Challenges in the era of Covid-19 pandemic
Center of the Information System has changed its way of work to a certain degree ever since the outbreak of pandemic and swiftly adapted to the new situation. Previously developed services and infrastructure where put to use and updated, while electronic communication between students and faculty members became a priority.
It soon became clear that e-learning, i.e. distance learning (DL), should be included to a much greater extent in the teaching process and therefore it was necessary to provide the infrastructure that could meet the upcoming challenges in the most adequate way.
Center of the Information System already lunched a service which had provided access to AAA infrastructure to all students at the beginning of the 2018/19 academic year, namely automatically generated credentials that would be used to access online services provided by the Academic Network. Under 10% of active students used these accounts until March 2020. Full usage capacity was achieved during the pandemic due to teaching process being transferred to DL platform. In order to provide DL service, the latest version of Moodle system has been installed on a virtual server with impressive features. Before the outbreak of the pandemic, students could receive these credentials at the Student Service Office while acquiring documents for the enrollment in the new academic year, i.e. on the occasion of getting a student card. In the beginning these credentials were intended to provide an access to e-mail and Eduroam services, however due to recently developed situation, this infrastructure proved as an excellent tool to enable authorization in e-learning system.
Considering that a large number of students was not able to acquire credentials on time due to this emergency situation, it was necessary to develop a service which would help students across Montenegro to get their credentials online, without visit to the Student Service Office. Therefore an SMS service (https://aktivirajnalog.edu.ucg.ac.me/) was developed, which provides a fast and reliable data delivery.
In order to assist faculty members, we have trained a team of IT administrators from respective University Units which created individual courses on DL platform in cooperation with CIS staff, followed by granting of suitable rights to professors and students.
We have also detected a need for additional support in order to resolve all ongoing problems as swiftly as possible and started a User Support Service through email address nastava@ucg.ac.me which provided both students and professors with fast replies and support so they could follow classes or give lectures regularly while staying at home.
Also, considering that the teaching process requires an audio visual contact, Center of the Information System has created a cluster made of fourteen BigBlueButton servers which provide a powerful videoconferencing tool, integrated with the existent DL platform. Besides other activities supported by DL platform, such as an upload of teaching materials, creation of activities and tests, professor can use this tool to create video conferences at the very DL platform, including the possibility of saving them in the real time, setting them for further viewing, defining time limitations and management of entire administration within the same course.
Since the beginning of the academic year, 11000 students out of 20000 active students have used DL platform. Also, there are more than 20 video conferences on average each day.
Due to the current situation and measures to reduce transmission of COVID-19, and in accordance with the valid regulations of the Ministry of Health and recommendations by the Institute of Public Health of Montenegro, gatherings were prohibited, therefore the classic enrolment in the first year of study, as well. Center of the Information System has developed a software for electronic submission of required documents and enrollment of candidates in the first year of study. Software was used for enrollment of all students in the undergraduate and master’s studies, with over 3700 candidates enrolled through this system during the first Call for enrollment alone.
In addition to the previously stated, we must mention that CIS staff also works on improvement of University web portal, Student Service Office and Financial applications, employee workload calculation, preparations for the implementation of fiscalization, performs regular maintenance of servers, other services and links between Units, as well reconstruction of UoM CIS Main Server Room on daily basis.