University of Utah Webmaster News:

• New Distance Ed classrooms at the U
  Several new Distance Education classrooms are scheduled to come online during the next year. Distance education classrooms are equipped to facilitate interactive communication between an instructor at one site and students at two or more sites.  Despite the fact that there can be hundreds of miles between origination and receive sites, faculty and students can see and hear each other and conduct class with few concessions to the use of technology. The new rooms will be located at several sites across the U campus and at two Academic Outreach and Continuing Education (AOCE) off-campus sites. 

• The U's WebCT Service now Hosted through UEN
  The U’s WebCT service is moving to Utah Education Network (UEN)-hosted servers starting this fall term. The U will be joining Utah State University, Utah Valley University, and several other institutions that have already migrated to this state-wide consortium.  On August 16, 2008, the hostname webct.utah.edu will start redirecting users to the UEN-hosted system.

• PAN Forms now replaced with ePAFs
  On May 27th, with the help of Administrative Computing Services (ACS), HR implemented the electronic Personnel Action Form (ePAF) and has received great feedback. Not only will the ePAF eliminate 29,000 paper PAN forms each year, but it will also bring the processing time down considerably. To process a PAN form in the past took up to two weeks, but with ePAF it can take as little as one day.