Wilfrid Laurier University | Information and Communication Technologies
In 2024, Laurier’s ICT department made significant strides in enhancing our digital infrastructure, improving services, and supporting the university's strategic goals. This report highlights some of the ways the team collaborated with university partners to change the way we learn, teach, research, and work in support of Laurier’s Digital Strategy and ICT’s Strategic Objectives.
These initiatives, among others, demonstrate our commitment to providing accessible, secure, and innovative technology solutions that support the Laurier community's evolving needs.
"At Laurier, digital technology is more than a tool – it's foundational for collaboration and innovation across all of our campuses and locations. Laurier's ICT team enables teaching, learning, and research, ensuring the university can deliver on its commitments to students, staff, faculty and our communities."
Deborah MacLatchy, President and Vice-Chancellor
In our increasingly digital world, ensuring fair and easy access to resources is paramount. We are committed to breaking down barriers and creating an inclusive environment where everyone can connect and thrive.
Throughout 2024, we implemented significant Wi-Fi upgrades across several campus buildings, including common spaces as well as residences in our Waterloo campus. These upgrades not only improved signal strength and coverage but also addressed long-standing issues with outdated wiring. In Lazaridis Hall, we replaced 47 network switches in all 13 telecom closets, laying the groundwork for improved network performance. These enhancements ensure that students, faculty, and staff have reliable, high-speed internet access, supporting both academic and administrative functions.
In collaboration with the Office of Indigenous Initiatives, we developed a streamlined approach for the Indigenous Identity Confirmation process, supporting Laurier's commitment to Indigeneity. This process created a new online form for Indigenous identity confirmation, streamlining the authentication and verification process. The process integrated data flows connecting the Qualtrics form, SharePoint, and our Banner student information system. These improvements support our Indigenous student, faculty, and staff population by facilitating more targeted services and streamlined awards processes.
Recognizing the transformative impact of digital technology at Laurier, the Digital Accessibility report aimed to ensure equitable digital access for all students, faculty, and staff. In response to challenges such as fragmented oversight, limited resources, and inaccessible legacy systems, this multi-year initiative proposed dedicated coordination, targeted accessibility training, and incremental improvements to Laurier’s platforms. This business case report has been submitted for budget consideration for the next fiscal year.
Heidi Northwood, Provost and Vice-President: Academic
Effective communication and seamless collaboration are the cornerstones of a vibrant community. We're investing in cutting-edge tools and platforms to foster meaningful interactions and teamwork across our campuses.
In 2024, we made significant progress on the Telephony Renewal Project, modernizing Laurier’s communication infrastructure. We transitioned the main University lines for the Waterloo Campus to our new carrier to provide business continuity and operational functionality. Our auto attendant and call menu system migrated to the Microsoft Teams environment, creating a more integrated communication experience. Classrooms across campus received Teams-based calling capabilities, enhancing the current environment to reach support services from a classroom computer. On the Brantford Campus, we maintained critical analog emergency lines, in support of the safety of our university community.
In partnership with Laurier’s Special Constable Service (SCS) we completed the implementation of an enhanced Alert Notification System to strengthen campus safety and emergency communication. A successful university-wide test of desktop notification alerts reached over 3,000 Laurier-managed computers. This enabled digital signage alert notifications on all screens associated with the Wallboard software and added the voice alert mode option for mobile phones, creating a multi-layered approach to critical information dissemination by balancing user experience with maintaining mass safety communications capabilities.
In support of Laurier’s Digital Strategy, we conducted a series of focus groups and distributed a survey this year to gather community feedback. This initiative reflects our commitment to ongoing collaboration and understanding of evolving technology needs. We engaged with over 125 students, faculty and staff participants in focus groups and received over 2,700 survey responses, ensuring diverse perspectives continue to inform our digital planning and priorities.
"The safety of students, staff and faculty is of paramount importance at Laurier. The alignment of ICT priorities, limited financial resources, cross-organizational collaboration and accelerated implementation plans was exemplified in bringing the new Alert Notification System to life over the last year. I am very proud of all the team members across Laurier who brought this important project to fruition."
Lloyd Noronha, Vice-President: Finance and Administration
Change is inevitable, but progress is intentional. We're strategically embracing technological advancements to transform our processes and services, always with our community's needs at the forefront.
We conducted a thorough Microsoft Copilot Readiness Assessment, evaluating our existing Microsoft 365 environment and our preparedness to leverage AI integrations. This forward-thinking assessment positions us to make informed decisions about implementing advanced collaboration tools while maintaining our commitment to security and privacy standards.
Our Data Warehouse Migration project saw substantial progress, modernizing Laurier’s data infrastructure. This modern infrastructure eliminates the costly hardware purchase cycle every 5 years while increasing the amount of computer power available to Laurier. This effort also eliminates lengthy hardware maintenance projects that take away from project efforts. Our ICT and Institutional Research teams are now able to focus on gathering, analyzing, and supporting data-driven decision-making utilizing data from across the institution instead of isolated systems These improvements enhance our ability to manage and analyze institutional data, supporting data-driven decision-making across the university.
We continue to improve our student information systems through various Banner-related projects. Tuition deposit handling automation has been developed to significantly reduce administration effort of deposit handling while allowing Laurier to quickly accommodate to International Student caps. Continued progress has been made utilizing Banner Communication Management to automate notices and reminders to students for various financial and reward-related activities. University of Waterloo Double Degree students attending Laurier will face fewer roadblocks since a new automation has been developed to coordinate with the Ontario Universities Application Centre (OUAC) instead of manual data entry on the part of both institutions. These enhancements greatly improve student experience while reducing administrative effort to manage the related processes.
We transitioned the Faculty of Graduate and Postdoctoral Studies (FGPS) applicant login process from the legacy LORIS PIN sign-in page to our single sign-on (SSO) environment, enhancing security and user experience. This streamlined the graduate applicant login process, enables self-service password resets, reducing staff time spent on password reset administration. Retiring the LORIS PIN page for graduate applications contributed to a more seamless admissions experience.
This project automated the tuition deposit payment process for international students, aligning with federal Immigration, Refugees and Citizenship Canada (IRCC) requirements. The system automatically applies deposits exceeding tuition fee payments to student accounts, reducing administrative tasks and ensuring a smooth admissions process. This automation supports compliance and simplifies financial management for both students and the university.
"Over the past year there have been several significant projects completed that enhance the digital transformation across the university. The comprehensive approach has resulted in a much stronger support network and has provided clarity on roles and responsibilities."
Dan Dawson, Assistant Vice-President, Student and Ancillary Services
In an era of rapid digital evolution, safeguarding our community and adhering to regulations is crucial. We're proactively addressing potential risks and ensuring compliance to create a secure and trustworthy environment for all.
We successfully transitioned from using legacy on-premises monitoring to a modern cloud-based system for enhanced management and performance alerting. This shift has allowed us to leverage an advanced solution that provides a more scalable and efficient monitoring solution with additional capabilities.
We have also completed our transition of requiring Multi-factor Authentication (MFA) for all user account types. These proactive measures significantly enhance our overall account security posture.
This fall, we expanded our mandatory cyber awareness training to encompass critical student employee groups, including residence dons, student employees in athletics, annual giving student employees, and all students with sponsored @wlu.ca accounts. This initiative aligns our digital security training with existing requirements for staff and faculty, creating a unified approach to cybersecurity awareness across our institutional community.
During October’s Cyber Awareness Month, ICT delivered weekly newsletters with practical cybersecurity tips for students, faculty, and staff. Additionally, we launched a series of micro and nano modules accessible to all students, offering essential insights into cyber threats on October 31 through MyLearningSpace. This new program will be promoted to enhance our student’s knowledge and resilience against cyber threats.
"As VP Research, I greatly value my close working relationship with ICT. In talking with my counterparts at other universities, I realize that this is not the norm but rather something special. And for that, I am grateful!"
Jonathan Newman, Vice-President: Research
Visionary guidance is essential in navigating the complex landscape of technological advancement. We're fostering a culture of innovation and forward-thinking leadership to steer our community towards a future of digital excellence.
The opening of our new Milton campus presented an exciting opportunity to implement state-of-the-art technology from the ground up. We successfully established full network connectivity, including eduroam Wi-Fi access, ensuring that students, faculty, and staff have seamless access to Laurier's digital resources. All three classrooms were equipped with web-conference capabilities including HD cameras, intelligent ceiling microphones and dual computer monitors at the teaching console. All this to fully support diverse teaching and learning modalities. We also set up an on-site ICT support office and prepared a stock of loaner laptops for students, ensuring that technical support was readily available from day one.
Maintenance and immediate support for all classrooms, event and meeting spaces are vital to our team’s mission, and we know our integrated systems are counted on to perform. Our design and integration teams continually look for the most reliable and modern systems on the market for Laurier. This year our concentration has been on wireless video presentation, and specifically in one of our most popular teaching spaces, Active Learning Classrooms (ALC). Less wires and increased classroom layout flexibility is the message we have heard from faculty, and we are introducing the technology to assist with that goal.
The research ecosystem at Laurier is complex and diverse, with various internal and external partners making research possible. To support these diverse needs, the Office of Research Services and ICT created a new position to support research at Laurier. This role is dedicated to consulting on research solutions. With this role we significantly expanded our support for high-performance research computing. By the end of 2024, we had processed requests for and supported 32 specialized research computers across various departments. We also developed a new Research Computer Request form and prepared a Research Solutions Roadshow presentation to better communicate our expanded services to the research community.
In response to Microsoft's retirement of the A1+ licensing, we strategically purchased additional A5 licenses for our Contract Teaching Faculty (CTF). This decision ensures that our teaching staff have access to the full suite of Microsoft Office applications, supporting their instructional needs and enhancing collaboration capabilities.
In collaboration with the Hub and the Hawk Shop, we conducted a comprehensive review of each unit’s processes and business capabilities aiming to identify opportunities to leverage systems and build revenue generating capacity within the team to better meet community expectations and needs. These review engagements provided both tactical and strategic recommendations to optimize technology solutions and processes with business goals of each respective unit.
"This September, we had the privilege of welcoming our inaugural class of students to the brand-new Laurier Milton campus, and it has been incredible to see the impact of thoughtful and next-level classroom technology implemented right from day one."
Patricia Kousoulas, Milton Campus Manager
The success of our digital initiatives hinges on how well they serve and satisfy our community members. We're dedicated to creating intuitive, user-centric solutions that enhance productivity and engagement across all our platforms and services.
We made substantial progress in our Computer Lab Strategy Project, transitioning from traditional desktop setups to more flexible and efficient solutions. Throughout the year, we upgraded 13 computer labs, installing 89 thin clients in key locations such as BA113 and BA206 labs in Waterloo and the library public lab at the Faculty of Social Work. This transition not only modernizes our computer labs but also provides students with more consistent and reliable access to necessary software and resources, regardless of their physical location on campus.
We updated 58 all-in-one computers on the second, third, and fourth floors of the Library, following the scheduled renewal plan of the Evergreen Computer Lab program. This upgrade ensures that students have access to modern, efficient computing resources in one of the most utilized spaces on campus.
Our Service Desk team prepared extensively for the increased support needs of our university community. We conducted thorough training sessions for all new student service desk analysts and developed specialized support processes for our Milton campus, including on-site presence for the crucial first two weeks of September. These efforts ensure responsive and effective support for all users across our campuses.
In Spring 2024, ICT and Teaching and Learning simplified student and faculty communication by consolidating email addresses. Previously, students had two email accounts – @mylaurier.ca and @myls.wlu.ca. This update, based on student and faculty feedback from the Digital Strategy focus groups, enhances secure, streamlined communication across Laurier systems. Further details will be shared in early 2024.
As we reflect on the accomplishments of 2024, we are proud of the significant strides made in enhancing our digital infrastructure, improving services, and supporting the university's strategic goals. The successful completion of major projects like the Alert Notification System Implementation and the launch of our Milton campus technology showcase our ability to adapt and innovate in an ever-changing technological landscape.
Looking forward to 2025 and beyond, we see tremendous potential for continued growth and development. We aim to further leverage AI technologies to enhance our services, expand our research computing capabilities, and continue to improve our network infrastructure. Our focus will remain on providing accessible, secure, and innovative technology solutions that support the evolving needs of the Laurier community.
The foundations laid in 2024 – from our enhanced security measures to our modernized communication systems – position us well for future initiatives. We are committed to staying at the forefront of educational technology, ensuring that Laurier remains a leader in providing cutting-edge digital resources for teaching, learning, and research.
As we move forward, we will continue to align our efforts with Laurier's Digital Strategy Objectives and our ICT Strategic Objectives, always striving to enhance the digital experience for all members of our university community. The challenges and successes of 2024 have strengthened our resolve and capabilities, preparing us for the exciting technological advancements that lie ahead.
Nela Petkovic, Chief Information Officer