-: Once again, my name is Marcia Dority Baker.
I am one of the chairs of this year's event
and it is a been an honor and a privilege to be able to
host the N U Amplify.
And it's also my opportunity to introduce Brett Blackman who
will be here to do some closing remarks
and give us an update.
So with that, Brett, thank you for joining us
this afternoon.
I'm going to stop sharing and we'll go ahead and get
started. Thank you.
-: Thank you, Marcia.
And good afternoon, everybody.
It's so great to be here this afternoon
and thank you for attending
the N U Amplify 2021 conference.
I'm thrilled to see
that we have over 550 attendees registered this year
which is absolutely tremendous.
Considering the remote sessions that were were involved
in this this week.
Also want to give thanks
to Executive Vice President and Provost, Doctor Susan Fritz
for her leadership and comments this morning.
And of course, Mary Nemic for her always ongoing support
and leadership of this conference.
And Marcia to you and Mike and everybody else on the team.
Thanks for all, you've done to make this
a successful event here today.
As Marcia had mentioned, my name is Brett Blackman.
I'm the Vice President for IET
and CIO for the University Nebraska System.
And I've had the pro the privilege of being part
of the University Nebraska community for over 20 years
both as an employee
and as an alumni of the University of Nebraska.
And I'm very glad to say that in NUITS is a partner
at this great event that brings together so many faculty
and staff across the University of Nebraska System.
In ITS, we frequently say are strategic
in our strategic plan that we want our work to align
to what matters most to our faculty
to our staff and to our students.
And nothing matters more
than our teaching and learning the core
of why a student comes to the University of Nebraska.
It's great to be part of a day celebrating innovation
and technology with teaching.
And if you would have asked us 15 months ago
what our spring was going to look like
none of us would have told you the current...
we would have told you the current initiatives
that we were working on in ITS
we would have mentioned things such
as our focus on digital accessibility
through our support of tools like Vidgrid
for accessible user-friendly video captioning.
We would have mentioned our commitment
to student affordability through us, through our support
of open educational resources and first day access
to programs, integrating digital course materials
into the learning management system, a program
that has now saved University
of Nebraska students $6 million
and counting.
We would have told you
about Duo our multi-factor authentication system now used
by all University Nebraska students, faculty, and staff.
A tool that greatly helps user accounts stay secure
and helps lower our risk.
But instead as we all know
things change dramatically during a due
to COVID-19 pandemic and, and NUITS has had been
has had an all hands on deck approach.
As many of you have as well, by lead,
what has proven to be an amount of digital transformation
at the University of Nebraska this past year.
Our role in service to the University of Nebraska,
particularly through this past year has been
an absolute privilege for us.
Each team in our division
from our help desk to our instructional technologists
to our security team and all other teams
within our division have needed to pivot along with the rest
of the University of Nebraska in order to serve in new ways.
Things such as the increase
in the number of people needing Soft Phones
for remote work set up up over 271%.
The number of phishing attempts that we've had to stay
on top of related to COVID-19
and some security during the pandemic has been
over a hundred thousand and just a 10 day period.
And the almost 2000% increase in Zoom usage
across the University Nebraska.
No surprise to us now,
it's become a daily norm for us
but that's quite a shift with the amount
of Zoom that we all experience every day in our lives now.
And finally close to the 380 million page views
in Canvas that were part of the year 2020.
As technologists we find this time to be
of incredible momentum and progress
but we also realize that change can be very difficult.
We will continue to partner closely
with our faculty, our staff, and our students
as we consider next steps with you
across the University of Nebraska.
Whether this be piloting,
piloting a new tool to help faculty
to continue to experiment
with digital elements of their courses
or support web development across the campuses.
We want to be the great partners
in determining what technology comes next
and how technology can ultimately
be strategic differentiator for the University of Nebraska.
Very exciting things ahead.
We are thrilled to be aligned, to align our work
and to serve President Carter's five-year plan.
As we leverage technology
in ways to help enable those priorities to be met.
We're certainly impressed
with faculty's desire to really dig
in and humanize the digital learning environment
and to increase connection and engagement.
We are in the middle of and your completion
of a complete refresh of the University Nebraska network
for the first time, since the internet came
to our campuses in 1990, which of course is decades
and decades ago and the term of IT.
For the first time ever
at the university of Nebraska, we have a modern scalable
and secure network infrastructure across every one
of our campuses, including 10,000 wireless access points
up into our ceilings, providing great coverage
across our campuses and every building
having upgraded connectivity
and security added each one of them.
And we're doubling down
on open educational resources
and reduce costs digital course materials
by partnering with campus registrars and bookstores
to implement course marking which will allow students
and their parents to view the courses
that are using these reduced costs course materials
at the time they register for courses,
helping them make more well-informed decisions.
All of these projects are gaining energy and momentum
because of our close partnerships and collaborations
with all of you and so many others across
the University of Nebraska.
On behalf of the University
of Nebraska Information Technology Services division,
thank you for the opportunity to serve
and create these possibilities
through the use of technology across our campuses.
I hope you've enjoyed this great event today.