Specialized Services

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Audio/Visual Digitizing Services

Optical character recognition (OCR) allows a user to scan a page of text in order to use this information with text editing and word-processing software. Digitizing allows users to scan and store printed or video images as graphics-based files. Sounds may also be digitized and stored for use within many software applications. Distributed Computing currently provides digitizing services.

Goal:: To enhance the current digitizing services (including OCR, graphics, video, sound).

Documentation of Campus Computing Services

In order for users to take full advantage of those services provided by the Computer Center, it is necessary to provide them with high-quality, printed documentation. This should include technical and general reference material. Documentation is needed most for centralized computing services since they are typically the least intuitive to use. Current information will be distributed to the campus community via e-mail, Gopher, and the Potsdam Reporter as appropriate.

Goals:

To maintain readily available documentation of computing services at Potsdam College which covers:
- electronic communication services including electronic mail, conferencing and Internet.
- location, hours of operation, equipment available and individual responsible for campus computing facilities.
- specialized information regarding the use of the College's computing services.
- policies governing the use of the College's computing services and resources.
To distribute needed current information to end-users in a timely fashion.

Multi-platform Information Exchange

It is often necessary to move from one computer format to another in order to take advantage of the unique capabilities of a computer, printer or other device. Sometimes, colleagues may need to share data with unlike systems. Banner data may be transferred to a personal computer to establish a grade book, or WordPerfect(TM)-generated files may be converted to Microsoft Word(TM) in order to incorporate graphics in a report, or prepare publication-quality materials. Distributed Computing will continue to support the transfer and translation of data between those personal computers supported on campus.

Goal:: To provide file translation service at the end-user level for any file format supported on campus.

File Recovery

The more our working information is stored on hard and floppy disks, the more imperative it is to insure against its loss by instituting proper backup measures. It is equally important to acquire the appropriate software tools to recover information that has been lost because of damage to a disk. The source of this damage can be physical (bad media, accidents, breakage) or logical (a user error, a bad program or a computer virus. The number of requests for file recovery service has risen dramatically over the past several years and is likely to continue rising as more of the campus population becomes actively involved with computing.

Goal:: To recover the loss of data as much as possible from damaged files on all campus-supported operating systems.

Testscoring and Optical Scanning

Courses which have large number of students often rely upon objective-type examinations as a means of practical student evaluation. Central Computing has developed a testscoring service which automatically scores student exams and provides an analysis of the test questions. An instructor may request output which reports simple raw scores for each student; a test-item analysis; test results by class ID (for posting student scores without violating privacy guidelines); and weighted test-items scoring. To utilize this service, students must submit test answers on special optical scanning (OpScan) forms.

In addition to the testscoring service, the special OpScan forms, described above, can also be used for collecting responses to surveys and questionnaires. Central Computing will custom design a survey or questionnaire for end users where the standard Op Scan form is not practical to use. The custom designed form can be reproduced in Duplicating. The responses on the form are stored directly in a computer file for later analysis. Programming support is available for developing and interface to read and store results from custom designed forms in a computer file.

Four options for analysis of the data are available. End users may use SPSS-X statistical software on the VAX or download the file to a desktop for input to a package of their choice. They may have results produced by the OpScan analysis software used for test scoring or by the Survey software provided with the custom design software package.

Goals:

To continue offering current optical scanning services.
To continue encouraging and supporting use of op-scan forms as a method of data updating.
To continue offering the service of custom designed and locally generated forms.

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This document prepared by Robert Jewett. Email: (jewettrj@potsdam.edu).