Each week, the Continuity & Community digest includes information about new and changing UC Merced services and platforms, tips for how to use existing services more effectively or efficiently, feature highlights, and resources that may be of value.

Be sure to visit the OIT pages dedicated to Educational Continuity For Instruction , Continuity For Learning , and Continuity for Remote Work . These pages, along with a broader set of crowd-sourced, curated resources for faculty , students , and staff are being updated frequently with new information to aid your transition.
WEEK 3: April 15, 2020
IN THIS ISSUE
  • Tonight: Campus Wifi Upgrade
  • Zoom: Coming Soon - Single Sign On & Default Setting Changes
  • Zoom Quick Tip: Space Bar Unmute
  • CALM App Premium Access
  • TEAMS for Collaboration
  • Library Digital Resources: Hathi Trust & Jove Webinars
  • CETL Workshops
  • Faculty Website Hosting
  • Curated Resources
  • Get Help - OIT Service Desk
  • Crashplan Backups
  • IT Health Checks
  • Curated Resources
CAMPUS WIFI UPGRADE TONIGHT
OIT will be performing an urgent update to the campus wireless network beginning this evening at 6:00 pm.

This work should not be disruptive, however users on campus MAY notice brief 3-5 second interruptions as their device connections are automatically migrated between access points.
ZOOM
ZOOM SIGN-ON CHANGES COMING MONDAY
To help increase the resiliency of UC Merced against Zoom bombing, OIT is strengthening the security of all meetings by requiring the familiar UC Merced Single Sign-On (SSO) when you login to Zoom starting Monday, April 20 . We'll also be changing a few default settings for Zoom meetings at the same time:

  • Only authenticated users can join meetings (an authenticated user is anyone with a Zoom account)
  • OPTIONAL: meeting hosts can restrict meetings to only UC Merced participants
  • Passwords will be required for meetings
  • Participant annotation on shared screens is turned off
  • Participants will be unable to rename themselves in meetings

You can adjust all the new defaults in your Zoom account settings or when you schedule a meeting in the Zoom app—click below to find more information.
QUICK TIP: ZOOM "PUSH TO TALK"
There's a quick "Push to Talk" feature in Zoom that is easy to turn on.

Once you enable the feature in your Zoom client, you can just push and hold your space bar to talk. See the steps to enable Push to Talk in the quick video above, or see full directions here.
CALM
FREE CALM PREMIUM
To help our campus community maintain positive self care,  UC Merced partners are providing free access to Calm, the #1 sleep and meditation app for every student, staff, and faculty member . 

Explore the Calm features as a resource to practice mindfulness to reduce anxiety and stress, improve sleep and focus, and enhance academic and workplace productivity and performance.
TEAMS
Vice Provost for Faculty Teenie Matlock talks about how her unit has been using Teams to build collaboration and inject some fun into their remote routine.

Please excuse the minor technical difficulties we had while recording this video! #ZoomLife
LEARN MORE ABOUT TEAMS
CALL FOR STAFF PARTICIPANTS
Teams is the de facto successor of Skype for Business (SfB), UC Merced's instant messaging platform. SfB will be decommissioned in 2021, so now is the perfect time to make the move to Teams.

If your group looking to get started with Teams, use the form below to volunteer for the OIT Teams Beta test group and be among the first to learn about Teams features.

Interested in learning more about teams? Check out this Microsoft blog post: Everything you need to connect with your teammates and be more productive
UPDATES FOR FACULTY
UC MERCED LIBRARY ZOOM SESSIONS
The UC Merced Library is hosting a number of 20-minute Zoom sessions to demonstrate how to access digital resources that have been expanded during the COVID-19 crisis. Mark your calendars!
HATHI TRUST DIGITAL LIBRARY
Millions of electronic books are now temporarily available to UC Merced users through the  HathiTrust Digital Library’s  Emergency Temporary Access Services  (HT ETAS).

Upcoming Zoom sessions to demonstrate access:

JOURNAL OF VISUALIZED EXPERIMENTS (JoVE)
Through June 30th, the UC Merced community has access to all materials in the  Journal of Visualized Experiments (JoVE)  including JoVE Video Journal and JoVE Science Education. These materials may be of particular interest to instructors teaching undergraduate students scientific fundamentals. 

Upcoming Zoom sessions to demonstrate access:

FACULTY WEB HOSTING SERVICE
Did you know that UC Merced has a web hosting service, OpenScholar, that makes it easy to create and update your own faculty website?

OpenScholar boasts built-in training and support options to minimize the time and effort necessary for maintenance.
REMOTE GROUP WORK CONSULTATIONS
As you transition to emergency remote instruction, do you find yourself struggling with how to meet learning outcomes intended for in-person group work and/or projects?  

The pedagogical coaches at the Center for Engaged Teaching and Learning (CETL) are available for 1-1 consultations to help you consider instructional options, best practices, and academic technologies to support your desired outcomes.
CURATED RESOURCES FOR FACULTY
Have a great resource that you'd like to share? Tell us about it!
UPDATES FOR STAFF
OIT SERVICE DESK AVAILABILITY
Though most of our campus is remote, the OIT Service Desk is still available to help with your technology problems and questions! There are a number of ways you can connect with us for assistance:
SUBMIT A TICKET
Is something broken? (Such as: your email isn't loading, your access to a UC Merced resource isn't working, or your device has an issue.)

Just click 'Report a Problem' on the right side of our website to let us know.
SCHEDULE AN APPOINTMENT
Many times, we can troubleshoot with you via a remote appointment on Zoom. ( And we'd love to see your latest virtual background.)

Click 'Rufus Time' on the right side of our website to choose the time that works for you.
CALL US
We'd love to talk to you on the phone! Call us anytime. (We may even have some new recipes to share.)
CHAT WITH US
We have a new chat feature on our website that is staffed from 9 am to 5 pm, Monday to Friday.
Find it in the bottom right hand corner of any page on our website.
DEVICE DROPOFF
Our Service Desk in COB1 is still open for equipment drop offs! (Just don’t be offended if we don’t stand too close to you.)
DO YOU CRASHPLAN?
Crashplan offers easy-to-use, automatic data backup and recovery that is FREE for UC Merced faculty and staff use on university devices. Crashplan offers:

  • Quickly back up, protect, and recover your data
  • Configure your own backup schedule
  • Customizable file versioning & retention
  • The ability to view, manage, and monitor your data from all your university computers
IT HEALTH CHECK APPOINTMENTS
OIT is now offering quick technology Health Check appointments via Zoom. Request your appointment to make sure that your system is running well and to troubleshoot common issues.
CURATED RESOURCES FOR STAFF
Have a great resource that you'd like to share? Tell us about it!
EXPLORE PAST CONTINUITY & COMMUNITY DIGESTS
Missed an issue? Explore past issues of Continuity and Community
to look back on important news and updates.