Instruction/Student Support/Research
Instruction/Student Support/Research
Contents of this page:
| NEXT section | PREVIOUS section | Table of Contents |
The Academic Computing Advisory Committee and the Distributed Computing Office at Potsdam College have devised three strategies to make computing resources
available for classroom instruction: computer classrooms, computerized
audio/visual lecture halls, and mobile computer carts. The college currently
has three computer classrooms in operation (Dunn Hall for MS-DOS computers,
Kellas Hall for Macintosh computers, and Satterlee Hall for Apple II and
multimedia equipped Macintosh computers) and a soon-to-be-opened Windows
classroom in Flagg Hall. These classrooms provide facilities for hands-on,
individualized instruction using a variety of applications programs (word
processing, statistical analysis, graphing, simulations, hypertext, programming
languages, and data communications) for teaching in many fields from
anthropology to education and music, from writing and literature to the natural
sciences, from mathematics to sociology and economics. Each classroom is
equipped with personal computers, a projection system for classroom viewing of
the instructor's computer screen, printers, and a Local Area Network (LAN)
which connects the personal computers to a file server where class assignments,
data and software is stored and to the campus network. Each classroom is
available to any faculty member, but must be scheduled for use.
The college has also equipped three large lecture halls with rear screen projection for images from computer screens, CD-ROM, laser disc, and VCR. These rooms are designed to get heavy use for such traditional a/v functions as showing videotapes in class, but increasingly they will encourage pedagogical
innovation as instructors find new ways to display information and demonstrate
materials. They have proven to be popular with faculty and students, and the
demand for additional facilities is growing. One strategy for meeting the
demand and accommodating flexibility in room scheduling is the provision of
mobile carts equipped with computers, video sources, LCD projection and network
connection. These carts provide functions similar to the lecture halls to small
classes on an as-needed basis.
Goals:
- To develop flexible and efficient strategies to meet growing pedagogical demand through systematic faculty participation in the planning process.
- To coordinate computer planning with planning for classrooms of the future.
- To encourage innovative pedagogical use of the network.
- To use SCAP funds in accord with strategies developed by the Academic Computing
- Advisory Committee to enhance students' skills and productivity.
- To enhance existing computer classrooms through upgrades with sufficient computing networking and multimedia resources to support current pedagogical needs.
- To support academic department computing activities with the necessary resources and services.
- To investigate distance learning techniques.
Many, if not most, academic departments on our campus are now expanding their
current programs of computer-based instruction, coursework and research as
increased numbers of faculty become interested in the opportunities made
available by new computing technologies and increased numbers of students
become computer literate through their initial writing course on our campus.
Computers will increasingly be interfaced with laboratory instruments, musical
equipment, and multimedia components (laser disc players, video cameras,
CD-ROMs). Faculty need a facility where they can become familiar with powerful,
current computing tools and technology to prepare their courses and pursue
their research projects. Distributed Computing maintains a centralized Faculty
High-Technology Workroom for faculty use in developing course materials. Among
services available in the Workroom are interactive multimedia, audio/visual
digitizing and sampling, image processing, and optical scanning and optical
character recognition. The Workroom serves also for evaluation of technology to
determine its effectiveness and appropriateness for instruction and research
before committing the campus, or their individual departments, to the purchase
of equipment. Staff support for the Workroom is constrained by budgetary
limitations.
Goals:
- To provide state-of-the-art technology to faculty and staff for purposes of evaluation.
- To provide cost-effective faculty access to advanced technology for course development and research.
- To develop strategies for more effective support of faculty and staff development.
- To publicize the availability of resources in the workroom.
Potsdam College maintains a rich variety of facilities to provide access
to computing resources for students to work independently. The James H.
Levitt Memorial Center was established in 1987 to provide centralized
access for students to personal computers, application software and general
assistance with the use of these computing resources. The Center is supported
by the Distributed Computing Office and provides access to Macintosh and MS-DOS
computers, dot-matrix and laser printers and a variety of software applications
used in computer-based coursework and research on campus. All computers are
networked to a file server which provides access to the software used in the
Center and to the campus network. The Levitt Center is located in the Crumb
Library and is staffed by Student Assistants during most hours of operation. It
is open whenever the library is open. The Center has become, and will continue
to be, the primary support area for student computing. As the Campus Master
Plan evolves, it is anticipated that the Levitt Center will be moved from the
Crumb Library to the Student Services area connected with the Student Union.
Student Residential Computing Centers provide students with convenient
access to computing resources and services within their residential buildings.
Students no longer have to travel across campus to the Levitt Center or other
computing labs to find a computer for work on their term papers or other
computer-based assignments. Open on a 24-hour basis, residential computing
centers provide students with access to personal computers networked as a LAN
with file, printing, and network services. The most common applications
students use are available via the file server; students need only bring a data
disk to store those personal files they are working on. During the evening
hours on Sunday through Thursday, Student Assistants from the Distributed
Computing Office provide general assistance and distribute printouts. All
residential halls now have student computing centers.
The SGA Computer Center in Dunn Hall was established with funds from the
Student Government Association. It provides 24 hour access to computers,
printers, and the network. In addition many departments provide access
to computing facilities of which the largest are in the Crane Library and the
English Department. The computer classrooms are also available for
independent use by students whenever classes are not scheduled in them.
The growing proportion of students who need remote access to campus computing
facilities requires planning for additional remote services, including
additional simultaneous connections, more direct access to networked services,
and more user friendly client interface for mail, library and other network
services. Additional services imply the need for additional support, such as
demonstrations, training, and documentation. Cost to students for taking
advantage of enhancements should be part of the planning process. New
technologies, like video-conferencing, will influence our need to provide for
remote access for students.
The growing proportion of students who need remote access to campus computing
facilities requires planning for additional remote services, including
additional simultaneous connections, more direct access to networked services,
and more user friendly client interface for mail, library and other network
services. Additional services imply the need for additional support, such as
demonstrations, training, and documentation. Cost to students for taking
advantage of enhancements should be part of the planning process. New
technologies, like video-conferencing, will influence our need to provide for
remote access for students.
Goals:
- To integrate planning for student-access to computing resources with the Master Planning Process.
- To develop a training program for student assistants.
- To upgrade facilities regularly including provision of access to multimedia stations.
- To involve students in design and operation of student-access facilities.
- To respond to the requirements of the Americans with Disabilities Act.
- To provide remote users with the same array of computing services as is available to users on campus.
- To provide remote users with the same array of client computing services as is available to users on-campus.
Access to the student information database by faculty advisors has made
advising more efficient and effective. Both the advisor and the student are
able to obtain and use up-to-date and accurate information. Currently, the
advisor can see a listing of classes which a student has taken on a
semester-by-semester basis. Availability of a full degree audit, which would
contain the student's entire academic history, including transfer work, would
greatly facilitate the advising process. The audit would show on one
page/screen the academic history and the student's progress toward completing
the College's general education and major requirements for graduation.
During registration for the Fall 1993 and Spring 1994 semesters about 5% of
the students were registered on an experimental basis from their advisors'
offices during scheduled advising appointments. The normal advising process
took place, faculty advisors registered their advisees, scheduling adjustments
were made on the basis of course availability, and students received
printouts of their schedules. In general, the experiment was a success;
students and faculty both appreciated the ease and speed with which the process
took place. Closer linking of advising and registration made the advising
process more effective.
Goals:
To provide easy access for faculty advisors to the student information database through use of a graphical user interface (GUI) for the purpose of advising students.
To create an audit for every student every semester which would replace grade slips and would serve as an unofficial transcript.
To provide degree audits, on-line, for students and faculty.
To continue the registration of students by advisors in their offices on an experimental basis with an additional goal to include all faculty advisors.
Computers play an ever-increasing role in faculty research in a variety of ways
that may broadly be divided into seven categories:
- real-time control of instrumentation--many areas of research in fields as diverse as chemistry, psychology, and music now rely heavily on computer monitoring of equipment and processes;
- data analysis--the use of statistical packages has become standard in almost all social science research environments;
- scientific computing--faculty in virtually all the College's science departments have frequent need for numerical results in their research, and use various platforms, numerical software packages, and compiled programs to satisfy this need;
- systems research--faculty in computer science are currently working on systems software development in both DOS and UNIX environments;
- communication--this includes collaboration with colleagues via networks, acquisition/exchange of research data, on-line bibliographic search, and remote accessing of various computer services;
- curriculum courseware development--faculty in teacher education, music, and several liberal arts disciplines are currently designing learning packages for use in various educational settings;
- desktop publishing/manuscript preparation--all departments on campus use computers in this fashion to some degree.
It is not surprising, however, that there are many on-going faculty research
projects using computers that do not fall into any of these categories (e. g.,
music annotation, analysis of human kinetics, theoretical algorithms). Such
developments in faculty research will continue to be difficult to predict.
Almost all research in the social sciences currently being conducted on campus
requires the systematic acquisition and analysis of data. Recognizing this, the
College supports and maintains the statistical package SPSS-X on its VAX 6000
minicomputer. Additionally, many academic departments and individual faculty
members use microcomputer versions of statistical packages such as SPSS and SAS
in their local environments.
Goals:
- To develop a systematic policy for providing more sophisticated hardware and software, including remote access to national and international computing facilities, when special research circumstances require.
- To develop policy for research support to attract creative new faculty (e. g., start-up funds).
- To explore new sources of funding (e. g. corporate sponsorships, grant programs, cooperative agreements) for the purchase of research equipment.
- To obtain and support statistical analysis software which will meet the instructional, research, and reporting needs of the campus and will execute across all campus computing platforms.
There are several high-level programming languages currently used on campus,
and their compilers reside on a variety of platforms. These languages are used
primarily in the curricula of the Computer and Information Sciences program,
Teacher Education program, and related disciplines, but they are also employed
by faculty, students, and staff in the programming of specific applications.
The campus's VAX system currently supports Basic, Cobol, Fortran, and Pascal;
the CIS Department's Sun Sparc systems currently support C, C++, and Lisp, and
will soon support Fortran and Pascal; the Dunn PC Computer Laboratory currently
supports Basic, Pascal, C, C++, Lisp, Prolog, Logo, and various assemblers, and
will soon support Ada; the Satterlee Apple/Macintosh Computing Facility
currently supports Basic, Pascal, and Logo. Additionally, a wide variety of
general-purpose programming languages is employed by individual faculty,
students, and staff on their personal machines. It should also be noted that
the use of special-purpose programming languages and language interfaces for
curricular, research, and administrative applications is likely to continue to
increase; examples of such software currently in use on campus include the
Graphical Kernel System residing on the CIS Department's Sun Sparcstation 2,
Mathematica (currently residing on some of the Mathematics Department's
Macintoshes), and SQL (currently part of the College's VAX/Oracle system).
Goals:
- To meet the needs of those departments on campus which make use of programming languages in their curricular and research activities.
- To explore the possibility of campus-wide and department-wide site licensing agreements and software support services.
| NEXT section | PREVIOUS section | Table of Contents |
Return to SUNY Potsdam's WWW Home Page.
This document prepared by Robert Jewett. Email: (jewettrj@potsdam.edu).