May 20, 2013

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Faculty Activity – New Custom Reports

February 27, 2013 by

We are pleased to announce recent enhancements to the Faculty ActivFaculty Activity Menuity interface in myOleMiss.   You can now create custom reports through the Faculty Activity interface. The custom report feature does not replace your annual Faculty Report, but will allow you to leverage the data that has been entered over time into a format for other reports. (To start your annual Faculty Activity Report, see Build Annual Report on the Detailed Navigation Menu.)

A custom report can be generated for a variety of content in either HTML or RTF file formats.  Chairs and those in administration will be able to easily gather information for analysis for a specific time period, activity or faculty member.  Faculty members can produce a report including all of their activities, courses, advisees, theses, and committees over a set period of time. This can be a great asset for tenure track faculty members in the creation of their report.   To begin a custom report, choose Create Custom Report on the Detailed Navigation Menu.

Faculty Activity - Create Custom ReportGetting Help

A training workshop on the Faculty Activity interface will be offered on Friday, March 1st at 1:30 pm. To register, visit http://ittraining.olemiss.edu/. If you need assistance,  or if you have any questions, please contact Faculty Technology Development Center at 662-915-7918 or ftdc@olemiss.edu.  If you would like individual assistance in person, please visit the FTDC in 101 Weir Hall weekdays between the hours of 8:00 AM  and 5:00 PM.

Filed Under: Academic Technology, Faculty Activity Reports, Faculty Activity Reports, FTDC, myOleMiss Tagged With: ,

Faculty Activity Reports – The Rest of the Story

February 21, 2011 by

A couple of months ago, the new myOleMiss interface for creating activities to be included in Faculty Activity Reports opened. This roll-out included new tabbed layouts and numerous other small changes to simplify and make the process more user-friendly. (See the December 2010 TechNews Article.) Last week the rest of the interface for creating and editing your Faculty Activity Report was made available.

You may add research and creative activities all year long, but your report will only be available for editing during the spring semester. When you create your activities in the database throughout the year, it is like putting a file in a folder to be added to your report at a later time. Then once it’s time for the report, you pull out your file folder and add all those things into it.

Detailed Navigation menu
Once your activities have been added, building or editing your report is simple as the activities that you have already entered into the database will be automatically added your report, as well as your courses, advisees, theses and dissertations, and committees. On the Detailed Navigation menu on the left, under the Build Report folder you will find an Edit folder that expands to show the various categories. Once a category is chosen, you will see a page with a list of subcategories that can be expanded to enter information relevant to your report.

Some categories, like Research, have several subcategories where activities (such as journals and conferences) that you entered into the database will be listed. In these areas you have several options – viewing, editing, and omitting.

Expanded Subcategories
If you would like to see more information about one of the activities, simply select the linked title of the activity to expand information boxes, which are formatted to look as closely as possible to the final report. You will also notice that, once expanded, there is a link that will allow Editing of this particular activity. Please note that these activities will be refreshed automatically in your report if you make any changes.

The project dates on the activity determine whether the activity will be included in the report for a given year. That is, if the project start and end date for the activity overlap with the reporting year, then the activity will be included. You may choose to omit activities that are not relevant to your report by checking the box to the left of the activity title and then saving all changes. You can know that it is omitted when the background of that entire activity becomes gray. Alternatively, you can update the project dates for the activity.
You may preview your full report at any time, by selecting Preview Report on the detailed navigation menu on the left.

Getting Help

A training workshop on the new interface will be offered on Friday, February 25th at 1:30 pm. To register, go to http://ittraining.olemiss.edu. If you need assistance with the new layout or if you have any questions, please contact Faculty Technology Development Center at 915-7918 or ftdc@olemiss.edu. If you would like individual assistance in person, drop by FTDC in 101 Weir Hall weekdays between the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Filed Under: Faculty Activity Reports, myOleMiss Tagged With:

Update on Faculty Activity Reports

December 6, 2010 by

It is getting to be that time of year again! Whereas many students and instructors are focused on wrapping up the fall semester, various others have been actively working on adjustments to the Faculty Activity Report process, which will begin in March 2011 — sooner than we want to believe. So your question may be, “What is happening with Faculty Activity Reports?”

Faculty Activity Report Review Task Force

In June, the Provost’s Office established a Faculty Activity Report Review Task Force to identify and evaluate options. The Task Force is chaired by Dr. Maurice Eftink, Associate Provost, Dean of the Graduate School and Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and includes the following members:  Dr. Glenn Hopkins, Dean of the College of Liberal Arts;  Dr. Mark Wilder, Dean of Accountancy; Dr. Linda Chitwood, Dean of the School of Applied Sciences;  Dr. Delvin Hawley, Senior Associate Dean of the School of Business and Associate Professor of Finance;  Dr. Ivo Kamps, Chair and Professor of English;  Dr. Stephen J. Cutler, Chair and Professor of Medicinal Chemistry;  Dr. Conrad Cunningham, Chair and Professor of Computer Science;  Ms. Mary Harrington, Director of Institutional Research; Dr. Robin Buchannon, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Research & Sponsored Programs;  Dr. Noel Wilkin, Associate Provost and Professor of Pharmacy Administration;  Dr. Mark Dolan, Associate Professor of Journalism and New Media; Dr. Jason Ritchie, Associate Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Dr. Lori Wolff, Associate Professor of Leadership and Counselor Education; Dr. Dwight Waddell; Assistant Professor of Health, Exercise Science & Recreation Management;  Dr. Tom Marshall, Professor of Physics and Astronomy; and Dr. Kathy Gates, Chief Information Officer. 

July Decision to Continue with Structured Database Model

In July, the Task Force voted to continue with a structured database model, which would allow for institutional reporting on activities. Long term options are still being considered, specifically whether to continue with an in-house solution or to adopt a commercial product. Given the time that is required to make a careful decision and then to implement that decision, the current in-house system will be used for at least one more year and has been updated based on feedback and assistance from the Task Force. This article highlights the changes that have been made so far.

User Interface Improvements

First and foremost, the interface has been incorporated into MyOleMiss for improved usability.  No more pop-ups or opening in other screens or tabs. Another major change is that the layout has been redesigned to use a tabbed format. When adding or editing an activity, there are no more long, scrolling pages that seem to go on forever, but rather there is now a tabbed layout that saves your content as you add it between the tabs on a single screen.

Other changes relate to how you manage your activities. As you may remember, there are two parts to the process: adding activities into a database that is searchable; and pulling those activities into an annual report to which you can add commentary. It is now easier to manage database activities such as journal articles, books, or artistic works. The system presents a list of activities that gives you more information initially, such as the start and end dates and the current status, so you can decide if you need to edit an existing activity or create a new activity. You are able to sort this list with primary and secondary sorting capabilities, and a drop-down menu beside each activity gives quick options for many functions (e.g., editing, deleting, or adding participants).

When adding participants, there is now an “auto suggest” feature. As you type in a person’s name (Last, First Middle) a drop-down list will show the first five matching responses. Help text is hidden under a question mark icon; that is, when you click on the icon, the screen will expand to shown customized notes for that particular field.

Numerous other small changes have been made to simplify the layout and make the process more user-friendly. These changes were based on feedback from the Task Force and individual faculty members as well as reviews of commercial products.

The interface to enter and edit faculty activities is currently available. You may begin adding your activities such as conferences, journal articles, etc. to the database now. Changes are planned for the report creation part too. The revised interface to create reports will be available by early February.

Getting Help

If you need assistance with the new layout or if you have any questions, please contact Faculty Technology Development Center at 915-7918 or ftdc@olemiss.edu. If you would like individual assistance in person, drop by FTDC in 101 Weir Hall weekdays between the hours of 8:00 am and 5:00 pm.

Filed Under: FTDC, myOleMiss, Web Applications Tagged With: