the sector’s response team and has been delegated responsibility with the operationalization of the framework.
The framework also describes what capabilities the institutions themselves are expected to have related to handling ICT security incidents.
In addition, the framework describes key players and the distribution of responsibilities between actors with a role in incident management.

SecDoc – GDPR-Compliant Documentation at the University of Münster

Thorsten Küfer, Dustin Gawron

Paper #: 74 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: Information Security
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: SecDoc is a web-based application for GDPR-compliant processing activity documentation which focuses on easy setup and usage. It has been developed at the University of Münster and is in use there. The goal is joint development and use by multiple universities. Future use should specifically address the IT security perspective of the technical and organisational measures in accordance with common standards (ISO 27000 (International Organization for Standardization, 2019), IT Grundschutz (Federal Office for Information Security (BSI))).

Services for Sensitive Data – an eInfrastructure to facilitate research on special categories of personal data

Gard Thomassen

Paper #: 87 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: Infrastructure, Platforms & Networks
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Through the Services for Sensitive Data ecosystem (TSD) the University of Oslo delivers a suitable and secure eInfrastructure for nation-wide usage. A wide range of research projects are handling data that according to GDPR are special categories of personal data, and therefore should be handled with special care. The private cloud Platform as a Service today hosts more than 3000 researchers from more than 560 different research projects storing more than 2,5 petabytes of data. TSD facilitates data collection services (web-based, smarthphone/tablet apps and IoT), cross-border collaborations, supercomputing, massive storage and other specialized services. Lately TSD has focused on developing easy-to-use end-user services including easy data import and export, a self-service portal and a digital dynamic consent portal.

 

Parallel session 18:
ICT Infrastructure & Security
Thursday 13:30 – 14:50

 

MyAcademicID: a European Student eID Scheme for Higher Education

Victor Aguilar, Jean-Paul Roumegas, Joachim Wyssling, Joao Bacelar

Paper #: 46 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Secure & Seamless Cross-Border Electronic Transactions — eID
Type: Technological
Abstract: MyAcademicID focuses on developing a European Student eID Scheme for Higher Education. This will allow students to identify and register themselves electronically at higher education institutions when going abroad on exchange and to access different student services in Europe.
The digital infrastructure supporting the European Student eID for Higher Education will be the result of the integration of eduGAIN and the European Student Identifier, and of the establishment of digital bridges between them and the eIDAS interoperability framework being rolled out by the European institutions.
Moreover, the project seeks to integrate the European student eID into four e-services: the Online Learning Agreement, the Erasmus+ Dashboard, the Erasmus+ Mobile App and the PhD Hub Platform. Additionally, the Portuguese national student ID (Estudante ID) will be made interoperable with the European Student eID, showcasing how national identity providers can join this digital scheme. Future integration with Erasmus Without Paper is also foreseen.
The scalability of the project and the potential for integration of the European Student eID with a myriad of other student services (both online and offline), not only pave the way for seamless student mobility and a stronger, reinforced European student status throughout Europe, but make MyAcademicID a key component of the European Student Card Initiative spearheaded by the European Commission.

Supporting Student Mobility — news from the EMREX network

Tor Fridell, Geir Vangen, Janina Mincer-Daszkiewicz

Paper #: 77 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Secure & Seamless Cross-Border Electronic Transactions — eID
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: The EMREX network, initially co-funded by Erasmus+, addresses the EU 2020 target that 20% of higher education students should be mobile during their studies. EMREX focuses on the electronic exchange of student achievement records between higher education institutions and together with other initiatives, like Erasmus Without Paper, ESC, ESMO, SEAL, MyAcademicID, is part of a wider set of activities supporting digitalization of student mobility.
In 2016-2017, the EMREX project ran a field trial in Finland, Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Italy and Poland, testing new ways to make the administration of student mobility easier by sending data digitally. Over 100 students from 30+ HEIs in these countries logged into their student portals at their home universities and collected their study achievements electronically from the host universities, without the need to send paper copies. Since then, the network has converted into a working production environment. EMREX is spreading out to new countries and provides more value to users by augmenting the service catalogue.
This paper aims at presenting news from the EMREX network — on development, expansion, and plans for the future. The EMREX solution will be demonstrated live during the session.

ESMO Project Results: Minimising Federation Costs for Boosting Service and Data Convergence

Francisco Jose, Arago Monzonis

Paper #: 16 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Secure & Seamless Cross-Border Electronic Transactions — eID
Type: –
Abstract: The ESMO project, which is an acronym for eIDAS-enabled Student Mobility, is an EC co-funded project that finished this year. The goal of the project was to promote the adoption of the eIDAS support infrastructure of CEF eID building block. To this end and based on the experience and learning obtained in former projects, the project was designed to produce and deploy the ESMO Gateway, a tool able to be deployed in many interoperability scenarios in order to minimise customisation needs of the existing services and data sources, especially those already available for identity federations like eIDAS or EduGAIN, on the academic sector.
ESMO also aimed at using the designed Gateway capabilities to deploy a support trust network infrastructure to provide added value to the eIDAS network, by facilitating the access and aggregation of academic sector data. This way, the benefits from eIDAS and the higher education sources, like EduGAIN, can be brought together paving the path for future convergence and strategic alignment of the different stakeholders.
In the present communication we will analyse the achievements of the ESMO project during its execution, as well as the roadmap for sustainability and adoption of the Gateway and the network, which includes forming an open source community and seeking the support of academic sector reference institutions.

eIDAS eID & eSignature for HEI/EDU Applications

Hermann Strack

Paper #: 45 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Secure & Seamless Cross-Border Electronic Transactions — eID
Type: Scientific
Abstract: Further use cases at HEI/EDU management were implemented as combined eIDAS eID & eSignature [2,3] based hybrid web accounts & applications to support cross boarder/domain usage & mobility (EU) for students and researchers as well as for study applicants for enrollment/eDiploma together with “Stiftung für Hochschulzulassung” (SfH) in the EU CEF project StudIES+ (formerly TREATS ). The project StudIES+ is funded by EU CEF program 2015 (project “TREATS – Trans-European Authenti¬cation Services”[6], Action No. 2015-DE-IA-0065). An insight look to ongoing work by the EU CEF 2017 funded project StudIES is given (Student’s identification and electronic signature services [5,6,7,9]), Action No. 2017-DE-IA-0022 (the projects are co-financed by the local government of Saxony-Anhalt (MW)), especially to the eNotar services/platforms for multiparty signing & notarization use cases like eDiploma/eTOR at HEI/EDU. This solution (federally scalable) would enable not only HEIs like universities to digitize and optimize their application process for studies. Every organization having an application process where authenticated diplomas are an essential input would have an enormous benefit out of this solution (like SfH). SfH pursues two tasks of services for the admission to study at German non-private colleges and universities on behalf of the German federal states. What SfH really needs to optimize their processes are also German diplomas as

• Scan of the original document (as PDF) & signed notarization
• Plain data like grade, name of certifying org., date of certification, type of qualifica-tion etc. (e.g. in XML/ELMO [4]) to make that data computable within the process.

Getting that prototype SfH will be able at least to test that optimization and digitizing of its application and verification process.

 

Campus for the future IV:
Developing the campus of the future: a game of snakes and ladders
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

Gill Ferrell, Eleanor Magennis

We partnered with AUDE, SCHOMS and UCISA to produce the snakes and ladders game: a staff development resource to help those planning learning space projects.
Join us to play the game.

You will gain an understanding of the different job roles impacted by learning space development and the perspectives they bring. You will work through a project simulation where you have to take some difficult decisions as a cross-functional group and you will be able to use and adapt the game in their own setting.

 

Parallel session 19:
Student Card Services
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

 

Challenges and solutions of a citywide Student ID System for nine HEIs

Tamas Molnar

Paper #: 27 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: Student Card Services
Type: Technological
Abstract: The Campuscard system is the result of a project of an alliance of nine colleges and universities in Berlin with the goal of replacing the local paper-based student ID of each institution with a modern, multifunctional standardized citywide card system. The systems was introduced at the first universities in 2016 and has become with over 130 000 active cards one of the largest uniform student card systems in Europe. This scope presents a challenge for the management of the system operation not only because of the large number of students but also because of the differences in the business processes of the participating HEIs. The solution for this problem was an ITSM based approach for the change and incident management of the system. The innovative, kiosk-based issuing process and the use of best practices for the service management enabled us to create an efficient and cost-effective solution for a citywide system with over a hundred thousand users.

The deployment of the European student card in Europe and beyond, and the services for mobile students

Jean-Paul Roumegas, François Pradal

Paper #: 30 View extended abstract
Theme: OpenX & Interoperability
Subtrack: Student Card Services
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: “The European Student Card : a passport to Services for the students in mobility”
The presentation will trace the results of the Strategic Partnership cofounded by the EU, which, after pilot phase 2016 -2018, entered in a general implementation all across Europe.
The success among the higher education institutions, as well as the developments of the y services for the mobility : access to the university libraries, services with electronic payment system, access to cultural events, health, sports, transports in the local partnerships which generate the multiservices student cards.
In the Bologna process and the Erasmus+ program, the mobility requests improvements in order to be easier, seamless and offer access to more students, in particular students with social needs.
At the same time according to the eIDAS regulation all organizations providing public digital services in an EU Member State must recognize the electronic identification of all EU Member States as from 29 September 2018.
The development of multiservices cards all across Europe, through partnership between the higher education main players, such as universities, organizations of student services and even local authorities, naturally aims to take a European dimension.
In France, the CNCE, comité national cartes étudiantes, has at the same time the mission of contributing to the rise of the Multiservices cards and the European Student card.
Access and security are compatible if the access is made possible through a digital authentication on the campuses, the labs, spaces of student life : halls of residence, restaurants, events, cultural premises, etc….
It prepares the future European portal of e services for an access to on line services but also the recognition of student cards everywhere.
The European Student card is not a new card, it is simply the current campus cards with a new dimension : european and beyond, global.

 

Parallel session 20:
Leadership & management (2 presentations)
ICT Infrastructure & Security (1 presentation)
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

 

Information Management @ Universities: a model proposal

Maria Manuela Pinto

Paper #: 63 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Managing the Digital Transformation
Type: Scientific
Abstract: This communication aims to present the main results of a research in the field of Information Management (IM), assumed as a cross-sectional and applied area in Information Science (IS).
It comprises a diagnosis made at Portuguese Public Universities, complemented by a more detailed study performed at the University of Porto (U.Porto) involving traditional information services (Archives, Libraries, Documentation Centres and Museums). This is an area that, in the last few decades, has sustained epistemological and theoretical changes which have impacted on training and investigative models, functional contents and professional profiles, as well as emerging services such as Informatics and the role of IM (which at U.Porto is embodied in an organic unit and SIGARRA Information Managers) that tend to dominate information management in the digital milieu.
The info-communicational flow is considered in its several stages and contexts and managed under the concept of information (human and social phenomenon). IM is defined as the study, conception, implementation and development of processes and services related to the info-communicational flow, serving to build implementation models for maximum efficiency and profitability.
The prospective vision that is derived from this research path is embodied in the Active and Permanent Information System Management Model (MGSI-AP) typified as systemic-informational and organizational/managerial. It is intended to ensure a balance which is based on the dual dimension of diagnosis and action, and in the development of the principle of flexibility, among others. The aim is a multidimensional modelling whose main instrument is the Systemic Analysis Matrix which integrates, as interacting and inseparable components: the social/human dimension (with the Active and Permanent Information System which addresses the Information and People Management System, focusing on competencies, skills and experiences); and the technological dimension (with the Technological Information System). The respective components, processes, and IM services will be specified and characterized.

The taming of Masaryk University websites

Pavel Budík

Paper #: 61 View extended abstract
Theme: ICT Infrastructure & Security
Subtrack: Infrastructure, Platforms & Networks
Type: Technological
Abstract: Since universities are inherently decentralized, each faculty – or even each department – can have their own way of managing and creating websites. Usually, there is no strategy as to when a website is needed or how to incorporate it with the others. Therefore, the need of presenting all university activities and projects online can spawn a tremendous amount of different websites. This causes a broad spectrum of issues: personal – who can update that website or create that content; technological – how to add a function to that website; security – hacked sites sending spam, used for phishing, etc.; or trouble with consistency of content or design – one type of content presented multiple times, in an inconsistent or even contradictory way.
In this contribution, we give insights into our approach to dealing with these issues at Masaryk University. Specifically, we discuss how we managed to start a widespread adoption of a single technology, unify design, and at least partially resolve some of the content problems for about 130 websites. We present a centralized content management system which helps tackle the security, technology and partially personal issues, as well as a design framework which ensures consistency of the websites’ looks.

SUDI – Single Unified Digital Identity – A Unified Identity Life Cycle Management platform for HEI – UTAD Case Study

António Rio-Costa, Silvio Capela, Alberto Vasconcelos, Frederico Branco, Elsa Justino

Paper #: 78 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Leadership & management
Type: Scientific
Abstract: In a higher education institution, the user electronic information is usually scattered among various places and systems that provide services according to their requirements. The digital information contained in the various systems needs to be transversal to many digital identities, each one representing a user. This leads to several issues when managing the users’ rights on the access to technological infrastructures and resources, mainly because users have different types of rights and restrictions according to their role in the institution.
Because of that problem, in 2007, the University of Trás-os-Montes e Alto Douro (UTAD) created an identity management system that became responsible for managment all digital identity information since creation to removal providing an Identity Management (IDM) solution, that it was at the time enough to respond to the University needs. Twelve years later the UTAD requirements, and in higher education intuitions in general, become more demanding, more mature gained importance in the information systems ecosystem. What led to a necessarily upgrade of the identity management infrastructure, to rethink and reengineer all the identity lifecycle management in the institution in the light of the best practices and standards.
The current paper, reports on an ongoing project that aims to improve the existing identity management system in UTAD and to present the basis of a proposal for a common Identity lifeclycle framework, under development, transversal to higher education institutions (HEIs) aligned with the identified best practices and standards.

 

Parallel session 21:
Leadership & management (2 presentations)
Learning, Teaching & Student Experience (1 presentation)
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

 

Project Digital Business Travel Management

Christoph Arndt

Paper #: 10 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Business Process Re-engineering
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: At Freie Universität Berlin, an electronic workflow for applying for and accounting business trips based on the SAP system, including an electronic file, is currently being introduced. In the future, all documents and receipts that arise during a business trip are to be stored here digitally. The previous paper-based procedure for applying for and accounting for business trips is extremely labour-intensive, very cumbersome due to the many media breaks, and no longer up to date.
In the future, the portal will also be used to record receipts. The receipts are thus already assigned to the trip and do not have to be entered again by the employees of the business travel agency. The paper receipts are then scanned and made available in the electronic travel file. The receipts, which already exist electronically, are uploaded by the employee when they are entered and assigned to the trip.
The project is part of the digitization strategy of the administrative IT at Freie Universität Berlin.In addition to the targeted optimization and mobilization of administrative services, the issue of sustainability also plays an important role here. To the extent that formerly paper-based work processes are replaced by digital workflows and electronic files, resources such as paper, office supplies and energy can be saved (“green IT”).

Information Technology Service Management to streamline decision making in UTAD – An e-governance case study

António Rio-Costa, José Bessa, Alberto Vasconcelos, Elsa Justino

Paper #: 62 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Business Process Re-engineering
Type: Scientific
Abstract: The application of the concept of e-Governance has been verified in several countries and one of the areas that has manifested greater interest in its application to Education, with a major focus for HEIs. In Portugal, the interest in e-Governance has been verified in several HEIs, as it is possible to verify in this article through the case study of the University of Trás-os-Montes and Alto Douro (UTAD). Using an Enterprise Architecture (EA) to manage its e-Governance component, this institution has identified the need to invest in Information Technology Service Management (ITSM) to streamline decision making in IT infrastructure management and user support. Higher education institutions (HEIs) make big efforts to provide more efficient services, to increase the means of communication between the parties and to manage in a more expeditious way the business processes and the information that they originate, aiming to obtain satisfaction and quality of the services provided. In order to operationalize these efforts, to dynamize and accelerate in a secure and permanent way the access and the delivery of information, we’ve focused on resources supported by the Information Systems/Information and Communication Technologies (IS/ICT) binomial, which refers to the application of the e-Governance concept. Given the complexity of managing e-Governance, institutions often rely on Business Process Management (BPM) frameworks, and Enterprise Architectures (EA).

Atomi – Automated Student Affairs Office Service for Digital Certificates and Signatures

Juha-Pekka Pihlajakoski, Jaakko Rannila, Lauri Stigell

Paper #: 44 View extended abstract
Theme: Learning, Teaching & Student Experience
Subtrack: Digital Technologies & the Learner Experience
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: Atomi is the most rapidly expanding digital signature service used in the Finnish HEI’s. With Atomi, a student can order for example certification of studies or study records.
Atomi can be integrated into the student information system (SIS) and it can retrieve data from the SIS using service interfaces. When a student has made an order in the user interface, Atomi attaches the information from a SIS to an existing document template. The document is filled with correct information from the student information system. After the creation of the document, Atomi creates a digital signature to the document. All this happens in a matter of seconds.
The student can download the document from Atomi and send it for recipients, for instance for the hiring employer. A recipient can verify that the document is genuine, and it has not been modified after the signature. This can be made with an Atomi validation service or by for instance Adobe Reader’s existing functionalities.
Atomi is developed in microservice architecture fashion and by using modern user interface technologies. Atomi supports also PDF/A conversion services thus being compatible with the requirements of long-term preservation of data.
Oulu University of Applied Sciences (OUAS) started using the Atomi service in production at the beginning of 2019. At the first phase, OUAS enabled students to take two different digitally signed self-service reports: transcript of records and study certificate. Based on the number of reports taken out of the system within the first month, it is expected that OUAS reaches the return of investment already six months after the deployment.
OUAS will broaden the use of Atomi in becoming months by putting more self-service reports available for the students. In addition, OUAS is considering starting to use Atomi also in degree certificates signatures thus proceeding completely to electronic certificates.

 

Parallel session 22:
Software development
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

 

Decentralized verification infrastructure for documents anchored to blockchain

Mirko Stanić, Matija Pužar

Paper #: 73 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Blockchain in Higher Education & Research
Type: Technological
Abstract: Digitizing student credentials presents several unique problems. Traditionally the issuers must provide infrastructure for hosting digital documents or chose to outsource it to a third party. In this solution, dangers of potential data breach can never be fully mitigated and the validity of these documents is automatically tied to the existence of the institution that issued them. With the advent of blockchain technology it has become possible to store proofs of existence on a distributed database thus eliminating the need for hosting complex infrastructure as well as rendering data breaches impossible and enabling ownership of the documents to be efficiently managed in the digital space.

EUNIS 2019: Log analytics using ELK stack on Cloud platform

Jordi Cuní, Estefania Muñoz

Paper #: 9 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Enterprise Application Integration
Type: Technological
Abstract: Elasticsearch is an open-source, RESTful, distributed search and analytics engine built on Apache Lucene. Elasticsearch is typically used for loging analytics, full-text searching, security intelligence, business analytics and operational intelligence use cases. Logstash is a tool to collect, index, forward events and log messages. Kibana is an open source data visualization plugin for Elasticsearch. It provides visualization capabilities on top of the content indexed on an Elasticsearch cluster.
In SIGMA AIE [2] we use this architecture for writing useful information about how the users are using our application and also build dashboards in ELK with online information. We are capable to know how many users are logged in, how long they are connected, what are they request to the application, and if in the GDPR environment they request personal data. All this audits aspects have been solved throught the analisys of the applications logs. Spending little time and effort we have turned our system with an audit layer very necessary for nowadays.

RAD-on: An integrated System of Services for Science – Online Elections for the Council of Scientific Excellence in Poland

Jarosław Protasiewicz, Sylwia Rosiak, Łukasz Błaszczyk, Marta Niemczyk, Marek Michajłowicz, Iwona Kucharska, Emil Podwysocki

Paper #: 20 View extended abstract
Subtrack: Software as a Service
Type: Scientific
Abstract: In this study, we demonstrate an information service which supports online elections for the Council of Scientific Excellence in Poland. It is part of an Integrated System of Services for Science, RAD-on (Reports, Analysis, and Data). More specifically, we show the overall architecture of RAD-on, and the most compelling features of the service for use in online elections. The proposed e-voting system implements three phases, namely: (i) candidate nomination; (ii) electorate approval; and (iii) voting, which includes ballot distribution, voting, and result verification. This approach distinguishes itself from a typical e-voting system by paying more attention more carefully to automatic candidate nomination and voter acquisition. Moreover, we have designed processes in the system that strike a balance between security requirements and accessibility to voters. Finally, we present selected statistics from a real online election for the Council of Scientific Excellence in Poland, which took place recently. We hope that our approach, experiences, and the operational challenges which we encountered during this election, may help develop other e-voting solutions.

 

Parallel session 23:
Benchmarking special interest group
Friday 09:45 – 10:45

 

BENCHEIT: Benchmarking Higher Education IT – An Update on the BM2018 Survey of the EUNIS BencHEIT Task Force

Teemu Seesto, Suvi Valsta, Ilkka Siissalo

Paper #: 7 View extended abstract
Theme: Leadership & management
Subtrack: Benchmarking
Type: Good Practice
Abstract: BencHEIT is a free of charge yearly survey with the aim of establishing a comprehensive knowledge of how cost efficiently IT works in European universities and universities of applied sciences. The BencHEIT is an official EUNIS Task Force that gathers the data and generates an analysis for the CIOs to use in comparing the organization’s IT costs and volumes to their peer’s numbers. It also provides them with tools to start more detailed discussions on how to improve the performance of institute’s IT services. Analysis gives some perspective to common development within higher education IT. This presentation aims to be both a short summary of what the BencHEIT aims and benefits are, but it also aims to give a glimpse of what new results have been obtained during the latest benchmarking round during January–April 2019.