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Shared Services 

Shared services are at the heart of DIAS. We leverage our expertise on behalf of campuses to negotiate, license, and administer shared tools that facilitate teaching, learning, research, and resource access. DIAS shared services include: 

  • Shared technology platforms and tools  
  • Procurement and contract negotiation 

Shared Technology Platforms and Tools 

SUNY Digital Learning Environment (DLE) 

The SUNY Digital Learning Environment (DLE) has continued to deliver a consistent user experience for faculty and students who teach or take courses at multiple SUNY campuses as all SUNY campuses capable of using the DLE and the Learning Management System (LMS) Brightspace at its core. Continuous improvement is key to ensuring the DLE remains a high value for campuses. The Co-Development project with D2L, Brightspace has provided additional functionality for campuses to administer their own instance. 

The SUNY Online Application Services Team’s focus shifted from DLE implementation to operational support and strategic expansion of platform capabilities. Partnering with campuses we accomplished the following: 

  • Expanding the administrative capabilities for campus administrators in their individual Brightspace environments.    
  • Developing Customized Brightspace Dashboards for more than 26 SUNY campuses to display Learner Usage and Tracking, Tool Utilization and Overall Brightspace Adoption, with more than 30 planned by year’s end. Additional ad hoc reports are developed in partnership with campuses on an as-needed basis.  
  • Supporting DLE operations. Resolved 13,085 DLE-related tickets.

The SUNY Online Apps team has been a fantastic partner to work with. They’ve consistently provided quick, effective ad hoc reports when we’ve needed data beyond existing datasets to address campus issues. The reporting dashboard has also been invaluable in helping us establish processes for archiving courses that support ADA compliance while maintaining the flexibility faculty need for course development and improvement. 

Through co-developed reports, we’re able to verify student course activity, adjust faculty access, manage student incompletes, and compile data to support retention initiatives. Their responsiveness and collaboration have made a real difference in our ability to use data effectively and improve our online learning environment responsiveness for campuses across the system. 

– DLE Campus Administrator 

Library Services Platform and Discovery Service 

The SUNY Library Services (SLS) team supports library technology management and library services initiatives including Ex Libris Alma and Primo VE, the Library Services platform shared across 60 SUNY campuses. Key achievements in 2024-2025 include: 

  • Configuring automated electronic resources usage data harvesting (SUSHI) and related analytics dashboards to improve data collection and analysis for SUNYConnect Core subscriptions,  
  • Implementing authority control in the shared SUNY catalog (the Network Zone) to improve resource discovery and access for students and faculty,  
  • Supporting the rollout of the AI Research assistant for Primo VE, 
  • Adding 85 new external resource sharing partners, allowing our libraries to share resources with a total of 248 additional libraries throughout the United States,  
  • Concluding an innovative ebook interlibrary loan partnership with ProQuest which resulted in sharing more than 3000 ebooks to support teaching and learning across SUNY, and  
  • Updating shared metadata policies through the work of the Metadata Standards and Policies Working Group to further standardize resource description in the SUNY catalog and improve resource discovery and access. 

 

I can rely on the SLS Staff to stay ahead of major changes that affect our vendors, tools, and daily workflows. Their team keeps me informed, which allows me to concentrate on providing instruction and outreach to our students and faculty. 
 
Beyond the day-to-day operations, they’ve supported my initiatives to try new tools, shared examples to help me build better platforms, and made suggestions that have improved my workflows. I don’t know how other libraries manage without such a supportive team in their corner and I’m happy to have them in mine. 
 
Sarah Tronkowski, Director of Library Services, SUNY Corning Community College 

Open Access Institutional Repositories 

OLIS provides access to two open access institutional repositories that SUNY schools and departments can use to showcase scholarly output, local collections, and administrative and archival materials. These shared services have resulted in more than 5 million downloads since they launched and greatly improve the sharing of scholarly works for teaching, learning, and research across SUNY. 

SUNY Digital Repository (SDR) serves as a platform for sharing historical and special collections, archival documents, and Open Educational Resources. The repository houses over 51,000 items with more than 1.7 million downloads since its inception. In 2024-2025, more than 2800 items were added to SDR and there were more than 295,000 downloads.  

SUNY Open Access Repository (SOAR) is the SUNY-wide repository for showcasing scholarly and creative works produced by SUNY faculty, staff, and students. There are more than14,000 items in the SOAR repository with a total of 3.7 million downloads overall. In 2024-2025, more than 1900 items were added and there were more than 1 million downloads. 

Lumen One  

Lumen One is courseware providing a Ready to Adopt catalog of courses and instructional materials covering a variety of subjects available at no cost to SUNY faculty and students. New courses added for 2024-2025 include: Abnormal Psychology, Business Communication, Introduction to Business, Introduction to Psychology, Introductory Statistics, Principles of Marketing, and Quantitative Reasoning. 

SUNY Online Student Success Inventory 

Proactively addressing gaps in online student preparation is essential for advancing retention, persistence, and equity in online education. The SUNY Online Student Success Inventory (SOSSI) is a no-cost online learning readiness assessment tool that helps campuses identify students’ strengths and challenges across key behavioral and attitudinal dimensions of online learning. Already in use across undergraduate and graduate programs, SOSSI provides actionable insights that enable campuses to deliver targeted support and improve student outcomes. 

Recognizing the evolving needs of online students and institutions, a SUNY-wide committee is leading a comprehensive redesign of SOSSI, with a planned rollout in Fall 2026. The SOSSI v2.0 will ensure data integrity and validity, enable adoption across all SUNY sectors, and provide flexibility for local campus contexts. At scale, SOSSI v2.0 will deliver a unified, systemwide view of readiness trends. This will empower SUNY to strengthen equity, strategically align student support, and reinforce its position as a national leader in online learning success. To learn more about the SOSSI, please contact Susan Warner, susan.warner@suny.edu. 

“We love SOSSI! Implementing the SUNY Online Student Success Inventory (SOSSI) during our fall pilot provided invaluable insights into the challenges students face and how best to support them. The tool sparked meaningful conversations and allowed us to send targeted communications to help students strengthen key skills (based on the measured domains). Based on its impact, we’ve now made SOSSI a core part of our onboarding process in CSTEP at OCC.” – Leslie Reid, CSTEP Director, Onondaga Community College 

SUNY Create 

SUNY Create provides students, faculty, and staff with the opportunity to register a domain name and create a digital presence through various mediums such as blogs, portfolios, and wikis.  The annual subscription fee covers unlimited access to the SUNY Create platform and its features, such as web hosting, domain registration, WordPress installation, Pressbooks integration, and technical support for WordPress and Pressbooks.  

Procurement and Contract Negotiation 

Through coordinated consortia contract negotiation and procurement, DIAS secures preferred pricing and favorable terms for digital tools and electronic resources that would be more costly and complex for institutions to negotiate independently. This approach supports system‑wide access to shared platforms such as the Digital Learning Environment (DLE), Ex Libris Alma and Primo VE, and SUNYConnect core electronic resources, while also enabling libraries to participate in opt‑in subscriptions based on local needs. Consortia purchasing maximizes collective buying power, reduces administrative burden for our campuses, and ensures equitable access to high‑quality technology and content across SUNY.