Minutes of the Computing Advisory Committee Meeting

10 April 2000

 

Those attending: JP Dunn, Michael Wainer, Larry Schilling, Dennis Leitner, Susan Logue (for Carolyn Snyder), Duke Koch, David Blakesley, Jim Duggan, Geoff Nathan (recorder), Olga Weidner (guest).

The meeting began with a presentation by Olga Weidner, Associate Director of Information Technology. Olga is responsible for managing site licenses on campus, and occasionally for the entire system. Currently the Carbondale has site licenses for AutoCad, GIS, Maple, SAS and SPSS, and is negotiating for Mathcad. The normal procedure is to secure a commitment from potential users (or their fiscal officers), but occasionally financial assistance from the Central Administration is necessary, and normally comes from the Provost. For particularly complex programs such as those listed above the experienced users normally serve as backup technical support, with the Customer Service Center functioning as a clearing house. IT is currently negotiating with Microsoft about a site license for Windows. This led to some discussion about the difference between a site license (which can expire, but which is upgradeable) and a purchase agreement (which is permanent, but requires an additional purchase to upgrade).

Geoff announced that he had been asked by Provost Winters to investigate a proposal by Smartforce to provide instructional materials to the campus. Some of the issues raised in her letter included potential conflict with existing courses, and legal problems relating to the bookstore reselling CD-ROMs. Susan and Duke pointed out that Smartforce is more like a teaching tool than an actual curriculum, and likened it to a textbook. Larry and Susan agreed that it seemed to be an attractive package, but may be quite expensive. Several people expressed the hope that it could function as a remedial training tool. Geoff asked members of the committee to get in touch with universities that are currently using it. He will talk to Norma Ewing and Fred Isberner, who have investigated the program extensively. Michael will take the materials back to the CS faculty to get their reactions. His department currently offers a course that teaches computer literacy and office application software (Microsoft Office). The question was also raised as to whether it would be available to faculty and staff who are also in need of remedial training.

There appears to be a proposal on campus to institute a Minor in Information Technology. Geoff agreed to investigate and report back.

The Provost has also been approached by a company called i-drive (www.i-drive.com), who provide large amounts of storage space to Universities for faculty, staff and student use (web pages, file sharing and so on), apparently for free, and (at least for educational institutions) with no advertising. Geoff will check with some of the universities that are using it to get some idea of how it works.

Geoff announced that, since David will be leaving, the committee will need a new webmaster. JP Dunn manages the host machine, so most of the work will involve coding materials into html. Volunteers are solicited.

David announced that his and Jim Allen's proposal for computer enhanced core curriculum materials had been approved. In addition, there is now a special web page off the English Department's home page that gives information on how to combat plagiarism. The web address is http://www.siu.edu/departments/english/writing/plagiarism.html.

The next meeting will be Monday, April 24 at 8:30 in the usual place (Library Dean's Conference Room). We will have an additional meeting Monday, May 8 (finals week) at 8:30 in the same place where we will meet with Don Olson. That meeting may well last more than an hour.