Support for non-TSU Projects

Ground rules for student projects and individual staff developing computer-based systems are being discussed.

It is a time-honoured practice in Universities, including this one, for students to develop projects of all sorts as some part of their assessable work. For example each year IT students put out a call to UC staff for expressions of interest in having suitable projects developed for them by the students. Design students are also sometimes available to develop websites for clients who otherwise don't have the resources to develop them themselves.

In our own Division the Scribe website was originally developed as a student project and has now become a permanent service used in subsequent semesters for teaching: third year students maintain the site as part of their Professional writing course.

While such projects must be encouraged as a critical part of students' learning, they can provide some difficulties once the student has completed a project and moves on: often IT units are expected to host, support, maintain and upgrade the "project" as time goes by and the project becomes an important service that is relied upon.

In the case of the Scribe website, it was developed in a temporary student directory that in the normal course of events would have been deleted at the end of the semester: it was only the invitation from the Vice Chancellor to the launch of the website (with the student url) that alerted us to the fact that the service was expected to be continued. It had to be transferred to a different, permanent address (rendering the marketing materials developed to promote the site unusable), and is now another service that needs to be maintained technically by the TSU.

There are also other systems developed by end-users to support their own activities that become mission-critical systems. From time to time these systems require some support from IT sections, especially when the original developer moves on and the system needs to be supported, maintained, updated and sometimes developed further.

ICT Services is currently looking at a number of possible support mechanisms and guidelines to provide a framework within which these projects can expect to sit. In the meantime, student projects and end-user developed applications must be seen as 'proof of concept' applications that could become corporate application projects after re-development, but clients should not think that a such projects would become supported UC systems. Any proposals for these projects to become permanent services must be discussed with ICT Managers or ICT Services to avoid unnecessary or duplicate proposals or the development of systems not able to be integrated with current environments or supported long-term.

Download limits for postgraduate students

University Information Management Systems Committee examines the possibility of increasing download limits for some postgraduate students.

The University is generally charged for Internet traffic coming into the University from outside: the cost can vary depending on the source of the data coming in. Traffic from the Local Regional Network (including UC, ANU, ADFA and now CIT) is free, and all other traffic costs the University 2.25 cents per megabyte (as of February 2002).

All students at the University, undergraduate or postgraduate, have a $25 allocation per year (starting in February) of "free" downloads to computers they use within the University network, which means they can access something like a gigabyte of data from outside the Local Regional Network, and unlimited amounts of data from the Local Regional Network, each year at no cost to them. Students who exceed their limit can purchase additional allocations from the ICT Services helpdesk at what it costs the University. Download charges are expected to drop over time rather than increase.

At its meeting on 15 April 2004, the University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC) asked the Academic Divisions to nominate research students who should has increased download limits.

Payments to particular students’ download accounts could also be made from other University cost centres.

Student storage limits

Increasing demands for storage of larger files is addressed by the Division of Communication and Education.

At a recent meeting of the University Information Management Systems Committee (UIMSC), the Committee agreed that the general student file storage allocation should be maintained at 20 megabytes, noting that Academic Divisions could consider providing additional storage if they thought it necessary.

Academic staff in the Division of Communication and Education requiring their students to access greater storage can contact the cehelpdesk with a request for more storage for their students. The subject or unit number, name of the course, ID numbers of the students requiring the extra space, type of data to be stored (eg. sound files, video files, graphics) and the amountof space required must be included with the request.

Supervisors of postgraduate students requiring additional space for any student should send the same type of request, with the same information where appropriate, to the helpdesk. Instructions explaining how to access the additional storage will be provided once the space is set up.

The Division has a number of possible alternative storage options available for this purpose: the appropriate option to satisfy a particular request will be chosen after a request is received.

Space will only be provided on a subject basis for the semester or year (for full-year courses) while the subject is being taught. Access to storage will be revoked and any contents deleted after examination results are released, so these storage allocations should not be considered permanent.

Students abusing the storage provided to them (for example, using the storage space to illegally trade music files) will have their access revoked.

The Division is working on a proposal for a "portfolio" server that, if provided, would allocate around 1 gigabyte of space to students enrolled in selected courses, and the space would remain available until they graduated or withdrew from the course.

NeViLLs

Update on upgrades in Building 5.

The Networked Video Learning Laboratories, NeViLLs, formerly known as the Microteaching rooms in Building 5, are in the process of being upgraded to provide better facilities for recording and playing back of video for teaching and learning. Video projection and SmartBoards are being installed, along with better sound recording facilities and lighting. When completed, it will be possible to use the facilities online, joining participants with broadband connections from anywhere on the Internet with the local group in the presentations.

Macintosh OS X 10.3 (Panther) Training

Feeling a bit lost in OS X?

New Macintosh computers being rolled out across the Division have the latest Macintosh operating system, OSX 10.3, installed.

In order to help clients with the transition to OS X, the Division has purchased a number of licences for some comprehensive online training materials, Macintosh OS X Fundamentals, to help clients become familiar with their new environment.

The training materials are available, to Divisional staff only, online at http://www.ce.canberra.edu.au/mac/. You may need to log in to the site using your ucstaff login: you MUST include the domain name (ucstaff) in the login: in a separate field if there is one, or by typing your username with "ucstaff\s" in front of the number (without the quotes).

See Logging on to secured services for more information about how to log onto the system.

The training materials can be accessed from a Macintosh or Windows computer.