Student Resources

Technology & Educational

The School of Biomedical Informatics (SBMI) is dedicated to providing high quality information technology and distance education services to our students and faculty. We provide the following facility, software, and technology services to our students and faculty.

Computer and Web/Network Access

14^th Floor Computer Lab

Whether you forget your laptop at home and need to use a computer at school or just need to check some information before heading to the TMC library, we have a place for you.

On the 14^th floor of UCT (UCT 1416), we have a computer lab available for our SBMI students. The lab is in a secured room, and includes computers and printers. You will need to press the door code to get in and use your SBMI account to login to the computer. If you do not have a SBMI account, you will need to login using a guest account.  

You can check with our staff at the Office of Academic Affairs (UCT 800) for the up-to-date door code and guest account information. Please remember to bring your UTHealth ID with you for verification.

Office of Academic Affairs UCT #800

Two desktop computers at UCT #800 can be used to access your student accounts.

Wireless Access

Wireless access is available on UCT floors 6, 8, and 14.  You will need to use your login and have an account for wireless access. Or, if you do not have your account set up you can use guest access which is unsecured.

Software

MATLAB

MATLAB is a high-level language and interactive environment that enables you to perform computationally intensive tasks faster than with traditional programming languages such as C, C++, and Fortran.

SBMI currently owns 6 concurrent licenses which are available for our doctoral students and graduate research assistants. A set of toolboxes (as listed below) is also available for your usage. If you are interested in installing a copy on your computer please contact David Ha (713-500-3919) for your requests. MS students who are interested in installing the software need to get approval from their faculty advisor.

MATLAB Toolbox licensed by SBMI:

SIMULINK	Image_Toolbox	Fixed_Point_Toolbox	Signal_Toolbox
Bioinformatics_Toolbox	MAP_Toolbox	Filter_Design_Toolbox	Symbolic_Toolbox
Curve_Fitting_Toolbox	MATLAB_Builder_for_dot_NET	Robust_Toolbox	Spline_Toolbox
Compiler	Neural_Network_Toolbox	SimBiology	Statistics_Toolbox
Control_Toolbox	Optimization_Toolbox	Simulink_Control_Design	VIrtual_Reality_Toolbox
Fuzzy_Toolbox	PDE_Toolbox	Stateflow	Wavelet_Toolbox

EndNote

EndNote is a commercial reference management software package that is used to manage bibliographies and references when writing essays and articles.

SBMI currently owns 25 licenses which are available for our doctoral students. If you are interested in installing a copy on your computer please contact David Ha (713-500-3919) for your requests.

SPSS

SBMI has been providing students copies of SPSS for a set of courses related to research design and statistics. Since Fall 2011 semester, SBMI no longer provides the license for SPSS to students due to budget cut. Alternatively, students are encouraged to consider open source options such as R (http://www.r-project.org/) and GNU PSPP (http://www.gnu.org/s/pspp/pspp.html) for their statistics needs.

TurnitIn

TurnitIn is a company providing solutions to discourage plagiarism and facilitate rich, meaningful feedback that improves student writing skills, promotes critical thinking, and streamlines grading. To promote integrity in education, SBMI has integrated Turnitin with Moodle.

As a student, you can check the originality reports for your submission made to assignments and view papers marked with Turnitin paperless grading tool.

As an instructor, you can create a Turnitin assignment in Moodle, check the originality of submitted student paper, use rubrics for grading, and create paper assignments with peer review.

Training video and manuals are available for students and instructors.

Students: https://www.turnitin.com/static/training/student.php

Instructors: http://www.turnitin.com/en_us/training/instructor-training

If you need any help for using TurnitIn service, please contact SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu) for help.

Course Management System

Moodle

Moodle (http://moodle.sbmi.uth.tmc.edu) is an open-source course management system that has been used by SBMI access to course materials and for distance education. A great number of courses at SBMI are now Web based taught using Moodle. We host our own Moodle site in a fully serviced and secure environment and provide a range of quality support services. You can view our Moodle tutorials at the YouTube SBMI Tutorials Channel.

For any front-end questions and problems, please contact SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu) for help. For any server side problems, please contact David Ha (713-500-3919) for help.

SBMI Virtual Campus Second Life

The University of Texas System through a grant provided each of its campus with three virtual islands in Second Life during 2009.  Since that time SBMI has built a virtual campus with faculty offices, classrooms, and a clinical health care facility that serves for both teaching and research activities. 

The School of Biomedical Informatics continues to enrich students’ online learning experience using the Second Life virtual environment, for teaching and learning activities.  With the initiation of the Applied Master’s degree program the use of the virtual campus continues to be used for the Health Information Technology program and as well as our other graduate level courses.

The SBMI island is currently composed of a virtual University Center Tower building housing staff, faculty and advisor offices as well as conference rooms, an amphitheater, a simulated care provider’s office, a student welcome center, an orientation area, and five indoor and outdoor classrooms. Whether you want to hold your class in an immersive learning environment or use it for research and studies it is available 24/7.

Please send an e-mail to SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu) for your Second Life request. To use Second Life you will need an avatar. If you do not already have an avatar we can send you the instructions; if you already have an avatar please include your avatar’s name in the e-mail. Our island manager will grant you island access through a group invitation in Second Life.

Be innovative, be creative. We look forward to seeing you using Second Life for teaching, learning, and research.

Other Software

Panopto

For teaching purposes, SBMI provides faculty with a user-friendly recording platform, named Panopto.  This software allows you to record audio, video, PowerPoint/Keynote and capture screens. If you use a Windows based PC you can broadcast live, however this function is not yet available for Macs.

Your recorded class sessions can be viewed in Moodle by students who are not able to attend classes and by those who want to review archived class sessions before exams. The recording will also be available to review as audio or video podcast. 

If you are interested please send an e-mail to SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu). Upon your request, we will set up an account for you and set up a folder for your class. We will provide training and assistance, if needed.

Adobe Connect Pro

Adobe Connect Pro provides instructors with the capability to easily create and deliver compelling self-paced online courses, conduct highly interactive virtual classes, and efficiently manage training programs.

SBMI supports using Adobe Connect Pro for synchronous teaching and learning activities. If you want to use Adobe Connect Pro for your class or meetings, please send an e-mail to SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu).

Accordent

Accordent provides rich media creation software that allows organizations to implement webcasts and streaming media presentations.

SBMI uses Accordent for weekly research seminars, students’ proposal defenses, and dissertation defenses. Our past research seminar videos can be viewed at http://webcast.shis.uth.tmc.edu. 

Students who want to have their defenses recorded please contact Marcos Hernandez (713-500-3589) for your request.

Video Shooting Service

We encourage our faculty and students to contact us for any picture taking and/or video shooting requests concerning any school related events. Upon your permission, we would like to use them for our school’s YouTube bi-weekly videos. Please send an e-mail to SBMI Distance Education team (de@uth.tmc.edu) for your request.

If you are a SBMI student and want to submit a video recording request to us, please ensure that you receive the approval from Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, Dr. Hongbin Wang.

If you have computer or software needs let us know so that we can help facilitate your learning and research activities.