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Date:         Wed, 15 Apr 1992 11:43:00 EST
 <WORDS-L%UGA.bitnet@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
From:         "The harder I work, the behinder I get"
 <TRAVEN%VMS.CIS.PITT.EDU@VTVM2.CC.VT.EDU>
Subject:      Re: Putting Aaron's school online
Comments: To: WORDS-L@uga.cc.uga.EDU

From: Rita <rita@EFF.ORG>

>   ...  Sounds like your school is
>stuck in the mid-80's somewhere.  You might also want to find out the
>rationale for big schools putting their entire student bodies online, like
>Penn State, MIT, UMASS Lowell, Carnegie Mellon, etc.

	I've appended a few words from the recently-published 'long-range plan'
	for computing at Pitt.  I hope Aaron will find them useful in support
	of his quest to bring NYU into the 90s.

	The excerpts are pretty long, so you may delete this message if you
	wish.  I tried to limit what I took from the document to discussions of
	the computing needs of students and faculty, and access to information
	sources through e-mail and networks.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------

A Long-Range Plan for Academic Computing at Pitt

The Executive Committee for Academic Computing
The University of Pittsburgh
April, 1992

Section 1:   Summary and Recommendations

Computing, more than any other field of human endeavor, has undergone
dramatic and rapid changes in the past decade.  Once the realm of
scientists and engineers, computing has extended its influence into
virtually all academic disciplines.  Rapid change makes prediction
difficult, but planning is essential if advanced computing technology is
to be made available to students and faculty in a timely as well as
cost-effective manner.
		...
Academic communities stand on the threshold of a significant and profound
revolution in the way in which scholarly activity is carried out.  This
revolution involves computers as access devices to large databases that
are distributed throughout the campus, nation, and even the world, and
will eventually come to encompass the complete range of recorded
knowledge.  Access to that knowledge will be qualitatively different from
that provided by traditional libraries, both in the ease in locating
desired information, and in the ways in which that information may be
manipulated by the user.
		...
In addition, students and faculty must be able to access services
provided by the network in a manner that contributes to creativity and
productivity.

The following observations and assumptions, discussed in detail in
Section 2 of the report, underlie the recommendations that follow:

>	Computing has become ubiquitous and services many functions in addition
to traditional numerical computation.

>	Computing is becoming highly distributed, and includes a wide range
of systems and services.

>	Computing power is increasing dramatically while expenditures are
increasing slowly.
		...
>	Electronic mail has become an essential communication link on-campus
and to the outside world.

>	Computing is becoming an essential tool for instruction, transforming
how we teach and placing special demands upon our resources.
		...
>	For many faculty, computer access is an essential professional need.

The principal recommendations of the report follow below.

In terms of computing strategy and access:
		...
3.	In order to enhance
computing on campus, we must make it easy for individual students and
staff to acquire, network, and maintain their equipment.  Adequate
financial support for the PC Center must remain an important objective.
		...
7.	We recommend the
development of a campus-wide electronic-mail (e-mail) facility that is
easy to use, compatible to as great an extent as possible with external
standards, and available to all students and faculty in Oakland and on
the regional campuses.

8.	Incremental steps
should be taken to test expanded database services, such as an on-line
encyclopedia.  We recommend a cooperative venture between the libraries
of the University and CIS to provide such a service in the near future.
		...
11.	As network services
expand, informational electronic forums must be provided where both
documentation and indices to documentation can be found and where
students and faculty can post questions and receive assistance.
		...
In terms of the public Computing Labs and of student access to computing:

15.	We urge the different
Schools of the University to adopt a computer-literacy requirement for
their students and the means for them to acquire those skills.  The
requirement should ensure at least that students have the basic skills
necessary for personal-computer-based text-processing, for use of
electronic mail for on- and off-campus communication, and for access to
on-campus electronic databases such as PittCat and other on-line library
resources.
		...
In terms of faculty computing goals:

26.	A program must be
adopted to enable all faculty with demonstrated need to obtain a personal
computer and software to perform basic academic tasks.  The
administration should plan to allocate an additional one million dollars
per year toward purchase of faculty personal computers beyond those funds
already available from the Faculty Proficiency Grant Program and from
faculty hiring and retention offers.

27.	All buildings
containing faculty and student offices and dormitories on the Pittsburgh
and regional campuses should have access to the network to facilitate use
of e-mail, file transfer, information access, and specialized printing.
Special consideration should be given to areas which will require
substantial network resources.
		...
31.	The essential
principle to be applied in cost-recovery schemes is that access to
computing services should be made available in an equitable manner to all
faculty and students.
		...
Section 2:   Historical Perspective

During the past twenty years, academic computing at the University of
Pittsburgh has had a dramatic and positive impact on the productivity,
interactions, and workstyles of faculty and students.  During this time,
computer usage has increased from infrequent use by a relatively small
percentage of the faculty to daily use by most.  In the coming decade,
computer usage will be as ubiquitous as that of the telephone, library,
and surface mail systems.
		...
Electronic mail has become an essential communication link on-campus and
to the outside world.  In the last ten years, use of University
electronic mail has increased dramatically.  Some faculty get more
electronic messages per day than paper-copy messages.  Papers can be
submitted by electronic mail to many journals.  Grant opportunities have
been announced, applied for, and funded without any paper copy being
sent, except for confirmation after all decisions have been made.
Inter-institutional collaborations have blossomed due to the almost
immediate transfer of electronic mail.  Writing a section of a paper and
editing it with a distant collaborator in the same hour greatly
facilitates interaction, compared to waiting three days for surface mail.
In addition to electronic mail, data and program files can be shared
easily via national network connections.  A researcher can access needed
data sets across the nation or in other countries.  Scientific societies
now include electronic mail addresses in their directories of members.
As electronic mail use becomes more common, increasing demands for having
a computer in each office will be generated by faculty.
		...
For many faculty, computer access is an essential professional need;
basic services should be made available wherever needed.   Faculty view
access to a telephone and use of surface mail as essential.  Soon,
document processing, laser printing, access to electronic information
systems and to electronic mail will become prerogatives of a faculty
appointment.

Section 3:   Looking to the Future

		...
At the present time, we find ourselves fascinated by the remarkable power
available to us on our desktops, even in machines that are totally
isolated from the rest of the world.   It is important, though, that we
not lose sight of the implications of the interconnection of large
numbers of such machines throughout the campus, nation, and the world,
and the sharing of informational resources on a scale that can be
difficult to imagine now.

We believe that we stand on the threshold of a significant and profound
revolution in the way in which scholarly activity is carried out.  That
activity is today largely effected via the searching of printed volumes
of information in the form of books, journals, and paper archives, many
of which are physically housed in our libraries and in those of other
institutions.

A variety of computer-linked on- and off-campus networks, many already
available via PittNet, are rapidly changing the manner in which a scholar
may access information.
		...

Section 5:   The Evolution of Distributed Services

		...
Links to the outside world

Just as FAX technology is introducing significant changes in the way in
which people communicate with one another, so also is the development of
electronic mail (e-mail).  Mail messages can be delivered to your
personal computer at any time and retrieved whenever convenient.  Most
importantly, however, is the variety of messages that may be transmitted
and received.  These may include letters and notes, reviews of proposals
and manuscripts, and manuscripts themselves.  Already, graphics,
photographs, and complex documents combining text and images may be sent
via e-mail, but some time will pass before standards are developed that
will make this not only possible but convenient.

We recommend the development of a campus-wide e-mail facility that is
easy to use, compatible to as great an extent as possible with external
standards, and available to all students and faculty in Oakland and on
the regional campuses.  The mail system should conform as closely as
possible to the user's native computing environment.  Voice mail should
be given consideration as an integral part of the campus mail
environment.
		...
Steps have already been taken to increase the speed with which off-campus
and dormitory modems may communicate with PittNet with the installation
of 9600-baud dialup ports.  Further developments in this arena should be
evaluated with the goal of providing controlled off-campus and dormitory
file and database serving via existing telephone lines.
		...
Database access

Over the years, Pitt's students and faculty have consistently indicated
that accessing databases on PittNet is a high priority. In 1984, as part
of the Campus of the Future implementation, all faculty and staff were
surveyed.  The respondents indicated that 30% desired access to databases
containing abstracts/indices and 61% desired access to full text files.
In 1987-88, the Senate Computer Usage Committee surveyed faculty and
found that 40% of the respondents used their computers to do database
searching.  In fall 1988, Pitt's and CMU's networks were interconnected
so that students and faculty could search each institution's catalogs and
databases. Statistics of Pitt's use of CMU's databases indicated that 57%
of the searches were of databases such as Magazine Index and 43% of the
searches were of CMU's catalog.
		...
Computer Literacy

The proliferation of computers in education and business requires
computer literacy as an essential skill. However, this University
presently does not have a computer-literacy policy for students.

There are many courses across the curriculum that require our students to
use computer resources and there are many other courses in which a
computer could be very useful, but we fall short in providing an
orientation that enables all students to understand and use the
University's public computer resources.

We urge the different Schools of the University to adopt a
computer-literacy requirement for their students and the means for them
to acquire those skills.  The requirement should ensure at least that
students have the basic skills necessary for personal-computer-based
text-processing, for use of electronic mail for on- and off-campus
communication, and for access to on-campus electronic databases such as
PittCat and other on-line library resources.
		...
Finally, a convenient and universal electronic mail system has the
potential to greatly increase communication between students and between
student and teacher.  CIS should pursue investigation and installation of
a commercial electronic mail system which is more sophisticated and more
user-friendly than the present system, which resides in the VMS and
ULTRIX central computers.  A communication protocol that provides
transparent electronic mail communication between divergent operating
system platforms should be adopted.
		...
Section 11:   Concluding Perspectives

Undergraduate Students

About 40% of the Student Computing and Telecommunication Fee paid by all
students goes to CIS, with the rest being applied to paying off the
telecommunication bond issues and to library automation services, such as
PITTCAT and other developing database services provided by the University
Library System.  The CIS portion is applied to establishment and
maintenance of the public computing labs, the file servers, printers, and
other distributed network services that increasingly will become a
routine part of the undergraduate educational experience at Pitt.

In return, the undergraduate can look forward to increasing access to
powerful tools with which to enhance the learning experience.  The key to
access will be the ability to hook into PittNet, either in one of the
public computing labs or, in the immediate future, via a modem in the
dorm room or home, and in the somewhat longer-range future, via ethernet
connections in the dorms and ultra-high-speed modems from home.

A wide variety of textual and graphical databases will open new
informational resources to the student.  In addition to PITTCAT, on-line
encyclopedias, journal searching, and a wide variety of databases
containing archives of information spanning all the disciplines of the
University will gradually become available, enabling the student to
extend his or her curiosity far beyond the boundaries of this campus.
Student reports and papers will be able to include graphical information
in the form of pictures, diagrams, and charts obtained from up-to-date
databases.

Students can expect to see increasing use of computers in their regular
course assignments, both to be used individually outside of classes and
also in classrooms and specialized departmental labs during regular class
meetings.

On-line remediation aids and tutorials will aid the student in the
learning of concepts outside the classroom.  The Learning Skills Center
can serve as a focus here, but individual faculty should be encouraged to
identify areas of student weakness, and the Skills Center people might
then search for commercial or academic material already available or
provide small grants for software development to address these problems.

Use of electronic mail (e-mail) will link students with others of similar
interest, through special-interest bulletin boards and through easy
communication with fellow students and professors.  Electronic submission
of papers and exercises will be a convenience and time-saver for resident
students and a boon for commuting and non-traditional students.

Students with handicaps will be accommodated in the public labs to as
great an extent as possible to provide them equal access to network
services.

Low-end personal computers whose operating systems are supported by CIS
(DOS or Macintosh OS) are increasingly affordable, with usable systems
(minus printing, which can be done via the public labs) now available
through the PC Center or elsewhere for $1500 or less.  This approaches
the price range in relation to personal income that typewriters occupied
a generation ago.  Site licenses and educational discounts on software
available through the PC Center will also ease the student's cost of
owning and operating their own computer.

Even so, owning a personal computer will remain beyond the reach of many
students, and they will have to continue to rely upon the machines in the
public Computing Labs and in the libraries.  Even owners of personal
computers will want to use the labs for laser printing and for use of
other platforms when called for by specialized courseware or software not
owned by the student.

Graduate Students

In addition to the services mentioned above, graduate students will have
growing access to workstations with advanced power in public labs and in
specialized departmental labs established through infrastructure grants.

Graduate students who have access to personal computers and workstations
will find increasing use of networked services, whether from file-served
software such as Mathematica, or from central computer or supercomputer
access for numerical calculations too complex to be carried out on the
desktop.

Journal searching via PittNet will add important capabilities to the
student researcher, as will access to worldwide informational databases.
Network services will also provide access to specialized peripherals such
as digitizers, phototypesetters, color printers and plotters, and slide
makers.  E-mail will provide important links to other researchers
throughout the nation and world.

Faculty

It is usually unproductive for faculty to use public lab facilities on a
regular basis.  They are more dependent upon departmental resources and
computers within their own offices.  The extent to which those resources
are available will determine the extent to which faculty are able to
participate in the information revolution that we have outlined.

The University administration must decide whether personal computers and
workstations for faculty are to be regarded either as "small tools of the
trade", to be purchased by hard money or personal faculty funds, or as an
entitlement of employment for those who need to use them.  That decision
must consider not only economic arguments based on initial and continuing
expenditures, but also the competitive position of the University in
attracting and retaining quality faculty.

Faculty with access to the network can look forward to greatly expanded
research and informational possibilities through access to large
databases via the network, along the lines presented above for students.
Access to nationally-distributed courseware and multimedia lessons should
enhance teaching practice and provide the freedom that students will have
to explore resources beyond those in the normal curriculum.

Document creation, in a broadened sense that includes not only text but
graphics and video images, illustrated class notes and slides or
transparencies, music in printed or audible forms, and all kinds of
scholarly publications, will assume new vitality.  Electronic mail will
link the scholar with others of similar interests around the globe with
unprecedented speed and ease, and can provide an additional and lively
line of communication between professor and student.

-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
neal	traven@pittvms			Bitnet		412-624-0097 (office)
	traven@vms.cis.pitt.edu  	Internet	412-624-0110 (fax)
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