By Anna T. McFadden, Director of Academic Engagement and IT Governance
The Information Technology Council (ITC) and the Council of Deans recently gave approval to IT to roll out new versions of Microsoft Office.
Currently, classroom and labs are running Office 2007 for PC (Windows) and Office 2008 for Mac; faculty and staff are running multiple Office versions (2003/2004 and 2007/2008). Many faculty members are requesting the new versions (2010 and 2011), and new student and faculty personal computers now come with the new versions installed. (Faculty and staff currently on Office 2007 are already used to the “ribbon,” the feature designed to help users quickly find the commands they need to complete a task, which is also found in Office 2010.)
IT is also moving ahead with an upgrade to Exchange 2010; a minimum of Office 2007 is required to make this move. In addition, as IT stands up an intranet for the campus in SharePoint 2010, Office 2010 is the version that works best in this environment.
ITC and the Council of Deans approved the following plan and support policy:
- Classrooms and labs will be moved to Office 2010 for PC, 2011 for Mac this summer (2011)
- IT will support only the current Office version minus one (IT is not staffed to support multiple versions)
- The rollout schedule is as follows:
Spring 2011 (now) –
– Begin deployment of Office 2010 to faculty who are designing coursework for fall
– Begin the “user readiness” program of communication and training
– Add Office 2010 courses to the Dell Learning System (onlinetraining.wcu.edu)
Summer 2011 –
– Image classrooms with Office 2010/2011 for fall 2011
Fall 2011 –
– Update Office 2003 users (more than 200 faculty and staff) to Office 2010
Implement the support policy
For more information, contact the IT Help Desk at 828-227-7487 or e-mail ithelp@wcu.edu.