Office of Information Technology and Learning Experience

Enterprise Services Leverages Amazon Web Services for my|HACC

The Enterprise Services department supports a wide variety of systems at HACC. One of those systems is my|HACC. The my|HACC system actually consists of several systems presented to HACC employees and students in a unified portal. Central to the my|HACC system is the single-sign-on feature that allows users to access a variety of HACC systems whether they are hosted in the HACC Data Center or cloud based vendor systems. When all systems are online and available, the my|HACC portal serves its purpose and provides seamless access to numerous systems without the need for separate logins to each system.

HACC’s Data Center hosts several applications and resources including the authentication servers and my|HACC portal. As the central gateway to many systems used by HACC employees and students, it can be challenging to troubleshoot issues that are described as ‘my|HACC issues’ or ‘Banner is down.’ In late 2019, HACC was the target of several Distributed Denial of Service attacks, known as DDoS attacks, when an external entity flooded HACC systems with attempts to access our servers leaving students and employees without access to any applications hosted on HACC servers including the single-sign-on system. Since students and employees could not access HACC servers to authenticate their login through my|HACC, it also meant they could not access any systems via single-sign-on, such as Brightspace D2L.

So when the DDos attacks occurred, all HACC systems access through the my|HACC system were essentially unreachable. To remedy this, enterprise services worked collaboratively with the information technology department to build a single-sign-on infrastructure in Amazon Web Services which is essentially like the Data Center we have on campus, but much, much bigger. We wanted to leverage a provider that could better mitigate or prevent a DDoS attack altogether and to ensure the malicious attacks were not successful. More importantly we wanted to ensure that HACC students and employees could login to my|HACC and all of the applications linked from my|HACC. If a DDoS attack were to occur now, users would not see any difference in their access and Amazon will block the attack within minutes. This effort to leverage cloud technologies in this way was a significant accomplishment for HACC, even more critical while employees and students are accessing HACC systems remotely.

For questions about the my|HACC system or single-sign-on, please contact Matt Gordon, director of development operations.

Learning Commons Update

The Learning Commons is abuzz with activity as we lay the groundwork for a successful return to campus this fall. The leadership team, in collaboration with facilities, has coordinated socially-distanced tours and walkthroughs of the individual campuses in order to assess the specific needs of each one. As someone new to HACC and to Pennsylvania, it was really a priority for me to begin exploring and learning about the physical locations. However, even more important than seeing the spaces was getting to meet members of the Learning Commons team face-to-face. It’s vital to get the perspectives of the team members who will be offering frontline support for students at the campuses and to learn more about how the campuses worked in the past.

As we’ve walked through spaces and discussed what fall can or should look like, I’m continuously impressed by our team’s orientation toward student service and success. All of our conversations begin with some iteration of “How will our students do X?” or “How can we make X available for our students?” There remains some anxiety about what fall will look like, but questions like these help shape our planning process.

Everything is on the table for the fall semester. The Learning Commons is reconceptualizing our approach to service operations (especially in how to serve students both face-to-face and remotely), staffing, scheduling, and working in a physical space. Permeating all of our discussions are the implementation of COVID-19 safety measures, balancing the need to provide services with the safety of staff members. We want students and staff to feel confident about being in the physical Learning Commons. To that end, we’re working closely with facilities and other departments to consider things like air quality and filtration, the removal and arrangement of furniture, the square footage of these spaces to help us determine size capacities, the availability of personal protective equipment, the strategic placement of plastic barriers, and so much more.

We are so excited for fall and to see students face-to-face again. Tempering this excitement is the need and responsibility to ensure everyone’s safety. However, with careful planning and attention to detail, I’m confident that the Learning Commons can continue its mission of connecting students to the support they need when they need it. If you have any questions, please contact Eric Camarillo, director, learning commons.

Tutoring Holds First Ever Virtual Peer Tutor Job Fair

On Tuesday, April 20, Tutoring, in partnership with Career Services, offered the first ever virtual peer tutor job fair. Nineteen HACC students joined the job fair to learn more about peer tutor job opportunities at HACC.

Why should students consider a job opportunity as a peer tutor? Just ask two of HACC’s current peer tutors why they love working as a tutor:

“Seeing students become independent and realize they are capable of achieving their goals.” – HACC Tutor

“The 'ah-ha' moments when students suddenly 'get it' and become increasingly adept at brainstorming ideas, finding sources in the library, asking journalistic questions, such as who, what, when, where, how and why, creating a workable thesis statement, and tackling grammar pains.” – HACC Tutor

Tutoring continues to recruit new peer tutors for the summer and fall 2021 semesters. Interested students can learn more about tutoring job opportunities by visiting https://www.collegecentral.com/hacc/. Tutoring’s greatest hiring need is in math, writing, nursing, and the sciences.

Systems Administration Team Update:

The Systems Administration team has been extremely busy over the last year and would like to share some highlights with our colleagues.

• Zoom (Usage for a 1 year period from April 1, 2020 through March 31, 2021)

  • 158,527 Zoom Meetings were held

    • Attended by 1,650,129 participants

    • 107,401,179 minutes in length or 1,790,019.65 hours

    • Average 12,254.5 Zoom Meetings per month

  • 38 Webinars were held

    • Attended by 2,972 participants

• Virtual Desktop Infrastructure (VDI)

  • Spring 2021 Semester

    • Hosted 62 sections of classes

  • Fall 2020 Semester

    • Hosted 43 sections of classes

  • Types of Programs using VDI (Not a full List)

    • Architecture (ARCH)

    • Computer Aided Drafting (CAD)

    • Computer Information Systems (CIS)

    • Engineering (ENGR)

    • Geographic Information Systems (GIS)

    • Music Business (MUSB)

    • Web (WEB)

• File Server Migrations

  • Replacing systems running on older technology and updating best practices, including the enablement of Access Based Enumeration.

  • Access Based Enumeration removes folders and files, in which you do not have access, from your view.

  • This project is ongoing and is replacing the File Servers at Lebanon, Gettysburg, Lancaster and York.

    • Lebanon’s File Server was successfully migrated to the new server on Sunday, April 18.

    • The project is ongoing and is replacing a File Server every week. Gettysburg’s File Server is next (April 25), followed by Lancaster and York.

• Always On Virtual Private Network – added for remote access. Currently we are averaging over 350 concurrent users connected at any given time.

• SolarWinds Asset Management – Deployed SolarWinds Asset Management to better control college resources.

• Remote Desktop Services (RDS) – Worked with Security to deploy and configure RDS server farm and remote access systems on campus for remote work access.

• Student Labs – Upgraded operating system in all labs on all campuses.

• Administrative Systems – Currently working on upgrading all administrative systems to current build of Windows 10.

Cognito Forms Update

In OITLE we continue to look for ways to move the college to an effective paperless system, where possible. Prior to starting the Cognito Forms pilot in late 2018, the college was using online form technology in a very limited capacity, specifically with Adobe and Google Forms. The trouble with both of these solutions was that we couldn’t truly create forms that had internal controls and the ability to build in the form logic we needed. The forms in each program were also owned by the colleague who created them, and were not easily administered if they left the institution. Additionally, the reporting feature was not at a level we needed to be effective, if at all.

The purpose of the pilot was to see if Cognito would be an effective tool to migrate our paper and current digital forms to. The pilot was started with a small group and expanded to include a representative from each functional area. Last March when we went to remote learning, we saw the need for this tool grow overnight.

The numbers below show the growth from March 2020 to March 2021 and continue to grow.

These 450+ forms resulted in 42,076 unique submissions. To assist our colleagues with learning the Cognito platform, a core training team was created and tasked with creating training materials.

During our initial shutdown, several colleagues across the college were trained in form creation. They in turn assisted our colleagues in converting and/or creating forms to be used collegewide. Since March, these trainers and volunteers have created 49 forms as a direct result of COVID-19.

Each platform has advantages and disadvantages, we share those below.

This pilot has proven that we need an online form tool! The college will continue to use Cognito Forms until the disadvantages become impediments to our full adoption of electronic forms. We will provide updates as they are available.