High Ed Hangout

By High Ed Hangout

Come hang out with us!... more

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FAQs about High Ed Hangout:

How many episodes does High Ed Hangout have?

The podcast currently has 66 episodes available.

High Ed Hangout episodes:

August 11, 2017HEH 25: Let’s Get Accessible!
Dan and Dave bring an enlightening report back from the CSUN Accessibility Conference in lovely San Diego, CA.
Dan and Dave just got back from CSUN Accessibility Conference
“Everyone will have a disability at some point in their life”
Accessibility is just a branch of usability
The UN has a ratification to make all their technology accessible
Voice assistance and AI is on the rise making much more controllable via voice
Target had an inaccessible app and added someone to their team who was blind to work with them on the development of this app.
ARIA is somewhat of an override (last resort) way to change something that you can’t do in the code or HTML.
Using HTML5 tags the way they are intended to be used is a huge step in the right direction.
How do persons with disabilities use mobile devices?
What’s the future of accessibility policy in higher ed? In the USA?
The easiest way to get buy-in would be to just have a disabled person show how they work through a site or an app.
How to test:
VNDA tool to see how it works
Turn on voice controls on Mac
Just try to tab through a website without a mouse
...more
1h 2min
August 07, 2017HEH 24: How I Learned to Love the (Ginger Beer) Bomb
People keep uploading HUGE images, so we chat about the best ways to handle automatically optimizing them via the various CMS tools. We also dip into usability and card sorting exercises.
Ken has an issue with people uploading non-optimized LARGE images. What’s the best way to deal with that?
Img tag can use “srcset” which you can pass a list including the path and width of the image with multiple images so that the browser doesn’t need to download the image to know the width.
“sizes”
https://ericportis.com/posts/2014/srcset-sizes/
How do we make images smaller (file size)?
Managed Image Content Areas
File size (compression, img data optimization, stripping meta/exif data)
Resizing
Cropping
Dynamic size use (srcset, sizes)
File Format conversion/use
Load/Pre-loading (lazy loading)
WordPress Tools
WP Smush
PicResize
ShortPixel (also does PDF’s… if you’re into that kind of thing)
Drupal Cropping Tool
Focal Point Module
Outside Services for Compression
TinyPNG
PicResize.com
Card Sort for usability
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Card_sorting
Good Article on Card Sorting Process: http://usabilitygeek.com/card-sorting-quick-guide-for-beginners/
Card Sorting App: https://sites.google.com/a/uxsort.com/uxsort/
(this is better used internally for reporting vs. a tool for a user to participate in the card sort)
What would happen when you played card sort telephone game – taking a sort and giving the results to the next sort and giving those results to the next sort?
...more
1h 4min
July 28, 2017HEH 23: Don’t Let Your Dog Eat Poo
Tonight the topics center around outside vendors and products for various tasks at our universities. We cover digital marketing, scholarship searches, chat and events calendars. We also touch on strategic planning.
What outside vendors do you use?
GVSU: Siteimprove
GVSU: google and FB ads
consultant provide a report for digital advertising
UALR: digital marketing buyer
Mainly for recruiting
Iowa Admissions: digital media buyer
Iowa Admissions: Search student development consultant
UALR: Consultant recommends a position, but the position is only half implemented
Iowa Libraries: Use a ton of vended products (search, springshare, libcal, libguides, chat)
Have you ever had a cold call from a consultant work out?
GVSU: Scholarship search – AcademicWorks
The issue has been the culture change reviewing scholarships
Getting data back and forth between school and cloud service is the most difficult part. UALR uses WS02.com (an api to make it easier)
Chat?
The biggest issue was trying to get people to monitor the chat – if you don’t monitor, it’s just a contact form
The library is the primary user for chat.
Iowa Admissions uses PHPLive Chat
Event Management Calendar
Iowa uses localist – events.uiowa.edu
Strategic Planning Practices
Iowa Admissions: every summer. What’s working, what’s not…
GVSU: lost several developers recently and really brought the focus in on what works and what goes where.
Iowa Library: New communications team sets the web surface of the library
UALR: IT and Marketing are coming together for a collaborative relationship, and need to have a plan.
...more
52min
July 21, 2017HEH 22: Inject this into your SQL!
Tonight the High Ed Hangout gents talk about security and what they’re doing to make their sites more secure. They also chat about rolling out new features and updating their CMS.
Possible SQL injection attack on GVSU reported by a student
Security offices in all of our separate universities who look for this.
UALR has a security area of study
Information Assurance Minor or Certificate.
GVSU is rolling out new CMS – what’s the best way to roll it out to users? It was prompted by the new website users wanting the new design.
Stage both at the same time and let users try the new prior to it being pushed to everyone.
How are new features added to the CMS?
Web team brainstorms based on comments and groups common features together for roll-out.
What are the best requested features for the CMS?
Best: form builder (also complicates things with very complex forms)
Pick template colors
How do you handle staging on your CMS?
Is there a temporary area where things can go before they go live since most CMS’s are published live.
Enterprise CMS have features like this (they need to)
There are workflow modules to make this work, but the overhead to roll something like that out is almost more trouble than it’s worth.
Dan & Dave going to CSUN Assistive Technology Conference in Feb.
Ken wants to go to UX Lib
...more
56min
June 15, 2017HEH 21: I Just Wish It Was Bulbous at One End
The gents chat about current books they are reading and then talk about what (non-computer) hardware they use for home, media, health and more.
What books are we currently reading?
What hardware do you use?
Amazon Echo
Smartthings Home Control
Ken built an echo with a Raspberry Pi
Nest Thermostat
Automatic bluetooth connector for car to feed information to the phone app
IFTTT
Search for conferences and email
Stocks watching
Nest notification of movement
Craigslist notifications
Lumo Lift
It notifies you when you’re slouching
Fitbit Aria Weight Scale
Tracks weight over time and does BMI
Withings activite-pop
Step tracking
Media Devices
XBox One for media
Apple TV 4
Plex
Windows Media Center
Chromecast
Streaming Services
Sling works, but having to watch on a specific schedule is hard
What Internet Service do you have?
Comcast
Mediacom
SouthSlope Coop fiber to the home
AT&T Uverse
Comcast Xfinity
New FCC Chairman is anti-net neutrality
Do we use a tablet of any sort?
How do you take notes
Laptop to Google Drive/Docs
Naming is important and tagging
You can assign stuff to others in google docs!
...more
1h 5min
June 09, 2017HEH 20: 4 + Joe: The Podcast Podcast
This episode is the podcast podcast (how meta!). The gang shares their favorite podcasts that span the gamut on topics. Tune in, and you might just find something new to listen to.
Our Favorite Podcasts
Serial
Season was waaaaay better than season 2
Reply All
Random topics about the internet
Startup Podcast
The startup of Gimlet Media who is the parent company for Reply All
My Brother, My Brother, and Me
3 brothers who give advice in response to Yahoo! Answers questions
The Adventure Zone
3 brothers play D&D with their father
Judge John Hodgman
People bring cases and John judges
Welcome to Night Vale
Fictional town of Night Vale radio drama
Criminal
Mini-serial
MacBreak Weekly
Common topics about Apple/Macintosh
Security Now
Security/internet with Steve Gibson
Slate Political Gabfest
Current political topics of the day with good analysis
On the Media
Issues in journalism and the news
Science Podcast
Current issues in Science Magazine
Hidden Brain
NPR – why our brain does the things it does
Freakaonomics Radio
TED Radio Hour
Interesting topics from really smart people
Comedy Central Standup
Just standup comedy
This American Life
Hit and miss on episodes (some of us have given up on it)
Long Form
Long interviews, in-depth
Cord Killers
Cutting the (tv) cable; streaming tv
In the Dark
Kindof like Serial; analysis of a child abduction story
A Life Well Wasted
Video game life
Penn’s Sunday School
Penn Jillette
More Perfect
RadioLab spinoff about the Supreme Court
99% Invisible
Design that works is design you don’t notice
Podcasting Apps
Pocketcast for Android
Overcast for iOS
Other Apps
Breathe Meditation
Ira Glass on Taste: https://vimeo.com/24715531
...more
59min
June 01, 2017HEH 19: Present-day Screwups and Misspent Youth
A site gets destroyed (temporarily), and how we all test our sites and prepare for the worst. We also talk about our favorite childhood games.
Ken destroys his Iowa Library site
Testing with the new google tester
Used a plugin for compression (w3 total cache plugin)
Got all 100’s (because an error 500 page loads REALLY quickly)
Iowa Library overwrote a site
Overwrote /maps with /maps (an actual site)
Arizona launched a new primary website
The server was not configured correctly for Drupal and failed under normal traffic.
Dave did load testing
Learned that the internet connection was not good enough and the load balance was failing on that.
Dave created a site for site administrator and not the actual users of the site
Failed badly and had to rewrite – was a learning experience
UALR set up 250+ WordPress (stand-alone) installations on a single server
The server still exists and they have been working on migrating into a single wordpress network
What do we want to be when we grow up?
Scott – Artist, Movie Director
Daniel – Hacker, Actor, a lot of things
Dave – Was outside a lot and wanted to be a park ranger (then got a Tandy and never left the house again)
Ken played games on ancient calculators (http://sm.pcmag.com/pcmag_in/photo/h/hewlett-pa/hewlett-packard-hp-65-1974_js34.jpg)
He LOVED the HP 15C!!!!!!
Play: Wizardry on the Apple II
Read: Ready Player One (movie coming out soon)
Favorite Childhood Games:
Dan: Pokemon (gameboy)
Dave: Thexter
Daniel: Myst
Scott: Lode Runner
...more
1h
May 14, 2017HEH 18: Is This Good for the COMPANY?
The gang talks about the what new strategies and goals they have for their schools/sites. It covers speed, new applications, and updates to the CMS. They also look into web boot camps for new hires.
What’s 2017 going to be in your area? Strategies? Goals?
GVSU
Upgrade to the CMS to reflect the new design of the home page
Caching, less server load
Admissions application rewrite – accessibility/usability
Increase grad enrollment (marketing/web) – giving it a lot of attention for the first time (centrally)
Iowa Admissions
Admissions application rewrite – responsive
It’s hard to drop in those random misc required questions in a way that works with the rest of the application. A possible solution is to visit it regularly and look at the big picture.
New digital marketing/tracking system
Iowa Libraries
Support systems/pages for content developers
New Style Guide (or pattern library)
Interface consistency (elements) – “This is how it looks”
Audit for usability and accessibility
Survey web users/audience (pop-up on top pages)
Standardize development workflow
New library search interface
UALR
Integrate CMS with other systems
API to standardize systems
Student portal -> content wide
Grow/nurture a new team
Workflow? Tell Stories.
Web/Online Boot Camps/Training
It was a single platform consistent across all browsers that HTML5 does not *yet*?
Mobile support of HTML5
Getting very popular
Don’t watch a tutorial – collaborative development with a mentor on a team. They look very thorough and… actually good.
Firehose
Bloc
General Assembly
The Iron Yard
Provide actual work experience
How Adobe Flash, once the face of the web, fell to the brink of obscurity—and why it’s worth saving
Urban Dictionary Word of the Day: Stealth-call
...more
1h 8min
May 03, 2017HEH 17: Dang It the Cat Threw up… Hold On
For some reason throw-up is a common thread to kick this one off. Dan’s cat throws up, and Dave and Dan take a trip which involves a (rather humorous) throw-up story as well involving an airplane barf bag. We also chat about web infrastructure in other parts of the world, and how much we hate (HATE!) mobile ads.
Dan and Dave traveled to Africa.
Dave and Andrea get sick. Dave washes his pants.
Sister institution travel
Dave traveled to Africa to visit a web team there 4 years ago.
Widernet Project
eGranary digital library (local internet)
What is infrastructure like in Africa and India?
Intrusive web ads
There’s a point where ads push you away from the actual content.
Google has started to hurt pagerank on sites with intrusive ads.
The scrolly-sucky ad that you need to scroll out of the way.
Urban Dictionary Word of the Day: Trump Stump
...more
55min
April 27, 2017HEH 16: Ken Got Hitched!
Ken goes to an island and gets married. GVSU looks at taking over web representation of grad programs, We talk about staff training opportunities and communities that our individual universities provide.
Leroyyyy Jenkins!
GVSU, after looking at analytics has taken over grad programs centrally because there is very little (or poor) data available.
Does the library provide information mainly to grad students?
Librarians jobs are coming to a turning point. They come in at the end to narrow down results after the fact where before they helped on the front end.
University of Iowa has a central graduate admissions site that lists all grad and professional programs in one place with a similar format and content type.
What sort of services does your university provide for (staff) training?
CPR
Violent Incident Training
Providing for safety and awareness (safe rides etc.), crisis alert systems
Staff communities
CMS communities: email groups, in-system help systems, trainings
Ambassadors for different topics: Safety, Health and Wellness, Technology, Web, etc.
Issues: identity crises within the community and cross-roles (Content? Developers? Tech/Support?)
Examples: Nebraska, Penn State
Urban Dictionary Word of the day (NSFW)
...more
1h 1min

FAQs about High Ed Hangout:

How many episodes does High Ed Hangout have?

The podcast currently has 66 episodes available.