In order to answer this question the NWU, for the first time in history, will participate in the EDUCAUSE Centre for Analysis and Research (ECAR) Students and Information Technology Study of 2016.

This study is based on an annual survey that helps higher education institutions assess student’s expectations and experiences of technology. Any higher education institution may participate, and there is no fee.

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The increase in demand for meeting and managing big data requirements poses big challenges with regard to ICT resources. This is especially true for big data projects such as the Square Kilometre Array (SKA) and the MeerKAT radio telescope.

Most researchers venturing into the daunting world of genomics research these days find themselves overwhelmed by new terminology, computational skills required for data analysis, and complex study design considerations.

On Tuesday, 2 February 2016, IT@NWU held its first departmental meeting of the year. The IT Department consists of various teams and sections located on the various campuses.

Connect@NWU (powered by Adobe Connect) was used to connect the campuses by means of video link. This enabled all IT staff to participate in the meeting. Although this was not the first time that Connect@NWU was used for the IT departmental meeting across campuses, the following is important to note about the most recent meeting:

As from 11 January 2016 qualifying students can pay for various services offered at the Institute for Biokinetics by using their NWU-Vending “wallets”.  If the student has sufficient vending funds at his / her disposal they can use their NWU student cards when making a payment for one of the service offerings provided.

The associated functionality has brought numerous benefits to the Institute for Biokinetics including but not limited to:

Gone are the days when you had to wait for your payslip to arrive via snail mail.  As from October 2015 the NWU are sending payslips electronically.

In the “snail days” payslips were printed by Nashua, folded by Finance Payroll and then sent to the postal division for distribution.  Today payslips are sent by the click of a few buttons.

Buying airtime through the NWU mobile app Buy Tool is not new.  The service was established in 2014.

Students can buy airtime from Vodacom, MTN and Cell-C through the app by loading money beforehand onto their NWU-Vending “wallet”.  On entering the app a student is informed of the amount of money that is available on his/her vending wallet.  The student can then continue with the purchase process.

Will you be traveling soon, possibly to a participating eduroam institution? 

“eduroam (education roaming) is the secure, world-wide roaming access service developed for the international research and education community. eduroam allows the user from participating institutions to obtain Internet connectivity when visiting other participating institutions by signing on with their institutions credentials.” source: www.eduroam.org

Wishes come true… Staff will be happy to know that their GroupWise mailboxes will increase to 1GB as from 1 February 2016.

The change will be seen when signing into GroupWise on that day.

Due to the Rand/Dollar exchange rate it is not possible to renew the NWU's Gartner subscription for 2016.