Companies world-wide are diverting capital spending from information-technology hardware to cloud services, artificial intelligence and other tools that hold the promise of cutting costs and boosting revenue, according to research group International Data Corp.
Overall corporate spending on enterprise technology is expected to decline this year, as companies slash IT budgets to cope with a downturn in business sparked by the coronavirus pandemic, the research group said in a report Wednesday.
The group’s IT spending index dropped to 987 in April, down from 1,005 in March. The index is based on a global survey of enterprise IT buyers and a composite of market and economic indicators. A score above 1,000 indicates that IT spending is expected to increase, while a score below 1,000 points toward a likely decline.
Experts say the rapid technological changes happening in medicine due to the pandemic also have profound implications for other types of businesses, government agencies, schools and religious institutions.
CSUCI computer science professor Michael Soltys says organizations of all kinds have been adapting quickly to new technologies like Internet-based meeting programs.
Michael Soltys. Photo courtesy of CSU Channel Islands
“Everybody’s on Zoom and working from home if they can,” said Soltys “It’s a massive shift.”
He also says some people are finding benefits from taking care of business at home.
“Of course there’s the joke about sitting in your pajamas at a meeting comfortably in your home with a cup of coffee, but you do save time on commuting. Meetings online tend to be more targeted and condensed and better scripted. They’re often recorded so people are better prepared. They’re not just hanging out in a meeting room killing time,” said Soltys. “People are going to become accustomed to those benefits and will want to have them.”
I recently (April 12, 2020) spoke with KCLU on COVID 19 and the Cloud.
Point 1: Don’t think of this move to online teaching as a one-off; this is the new normal. At California State University we have had to move to online teaching practically every year in the last five years: fires (twice), shootings, and now the pandemic. So think of the COVID-19 pandemic as an opportunity to build an online offering that can serve your department and students for years. You should have an online version for all your classes, not only for emergencies, but also to be responsive to the current reality where so many students want online offerings.
Point 2: There are two initial “shifts” in the move to online teaching. First, the pedagogical shift to not teaching in the classroom, where it is easy to connect with students physically present, to read facial expressions and adjust your teaching accordingly, to chat with some of them in person after class. Second, the shift to a different usage of tools, or a different set of tools altogether: Zoom, Canvas, Piazza, MyITLab, Slack, Microsoft Teams, and of course AWS Educate offerings. Both “shifts” require some time; e.g., think of how you are going to compensate for lack of physical presence, and do not start learning Zoom half an hour before the first class.
Point 3: In Point 2 we mentioned the challenge of not having the students physically present; how are you going to compensate for the lack of interaction that you are used to? I use Slack to create a collaborative environment in the class. I dedicate a channel to the course, and include all the students in the channel. Students can interact with me (the instructor), but even more importantly, they can interact with each other, and they do! Here appears one advantage of online teaching: often, as the students sit to write down a difficulty they encounter in the course, by the act of writing it in a public forum, they concentrate more than they do when asking verbally in class, and the question is better formed and often the answer appears in the process. Also, having those interactions recorded in the channel allows us to point them out later if the question comes up again. Further interaction comes by using Zoom on a regular basis, both to teach, and to have office hours / question periods.
Point 4: In Point 2 we mentioned the challenge of shifting to a new set of tools. For Computer Science faculty this is relatively easy from the technical perspective. We are familiar with cloud-based tools, and our students like IT tools, and so the move is seamless. What can be problematic is how these tools are deployed; that is, the heavy reliance on these tools can make the course about them instead of making them ancillary to the objective of the course. The solution here is to explain, or even better automate, the aspects of the tools that are not intrinsic to the topic being taught. For example, we use AWS Educate accounts to teach our Computer Architecture class (COMP 262), a sophomore course where student learn about different microprocessor architectures and assembler level programming. Being able to deploy AMI (Amazon Machine Images) with certain architectures frees the student to concentrate on the point of the exercise: the differences in architecture.
Point 5: It is important to be creative. More material can be taught successfully online than one would expect. For example, we have a senior elective in “mobile robotics” (COMP 470), which includes a lot of hands on lab work. It may seem hopeless to simulate such a course online, but it is not – we used the material in AWS Educate RoboMaker class to create virtual labs. Students can be given the relatively inexpensive robots (e.g., Amazon Deep Racer, ~$300 each), and participate in a lab by doing the hands-on activity at home, but testing and competing in a virtual environment in the cloud.
Point 6: Do not think of online teaching as simulating classroom teaching. It is a different entity, with its advantages and disadvantages; concentrate on the advantages. For example, simply using Zoom to deliver a lecture at the same times as a regular lecture won’t do. Your lecture will be dry, you will feel frustrated as you feel as if you were talking into your own screen instead of a classroom full of students. Use Zoom to create an interactive environment, including quizzes (there are some nice tools to deliver interactive quizzes which always awaken a sense of fun competition along students; e.g., Kahoots, Quizzez), Zoom breakout rooms, question and answer sessions, presentations by students, etc.
Point 7: Grading has to be changed. For example, rely more on assignments, as in a final assignment rather than a final exam. Tests and exams can still be given, but I would suggest to give them as multiple-choice quizzes with limited times per question, in order not to make them exercises in who can Google-search faster.
Point 8: In my experience online teaching has to be very well structured and organized, and the communication with the class has to be excellent: frequent, repetitive and complete. Students should know exactly what they need to do each week, and where to go with questions.
Point 9: Communicate enjoyment, passion and enthusiasm for the material. One of the most important roles of a teacher is to reassure the student that time spent with you, and the effort required to master your difficult material, is a worthy pursuit. Tell the students what is the treasure that they will possess upon completion, what we dryly call SLO (Student Learning Outcomes), but which is the raison d’être for your course. Present your online offering not as “the 2nd best given the circumstances”, but rather as a great opportunity to work with others in an online setting – remember, this is the direction in which the IT world is moving, and students will benefit greatly from having the experience of being self-motivating, accountable and working with others online.
Point 10 (Bonus for Comp Sci instructors): Some material can be taught very easily online. For example, I prefer to teach programming classes in a blended online environment, even when we do not have a crisis! The reason is that Amazon Cloud9 is a perfect cloud-based IDE (Integrated Development Environment) that has many advantages over a machine-in-a-lab IDE: first, everyone has exactly the same environment, which I can customize to the needs of the course as precisely as I choose, and everyone can access this environment independently of the type of computer they have, as all it requires is a wi-fi connection and a browser. It also allows me to enter the environment from the “outside”, and code with the student watching my changes. This is really fantastic!
I followed @realjasonisaacs for his data gathering and analysis of COVID-19 in Ventura County. I wrote a simple Python3 script (using graphics.py) that provides a visualization of the pandemic. The simulation has a few parameters, but it is essentially a simulation of people’s random but relatively confined movements. It starts with one sick individual in the center, and a population of 300 healthy individuals. What was surprising was how easily I was able to simulate the situations presented by Jason Isaacs (e.g., exponential versus logistic growth) with my simple code. See a recording of a run of a typical development of the pandemic.
From the page: During this unprecedented time of temporary and sustained school closings, educators across the globe are quickly transitioning to remote learning. This webinar series is designed by educators for educators and based on educator input from a recent survey capturing current challenges. Any educator is invited to join. There’s no cost for participating. The webinar topics are detailed below with links to sign up.
My talk is: Teaching Online: Ten Suggestions for Success As you shift from traditional instruction to online instruction, learn from Dr. Michael Soltys the things you should consider and actions you should to take for a successful transition. Don’t think of this move to online teaching as a one-off. Think of it as an opportunity to build an online offering that can serve your department and students for years.
We are offering an 8-week course in AWS Solutions Architect certification. The class will be taught by me (Michael Soltys), May 4 to June 26, 2020. In response to the need for online classes during this time of national emergency, we have halved the price of the course. Upon completion of this class, students will be able to take the AWS Solutions Architect certificate exam. This is an advanced level of AWS cloud expertise.
Please contact Jeff Ziskin (jeff.zisking@csuci.edu, 805-437-2653) with any questions. Please not, you do not have to be registered at the university as a student to register for this class.
From the abstract: This paper re-examines the content of a standard advanced course in Cybersecurity from the perspective of Cloud Computing. More precisely, we review the core concepts of Cybersecurity, as presented in a senior undergraduate or graduate class, in light of the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud.
This paper has three goals: (i) to aid faculty in cloudifying a Cybersecurity offering; (ii) to re-examine Cybersecurity in light of the new paradigm of Cloud Computing; and, (iii) as a guide for preparing for the AWS Security Specialty certification. The paper presents an outline of Cybersecurity, with topics examined in the context of AWS, and with a long bibliography for a more in-depth study of each topic.
It should be mentioned that this paper is a second paper in a sequence on cloudification with AWS; the first one, Cloudifying the Curriculum with AWS, can be found here: https://arxiv.org/abs/2002.04020, and it was mentioned in this blog post. I mention the AWS security speciality certification exam in this post.
We have the CI in the Cloud group for students, faculty, alumni and friends; MSCS alumni Rihan Pereira designed a great banner for us! Please join us on LinkedIn at:
My book, An Introduction to the Analysis of Algorithms, has been identified by the publisher, World Scientific, as one of the most downloaded ebooks. See my page http://www.msoltys.com/book with all the book details and resources (slides, GitHub repository with implementations of all algorithms, solutions to problems, errata, etc.).
KES-202024th International Conference on Knowledge Based and Intelligent information and Engineering Systems (KES2020) | 16th – 18th September 2020 | Verona, Italyhttp://kes2020.kesinternational.org/index.php
We are pleased to invite contributions for KES2020 taking place in Verona, Italy organised by KES International, in conjunction with the University of Verona.
