Jon Rickman

The evolution of the electronic campus: from a communication system to an educational delivery system

In 1987, Northwest Missouri State University implemented the first comprehensive networked campus in the nation at a public university in an effort to prepare its faculty, staff and more than 6,000 students for the emerging information-driven society. Northwests Electronic Campus Program, which was heralded by the Washington Post[1] and USA Today[2] as innovative and exigent, provided networked computing stations in every residence hall room, faculty office and administrative office. In 1997, Northwest also began issuing a personal notebook computer to all of its faculty members and added electronic classrooms with audio and video projection systems. Since its inception 16 years ago, Northwests Electronic Campus has evolved from an academic system with high capacity communication structures to a complex educational delivery system that has truly become an integral part of the universitys daily living and learning experience. Moreover, that evolution has been filled with all the joys and headaches associated with the growing pains of nurturing and watching an infant develop into a rambunctious teenager. Northwests Information Systems has had the responsibility of parenting this digital entity to help it cope with new and increasingly greater information and technology demands. These demands include, but are not limited to, the support for online degrees and courses in cooperation with the Center for Information Technology in Education. In this paper, the authors will discuss that development-its past, present and future-along with the costs of rearing such an entity, and how Information Systems is helping Northwests Electronic Campus master the many technological challenges of the twenty-first century.

Notebook universities do not have to be expensive

Most notebook universities have a process to provide notebook computers for a large portion of its students. The universities charge each student a notebook fee which is typically around

A videodisc training system for academic computing services

1,000 per year. Usually, each university owns or leases the computers and tries to replace them every two years. Northwest Missouri State University has implemented a system to provide notebooks to every student living on-campus by increasing residence hall and tuition technology fees for a total cost of about

Implementing a network improvement action plan

300 per year. Students living off-campus also have the option to rent a notebook computer at a similar cost.Northwests model for providing notebooks to students has several key features. First, the notebooks are purchased by the university and the expected life cycle is three years. Second, the notebooks are purchased with a three-year warranty and students are responsible for providing damage and theft insurance. Third, the university owns the computers and utilizes volume independent licenses for most software. Finally with 2,500 student notebooks to support, Northwest has only 2.5 FTE staff positions for maintenance and repair of these units.With Northwests computing model, higher expectations can be set for freshman academic assignments, since they are required to live on-campus and faculty can depend on students having access to standardized computing resources. Experience has shown that upper-classmen try to stay compatible with the computing model they have used for one or more years.This paper will discuss the challenges and benefits of implementing a low-cost, university-owned notebook computing model.

Campus MIS and OA services for students and faculty

One of the difficult problems presented to academic computing services is the training of a growing number of novice users. Some large installations have acquired or developed video tape instructional systems while others have spent sigtiicant amounts of staff time on training these users. Northwest Missouri State University(NWMSU) is developing a videodisc system to introduce students to its timesharing services and library automation services. The videodisc system is controlled by an IBM PC compatible Zenith 152 and will be accessible on demand by the user in the Library. The menu driven design has two advantages: 1) the user can select training for only the sections or individual services requested, and 2) the system design makes it very easy to operate. One of the drawbacks presented by interactive videodisc instructional systems is that after the release videodisc has been recorded, the voice and graphics may need to be updated. At NWMSU this post release videodisc editing, or updating process, is accomplished using a Zenith PC which can overlay graphics and also add and overlay voice instruction using a DECtalk voice synthesizer. The graphics and the voice text are recorded on magnetic diskettes which can be up&ted to keep the courseware current. The synthesizer can also be used to echo or create responses not recorded on the videodisc or the magnetic diskettes. The entire hardware system including the synthesizer is relatively inexpensive when compared to personalized training costs. The major costs are related to video production as with any video system. Permission to copy without fee all or part of this material is granted provided that the copies are not made or distributed for direct commercial advantage, the ACM copyright notice and the title of the publication and its date appear, and notice is given that copying is by permission of the Association for Computing Machinery. To copy otherwise, or to republish, requires a fee and/or specific permission. Copyright 1986 ACM 0-89791-208-X/86/0900/0177

Word processing and data entry computing services

0.75 Setting The Direction ACM-SIGUCCS XIV, 1986 177 Jon Rickman, Phillip Heeler, Tracy Corl, Bruce Gehrlein, Scott Land LNTRODUCl7ON A laser instructional videodisc system has many possiblities for showing students how to use computing services. With full motion video and cIose ups or’partial screen close ups, students can be shown many spatial relationships in operating hardware and software systems. Most computing software systems are well defined and associated training needs can also be well defined for the novice user. The cost of developing a video tape or videodisc course can be as high as several thousand dollars a minute if produced by commercial firms. Costs can even be higher in a videodisc course about computing where one is working with a dynamic subject area and small changes or updates require a script change or graphics change in the courseware. Any change in a videodisc course requires that an expensive new disc must be pressed and this may take a week or more if off-premise services are required. Northwest Missouri State University has an enrollment of approximately 5000 students. The Interactive Videodisc Project consisted of three senior computer science students, a computer science professor and the Director of Computer Services. One goal of this research project was to demonstrate to the 5000 students how to use modern intricate computing software within the complex networking environment described in figure 1. The course developers aIso wanted to experiment with various methods of presentation. However, this required the ability to change the courseware components such as the graphics, voice, scenes, or screen text. From the authors’ experiences, it is believed that every course will need several updates each year when using a videodisc system for training in computer services. It is also apparent to the authors that without incorporating some flexibility into the course production process, one can easily give up before a useful course is ever completed. Even with extremely. capable video production crews, more and more of the video production process is moving into the video post production editing room. The authors believe there is a need to expand this powerful process so as to realize a continuum of flexible editing processes. The normal editing process for video production is in three stages: 1. Preproduction editing is where scripts and storyboard plans are reviewed and edited before the camera production process is started. 2. Online production editing is where multiple live cameras and audio inputs are selected in a control room environment at the time of production. 3. Post production editing is where multiple camera and audio recordings from the production process are selected for output to an answer release tape or print. After review and possible iteration of this step, a master release is produced. In videodisc production the answer release is called a check disc. It costs about

Computer usage patterns on a computing intensive campus

200 to

MURJE: a multiple user remote job entry system

400 to record a check disc from a master release tape. With the system used at NWMSU, another stage of editing is realized. 4. Post release disc editing is where a personal computer selects segments from the release disc and optional non-release disc video and audio tracks to produce the desired presentation at the time of user interaction. This paper describes the system which permits post release disc editing of the courses in academic computing services at NWMSU. New graphics and voice overlays are controlled by the 178 ACM-SIGUCCS XIV, 1986 Setting The Direction A Videodisc Training System for Academic Computing Services Zenith personal computer. HARDWARE AND SOmU SOLUTIONS A videodisc course is composed of full motion video, voice and music presentations and graphics displays. As with a good textbook, graphics can greatly improve the effectiveness of complex courseware. Graphics and lists of procedures inherently contain a high density of information. Unfortunately, entire fact-filled screens of graphics and procedures listings are likely to become outdated whenever any smalI change is needed. Full motion video is very difficult to update and full motion video of someone speaking requires that both video and audio must be overlaid. But many changes can be easily made when text, voice or graphics need updating. The hardware solution which permits post release disc editing of the courseware graphics and voice is shown in figure 2. The AMOCO Foundation awarded Northwest Missouri State University a grant to develop a computer aided instruction system to instruct students on how to use the computing services and library automation services available on campus. This grant was used to purchase the equipment described bel0w.W The system shown in figure 2 was purchased for about

Enhancing the computer networking curriculum

5000 and includes the following parts: Zenith Personal Computer Zenith Color Video Monitor Pioneer LD-WOO0 VideoDisc Player DECtak Voice Synthesizer MicroKey Model 1100 Controller The videodisc player made by Pioneer uses standard play videodiscs. The DECtalk unit was selected since the authors had had several years of experience with the unit. They felt that most script could be understood without phoneme modification which is required by other units on campus. The DECtalk unit also has a multitude of male and female voices which increases its flexibility in editing. The MicroKey controller was chosen because of its ability to interface computer graphics output and videodisc output to the same color monitor. This is important since post release disc editing overlays needed to be displayed on the same screen. The MicroKey controller, in fact, permits composite display of computer and videodisc outputs. The authoring software which came with the controller was found to be inappropriate for the planned development efforts. However, it might be acceptable for other straight-forward applications. Most of the replacement software for the authoring system was done in the BASIC computer language. Using this language the instructional sequences as well as the video scenes, graphics displays, and voice synthesizer output were controlled by a single program. The BASIC system also permitted the authors to present scenes, pause for student interaction, present information from the computer, return back to the video, if necessary, and allow other computer controlled actions to take place. Setting The Direction ACM-SIGUCCS XIV, 1986 179 Jon Rickman, Phillip Heeler, Tracy Carl, Bruce Gehrlein, Scott Land The videodisc system is being used to show students how to invoke the following VMS operations: . 1. LOGON 2. HELP 3. DIRECTORY 4. EDIT file 5. PRINT file 6. TYPE file 7. DELETE file 8. WPS-PLUS word processing 9. 20120 spreadsheet 10. LOGOFF The videodisc system is also being used to show users how to use the timesharing public information systems listed below: 11. Keyboard Information System a. Calendar of events b. Spring class openings c. Summer class openings d. Fall class openings e. Financial records system f. Student telephone directory g. Faculty and staff directory h. Scholarships available i. Student jobs directory 12. Touch-screen color graphics directory of library and computing services 13. Touch-tone telephone information system For the OCLC LW2000 library automation system, the following video instructional modules are available: 14. LOGON 15. AUTHOR search 16. TITLE search 17. SUBJECT search 18. KEYWORD search 19. LOGOFF Most of the interactive systems have on-line help and the users are shown how to invoke those help routines. However, many of the details concerning the software operations are not covered by the video disc but are covered by the on-line help modules in the software. 180 ACM-SIGUCCS XIV, 1986 Setting The Direction A Videodisc Training System for Academic Computing Services VWEODISK SOFTW’ The logical design of the courseware delivery system for the personal computer instructional videodisc sys

Practical experiences for undergraduate computer networking students

Firewall failures and the recent onslaught of computer viruses and worms, such as Klez, loveletter, SoBig, and BadBoy, increased network traffic and ever-growing network abuse, propelled security awareness at Northwest Missouri State University to a higher level and increased the need for finding and implementing effective solutions. Northwests Information Systems Department was able to build awareness of computer security issues, decrease network abuse, institute significant enhancements to the network and better ensure network reliability, through the implementation of a multiple step network action plan. This plan included the adoption of new policies and procedures, new student staff positions and equipment upgrades.