Author: Robert Evans

IT Director for the Purdue University College of Education

IT Director for the Purdue University College of Education

Connect to EDUROAM Wi-Fi

Purdue University supports the EDUROAM Wi-Fi network. EDUROAM is available at hundreds of institutions throughout the world and once you connect to EDUROAM, you should, in theory, be able to roam across institutions seamlessly without needing to manually reconnect your devices at each institution.

However, there are a couple of things to consider when connecting to EDUROAM:

  1. Before you travel to another institution, be sure to connect to EDUROAM at your home institution at least ONCE to initialize your account.
  2. When you initially authenticate, use your username@purdue.edu as your username (do not simply use your username alone).
    • If you have an “alternate” email address, do not use that. Instead, use your Purdue “alias” or username + “@purdue.edu”.
    • If you are based at another institution, sign into EDUROAM using your email address from your institution. For example: your-username@your-institution.edu
  3. When you visit another institution, if you are not able to connect automatically, it is possible that you may need to “forget” the EDUROAM network and then re-add it. Be sure to log in with username@purdue.edu (or username@your-institution.edu).

To connect to EDUROAM at Purdue, simply look for EDUROAM in the list of available wireless networks and select it. You will then be asked to enter your username (e.g. username@purdue.edu or username@your-institution.edu) + regular password (not multi-factor). After authenticating, you will likely be asked to “Trust” a certificate which is normal and OK to do. Note: if your Windows computer asks to “Use my Windows user account” do not check that checkbox and proceed with your username@purdue.edu or username@your-institution.edu.

Purdue has a tool that can assist with connecting to EDUROAM located here:

Connect to EDUROAM at Purdue
https://cloud.securew2.com/public/62946/wl-prd-eduroam/

For more information about wireless networks at Purdue, see:

https://www.it.purdue.edu/services/wifi.html

For more information about EDUROAM see:

https://eduroam.org/where/

Need help connecting your College of Education laptop/device? Please contact us at: EdIT@purdue.edu

Connectivity problems @ Home?

This can occur for a variety of reasons such as a server, system or ISP being overwhelmed, or your home network dropping momentarily. If this happens, try to reconnect.

Some things to look out for on your home network:

1) Are you too far from your wifi router? Make sure the signal is strong. If not, consider moving closer to the wifi router. Also, consider plugging directly into your router with a network cable if that is at all possible. A wired network is more stable than a wireless one.

2) Is anybody else in your house streaming (such as YouTube, Netflix, etc.)? If so, might have to ask them to stop. Depending on your home network, steaming an HD movie, for example, can overwhelm a slower home internet connection.

It is possible that your home Internet connection can be experiencing problems, especially if many people in the area / neighborhood / city are using it heavily. This may not be noticeable when browsing the web, or streaming video/audio in a one-way download; however it will be noticeable when doing live two-way video or audio. You may want to contact your ISP to ask if loads are high in your area. You can also try power cycling your cable modem and wireless router. If a video+audio call is choppy, try turning off video and see if audio improves.

How To Collaborate Online

  1. Email – official Purdue communication
    • Continue to monitor and respond to emails
  2. Remote desktop – databases and U: drive      
    1. Access your personalized environment and secure resources as usual on your office computer
    2. Access restricted databases with your office computer (e.g. ACAD MS Access databases).
  3. Teams –real-time office chat, video, file sharing (not for classes)
  4. Zoom – videoconferencing and screensharing
    • Purdue campus license
  5. WebEx – videoconferencing and screensharing
    • Faculty and staff – 1000 connections
    • Students – 8 connections
  6. OneDrive (or Box)
    • share documents with staff and students outside of your office
  7. LMS – Brightspace
    • Use internal messaging tools to communicate with students

For information about How to Teach Remotely, see:

Teaching Remotely Overview – from Purdue Innovative Learning
https://www.purdue.edu/innovativelearning/teaching-remotely/

See:
https://edit.education.purdue.edu/download2/How-To-Collaborate.pdf

Microsoft Teams

Teams logo

Dear College of Education,

You may have received an email over the weekend about being added to Microsoft Teams.  That was me (Bob Evans).  Microsoft Teams is part of Office 365 and is Microsoft’s flagship tool for team collaboration which includes chat, videoconferencing, file sharing, etc.  It is a great tool for both local and remote collaboration.  And because it is licensed by Purdue, it is secure and not being used for commercial data mining of University operations.  Teams will be replacing Skype for Business in July of 2021.

Here is a short video that gives a quick overview of Teams:

Welcome to Teams

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/video-welcome-to-microsoft-teams-b98d533f-118e-4bae-bf44-3df2470c2b12

This tool has recently become available to the campus and last week I began staging Teams for our College so people can use it if desired.

A “Team” has been created for each major department in our College.

Within each department, “Channels” have been created for each office, center and/or program.  Channels are where the work and collaboration takes place (chat, video, file sharing, etc.).  If you see a “lock” icon next to a channel, that means the channel is private and only accessible to the members of that channel (a team includes everyone, but a channel can be a subset of the team).

Feel free to check out Microsoft Teams.  You can access it via any web browser by logging into Office 365…

https://www.office.com/

…and look for the “Teams” icon:

Teams icon

You can also download a Teams app for Windows, Mac OS, iOS, or Android.

Here are training resources for Teams:

Teams Interactive Demo

https://teamsdemo.office.com/

Microsoft Teams Video Training

https://support.office.com/en-us/article/microsoft-teams-video-training-4f108e54-240b-4351-8084-b1089f0d21d7

End user training for Microsoft Teams

https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/microsoftteams/enduser-training

For those who want to use Microsoft Teams and do not have the client app installed on your computer/laptop/tablet/phone, you can locate the app using this web page:

Download Microsoft Teams on any Device

https://teams.microsoft.com/downloads

Please send email to EdIT@purdue.edu if you have any questions or need an additional private channel added to your departmental Team.  EdIT is still learning about Teams and we hope to learn together with all of you as this tool unfolds.  Thank you!  😊

Robert Evans
Director, Education Office of Information Technology
Managing Director, Teaching Resource Center
Chair, College of Education Safety Committee
Purdue University College of Education

11 Classroom Technology Tips to Help Instructors Speed Up Time to Teaching

From Purdue IT:

“For instructors, getting the most out of class time often requires uploading presentation materials and priming classroom technology before the start of class. When the clock is ticking, a basic understanding of classroom technology at Purdue and a few best practices can help ensure a seamless transition from pre-class setup to teaching.”

For more information see:

https://it.purdue.edu/newsroom/2019/190813-Classroom-Tips.php

Reasons to use Purdue email systems

Reasons to use Purdue email systems

In other words, reasons not to forward your Purdue email to a non-Purdue email service:

1. Purdue email is considered an official Purdue record.

2. Purdue is legally liable to protect and retain Purdue records, including student information regulated by FERPA that may be conveyed in email and email attachments.

  • Purdue Email Policy: Users are reminded that any e-mail sent from a University Email Account or residing on University Email Services may be considered a public record under the Indiana Public Records Act (IC 5-14-3) and may be subject to disclosure. Users need to exercise judgment in sending content that may be deemed confidential or that they otherwise do not wish to be disclosed. Furthermore, email transmissions may not be secure, and contents that are expected to remain confidential need to be communicated via means other than email. Common examples of confidential contents include: student grades, personnel records, individual donor gift records, personally identifiable information, and data subject to federal and state laws or regulations, including but not limited to, the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act of 1996 (HIPAA), Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) and the Gramm Leach Bliley Act (GLBA).

3. Using consumer email systems for Purdue email, when not contractually obligated to Purdue, causes Purdue to lose control of records, and circumvents Purdue access controls. Purdue has created access controls to protect and provide secure access to email. The security of 3rd party email systems cannot be guaranteed by Purdue.  While some email users may be able to safely forward their Purdue email to a non-Purdue email account, employees who handle official Purdue data are bound by Purdue policy to ensure that Purdue data remains protected in ways that comply with all applicable laws and regulations.

4. The Purdue records retention policy must be complied with even if Purdue email is forwarded to a non-Purdue server.

http://www.purdue.edu/policies/governance/vb3.html

5. Consumer email systems are typically commercial data-mining systems. Purdue students and employees may not consent to having the content of their email messages forwarded to, or entered into, a commercial data-mining system and tracked/indexed or potentially targeted with advertising, etc.

6. Caching a Purdue career account username password within a consumer email system (not an email client, but email systems/servers) that Purdue has not legally contracted puts Purdue systems and/or accounts at risk.  Some non-Purdue email systems will offer to log into your Purdue email account on your behalf and pull your Purdue email onto their servers.  It is OK for users to do this for their personally owned email and their own data, but this practice can put the data of students, and Purdue data in general, at risk.

7. When forwarding all Purdue email to a personal email account, a freedom of information act records request could impact someone’s personal account, and potentially bring personal email into litigation.  Or it could cause Purdue to become out of compliance with laws that require Purdue to control and access Purdue-owned data.

See: https://www.purdue.edu/legalcounsel/public/index.html

Outlook Email Rules

If you are trying to organize your email to make it easier to process, you may want to consider trying a “non-Purdue” email rule.  A non-Purdue email rule will automatically move any email message that does not come from an @purdue.edu address into a non-Purdue folder.  You can add exceptions to the rule so certain non-Purdue email addresses that are a priority for you will remain in your primary Inbox folder.  Here is a PDF document describing how to set this up:

https://edit.education.purdue.edu/download2/Outlook-NonPurdue-Rule.pdf

~ Bob