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Microsoft Software Available for Faculty and Students

news-dreamsparkCLAS IT has signed a subscription with Microsoft for its DreamSpark program, which will run through the summer of 2017. 

This subscription allows students to gain access to a wide variety of Microsoft tools, such as Visual Studio, while they are enrolled in Liberal Arts and Sciences courses.

You can view the entire list of available tools on this spreadsheet by selecting the tab labeled “DreamSpark and Designer AA.”  Our subscription includes both the Premium and Standard editions; Premium covers the STEM disciplines, and Standard covers the non-STEM disciplines.

Accessing DreamSpark for Teaching

Because the End User License Agreement allows faculty, staff, and students to use these tools to teach and develop courses, we will be opening up the subscription to all CLAS faculty and graduate assistants by the end of this month.  When that happens, you will receive an electronic invitation from Microsoft to register and access the DreamSpark tools.  Once you register, you will be able to access the DreamSpark “storefront” to download the tools of your choice.  All of the tools available in the DreamSpark store are free for you to use for course development, non-commercial research, and teaching purposes.

Requesting DreamSpark for Courses

Beginning in January 2015, you may offer these tools to students enrolled in your courses.  However, in order to limit the misuse of the license agreement, we will be limiting undergraduate access only to registered courses.  If you decide you would like to take advantage of these tools for your teaching, you will need to fill out a DreamSpark Access Request Form with CLAS IT with the course and section number that should be granted access.

As you can see, there is a large suite of applications and tools that you and your students will have access to under the terms of the subscription, and I’m pretty excited to provide this.  These tools will be useful for many programs in the college.