Emergency Maintenance on Moodle – Thursday, Jan 20

LITS will be performing emergency maintenance on Moodle at 7 PM Today, January 20, 2022. The upgrade will address security vulnerabilities. The upgrade should last less than 10 minutes, and people who are already logged in should experience minimal disruption during that time.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

Brief Canon Printing Outage, TODAY (1/18) 1pm

In order to troubleshoot an issue with printing from Macs to Canon printers, LITS will need to restart the our Canon print servers at 1pm. During this time, there will be a very interruption to printing to Canons. The outage will last less than 10 minutes.

Thank you for your patience while we troubleshoot this issue.

Please contact the Help Desk with any questions or concerns: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

RESOLVED: Problems Printing to Canons from College-Owned Macs

Update, 2:25pm: This issue has been resolved and community members should again be able to print to Canon printers from College-owned Macs. Printing from personal Macs is still unavailable.

Thank you for your patience while we resolved this issue. Contact the Help Desk with any questions or to report any lingering issues: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

Several community members have reported problems printing to Canon printers from Macs across campus. LITS is investigating the issue and will provide additional information as we have it.

Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440.

What’s New in Panopto and Zoom

What’s New in Panopto

What’s New in Zoom

Note: Some features are require later versions of the Zoom app/desktop client. If you aren’t seeing a feature below, upgrade your Zoom app to the latest version. Some features may not be supported in iOS and Android apps.

For all participants

  • Hide Self View. Use this in-meeting feature to hide your own video from yourself after you turn it on to help prevent Zoom fatigue.
  • Stop Incoming Video. Use this in-meeting feature to block other people’s video if you’re having bandwidth issues or to reduce Zoom fatigue.
  • Set a custom gallery view. All participants can now reorganize video participants in the Gallery view and save the order for future instances of a recurring meeting. Hosts can create a customized view for participants.
  • Other tips for avoiding Zoom fatigue.

For hosts/co-hosts

  • Focus mode. Designed for online learning, hosts/co-hosts can turn focus mode on during a meeting to hide non-host/co-hosts participants videos and/or shared screens from other non-host/cohost participants. Hosts can make this the default by checking Enable focus mode when meeting starts under Advanced Options in the meeting settings when setting up the meeting.
  • Advanced Polling and Quizzing. Hosts can turn this on in meeting setting to add new question formats (e.g., short answer) and/or turn polls into quizzes by designating a correct answer for questions. (Note: Participants using older Zoom apps may need to exit the meeting, update their Zoom apps, and rejoin to answer advanced polls and quizzes.)
  • Broadcast message or screen to all breakout rooms. Hosts/cohosts in the main meeting room can now broadcast messages to and share their screen in all breakout rooms. See Managing Breakout Rooms for updated information.
  • Two-way chat with participants in waiting room. Hosts/co-hosts can now message participants in the waiting room individually and receive replies. See How to Use Waiting Room for updated information.

If you have any questions about or issues with these or other features in Panopto or Zoom, please contact the Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440).

Changes and Improvements to Moodle

The upgrade to Moodle 3.11.4 during the month of December was successful. This version update included general fixes and improvements, as well as accessibility and security improvements and fixes. For a complete list of changes see Moodle 3.11.4 Release Notes.

The most noticeable changes include:

  • Mark as done buttons under course activities. These buttons are part of Moodle’s ongoing efforts to make it easier for students to keep track of their coursework and for instructors to provide and manage ungraded course activities. See “Using Activity Completion” for examples and instructions. Teachers can disable activity completion and remove all “Mark as done” messages on the Course Settings page (Go to Edit Settings > Completion tracking > Enable completion tracking > No).
  • Word document import button on the text editor box, which allows users to import the contents of a Word document (as opposed to copying and pasting the contents, or attaching the document).
  • Create Merged Course Shell option appearing under the settings for each course.
  • Fixes and minor improvements to activities such as: Attendance, Checklist, Collapsible Topics, OU Blog, and the H5P Content bank.

We have also made the following accessibility improvements to Moodle:

If you have any questions or concerns, please contact the Help Desk: 610-526-7440 or help@brynmawr.edu

Panopto Scheduled Outage starting 9pm Saturday Jan 8

Panopto has announced a scheduled downtime from 9:00 pm ET Saturday, January 8, until 1 am ET Sunday, January 9, 2022.

  • While Panopto is offline, you will NOT be able to record/upload to Panopto or  manage and view recordings on Panopto.
  • If you need to record during the outage, use the Panopto Mac or PC desktop app and choose Continue Offline instead of logging in to record to your computer’s hard drive, then upload the recording to Panopto once service is restored. (See How to Record with Authenticating for details.)
  • If you need to view during the outage and the recording owner allows downloads, download a copy of the recording BEFORE the service outage begins so you can play recordings locally, rather than streaming them.

During this outage, Panopto will be releasing a major update that includes new features. For a demo of these features, register for Panopto’s New Features webinar on Wed, January 26 at 11:00 am-12:00 pm EST (free if you use your brynmawr.edu address). LITS will also providing info on new features of interest to our community. Full January 2022 release notes are here.

Please contact the Bryn Mawr College Help Desk (help@brynmawr.edu or 610-526-7440) if you have any questions or concerns.

Warning: New Phishing Attempt

Please be aware of a recent attempt to gather login, password, and other secure personal or College data from Bryn Mawr College community members.

Be on the lookout for messages that appear to be a password expiration notice from your Microsoft account. This is a scam.

Do not click links or respond in any way. Delete the message or report it as Phishing in Outlook. If you believe you’ve given your information to a phisher, immediately change your password and contact the Help Desk.

Email scams come in many forms. While we work to keep you informed, attacks are increasingly diverse and sophisticated. It’s not possible for us to warn you of every message before you see it. Be cautious and suspicious. If you ever have a question or suspicion, don’t hesitate to contact the Help Desk.

Contact the Help Desk with questions: help@brynmawr.edu, 610-526-7440, or lits.brynmawr.edu.