istpub.berkeley.edu:4201/bcc/Sept_Oct99/avc.students.html
From the Associate Vice Chancellor New student computing service planned for this academic year Jack McCredie IST provides many services in support of the broad academic programs of our campus community. Such resources generally fall into two main categories -- general infrastructure supporting a broad range of information technology applications, and activities designed specifically to support UC Berkeley's academic programs. Examples in the first category include electronic mail, the campus network with more than 36,000 local ports, dial-up and wireless modems, interconnections to commercial Internet service providers, and research and education networks such as CalREN-2 and Internet2. Illustrative activities in the second category include several specially designed classrooms and drop-in labs used directly in the teaching process, support for course home pages on the Web, general computing accounts for hundreds of classes and thousands of students, and support for computer-based learning modules available directly over the network. Last August, the Commission on Campus Computing issued its report, and one of its recommendations was strongly supportive of the concept of persistent computing accounts for all students. Acting upon this recommendation, Chancellor Berdahl allocated start-up funding for the project as part of the UC Office of the President's Instructional Technology Initiative. During the past year, IST has been working with vendors and campus working groups to refine the original proposal, and to develop the infrastructure required to make this idea a reality. We believe that persistent student computer accounts will become a reality during this 1999-2000 academic year. Providing students with persistent computer accounts (accounts that can be used by students during their entire academic careers at Cal, in the same manner that students have the ability to have the same email addresses) has been an IST goal for a long time. Because of resource constraints, however, central computing accounts have historically been assigned to undergraduates only for the duration of a particular class for which they were needed. These short-term accounts do not provide for permanent storage of study materials and other digital information students accumulate as they progress in their academic work. The budgetary and technical challenges of providing over 30,000 traditional login-style accounts have been prohibitive. Not only hardware costs, but more importantly, technical support costs, have prevented IST from pursuing this objective. The support issue and its related problems, however, have been radically altered by the web revolution. The web protocol, the basis of most Internet computing, allows many complicated computing functions to be accomplished very simply. IST's current goal is to provide students with central disk space where they can store and retrieve files of any kind, and where they can publish information via the Web. This will not be a "full-service computer account" in the traditional sense, but a new, less costly, web-based service provided to every student. Requiring only a standard Internet browser, this service will provide the file storage and file management functions of uploading, downloading, copying, moving into different folders, and publishing to the Internet. Since no special desktop software will be needed, and most students are already very familiar with using browser functions, much of the training and ongoing technical support is eliminated by this service model. With no dependence on client software, this central, secure computer storage will be accessible from any networked computer at any time. The first phase of this service will be the creation of a pilot program in which a relatively small number of students participate in testing the software and providing feedback on the functionality of the new design. IST is planning to have this pilot service available during the fall, and then, if funding remains available, to roll it out to the entire student community next year. Information about the progress of this project will be made available to the campus as the supporting software is decided upon and more design elements are in place. IST is currently negotiating with several commercial vendors to determine which is able to meet the campus service specifications at the lowest costs.
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