The first thing you do is check out your new classmates in SPIKE Community. You see some familiar names and faces, but plenty of new ones too. You download the Wharton Connect App on your smartphone so you can check names on the go. All of your practice pays off when you ask an acquaintance about their winter break. You impress them with your excellent memory while they fumble around with impersonal nicknames like “buddy” and “friend”, obviously not remembering your name. Nailed it.

Next, you master your route. Checking your course calendar subscription on your mobile device, you pinpoint the optimal lunch spots in between classes. If you time it just right, you’ll get there before the line. Got a new mobile device over the holidays? No problem. You get Whartonized and get everything syncing together including email, calendar, AirPennNet, and wireless printing on your laptop.

Now that you know your classmates and your schedule, it’s time to tackle your course materials. Surveying your glorious spread of technology – laptop, smart phone, tablet – you begin by downloading your course materials from Canvas to your laptop and then organizing them to sync across all of your devices through your cloud storage. While you are in Canvas, you check your notification settings, making sure that you have turned off any excess notifications from last semester and turning on the notifications that need your attention, like new assignments and grade postings.

After taking a look at your syllabus, you realize you’ll be doing some group work this semester. Last year was a disaster. Unmanageable email threads, documents all over the place, and the nightmare of scheduling meetings. How can someone have dance practice every night of the week in Center City? It’s okay, though. All of the GSRs now have webcams, so that impossibly busy team member can just call in from home using Skype. Besides, you are going to master collaboration this semester! Goodbye, term_paper_myedits_final_FINAL_REALLYFINAL.doc, you won’t be missed! Penn+Box has plenty of space and excellent version control to reign in the endless revisions.

And the last of your preparations for this new semester – now that your schedule is filling up with course work, networking events, and group projects, you want to master the very fine art of time management and productivity. The Virtual Lab will save you the hassle of having to go the lab every time you need to use MATLAB and JMP. By logging into the Virtual Lab on your tablet, you can send documents to the Wharton printers. While others fight for open hallway computers in a scramble to print, you breeze through and pick up your documents that are already in the queue. At this point, you’ve saved so much time that you entertain the thought of taking up a new hobby, but then you decide to breathe a little easier and just enjoy it.

You’re organized, you’re prepared, and you’re ready. Now that you have mastered the preparations of the new semester, go forth and succeed!

The format of this Lunch & Learn was a little different than usual. Instead of a full presentation followed by Q&A, we only covered some basic time productivity and time management tools and methods for 15 minutes. Then we turned things over to a panel of students composed of Undergrads and MBAs. The discussion was lively and engaging. All of us on the Student Experience team had been researching this topic for almost two weeks and felt really prepared, but left the discussion with a long list of new tools to try.

The discussion kicked off with asking our panelists to share their strategies and favorite tools for managing tasks and deadlines. One panelist suggested adding to-dos to a separate, differently colored calendar (in a bright color like orange or red). This strategy is a great blend of task and time management – it gets everything recorded and easy to find, but it also blocks time in your day to work on the task. This is a great example of the fact that you don’t always need a specific tool or an app to be efficient. Sometimes the best tool is the one you already have. Other suggestions included “inbox zero”, which is the practice of only keeping action items in the inbox and filing everything else. For those tricky items that aren’t finished, but are out of your hands, try using a “Follow Up Needed” folder. This gets them out of your action items, but they are still easy to account for and recall when needed again.

Next, the discussion moved into scheduling meetings and collaboration. One panelist shared that at the end of each meeting, the group agrees on the next meeting time before departing. It cuts down on all of the emails back and forth, or the need to input your availability into a scheduling aid, saving time for everyone. She also suggested choosing a recurring time and blocking it out each week for the duration of the project. For collaboration, the old favorites reigned king. Google Docs is still the most preferred, but Dropbox received enthusiasm for its ease of use, slick mobile apps, and extra 15 GB free for Penn users. Box.com also got a nod for its superior version control and the ability to comment on files and folders.

Finally, we wrapped up our discussion on the topic of taking notes in class. For the best combination of note taking and PDF annotation, Notability for iPad was the favorite. It was agreed, however, that Notability was stronger for its PDF annotation feature than its note taking or organization. If you are not looking to annotate PDFs in the same place you take notes, Evernote is preferred, especially for its powerful search that can even find words in attached photos. Evernote also came out on top for compatibility, working across Android and iOS devices, as well as having robust desktop clients for both Windows and Mac.

In case you couldn’t make it to this Lunch and Learn, the slides are posted below. Also, if you want to learn more about time management and productivity, one of our audience members recommended a great book, Getting Things Done: The Art of Stress-Free Productivity by David Allen. Keep the discussion going by posting comments about your best practices for time management using tech tools.

Time Management and Productivity Lunch & Learn

The game is pretty simple – our security experts, Scott McNulty and Barry Wilson, prepared a bucket full of slips printed with passwords of varying strength. Many were taken from a list of the 500 most common passwords. Interspersed in this sea of insecure passwords were a few very strong passwords. If a student reached in and drew the strong password, they won an 8GB flash drive. Part of the fun was watching the reactions when the drawn password was humorously bad. We were happy to see that our students can identify bad passwords! For those who didn’t know if their password was the winner, it was an opportunity to talk about what would have made the password stronger and ways to remember complex passwords.

In the two hours we were in the Forum, three students were lucky enough to draw a winning password. If you didn’t have a chance to stop by for a snack and a chance to win, we’ll be wrapping up Cyber Security Awareness Month with another snack table and more chances to win prizes on Monday, October 29 from 2pm – 4pm. Take a break from your studies and visit us!

 What Facebook Actually Changed

Many people are saying that Facebook is publishing private messages on your timeline without your consent. That’s technically not true, but the reality is a little more nuanced. If you’re a long-time Facebook user, you may now have messages on your timeline that could be from as far back as 2005. In those days, people posted back and forth on each other’s walls because you could not comment under a post or “Like” things. The model was more simple – share with all of your friends or none. These messages were always public, though your networks were probably a lot smaller more personal back then, and you probably weren’t thinking these posts would still be around 7 years later. So, no private messages have leaked, but things that were intended for smaller, more intimate audiences are suddenly easy to find, out of context and available to a more people than they were intended.

What You Can Do

While these posts might technically be public, they can still be embarrassing or unwanted. As always, you can limit who can see each individual post by clicking on the grey icon next to the date, which allows you to specify friends only, public, no one (by choosing only yourself), or some other custom group. If your old posts were public when you initially posted them, you can change them to friends only in one click by going to the small arrow in the top right corner, then Privacy Settings, the Limit the Audience for Past Posts. This doesn’t get rid of posts on your timeline, but it makes sure they are not available to everyone.

More Ways to Get In Control – Account Settings

This is also a good time to take a look through your other account settings to make sure your information in not being used in ways you did not expect. Facebook has made several changes to its privacy policy and how it handles data. You might have been comfortable with your settings last time you checked, but changes may have made things more public than you want. First, go back to the arrow in the top right corner and click Account Settings. Along the left side you’ll see several categories that you can edit.

In the Security section, you can see which devices are connected to your account and deactivate any old phones or tablets that are no longer in use. If it’s not already configured, you should enable Secure Browsing, which encrypts your activity on the web. This is also the place to go if you’d like to deactivate your Facebook account.

The Apps section will show you all of the apps that have access to your Facebook account and which information they use. Some apps simply use your email address for logging in to the service, while others track your location, friends, likes, and make posts on your behalf. If you’re uncomfortable with the amount of information the apps use, you can remove the app from here.

One last place to check is in the Facebook Ads settings. Not only does this ad control how Third Parties may use your information now, but it controls how it will be used in the future if Facebook allows third parties to use your name and picture. Right now this is not allowed, but Facebook mentions that it might be in the future and that this setting determines how your information will be used when that happens.

As the year goes on and more people realize what great resources these study spaces are, they can become harder and harder to use because they’re always full or reserved. When it gets a little crowded in Huntsman, check out some other study spaces across campus.

Right across 38th St. you can find a great new place to settle in. At the foot of the bridge, a cozy fireplace is waiting for you in 1920 Commons’ newly renovated Starbucks. If you need to meet with a group, row after row of large, rectangular tables can accommodate up to 8 people, or maybe just 4 people who have a lot of books spread out. On the last of these sunny, fall days, enjoy an outdoor study session on the picnic tables in the courtyard. You’ll be close to caffeinated beverages and tasty snacks to sustain you well into the night, since Starbucks is open till 2am Sunday-Thursday.

Warm, inviting, and conveniently located.

If you find yourself looking for somewhere to study closer to 34th Street, check out the Penn Library’s recently opened student study space – the Education Commons. It is located on the Mezzanine level of Weiss Pavilion in Franklin Field. Unlike many of the study spaces around campus, natural light pours in the large arched windows that look out onto Shoemaker Green. There are plenty of seating options, from traditional tables and chairs to enormous bean bags. The Education Commons are also equipped with computer-equipped group study rooms that can be reserved up to a week in advance, a seminar room, both black & white and color printing, and a scanner. It’s the perfect place to meet if you are coming from Center City and don’t want to come all they way into campus. It’s also an ideal spot if you want to study a little bit before going to for a jog in Penn Park or working out in the Fox Fitness Center. Check out the Education Commons website for hours and to reserve a group study room.

Natural light and bean bags. Bringing comfort to study time.

Since the first day of Pre-Term, Wharton Computing has been busy helping students with all of their computing needs. The Support Office has already seen hundreds of students and configured over 600 laptops, phones, and tablets in their Whartonization classes. The Student Experience team (that’s us!) takes over for the second half of the process – Whartonizing you. We had over 120 MBAs attend our Technology Jump Start sessions to get themselves Whartonized. They learned about all of the technology resources that Wharton provides and the lingo that goes along with them.

Erin is getting ready to start the 2012 Jump Start Presentation.

Sarah, Erin and I took turns presenting, manning the sign-in sheet, and passing out flyers and pens. We were also joined by many of our colleagues from other parts of Wharton Computing, such as Student Support, Public Technology, Courseware, and Core Systems, who were on hand to answer questions and give detailed explanations.

In all three sessions, the topic that yielded the most questions was printing. Questions ranged from cost and printer locations, to scanning and printing from your laptop. We gave tips about how to skip the long wait in between classes and shared which printers have the lowest overall volume (hint hint MBA café). We also covered accounts, security, Canvas, Study.Net and the Wharton online environment.

We are grateful to everyone who came to our presentation, which was tightly packed in between classes and other Pre-Term activities. It’s always a lot of fun for us to meet the new students and share our knowledge, whether it’s our recommendation for an iPad app that’s good for annotation or the best place to get a cup of coffee on campus. If you couldn’t make it to one of our Jump Start presentations or want to review what we talked about, take a look at the slides and let us know if you have questions.

Also, please stop by and say hello to us during the first week of class. We’ll be out in the Forum with snacks, ready to answer your questions and give any help we can.

We are looking forward to many more opportunities to connect with you during the year.

For me, the most interesting findings in the survey have related to the difficulty and frustration that comes with collaborating and sharing information for group projects. As I was reading the results and comments, my first thought was that students had to be missing something because I never had this much trouble doing group work. We met, broke up the parts of the project, then worked on them independently. We might have emailed about a few things, or peer edited here and there. At the end, we’d meet again and put everything together. One person (usually the most dominant personality), would be in charge of making sure it flowed, looked the same, and was nicely formatted. Then I realized that in the timeline of tech generations, I’m old. I never had Google Docs or Dropbox to help me do school work. I certainly couldn’t work from my smart phone because the iPhone hadn’t changed everyone’s lives yet. I didn’t have as many options and that made collaboration a lot easier.

Fall 2011 Tech Survey Results - Collaboration Tools

Now, there is an app or a service to do just about everything. You can edit a document in real time, access your work from any Internet connected device, share it to others with a click on your smart phone, and communicate with group members by phone, email, text message, instant message, social networking, or video chat. All of these tools can be a help with school work, but in the context of a group project, managing them can be as much work as the assignment itself. Moreover, choosing the right services can make or break your collaboration experience.

There is no single tool or service that does everything well (yet!). Google Docs is best for real-time multi-user word processing, but falls short on spread sheets and formatting. Dropbox makes it easy to share with your group, but version control can get out of hand quickly and it’s web-based when you’re not on your own computer or device. MyWhartonDrive is great for storing files, especially when you’ve been working in a GSR or lab, but sharing is by email only. What’s the best strategy, then? Do you use the best service for the specific task at hand, even if that means having more accounts, applications, and services to set up and manage? Or do you pick one and try to make it fit all your projects? What do you do if your group members don’t know how to use the same tools, or insist on using something else? Or do you skip all of the tools and try to manage a deluge of email? It seems like most people do a little bit of everything with varying levels of success.

This is where we need your help. We’ve done our best to document the complications and nuances of group work. We’ve compiled a list of commonly used tools and their strengths and weaknesses. We’ve also thought about the non-technical aspects of collaboration, such as file and folder naming, organization, and meetings. They are not technical concepts in their own right, but looking for the most up to date file or trying to schedule a meeting can waste a lot of the time that is supposed to be saved by using these tools and services.

So take a look at our articles on collaboration and let us know if we got it right. Tell us in the comments what has worked for you and what hasn’t. As business students, collaboration is unavoidable, so help us figure out what the best practices are so we can share them with your fellow classmates.

After the Student Experience team organizes and analyzes the annual survey data, we share relevant comments, graphs, and trends with other groups within Wharton Computing.  Although we only recently finished preparing survey data, the Wharton Computing Public Technology team has already made some changes based off of student feedback.

You asked for printers in SHDH and quicker access to lab resources – we heard you!  We have made the following improvements:

1. Printer in SHDH - We’ve added a printer to the Mac bar on the ground floor next to the 107 classroom.  Now you can conveniently print without having to trek over to Huntsman before class.
2. Crystal Ball does not automatically open - When you open Excel, Crystal Ball no longer opens automatically as well. If you would like to run Crystal Ball, you can find the shortcut in the Departmental Applications folder under OPIM.

Now that the survey data has been analyzed and organized, this week begins my favorite Student Experience process – contacting & thanking those of you who said that you were willing to discuss your results with us.  It is extremely rewarding when a student writes back completely shocked that a real person actually read their comments.

“Thanks very much for your individualized response!  It’s very impressive”

It provides a nice opportunity to open the door for a personal email exchange with the students – many of them often respond with even more detailed feedback, compliments, and recommendations.

In a world full of numbers and data and billions of people with trillions of ideas … sometimes it’s just nice feeling like your voice was heard!

Jamie Kent, Kindle Fire Raffle Winner

Wharton Computing would like to personally thank the approximate 1230 students who participated in the 2011 Student Survey. We’d also like to congratulate Jamie Kent who won our Kindle Fire raffle!

We’re in the process of analyzing the results, creating graphs, and sifting through the patterns to determine how we can best meet student needs.  It’s easy to analyze quantifiable data but for the free-text comments we created a tagging system to help us best utilize the information.  We tag each student comment according to subject matter (AirPennNet, Student Support, Public Technology, Printing, Mobile, etc.) and then import the data into a SQL database so that we can search through the tags and find the trends.  This will help us monitor not only this year’s trends, but also emergent trends that might become apparent after a few years of data.

We will publish a full analysis of the results on SPIKE in the next few weeks, but in the meantime here is a preview of some of the trends:

• Overall students are satisfied with our services, with 74% of MBAs satisfied or very satisfied and 81% of UGRs satisfied or very satisfied.
• While only 20 students are somewhat dissatisfied or dissatisfied with our services, our goal is to keep reducing that number each year through improvement and innovation.

2011 WCIT Overall Satisfaction

One way that we try to increase student satisfaction is by building a road map of Wharton Computing projects and improvements prioritized based on feedback from the survey.   We’re currently crafting the 2012 roadmap, but since new years are all about reviewing a previous year’s accomplishments, let’s review some of the ways that previous survey data helped guide Wharton Computing’s accomplishments in 2011:

• What students asked for – Updated Courseware:  While Wharton’s webCafe continues to power several of your classes, we’re actively piloting Canvas, a next-generation platform for delivering course materials.
• What students asked for – myWhartonDrive Web Access:  This fall, we added a highly requested student feature: web access to myWhartonDrive (Y:Drive Upload and download files from any location using the web interface, as well as Wharton’s public computers. Access it by logging into SPIKE and clicking the MyWhartonDrive link under My Accounts or by going directly to: https://mywhartondrive.wharton.upenn.edu
• What students asked for – More Educational Opportunities and Better Awareness of WCIT Offerings:  Last semester, we offered sessions covering tips, tricks, and best practices for courseware, student events and mobile devices. If you missed one, check out the Wharton Computing blog for a recap.  Additional Lunch and Learn sessions will be offered this semester, so keep an eye on SPIKE for news about these offerings as well as weekly IT tips.

Students Demo Mobile Technology

To set the stage for their debate, Scott and Ted covered mobile phone carriers, common buzzwords used in consumer marketing, and adoption rates of each platform among students at Wharton. After the cooperative part of the presentation, the battle began – Scott for Apple and Ted, a self-proclaimed recovering Apple user, for Android.

The lively debate wrapped up with live demonstrations and discussion of tips, tricks, best practices, and security features. So who won the debate?  I’d say the attendees, who got a convincing presentation from our seasoned IT professionals, the opportunity for hands on demonstrations with a selection of devices rarely found in the same room, and a delicious, free lunch.

Check out the slides!