IT Services Annual Review 2011

Focus

The focus for UCD IT Services throughout 2011 was enhancing the user experience and access to information. Key objectives were to develop and improve systems and services delivering electronic content to students and staff and sustaining the quality of the IT infrastructure.

Highlights

Highlights in 2011 include the introduction of mobile apps for students and staff offering readily accessible IT services on smart phones. Blackboard Mobile Learn gives students and staff anytime access to course notes and interactive features and UCD Mobile, the UCD app contains Blackboard Mobile Learn, an interactive campus map, staff directory, news and events updates, sports fixtures, videos and more.

In May 2011 in preparation for start of term, the student email service was upgraded to a cloud service provided by Google, increasing each students email storage to 25Gb. Following this, students class timetables were incorporated into their Google calendars, which along with their new UCD mail can be synced to smart phones.

At the end of the year, IT Services had the rare opportunity to test our Disaster Recovery Plan when a server in the Daedalus Data Centre caught fire. Read about it in the Disaster Recovery "In Action" section.