제 26 호 E-campus Downtime at Sangmyung University: What Caused It and How It Was Fixed
Kicker: SM NEWS
E-campus Downtime at Sangmyung University:
What Caused It and How It Was Fixed
by Sumin Lee, Cub Reporter
On May 3rd, an error occurred on the e-campus and online learning service server of Sangmyung University Seoul Campus. It was restored on May 21st after about two weeks of server restoration. In this process, many students' assinments were hindered, affecting their grades. Furthermore, students complained of various inconveniences, such as having difficulty finding their instructional materials by the professors through the existing e-campus. Therefore, we will examine the problems students have experienced, the voices of students, how to deal with school problems, and the impact of this problems on Sangmyung University's online learning environment in the future.
The post of e-campus service failure
https://www.smu.ac.kr/kor/life/notice.do?mode=view&articleNo=756007&srCampus=smu&article.offset=20&articleLimit=10
Sangmyung University provides e-campus based on an online learning platform called Coursemos, which provides notifications, lecture information, communications services with professors. online video courses, building team-based learning spaces, submitting tasks, and taking exams. It also provides services such as schedule notifications. As the digitalization of the university's learning environment progresses rapidly, classes that have a greater proportion of online than offline-oriented assignments and classes are currently being held at Sangmyung University.
The e-campus, the center of this online learning space, began to lose access to the platform on May 3rd due to a service failure caused by ransomware, causing a disruption to students' learning as it failed to provide smooth services for about two weeks on the 21st. The biggest problem with this service failure was that students who did not quickly access the notification could be disadvantaged in their grades due to the problem of sending notifications to different channels for each professor when they were unable to access Coursemos, the only window for submitting assignments and reflecting grade points. Students who take e-learning, an online course currently held at Sangmyung University, were unable to listen to the class itself, including attendance causing complaints from students. As a response from the school, a push notification was sent through the Sangmyung Universiry portal app on the 5th, two days later, that the system failure occurred on the website on the day the server was first paralyzed. 11 days later (on May 3rd), the school announced the service problem and the current situation that the server started to fail, the person in charge requested the virtualization server management and maintenance. However, the initial response was delayed due to the closure of the related company. After visiting and checking the company, some infections of ransomware were identified and the way to solve this problem was by providing other alternative learning methods due to the long-term time required in the backup process. The school posted an announcement and apology on how the service failure occurred, countermeasures, and how the classes would be operated before the service resumed.
This problem caused problems and inconvenience in learning for professors and students and reminded them of the need to provide and maintain stronger servers as they are highly dependent on online learning services due to the online learning environment. Students who felt inconvenience due to the problem expressed disappointment in that the school did not make a faster and more detailed announcement and that the notice of activities affecting their performance, such as submitting tasks, were not delivered to a uniform window. In addition, as the period of inconvenience was not short, in Everytime, a college student community, there was an opinion that the disadvantages of not using the e-campus should be compensated by adjusting the duration of the assignment or slightly easing evaluation criteria.d. This service failure problem was an opportunity to recognize the problems caused by school classes being conducted in an online-dependent environment and provided the school with the need to prepare proactive countermeasures.
Sources:
https://ecampus.smu.ac.kr/mod/ubboard/view.php?id=1
https://www.smu.ac.kr/kor/life/notice.do?mode=view&articleNo=756007&srCampus=smu&article.offset=20&articleLimit=10
