Customer Spotlight: New River Community & Technical College
New River’s IT Response to the Pandemic Like many colleges and universities, since March 2020, New River Community and Technical College has been working and delivering services remotely. This sudden change required us to quickly identify services not yet available to students and remote workers so we could modify these services to make them available for remote users. While this sounds simple enough, it required a good deal of effort to modify several services while we were also working remotely and continuing to meet the daily demands of IT support. When in-house modifications weren’t possible, we had to quickly purchase…
Customer Spotlight: WVROCKS
The Fall 2020 semester marks West Virginia’s Remote Online Collaborative Knowledge System (WVROCKS) ninth year of service to institutions of higher education in the State. The WVROCKS portal delivers quality online courses to Regents Bachelor of Arts (RBA) and Board of Governor’s (BOG) degree students from eight different institutions: Bluefield State College, Concord University, Fairmont State University, Marshall University, Shepherd University, BridgeValley Community & Technical College, Southern Community & Technical College, and West Virginia Northern Community & Technical College. Their winning formula of accelerated, affordable, and accessible courses covering a range of subjects from the humanities to mathematics and sciences…
Customer Spotlight: First2 Network
First2 Network (First2) is an expanding group of people and organizations across West Virginia that seek to improve Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) persistence among rural, first-generation, and other underrepresented STEM students. As many as 7 in 10 first-generation students leave a STEM major within two years. First2 is working to change that. What started out as a pilot project in 2016 to provide rising college freshmen with early exposure to STEM research, has turned into a National Science Foundation (NSF) Inclusion Across Communities of Learners of Underrepresented Discoverers in Engineering and Science (INCLUDES) grant funded initiative. In September…
Customer Spotlight: Morgantown Area Meals on Wheels
The service that the Morgantown Area Meals on Wheels provides is vitally important year-round, but especially during this period of social distancing. Their network of volunteers prepares and delivers an average of 115 fresh and healthy meals each day to clients throughout Morgantown and the organization has experienced an increase in meal requests due to Covid-19. Thankfully they have had 20 new volunteers help out with the daily deliveries. In addition, a number of community partners have stepped forward with donations of food and funding. “The new volunteers have been a blessing, as many of our regular volunteers fall in the more vulnerable…
Tech Tip: How to Prevent “Zoom-Bombing”
Zoom-bombing is the term for when individuals “gate-crash” Zoom meetings. These uninvited guests share their screens to bombard real attendees with disturbing pornographic and/or violent imagery. Most of these are perpetrated via publicly available Zoom links; however, not all depending on your settings. Here are ways to protect you and your guests from falling victim. Read more about what you can do to protect yourself here: https://security.berkeley.edu/resources/cybersecurity-and-covid-19/settings-preventing-zoom-bombing Tips courtesy of Zoom and UC Berkeley
Customer Spotlight: E-Learning at Blue Ridge CTC
The E-Learning department at Blue Ridge Community and Technical College hosted its tenth successful Welcome Back Week in January 2020. The department’s e-learning support awareness program was started in the fall of 2016 to educate students about the support options for Blackboard and online learning while on campus. During the first week of classes each semester, E-Learning sets up a table in the café area on campus to serve as a one-stop shop for login assistance and Blackboard support. In addition to offering on-demand support at a convenient location for students, E-Learning chooses a campaign theme for each Welcome Back…