Present: Arlene Allen, Debbie Anglin, Kevin Barron, Art Battson, Eric
Brody, Glenn Davis, Ken Dean, Zeina Ellis, George Gregg, Bill Koseluk,
Tom Marazita, Ed Mehlschau, Elise Meyer, Alan Moses, Stan Nicholson, Deborah
Scott, Vince Sefcik, Glenn Schiferl, Bob Sugar, Jamie Sonsini, Paul Valenzuela,
John Vasi
Not Present: Ken Bowers, Bill Doering, Phil Handley, Rick Johnson, Tom Lawton,
Joan Murdoch, Larry Murdock, Kevin Schmidt
Housing introduced plans to build a Windows 2000 root directory (called
"Housing"). This directory might or might not be included in a campus
wide hierarchy at some future time. Housing would be interested in
joining a special interest group of NT administrators working with Windows
2000.
The RFP for the NGB is in Purchasing and site evaluations are in progress.
Zeina Ellis was introduced as the new project manager for the Intrabuilding
Wiring Project (IBW). Getting off to a quick start, she distributed
drawings to the Library, Engineering and L&S. IBW project priorities
have been set and coordinated. It was noted, however, that
program commitments will cause new items to be folded in as the year progresses.
Members of the wiring standards group reported plans to produce a single
page summary of their conclusions suitable for publishing on the web.
The replacement modem pool equipment is ready for production on October
1. (This date has since been changed to
October 31.) Given that usage has recently been topping out
at 20 simultaneous users, it was decided to implement only two of the five
planned PRI lines. These will support 48 simultaneous connections.
The system will be monitored and capacity can be increased if necessary.
It was noted that the new system could support additional features (such
as authentication and general Internet access) that should be discussed
at some point. Although the initial plan is to continue with two
pools, one with a 30 minute time-out and one with a 2 hour time-out, we
might wish to relax the 30 minute limit and merge the two pools after we
gain some experience.
Currently connections to off campus locations
share Frame Relay capacity with ISPs (e.g., Silicon Beach and Impulse).
Communications Services plans to separate the two functions because
additional off campus connections are being planned (e.g., Coal Oil Point,
IV Theater, Purchasing and Embarcadero Hall). Additional Frame Relay
capacity will be required.
UCSB cable modem service to Storke and West Campus locations is now in
production. This completes wiring of all university owned housing.
It will also add 400 customers to the 10Mbit connection between ResNet,
the campus backbone and off campus locations. Use of Napster bodes
saturation of this connection. Note: Statistics
are available online.
Gartner offered to expand services and seats such that all on campus
could access all categories of their service. Although the price
increase was modest ($7500 in addition to the $19,500 currently charged),
little interest was expressed.
The UCSB Directory (LDAP) is online (available at http://directory.ucsb.edu). A web application is available for registration (CorporateTime
users are already registered). Anonymous access is provided to certain
fields, while authentication is required to see other fields or to make
changes to your own information. A note will be sent to various lists
when support for email clients is ready for production (requires population
of certain fields). Pointers to "help" screens telling where data
elements were obtained and where one might go to change incorrect data
will be provided.
The (paper) Campus Directory is currently produced by circulating update
forms each spring. It is hoped that the Campus Directory can be printed
from the (electronic) UCSB Directory, once people get in the habit of keeping
their online information current.
Announcement of the proxy service is waiting for the UCSB Directory
to permit self-service password assignments and changes. Twenty faculty
have tested and most have succeeded. The Library is tuning the instructions
based on their experiences. Instructions will be circulated to the
csf list when ready. One problem is the lack of help at night and
on weekends when people are most likely to be using the proxy service.
The Wireless
Access Scouting Party Report is in final review by the committee.
Recommendations will be discussed next month. A campus research group
recently received an NSF grant to experiment with wireless access in teaching.
Review of the Electronic
Communications Policy is in progress. Comments were to be directed
to Meta Clow or Bob Sugar. It was noted that significant responsibilities
have been delegated to the campuses.
October marks the two-year anniversary of ITPG. Several things
have been accomplished (e.g., Security Coordinator, Gartner, Educause &
CBT memberships). Others are funded and beginning implementation
(IBW, NGB, Students in the Directory). Still others remain in the
planning stages (PKI, Course Web Support, Student Access Staff Support
and a Multimedia Production Lab). With the ITB, ITPG and OIT in place
a structure exists to facilitate IT planning on campus. Nevertheless,
much remains to be done. For example, a Lab Operations Group needs
to be convened and discussions should proceed on such issues and copyright
and MP3. Further, we need to refine our discussion regarding IT support
for instruction. Although there was much interest in the topic at
ITB, our specific proposals did not seem to hit the target. We need
to stimulate continued discussion, perhaps by presenting a taxonomy of
alternatives.
There are many possible services that might be augmented, including:
web hosting, web page development, teaching with access to the web, lab
space for students, access to appropriate tools, classroom equipment for
teaching, etc. How to look at these topics in our distributed context
is puzzling. One concern is that members of ITB typically have a
higher level of IT expertise than instructors who appear at the labs needing
assistance. Grad students are able to fill only part of the gap.
The number of faculty members requesting Instructional Improvement grants
with IT requirements suggests more staff support is required.
Successful projects generate additional need for computer support in classrooms,
putting a strain on staff in Instructional Resources as well.
In addition, the Chancellor would like to know what other "big
things" we see needing support in the future. For instance, what
would be required to scale up the provision of IT support for instruction?
It was noted that the ITPG Context Document still has a good list of major
items with estimated costs that remain operational. Consequently,
it was decided to continue the discussion of how ITPG might help define
instructional IT projects at our next meeting.
The next three ITPG meetings will be held on October 26, November 30
and December 21, 2000. All three meetings will be from 10:00 a.m.
until noon in the Mary Cheadle Room at the Library (thanks, John!).
Back to ITPG Meeting Schedule
