Web Services Policy -IT010

Introduction

This policy defines the on-campus and off-campus access for information systems, news, and events related to the Alfaisal university. Alfaisal is committed to ensure availability to the information systems in its domain of ownership. Furthermore, the university recognizes its responsibility to provision access to these critical information systems to Alfaisal users accessing it from any part of the world.

Policy

General

This policy covers students, faculty and staff at Alfaisal university. This policy compliments Alfaisal code of conduct and security & information system privacy policy. Alfaisal portal provides access to a variety of university information services and resources. Portal accounts are created automatically for users in the Alfaisal Community, both on and off-campus. Accounts are created and administered by Alfaisal IT Services.

User Access

• University portal and network resources may be accessed or used only by authorized individuals. Different groups of users will have different levels of access
• Access to applications within the portal are either authenticated from the Active Directory or by the application itself.
• The university reserves the right to suspend portal access or computer account, as defined in this policy if user-maintained files, programs or services are believed to have been operating in violation of either law or policy.
• The university can apply the provisions of this policy and the rights reserved to the university without prior notice to the user.

Calendaring

There could be a number of calendars operating within the Alfaisal portal; each user/group will have a set of calendars. Personal calendars will be managed by the users themselves whereas the management of all other calendars would be designated by their respective business unit head’s. Calendar owners can post events on their calendar knowing that the targeted users would be able to see.

Group Management & Storage

Alfaisal permits the formation of groups or associations (e.g. sports club, linguistic group). Each group can have its own site in the intranet portal, calendar, message board, access links, posted articles, and photographs. Groups can be either public or restricted. Groups and group categories are listed under the respective business units.

• All groups must observe the relevant acceptable usage i.e. the code of conduct policy.
• The head of each business unit will appoint a power user.
• Requests for group creation via an eform must be submitted to IT Services,

Targeted Announcements

Alfaisal portal provides variety of ways in which announcements can be broadcasted to a specific audience. Those wishing to use the portal for communication purposes should select the most appropriate alternative, which is the one which is most highly targeted to those who wish or need to receive the communication.

1. The marketing and public relations department will use the home page of the Alfaisal Portal, and a news channel on the welcome page of Alfaisal, as places to post news of general interest.
2. Global Alerts will be used for important, time-critical information which has a major impact for the whole campus. Examples might include a security emergency, cancellation of classes because of weather, or the loss of an important technology service such as email. It is expected that the channel will only be used occasionally. The University will use other ways to communicate alert information in addition to Alfaisal portal alerts. The portal administrator would manage the global alerts on the Alfaisal portal.

Document Library Management**

The Alfaisal Portal Document Library provides the provision for the users to save their office documents and can accessible those documents from anywhere through internet. Serving as a central repository for the documents , The total storage space allocated to each user is 2 GB which can be increased based on the business requirements and availability.

Learning Management System(LMS)

Learning Management System compliments classroom learning. Moodle is Alfaisal University's supported LMS. Moodle resources are available to all Alfaisal university faculty, students and staff.

• Moodle accounts are available for all faculty, students and staff at Alfaisal university. faculty, staff and student accounts are automatically created in the Moodle once their email addresses are created by the ITS. Faculty & staff accounts will be confirmed by the Human resources and student accounts by the Student affairs.
• Student, faculty, or staff member at Alfaisal university can request a course if it is related to official college business. This does include clubs, committees, groups, etc. Courses will not be created for non-Alfaisal University users.
• The Moodle administrator will process course requests as received from Student Affairs. Courses would generally be created within 48 hours
• Courses are moved to a Moodle Archive section at the end of each semester. Course data will be stored for the last Academic year and then deleted.
• Course Faculties are responsible for granting guest access to their course(s) if they choose to. Faculties are also responsible for deciding what additional Faculties, Teaching Assistants, and Librarians shall get access to their course. Students enroll automatically to the courses based on their SIS registration
• Users are responsible for managing their Moodle data. Some examples of Student Moodle data are uploaded assignments, forum posts, Wiki posts, etc. Some examples of Faculty Moodle data are course readings, course quiz questions, course grades, links to websites, etc. If users wish to keep the data for more than the semester they should download the content to their computer.
• The Moodle admin will provide documentation to course facilitators on how to back up course data (Can be accessible through the IT Guidelines). If data needs to be restored, the Moodle Administrator would handle the restoration.
• Students and faculty using Moodle should ensure that anything uploaded to Moodle does not violate copyright laws (refer to code of conduct and security & Information Privacy Policy).
• IT Services (ITS) would terminate accounts as directed by Human resources (for faculty/staff) and the Student affairs (for students). If a course facilitator's account is terminated, the concerned business unit shall nominate the new assigned facilitator. Termination of an account also removes associated course user data.
• The Moodle Administrator would watch for and review new releases of Moodle and will maintain a list of requests from faculty, students and staff. Upgrades and plugins will initially be loaded into a test environment where they will be tested. Once an enhancement is deemed acceptable for the production environment, ITS will load into the live instance of Moodle. ITS will document the change in the Moodle log and will notify the appropriate constituents that the change has been made.

Exemptions

Exception to or exemptions from any provision of this policy must be approved by the VPFA Similarly, any questions about the contents of this policy, or the applicability of this policy to a particular situation should be referred to the IT Director.

Enforcement

Non-compliance with this policy could severely impact the operation of the institution by exposing the university to permanent loss of university data leading to loss of financial records, Students' records, other records, research material. It may also expose the individual or the University to legal action.

Education

All students, staff and faculty members shall be trained (on going) to know about their roles in the portal and LMS(Moodle). Building awareness is an important element in establishing an environment in which each individual feels both responsible and empowered to act in their own and the university’s best interests.

Definitions

Learning management systems (LMS): Is a software for the administration, documentation, tracking, and reporting of training programs, classroom and online events, e-learning programs, and training content.

Portlets: Are pluggable user interface software components that are managed and displayed in a web portal. Some examples of portlet applications are email, weather reports, discussion forums, and news. Portlet standards are intended to enable software developers to create portlets that can be plugged in to any portal supporting the standards.

Web Part Also called a Web Widget, is an ASP.NET server control which is added to a web part zone on web part pages by users at run time. The controls enable end users to modify the content, appearance, and behavior of Web pages directly from a browser. It can be put into certain places in a web page by end users.

Web parts are equivalent to p, but don't necessarily require a web portal such as SharePoint to host them.

Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM): Is a collection of standards and specifications for web-based e-learning. It defines communications between client side content and a host system called the run-time environment, which is commonly supported by a learning management system. SCORM also defines how content may be packaged into a transferable ZIP file called "Package Interchange Format".

Web 2.0: The term Web 2.0 is commonly associated with web applications that facilitate interactive systemic biases, interoperability, user-centered design and developing the World Wide Web. A Web 2.0 site allows users to interact and collaborate with each other in a social media dialogue as consumers of user- generated content in a virtual community, in contrast to websites where users (prosumers) are limited to the active viewing of content that they created and controlled. Examples of Web 2.0 include social networking sites, blogs, wikis, video sharing sites, hosted services, web applications, mashups and folksonomies.

*Storage capacity is subject to be changed based on the availability and requirements.
** Users are advised to keep a copy of the documents saved on Alfaisal portal, ITS is in the process of procuring comprehensive backup solution especially for the portal.