The Office of Mediated Education (OME) is a central IT unit dedicated to providing innovative and reliable solutions to meet the academic computing needs of K-State in the areas of teaching and learning as well as research, technology transfer and outreach. OME reports to the Vice Provost for Information Technology Services.
More than 45 full-time staff and part-time students makeup the OME team. Our services and web applications are used daily at both the Salina and Manhattan K-State campuses as well as research and extension facilities. In addition to our services and web applications, the many OME teams support the growing needs of our diverse community.
The Identity Management (KEAS) team merged with OME in 2006. Among other things, the KEAS team provides central authentication for approximately 30 university applications including K-State WebMail, KATS, protected websites, dial-up services, K-State Online, and the K-State Calendar.
Besides supporting the Office of Mediated Education and the Division of Education, our LAN and Technology Support team is the K-State Coordinator for Barton County Community College and Dodge City Community College, and also provides technical support and hardware maintenance to the Fort Riley/K-State administrative offices.
Our Integration Team is involved with several university-wide projects including a central transaction hub for the many K-State applications and databases. They also work with Career and Employment services to generate graduating senior data, which is then used to support accreditation with the Kansas Board of Regents.
The Landon Lecture series website and streaming video is provided by the Electronic Media Services team. They also produce, encode, and duplicate DVDs and CDs for university departments such as Counseling Services and the Division of Continuing Education. See Web Hosting and Design, Live A/V Webcasting, and A/V Encoding and Editing for more information about the many Electronic Media Services.
Faculty interested in teaching online courses, bringing their face-to-face course to an online environment, or teaching with technology in general can contact the Instructional Designers for Mediated Education. The IDME team can help individuals, teams, and departments with their online education goals.
Podcasting, collaborating with others from all over the world in a live online space, and creating and archiving classroom lectures and meetings and much more can all be effortlessly done with the help from the Web Presentation Services team. The WPS team works with both the K-State and Axio Learning community.
Our developers and quality assurance team are often brought into outside projects as consultants. Some of our development projects include: K-State Online, Go Members, Axio Survey, Electronic Grade Submission, National Agricultural Biosecurity Center, GoArmyEd, and Electronic, Theses, Dissertations and Reports.
Many of our development projects and web applications are created from direct user feedback. “Users have been major contributors by helping design tools both in terms of features and interface. They have helped create and specify most of the features that our applications have and they will continue to do so via direct feedback and established communication channels. Their input is why many of our applications even exist,” said Scott Finkeldei, assistant director of OME.
We are constantly growing in both our projects and technologies. OME’s future includes projects such as Scholar’s Desk, K-State Single Sign-on, DCE Business Office, and the annual version release of K-State Online and Axio Learning. We are also working towards the many university international and global online education initiatives.
Please contact us with any questions about the Office of Mediated Education. We look forward to hearing from you.