Recommendations for IT Services

Draft, Including Comments on the Version of 3/9/99

Policy Recommendations

1. Students should be encouraged to obtain their own workstations and network connectivity.

 
2. Campus-supported workstation facilities should be designed to complement workstations owned by students.

 
3. Sufficient funding should be budgeted to replace the campus-supported student access workstations and communications devices on a phased cycle.

 
4. Guidance should be provided to students regarding appropriate workstation configurations and network services.

 
5. Guidance should be provided to instructors regarding the computing and networking capabilities that are available to students.

 
6. Periodic surveys should be conducted to determine the facilities available to students, the plans and aspirations of instructors and the components of the campus infrastructure that need updating or expansion.

Implementation Guidelines for 1999

1. A recommendation that students own their own computers and obtain their own Internet Service Providers should be placed in campus publications such as the General Catalog and/or other materials directed to prospective and current students.

 
2. ITPG should form a subcommittee to evaluate the distribution of campus-supported student access seats compared with faculty goals and student needs gathered from surveys. This information would be provided to control points to inform the funding process for new and existing facilities.

Lines at open-access facilities suggest that additional "safety net" (Tier 1) workstations should be installed on campus. Secondly, requests from instructors indicate a need for labs capable of video presentations, web authoring and directed collaboration. Finally, some academic units strive to provide their students with state-of-the-art, as opposed to baseline, facilities in which to do their work.
 

3. Between $800K and $1M per year would be required to update the current campus-supported base of 1244 workstations and 128 modems on a four-year cycle.

 
4. ITPG should form a subcommittee to create examples of appropriate hardware and software configurations for student-owned workstations for fall 1999. These examples should be published on the web and distributed to prospective and current students. The web pages might have links to departmental pages that offer additional, major-specific advice to interested students.

 
5. ITPG should publish guidelines for instructional use of IT for spring 1999 and fall 1999, including:
    
   1. Instructors should limit their assignments to those that can be accomplished with 28.8Kbps bandwidth unless they make reservations in an appropriate laboratory or otherwise determine that their students have access to higher bandwidth services.
   2. Instructors should limit their assignments to those that can be accomplished with Tier 1 workstations (email, web browsing of text and graphics pages and Pegasus) unless they make reservations in an appropriate laboratory or otherwise determine that their students have access to higher function workstations.
   3. Instructors should make assignments well ahead of their due dates so students have time to share scarce resources.
   4. Instructors should request that students make them aware of access problems that might arise from impacted services or from special requirements such as ADA accommodations.
   
    
6. ITB, ITPG, Instructional Consultation and Institutional Research should collaborate to implement surveys of faculty and student access to information technology.