| GENERAL
POLICY
This document serves to summarize Instructional
and Information Technology Services (IITS)
policies regarding computing resources
for faculty, staff, and students. It is the goal of IITS
to accommodate the campus community as much as possible
with all their computer needs, to the extent that our
budget permits.
Computer Hardware Upgrades Purchases, and Support -
Unless otherwise notified, upgrades are the responsibility
of the individual faculty/staff member and must be funded
through their budget allocation, Center allocation (if
one exists) or through a
grant. Any advice, pricing, network issues, etc. can be attained by
calling Bill Ward. It is a good idea that computing equipment is
checked out prior to purchase by Bill Ward to make sure it
is
compatible with existing campus equipment. Installation of upgrades,
new purchases or any other hardware support can be coordinated
with Jim Corbitt.
Office Computer Software Upgrades and Purchases -
This follows closely with the above paragraph. However, IITS
has some limited resources to support software upgrades
and will continue to upgrade the following software products
when these upgrades are received by IITS: DOS, Windows,
System 7, Quickmail, Gopher, Mosaic, Telnet/FTP, virus
protection, Word, Excel, Powerpoint, Foxpro, SAS, and
SPSS. IITS does NOT supply any manuals. As upgrades become
available we will notify the campus community. IITS has
announced that they are no longer supporting upgrades
of products from the following vendors: Borland, Lotus, dBase,
Harvard Graphics, Claris, and WordPerfect .Because we are
migrating from a PC DOS environment to Windows, DOS-based applications
will no longer be supported when a Windows version is available.
This change in support affects both software upgrades and
technical support. IITS will fully support all Microsoft products
mentioned above. IITS will attempt to assist individuals with
other misc. software products when a legal license and documentation
exist with no guarantee of complete success. This policy
has already taken effect in the computer laboratories. Please
note that all faculty/ staff will soon have all the newest versions
of Microsoft Office (Word, Excel, PowerPoint) installed on
their workstations and will have training available in these products.
For information on class schedules or individual training
call Clayton Bower.
Unix Computer Hardware Maintenance -
IITS has a goal of providing hardware support for campus Unix computers
either through the purchase of maintenance services from an
outside vendor or by a funded pool of money which can be used for
repair/replacement of problem equipment. This is money that is
included in the budget request. In the event that the budget request
for Unix Hardware maintenance is not granted then individuals
who have Unix boxes on their desk will be notified of
the problem. Unix hardware failures should be reported to
Mike Irick.
Unix Software Support -
IITS will provide help and basic problem resolution for Unix
users. Specific problems with free/shareware will be
resolved on a sliding scale depending on the number of
people the affected by the problem and the availability
of IITS personnel. IITS will provide a once-weekly backup
of home directories on desktop and shared Unix computers.
IITS will install software maintenance releases at a
time mutually agreeable to the Unix desktop computer owner
and IITS staff. IITS will assign and maintain network address,
naming services and send mail configurations for Unix computers.
Unix Software Availability -
IITS will maintain and make available standard software applications
for the Unix computers. These include the pine mailer,
gopher server/client, Mosaic client, web server, emacs
editor, laTex editor, tin newsreader, rn newsreader, standard compilers,
BMDP, SAS, SPSS and many other applications a complete list
of which can be found in the file /usr/local/info/whats_on_(computername).
Dial-up Access -
Every effort is made to provide dial-up access to the campus
24 hours/day with the exception of major maintenance
tasks performed between 6am and 12noon on Sundays.
Network Availability -
The CSUSM network and networked equipment should be available
24 hours/day except for the period beginning at 6am and
ending at 12noon on Sundays. Typically IITS will post
a notice in the CWIS and/or Quickmail Public folder of
scheduled maintenance periods. Other outages will inevitably
occur due to equipment failure. Unscheduled outages will
be resolved as quickly as possible.
Computing and Multimedia Equipment
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The Technology
Resource Center (TRC) located in Craven 2302 -
The TRC is a computer lab on the CSUSM
campus, supported by Instructional
& Information Technology Services (IITS), in which
faculty and staff can:
- Try out new software and hardware
- Learn new technologies
- Create interactive media to enhance
learning
The TRC is available for faculty and staff use 7AM-10PM,
Monday-Thursday, 8AM-5PM Friday, or by appointment. Users
may make appointments by calling x4780
or emailing Chuck
Allen. When calling make sure
to ask for tutoring if needed.
Three levels of support will be provided to users. Level
One includes general introduction to the utilization
of multimedia technologies. This introduction will
involve the use of PowerPoint
in presenting content material to students and demonstrating
the use to faculty members.
Level Two would include offering training sessions
in the use of presentation software. This step involves training
faculty on how to create their own presentations utilizing
PowerPoint. It also includes instruction on how to include
(digitize) audio and video (QuickTime movies). These two levels
are supported by Clayton.
Level Three would be for the more advanced users; those
users interested in authoring courseware. Training
sessions in the use of an authoring tool will be introduced
at this level. Users will be provided with an overview
of the design and development process. After completing
a short tutorial/project in the training class, users
can be left to work on their own. Any users who require
additional support can schedule an appointment with Chuck
on a as needed basis. Computing and Multimedia
equipment is available for for check out through Classroom Technology Services(ITS).
Classroom
Technology Services (CTS)
located in room Academic Hall 302A
-
The CTS exists to provide technology in the classrooms
for students, faculty, and staff. Laptops (PC and
Macintosh) and mobile computer units (computer/video projection
carts) are available for delivery and are processed on a
first come, first serve basis.
Training on the Microsoft
operating system and Microsoft Office software is
available through Clayton Bower and Candie Halstead.
Campus Budgeted New Employee Computer Complements -
A computer complement is given to all new campus budgeted employees.
It is the responsibility of each unit to decide if the new
computer goes to the new employee or if the new complement
will be distributed on a need basis within that department.
This includes all standard hardware, networking and
software needed. There is no computer compliment supplied
to new employees that are budgeted by an individual
unit. This type of new employee's computer equipment
will be the responsibility of the college or department.
Software Purchases and Upgrades for Computer Labs -
IITS will continue to upgrade the computer labs at appropriate intervals.
Faculty are encouraged to contact Mary Atkins in Computing
Services if they have special needs in the computer
labs. Faculty should not install their own software in the
labs without first contacting Mary. Any unauthorized
software found in the labs will be deleted immediately!
Computing Services is in the process of cleaning up
the computers in the labs and will be deleting software
that is no longer used to support computer courses.
Summary -
The goal of IITS is to begin standardizing some of the applications used
on campus. By doing this the university will be able to
save money by purchasing in quantity from a single
vendor, technical support will be more feasible, data
sharing between computers (including Mac and Windows)
will be more feasible, the newest upgrades will be
available, and staff and students will be required
to master only one product per application type. Our department
in no way intends on forcing anyone to use certain software
or hardware but we must limit our support due to our department's
limited resources.
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