Nowadays, a university needs to build and maintain a central ID database and authentication system for better ICT (information and communication technology) services. In 2008, the headquarters of Kyushu University had defined medium-range policy of ICT infrastructure preparation, and the policy had indicated construction of a central authentication system. According to the policy, the authors elaborated an installation plan of the Kyu(Q)shu University authentication system (QUAS, for short). Since 2009, Information Infrastructure Initiative of Kyushu University, to which the authors belong, has been issuing ID cards to all employees, and also operating LDAP servers. This paper introduces the action plan and outline of QUAS. This paper also describes two recent topics of QUAS. One is high load of LDAP servers because of rapid increase of mobile devices, and the other one is development of a multifactor authentication Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP).
It is important for teachers to know how well students understand course content. It is possible for teachers to collect such data with a web interface in computer-equipped classrooms, but this is difficult for teachers in traditional classrooms. Mobile phones with Internet capability are very popular among students in Japan, so we implemented a classroom support system to collect students' degree of comprehension of course content using mobile phones. We devised this system to offer better ease of use for both students and teachers. Teachers who use this system can prepare a questionnaire with a web interface and edit the contents and structure very comfortably. The system uses the unique subscriber ID of mobile phones assigned by the communication vendor. After the lecture, teachers can get the summarized and detailed results of the questionnaire through a web interface. Teachers can now get feedback on student comprehension of lectures and use this information to improve future lectures. We are using this system in several classrooms. In this paper, we share our system design, user interface, and our experiences implementing this system in our classrooms.
In the end of fiscal year 2013 (March 2014), Kyushu University Information Infrastructure Initiative introduced new Primary Mail Service for Staff Members and Students. The previous service for staff members had been built using proprietary mail and LDAP appliance, but tight user license and the nature of proprietary system caused several troubles. The previous service for students had been built using open source software (Postfix and Dovecot), but there were some issues with the old implementation of LDAP authentication. With these experiences, we decided to design a new system by merging both system using open source software including Postfix, Dovecot, OpenLDAP, and Squirrelmail. We also extended alias address setting service (previously available for students only) to all the members including staff members. In this paper, we explain the design and implementation, user migration, current status and future works of our new mail service.
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