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Friends and colleagues of UWindsor staff members Nancy and Peter Steeves will gather to offer congratulations on their retirements at an open house reception Friday, February 16.

Nancy Steeves is an admissions and recruitment specialist in the faculty of Graduate Studies and Office of Quality Assurance. Peter Steeves is a computing consultant in the Department of Information Technology Services. The two will retire at the end of the month.

Friday’s reception will run 1:30 to 3:30 p.m. in room 4108, Leddy Library.

woman working on laptop computer

 

UWindsor students now have the same free, unlimited access as faculty and staff to more than 6,000 video tutorials related to business, technology, and creative skills through Lynda.com.

 

As part of the Government of Ontario’s Career KickStart strategy, eCampusOntario has secured access to this self-service training site for students at publicly-funded colleges and universities in the province.

With access to Lynda.com, UWindsor students, faculty, and staff can all leverage resources from this system in a number of different ways:

  • Students can increase career-readiness by undertaking a wide range of business and technology courses.
  • Faculty can incorporate available resources into their curricula, assign video tutorials, and utilize training materials to enhance course work.
  • Staff can look to advance their careers through courses to build on existing skills or develop new ones.

Lynda.com can be accessed at any time and from multiple devices by visiting www.uwindsor.ca/lynda and logging in with a UwinID and password.

Further information regarding UWindsor access to Lynda.com is available on the website of IT Services.

computer screen displaying UWindsor Drupal website

The UWindsor web presence has reached a milestone, reports Information Technology Services, with more than half its sites now present in version 7 of the content management system Drupal.

“For the first time, we officially flipped the balance and have more sites in Drupal 7 than in Drupal 6,” says Marcin Pulcer, assistant director of IT Services. “While we still have some key academic and student services sites remaining to be migrated, we have made progress.”

He notes that more than 2.3 million visits to the site in 2017 represents an increase of 16 per cent over 2016.

“Our website is now the main tool for student recruitment,” Pulcer says. “Greater numbers of eyes on our site, increasingly stringent accessibility requirements and growing internal expectations for the quality of our presentation all demand that we get everyone over to Drupal 7.”

He says that support from Public Affairs and Communications helped to speed along the conversion process.

“We had been on track to take eight years to finish migrating to version 7, but the addition of a part-time staffer dedicated just to helping departments lowered that to 18 months,” says Pulcer.

He suggests that campus departments wishing to take advantage of this opportunity contact web development team lead Rob Aitkens at 519-253-3000, ext. 3267, email rob.aitkens@uwindsor.ca.

SPSS box

The newest version SPSS, v25, is now available on the UWindsor Software Depot.

The license servers for SPSS have also been updated, so no one running the network version should see the license expiry warning any more, advises computing consultant Mathew Chandler. He invites anyone running SPSS 23 network version and still seeing the expiry message to contact him at mchandle@uwindsor.ca for assistance.

Those running the single user license will have to repurchase SPSS on the Software Depot to continue using the program in that way and will continue to see the expiry message until they purchase a new license.

SPSS is the world’s leading statistical software, used to solve research problems by means of ad-hoc analysis, hypothesis testing, and predictive analytics.

screen showing sign-in

The University has recently adopted the Digital Password Management Policy to go into effect in February 2018, coinciding with the launch of UWinsite Finance.

Upon first accessing UWinsite Finance, users who haven’t changed their UWin password in the last four months (120 days) will be required to do so before they can sign into the new system.

To find out when you last changed your password, go to the My UWin Account page. Information Technology Services recommends that you change all passwords every few months to be on the safe side.

Since the requirement to change your password regularly increases the likelihood that you may forget it, IT Services strongly recommends that you configure Security Questions. Once your Security Questions are created, you can reset your forgotten password anytime using the online self-service option.

For more information or to request assistance, visit the UWin Self-Service Portal at uwindsor.ca/help.