The University of Idaho is now being asked to pay Microsoft upwards of six figures for cloud storage space, which was previously free, according to Teresa Amos, Director of IT Planning and Initiatives, during the Faculty Senate meeting on Feb. 24.
The conversation began with faculty reporting receiving emails about previous Canvas classes expiring. Lyudmyla Barannyk from the department of mathematics was concerned about receiving these notifications for classes that are not taught every semester but remain a current part of the department’s curriculum. Many of the materials for these classes were longer locally saved, Barannyk said, and would be lost should the Ccanvas page expire.
Amos responded to the issue, saying the emails were about old Teams content created by an automated system for each class that are now being cleaned up by the UI Office of Information Technology in the effort to mitigate the costs of paying for cloud storage. All Canvas classes are staying, Amos said.
“We’re having to cut back on what we’re storing in the long term quite a bit,” Amos said.
In December 2024, Microsoft made a change to educational plans where each institution will now get 100 terabytes of free storage allocation and usage across OneDrive, SharePoint and Teams, and can purchase extra storage in 10 terabytes increments priced at $300.
Microsoft reported that 99.96% of schools using their education plan were well below this new storage allotment, and that the change comes with benefits such as helping schools reduce security risks associated with legacy storage and data sprawl while also benefiting the environmental footprint created by largescale data storage.
The UI OIT website states that due to storage costs, active employees have a university OneDrive site limited to 100 gigabytes, and students have a limit of 50 gigabytes by default.
The Daily Evergreen reported on funding cuts to Microsoft cloud storage at Washington State University on Jan. 28, which will see reduction from five terabytes to one gigabyte of cloud storage for students and 10 gigabytes for faculty.
During the meeting, Provost Torrey Lawerence reminded faculty members of an AI literacy class called “Teaching and Learning in Higher Education.” Lawerence explained it aims to help faculty know how AI can be used in the classroom. A small number of seats remain, and Lawerence encourages those interested to enroll. A link can be found in emails already sent out to faculty.
Faculty Senate Chair Tim Murphy said that he had completed the training last week and that it was quite interesting.
Lawerence also reminded faculty members of Title II accessibility compliance that will go into effect in April. The Center for Excellence in Teaching and Learning has resources that can help faculty convert their course work.
“We’re seeing some utilization of those resources, but there is a lot still available,” Lawerence said. “It’s a great way to help, so it’s not all on faculty to fix on their own, but they won’t be there forever so using them now would be ideal.”
Joshua Reisenfeld can be reached at [email protected].