Electronic services for Open University of Applied Sciences students

As a student of the Open University of Applied Sciences at Oamk, you get to use the same IT services as any student at Oamk: You get an Oamk student username for your account. The Oamk student account gives you access to electronic services for the whole period of your studies.

Your username will be created automatically. The account is valid as long as you have registered as a students, and you have paid for the course(s) and you have accepted the license terms and related rules. To get the user account, you must accept the terms of use either electronically (with your Finnish bank account) or with your signature.

Electronic services for students are:

1. The cloud services:

Microsoft Office 365, comprising for example these personal services:
– E-mail (your username is your email account at the same time),
– One Drive for Business cloud storage and
– Teams for collaboration
Google Apps for Education that has for example
– Google Drive cloud storage,
– Blogger blogs and
– your own YouTube channel

2. Using Oamk’s computers and your home directory, where you can store your files (in addition to your cloud storage)

3. Oiva, the student intranet – from Oiva you will find news and the links of many tools and services you will need in your studies.

4. Remote access to the Oulu University Library‘s electronic materials (also from home).

5. Online learning
The Oamk Moodle, our online learning environment is used on many courses, though not all.
You can log in to Moodle even if you do not participate in any online courses: there is a space specially for open university students. Teachers can also use the cloud services (e.g. Teams) for online teaching.

Oamk student’s account and e-mail address

Students’ accounts are automatically generated. The username consists of eight characters. Open Oamk students’ usernames begin with the letter c followed by a number, which is the last number of the year it was created. The following four characters come from the student’s name, and the remaining two characters are numbers: The number is sequential, starting with the numbers 00: the number increases if the first part of the code is already in use by another student.
Example: John Edgar Smith begin his studies in the fall of 2018 in open Oamk. His username is c8smjo00 and his e-mail address c8smjo00@students.oamk.fi. You can send him an e-mail to the address john.e.smith@students.oamk.fi

Your students password

Students password is needed every time when you login to a service: You will need your username and its password each time you check your email, go to the students intranet, log in to Moodle, or use the library remote services.

NB. Keep your password to yourself. ICT Services’ personnel will never ask for your password. If you get an e-mail that claims you need to verify your account by sending your password (by e-mail or through a link to a website form), just delete the e-mail; it’s a scam.

Changing your password

How to change your password

When to change your password?

You should change your password from time to time, for example one or two months apart. The system may also require you to change a new password (at least every 3oo days).

What should the password be like?

The requirements and recommendations for a password

Did you forget your password?

First, check that you have not accidentally left the Caps Lock (upper case letters) on. If you have forgotten your password, fetch your Oamk (OUAS) username and reset your password online. If you don’t have a Finnish bank account (or a Finnish mobile number with the mobile ID), come and visit us at the ICT services’ service point. Take your identity card with you! If you are unable to attend office hours, please contact the helpdesk.

For how long can you use your account?

Students’ accounts stop working after the study period is over and the registration has not been renewed. If you have registered this fall, then you are marked as an attending student till the end of the spring semester. If you register for a course in the spring term, it lasts until the end of the year. Your student account is valid for another 7 days after you end your studies.
Remember to transfer your important files in a safe place before your account stops working! When your account is discontinued, you will not be able to reach your Oamk e-mail, home directory, cloud services or e-learning environments anymore.

1. Cloud services: e-mail and cloud storage

At Oamk, you have access to both Microsoft Office 365 and Google Apps for Education cloud services. Your e-mail is located in the Microsoft 365 cloud service.

1.1 Microsoft Office 365 cloud services

Log in to your email at https://outlook.com/students.oamk.fi (If necessary, see how to log in.)
There, you can also reach other services included in the MS 365 cloud service.

NB. You should always use your Oamk student email in all email communication related to your studies. If you need to forward your school email to another address, you have to realise that the security of the email is then your responsibility. All email systems are not safe.

Add your email account to your mobile device

You can use the email application on your mobile device. (See the email settings you need.)

Restrictions

E-mail box has a maximum size: when the box size is close to that you can no longer send e-mail. Also a single message has a maximum size. See the details from the MS 365 FAQ.

Send files

It is recommended that you do not add any attachments in e-mail (at least not large files) but rather use a web link to an online file. You can share your files from a cloud service, i.e. OneDrive or Google Drive. (You could as well use your own purchased service such as Dropbox or Flickr service if you wish.) Although sending attachments is not recommended, it is still possible. However, see the MS 365 restrictions. Note, that you should not send attachments to mailing lists.

Receive files

If you receive e-mail with large attachments, you may want to store the files in to your own computer or place the files in your OneDrive. (See OneDrive instructions.)

1.2 Google Apps for Education

Google Apps has a number of services, one of these is Google Drive. There you have a storage for 30 GB. (See how to login to Google)

2. Using school computers

You can log in to schools computers with your Oamk account and your password. You can work independently in classes unless there is no teaching going on. In addition, the campuses have computer facilities for independent work of students. Some of these computer classes are also available in the evenings and on weekends. For more information about the possibilities of using computers, you can find from Oiva or you can ask your teacher.

When you log in to an Oamk’s computer in a class room, the computer should automatically connect tuo your personal home directory. It is a place where you can store your files, regardless of which of the school computers you are using.

Your home directory in Oamk’s network

Your home directory is located at \\files.kk.lan\students\username (where ‘username’ is your username). When you are using a school computer, you will see your home directory named with your personal ID in windows/file explorer. You should save your work to your home directory, so that your work will be available from any school computer in the future. Your home directory is personal. Only maintenance personnel can see your directory but only in maintenance activity. (You may want to explore the maintenance personnel policies.)

You have a limited amount of disk space in your home directory. You have a 500 MB quota. If you need to compress your files into a smaller space, use a file compression program (for example 7-zip is available for free download http://www.7-zip.org/ and it is available for you to use in all machines run by ICT services).

You can use your home directory also from home

If necessary, you can reach your home directory also from your own laptop: If you are in Oamk’s own wireless kk network, just map your home directory to your computer. If you are at home, or you are using any other network than kk, i.e. for example EduRoam, first you will have to take a VPN connection to the school’s network and then map your home directory. The VPN connection will also allow you to connect to any other Oamk’s network disks that are allowed to your use (for example shared data disks, such as the Y drive available for Business students), as well as online access to other school services in the network from anywhere.

(Note that you can also re-establish the connection to your home directory from the school computer if you accidentally delete the automatically generated network drive link, or if a link does not automatically connect.)

Also, see the instructions for printing

Your personal website

You can make webpages and blogs with ready-made tools for cloud services (e.g. Google Apps: Sites and Blogger). These tools are easy to use, but they do not give you an opportunity to code your site from scratch.

If you need to make websites as a part of a course, or your studies duration is at least one academic year, and you wish to code your own website, you can do that in your home directory located at students.oamk.fi server.

To access the directory, you can login at students.oamk.fi server with your Oamk account for example using Putty. When you make a directory named public_html in your home directory, it will work as a personal web directory for your web pages. If you have a public_html directory in students.oamk.fi server, you can see its public contents on your homepage address, which is in the format <http://www.students.oamk.fi/~id/> (where ‘id’ is your username).

3. Student Intranet Oiva

Oamk’s student intranet is called Oiva. Login with your username and password at https://oiva.oamk.fi/

Oiva is students’ primary source of information for what happens in Oamk: You can find all the latest news from Oiva and for example ICT Services provides information about current issues primarily there.

4. Remote access to the Oulu University Library

The Oulu University library gives you access to an extensive collection of electronic material in various fields, use Oula-Finna for Oamk to search for resources. As an Oamk student, you get to use the data for example from your computer at home with your Oamk account.

Available for you to use:

e-books,
e-magazines,
e-notes,
dictionaries,
databases,
patents,
statistics,
reference databases and
theses.

Ask more from library staff!

Instructions for remote access you can find from library’s site.

5. Online learning

An e-learning environment is an online platform for studying. Oamk’s official e-learning environment is Oamk Moodle: https://moodle.oamk.fi/. However, please note that not all of the courses are available online and not all online courses are in Moodle.

All Oamk students have an Oamk account, and anyone with an Oamk account can log in to Moodle with their username and password.

When you log in to Moodle, you will see a list of links to those courses you have already joined or in which you have been added as a participant. You can also browse the names of all of the courses in Moodle: from the course listing, you can also join those courses.

When you have enrolled to a course and that course is in Moodle, at Oamk you usually have to join the course yourself separately in Moodle. There are three ways to became a course participant and the teacher chooses which one to use:
1) the teacher adds you to a course on your behalf
2) the teacher lets you to join the course without a enrolment key or
3) the teacher gives you an enrolment key that you will have to use to join the course.

NB. you cannot get credits from those courses which you can join without an enrolment if you have not officially enrolled for the course. Also note that if you join a course that does not require a key, you cannot leave the course on your own but you will have to ask removal either from the teacher or from the ICT services.

Your teacher will inform you if you need to enrol in a course in Moodle and he/she will notify you if you need an enrolment key.

How to join a course in Moodle

Browse the course list (you can use the search) from Moodle course category and click on the name of course. If an enrolment key is required, you will see the enrolment key field; enter the enrolment key there. Otherwise, you will see the text “Enrolment key is not required.” Finally, press the ‘Add me to the course platform’ button, and after that you will see the course in your own courses.

The teachers can also use the cloud services for online teaching

Teachers can also use the cloud services for online teaching: e.g. MS Teams is a tool for group work, file sharing and conversations and it is possible to link other apps to Teams.

Other services:

Plagiarism detection system: Urkund

Urkund is an online service for plagiarism detection: It checks whether the returned learning activities could be copied from elsewhere. Urkund uses web search, as well as files previously submitted to Urkund and other published material for comparison. It is possible to have an automated Urkund check for the files returned in Moodle. You might want to look the students Urkund instruction.

Online Lectures: Zoom

Some courses have lectures or meetings online. The main tool for online lectures is Oamk is Zoom.

To participate, you need a network connection (a Wi-Fi network or a fixed-price data package) and a computer with a headset or speakers. A separate Zoom application is also recommended and on mobile devices it is necessary. For mobile devices, you can find the app for free from the Google Play Store (Android) or from the App Store (iOS).

Your teacher will inform you a web link to the Zoom meeting and the time when you need to open the link.

To check the audio works well, please join the lecture on time!

Other tools for online lectures at Oamk include

Exam, electronically supervised exam room

The teachers can set the exams to be taken independently in an electronically supervised exam room. Please read more about the Exam system at Oamk.

IT support

ICT Services gives IT support to both Oulu University of Applied Sciences and the University of Oulu. ICT services will help you with IT problems related to your studies. It may be that you encounter a common problem, so at first, check out if you can find help from this site (it.oamk.fi) before contacting us for help. You can browse through the guidelines given to students. You can also use the search on that page. If you can not find help for your problem, please contact us. You can also visit ICT service’s service point on campuses during the opening hours.

Sending a Support Ticket

Support requests sent to helpdesk end up in a request queue. A request queue makes sure the request will be assigned to an expert who is available and your request will be solved as fast as possible.

ICT Services are responsible of IT support on all campuses, so locating the problem immediately from a support request will speed up the solution to your problem: So, in addition to the actual problem, please mention that you are open university student at Oamk. Identify the request by telling more details what campus/classroom/device/software your request relates. The exact description of the problem will help to solve it. Compare these examples:

“Moodle does not work” vs.
“When I try to log in to Moodle, it tells my password is not correct. I am sure it is correct as I am able to log in to my e-mail with the same password. I am supposed to join the Business Moodle course, but I can’t even log in to Moodle?
Br. Smith John (john.e.smith@students.oamk.fi)”

Always use descriptive title in your support request. The title is the most important part of an e-mail: For example, compare the headlines “Help!” and “I can not log in to Moodle”. The latter option is preferable because it tells the message subject and the message is recognisable by its title for a later date.

Security and privacy

It is important to protect personal information. Oamk has a privacy policy and all personal data is processed in accordance with the laws of Finland (see Personal Data Act). Also you have a responsibility to protect your data. Internet privacy is also in the hands of users.

Please do not put another person’s personal information to Internet – and when you are giving your own information, consider carefully what information you hand over. Anything published to the Internet (be it text or e.g. a photograph) could turn out to be impossible to delete, even if you have the legal right to the material: if someone manages to make a copy of the information and publishes it elsewhere, it could be impossible to remove it.

When handing over your personal data, (for example, when you give your personal information to a service provider when you register to a service), you should read the service’s privacy policy. It tells the purpose of the service and why it collects personal data, how it processes and transfers the data and who can access the data. Also, before you enter your data to a service, please make sure that you are on the right website: Fake sites and their addresses often resemble the real ones. Never give your contact information to a web form if the site does not provide a secure connection, even if the service provider seems otherwise unreliable.

Always remember to log out from Oamk’s systems after using them, so someone else can’t access the services with your account. If you are using someone else’s computer/device to access Oamk’s services that require you to log in, you should use private browsing and close the browser after you are done. Use Incognito Mode in Chrome, Private Browsing in Firefox, Private Windows in Safari and InPrivate Browsing in Edge: Then your browsing history is not stored. You can find the function from browser’s function menu (for example In Chrome, menu is on the right on the top of your browser window).

Smartphones, tablets and laptops in which you have set up the school e-mail, should always be protected by a password/PIN.

When you leave your computer, you should either lock the screen, log off or shut down the computer. Never never leave your computer open and unattended.

You should not carry any files that you do not want to get into the hands of others in an USB memory (at least without encrypting), because USB sticks are easily forgotten for example to classrooms. Note that you should put a sticker with your phone number to your USB memory, to help you get your lost USB back to you. If you find someone else’s USB stick, you should not put it into the school’s computer: Please bring the USB memory stick to the information booth on the campus. (Learn more about using USB sticks.)

Printing, scanning and copying

You can use the multifunction devices on the Oamk and the University of Oulu campuses with your Oamk user account. Printing and copying has fees (you’ll get a 4 euros printing balance) and scanning is free of charge. Please read the secure printing instructions.

Wi-Fi at the Oamk campuses

Oamk’s own KK network is the preferred network on Oamkin campuses. You can also use Eduroam on other university campuses and if KK is not availabe. Please read how to log in to KK and Eduroam.

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