As a faculty member @ BU, there are several technologies you may need to setup and/or familiarize yourself with. This page attempts to introduce and at least link out to all the resources you may need.
Wi-fi Setup
All students, faculty, and staff members have access to the WIZABU wireless network on campus, which works in every building and many outdoor spaces. Setting-up WIZABU is easy but slightly different depending on the types of devices you own. For details, check our “Connectivity @ Bishop’s” page.
MFA Setup for Office 365
As we use Office 365 (O365) for communications and collaboration on campus, you’ll need to first setup your O365 Multi-Factor Authentication (MFA) to secure your account. This step requires an iOS/Android device (phone or tablet) and only takes 5 minutes. Follow the directions on this page to complete this process.
Your BU Email
A Bishop’s email account is automatically set up for you. People can send email to you using one of two forms of address(they both go to the same place):
username@ubishops.ca
firstname.lastname@ubishops.ca
ITS supports several methods of accessing your email:
Outlook is installed on your office computer and all lab computers on campus. It provides an extremely feature-rich email experience.
Webmail is accessible from any computer with a connection to the internet. You can go to the Bishop’s website, click the Faculty and Staff tab in the top right-hand corner and click the envelope icon, or you can navigate directly to outlook.office.com.
NOTE: You will need to have setup your MFA method to access webmail.
Mobile platforms (i.e. smartphones) can be extremely convenient for accessing your mail. To have your phone or tablet set up with your Bishop’s email account, please visit the ITS Helpdesk, or visit our support pages:
Accessing Office 365
The best way to access the Office 365 tools is to visit https://portal.office.com and log in using your BU email address and password (after you have setup your MFA as indicated above).
Office 365 has a full suite of online tools and makes collaboration with others on campus very easy.
Full time faculty members can also choose to install the main Office apps (Word, Excel, Powerpoint, and Outlook) on their personal computers from the link at the top right of the screen after logging in to Office 365. Note however, this is in no way required and many people on campus never install the applications as the web-based ones are extremely powerful.
Our Learning Management System – Moodle
At BU, we use Moodle for all course content. Classes that you are registered as the professor for should automatically be created in Moodle with you having “teacher” access. Students get added to Moodle classes in which they’re registered about a week before class starts.
You log on to Moodle at the URL: https://moodle.ubishops.ca
Our Lecture Capture System – Ensemble Video
Bishop’s has 9 dual stream lecture-capture enabled classrooms. These rooms capture HD video from a camera in the room, and also an HD feed of whatever is shown on the projector. The 2 videos are combined in a recording allowing students to customize their viewing experience when watching the recording.
If you are scheduled to teach in one of these rooms, an ITS staff member will contact you before the start of the semester to ask if you’d like to have your classes automatically recorded.
All faculty can also use the “soft lecture capture” tool called Ensemble Anthem to make recordings from their own personal or work computers including both webcam and screen recordings.
Ensemble can be accessed at: https://ensemble.ubishops.ca
Our Synchronous Communications Tool – Microsoft Teams
We us Microsoft Teams as our main synchronous communications tool. Teams has proven itself as both powerful enough for the needs of our faculty and students, but also flexible enough to be used in a lightweight manner (just online meetings) or more robustly with the use of “Teams sites” incorporating communications channels, meetings, and persistence of data over the duration of a course.
All faculty members can access Teams (or download a copy onto their computer for the best experience) at https://teams.microsoft.com
Support for Learning Technologies
When arriving at BU, there can be a bit of a learning curve because there’s a possibility that we use different educational technologies than other institutions you’ve been at.
ITS maintains a Moodle site with tutorials and help for all of the educational technologies at Bishop’s which can be found here: https://moodle.ubishops.ca/course/view.php?id=1077
All faculty members should have access to that “course” and it is kept up to date as we add/change technologies in use on campus.
Your BU ID Card
All faculty members should get an employee ID card which is both your BU photo ID, but also provide access to electronic doors, allows you to take materials out from the library, and allows you to swipe to log in to any of the Xerox photocopiers on campus.
You obtain your ID card from the Residences front desk in the Paterson Residence.
Our Intranet – myBU
Bishop’s has an intranet site called myBU which contains links to most of the critical sites you will need as a BU employee. Additionally, most departments have pages on myBU so that you can obtain forms and other resources from HR, B&G, ITS and others.
Access myBU here: https://mybu.ubishops.ca
Printing Stuff
Sometimes you just need to get something printed on paper!
For printing that you’ll do yourself, all BU computers will automatically have the “FollowMe” print queues on them. You can use these print queues to securely print documents to any of the Xerox photocopiers located on campus — there will be one close to your office! Click here to learn how to use FollowMe printing.
For larger or more complex print jobs, we have a campus Print Shop which can receive electronically-submitted jobs and print them with all of the specifications you require: https://printshop.ubishops.ca/
It is worth mentioning that all of our Xerox copiers also offer “scan to email” and creation of searchable PDFs. See this page for documentation about how to use the copier features.
Telephony
Faculty offices are equipped with IP phones. To learn more on how to use your office’s phone, refer to these support pages:
Note: Contract faculty members in shared office do not have a voicebox assigned to them.
Getting in Touch with ITS – The Helpdesk
The ITS Helpdesk is located on the ground floor of the Library Learning Commons and is the best place to visit for tech support of all kinds. Our student team staffs the front desk but with easy access to our full-time employees who provide 2nd-level support for more complicated issues.
The Helpdesk is open all hours that the Library Learning Commons is open to provide maximum coverage to students, faculty, and staff.
You can also speak to the Helpdesk team by phone, by calling x2273 on campus. This is the best way to reach the Helpdesk when you experience a technical issue in a classroom. There are phones in all multimedia classrooms and they all have a sticker of them indicating the Helpdesk extension.
Getting in Touch with ITS – Octopus
The best way to reach ITS for non-urgent issues is to place a “ticket” into our Octopus IT ticketing system at https://octopus.ubishops.ca. Once you log into that system, and submit a new ticket, you’ll see that you can either report a problem (with your office technology, classroom technology, your account, or anything else) or place a request for something new (a new Teams site, shared email address, PDF computer purchase, etc.)
PDF Purchasing
Certain technology items you may wish to purchase with your professional development funds must be purchased through ITS. These items are:
Your PDF will not reimburse purchases of these types if you purchase them on your own. For other, small, technology purchases under $200 in cost (ex. microphones, webcams, lighting, printers, etc), you can simply purchase these items at a place convenient for you and then submit a PDF reimbursement form which is found on the “Business Office” page in myBU.
In order to purchase one of the items that ITS must assist with, place a ticket in Octopus to request this and one of our team members will reach out to discuss the details with you.
The OLTC Program
Created in summer 2020 as a “transition to online” mitigation, the Online Learning & Technology Consultant (OLTC) program has quickly become a very popular adjunct for faculty members wishing assistance with incorporating online resources in their course. Need content added to your Moodle page? Need assistance setting up the gradebook in Moodle? Need a series of online quizzes built? The OLTCs can assist with all of these requests and much more.
For more information, or to register for OLTC assistance, visit the OLTC website.
Shahn
So good, he gets his own category. Within ITS, our full-time faculty support specialist is Shahn Nadeau. Shahn is available to support you when an issue gets beyond the Helpdesk’s ability to support, and he is an expert with all of the learning technologies available to faculty members.
