CCIT This Week: RCD lightning talks, Canvas Gradebook and weighted grades with Clemson Online

Tara Stone, CCIT Communications
June 5, 2023

Welcome to CCIT This Week, where we give you a rundown of news, tips, upcoming maintenance and more. This page will be updated throughout the week. Follow us on Twitter @ClemsonIT for daily information and timely updates.

News

The CCIT Support Center is now operating under Summer hours. The Support Center will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Thursdays; 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. on Fridays; noon to 5 p.m. on Saturdays; and 1 p.m. to 8 p.m. on Sundays.

View the schedule online

A pair of policies concerning Clemson University security have recently been approved. The new Electronic Mail (Email) Policy and the updated Electronic Surveillance Policy have both been reviewed by the Executive Leadership Team and approved by President Clements.

Learn more

Be aware of voice stealing scams! The Federal Trade Commission is warning people to be cautious about answering phone calls from unknown numbers. Threat actors are now recording your voice and then using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to convert those samples into realistic impersonations of you, which they use to scam your family members. If you decide to answer a call from an unknown number, always let the other person speak first.

Learn more

Use caution with sensitive data and AI services! The rise in capabilities and ease of access of ChatGPT and other AI services provides exciting potential as a tool for research, programming, data processing and other applications. However, when using these AI services, as with any technology, we are obligated to protect and preserve the data we use at Clemson every day.

Learn more

Create strong passwords to protect your accounts! As computing power continues to increase along with the growth of Artificial Intelligence, it is becoming easier to crack user’s passwords. Having a longer, more complex, and unique password for your account is vital.

Learn how to create a strong password

Upcoming planned outages of departmental group storage. CCIT is in the process of updating the hardware disks for ZFS group storage, commonly referred to as the H: drive. The current generation of hardware disks is past end of life and needs to be replaced. These updates will likely be disruptive to users, as ZFS group storage is used throughout the University. CCIT plans to schedule these updates after hours and on weekends over the next several months to minimize disruption as much as possible.

Learn more

Events

Research, Computing and Data will host Lightning Talks this Summer! Join the RCD team during your lunch break to expand your knowledge of high-performance computing and research resources available to you! These engaging 30-minute presentations scheduled for Thursdays at noon are designed to give you just enough information to get started. The next talk on Singularity will be Thursday, June 8 at noon. Registration required; open to all Palmetto users.

Learn more and register online

Do you find that your grade plan and Canvas Gradebook aren’t on the same page? Join Clemson Online on Thursday, June 8 at 3:30 p.m. for a live demonstration on how to fix this problem before grades are due. You will also learn how weighting graded assignments impacts this issue.

Learn more and register at the Clemson Online website

The popular GIS Fundamentals Workshop Series continues this week! The next two workshops are “Working with Tabular Data in GIS” on Tuesday, May 30 and “Basic Spatial Analysis” on Thursday, June 1. The virtual workshops are free and open to all Clemson students, faculty, and staff. Participants can attend one, several, or all workshops in the series; no previous experience is necessary! Sessions will be delivered online every Tuesday and Thursday from 9 a.m. to noon; attendees must preregister for each individual workshop.

Learn more on the Clemson GIS website

June Tech Tip

Stay current on how to protect yourself online at Clemson! CCIT’s Office of Information Security maintains an up-to-date Cybersecurity Alerts page to keep the Clemson community informed of the latest in cybersecurity news and tips. OIS provides updates on new phishing attempts, technology recommendations and more.

Read the latest Cybersecurity Alerts

Upcoming Maintenance

Check out upcoming maintenance events on our CCIT Status Page.