Naomi Fujimura

Bring your own computers project in Kyushu university

At Kyushu University, we have been providing students with access to computers for education of information processing since 1979. The computers have varied from general purpose computer to personal computers (PCs). The number of PCs increased dramatically for about thirty years. The number of lectures with PCs has also been increasing rapidly for information literacy, CALL (Computer-Assisted Language Learning), and so on. We have been always trying to arrange the PC rooms as many as possible to provide the good and comfortable ICT (Information and Communication Technology) environment for students. How-ever, we never have the budget to equip enough PC rooms. On the other hand, the price of PCs has been going down over time. As a result, our students of 95% in first grade have their own PCs around when they enter the university. In response to these changes, we have decided to abandon terminal rooms. We now expect all students to bring their own PCs and use them in their classes. After many meetings and committee discussions, we are going to start the new ICT environment for education in April 2013. It has taken almost two years to start up the Bring Your Own PCs (BYOPC) project. Following were the important steps to begin the BYOPC project in Kyushu University: -Gain agreement in the university -How to decide the PC model, Windows or Mac, in each department -Software (Windows, Office: EES contract with Microsoft) -Anti-Virus software (Symantec Endpoint Protection) -Wireless LAN (IEEE 802.11n, 80% covered of lecture rooms and so on) -Firewall (P2P file exchange software) -Seminar for all newcomers (Software installation, network con-figuration and so on). We will report the detail and the result in the above points. It was a difficult and hard work. For example, I visited sixteen faculties and/or departments to explain the new policy and how to proceed on the project in order to get the cooperation and help. Ultimately, we had a great success on our project.

Implementation and operation of the Kyushu university authentication system

Nowadays, a university needs to build and maintain a central ID database and authentication system for better ICT (information and communication technology) services. In 2008, the headquarters of Kyushu University had defined medium-range policy of ICT infrastructure preparation, and the policy had indicated construction of a central authentication system. According to the policy, the authors elaborated an installation plan of the Kyu(Q)shu University authentication system (QUAS, for short). Since 2009, Information Infrastructure Initiative of Kyushu University, to which the authors belong, has been issuing ID cards to all employees, and also operating LDAP servers. This paper introduces the action plan and outline of QUAS. This paper also describes two recent topics of QUAS. One is high load of LDAP servers because of rapid increase of mobile devices, and the other one is development of a multifactor authentication Shibboleth Identity Provider (IdP).

Experience with the educational ICT environment in Kyushu University

The Educational ICT (Information and Communication Technology) environment support group of Information Infrastructure Initiative has been managing and operating the educational ICT environment in Kyushu University. We had a PC system that consisted of 598 Windows PCs, printers, and servers. The number of terminals was not enough for 18,000 students. We introduced a new system of 712 iMacs and servers without printers this March 2009. The reasons are as follows: 1) to provide students and teachers with a better educational ICT environment, 2) to increase the number of terminals for students, 3) to decrease the undesirable cost for print service, and 4) to make it possible for users to reset their login password by themselves for their convenience. We were worried that students and teachers would be confused by the sudden change of operating system from Windows to Mac OS. Since our university has a Campus Agreement with Microsoft, we can provide the students and teachers with Windows and its applications on Mac OS X. This agreement made it possible to change the educational ICT environment from Windows to Mac base to easily improve the user interface. It would have been very difficult to introduce only the Mac base system without the Windows software. We also stopped the free printing service for students and teachers. Our university has, by policy, committed to reducing paper use. By doing this we could also promote the Web learning system in our environment. However, it was very difficult to abolish all printers. We investigated the number of pages which students used in a year, and estimated the cost to students to make this a pay service. As a result, we set-up several fee-charging printers in our campuses instead of free printing services. This attempt succeeded in sup-pressing the use of papers. The new system began operation in March 2009. We had a serious problem with file server performance. We also experienced problems with the difference of file usages between Windows and Mac OS. We report the details of our experiences with the installation, operation, and effects of the new system in this paper.

Introduction and management of inter-campus learning assistant system for distributed campus

Kyushu University consists of several major campuses. Most students are required to go to a couple of campuses to take classes for the first one-and-a-half or two years. Teachers are also expected to go to another campus to teach students from their home campus. The time wasted traveling one-and-a-half hours between campuses is significant for teachers. Using a video-conference system (such as Polycom) seemed to be a good solution; however, the set up procedure before the lecture is time-consuming and troublesome. It is difficult for most teachers to set up such systems. Furthermore, operating the remotecontrol while teaching a class is difficult. Teachers want an easier and more intuitive interface to give a smooth lecture. In response to these requirements, we introduced the Inter Campus Learning Assistant System (iClass) into each distributed campus. The system uses an ordinary video-conference system that is customized for our purpose. The startup processes are automated and operation is performed intuitively with a touch panel. Teachers can operate cameras and other peripherals easily and with little training. We expect to promote the lectures among campuses, making the delivery of lectures between Japan and foreign countries such as our branch office in California easier with iClass. In this paper, we describe the detail, results, and effectiveness of our iClass. Furthermore, we will discuss further applications of such devices.

Experience with software blanket contract in Kyushu University

Information Infrastructure Initiative of Kyushu University decided to begin the blanket contract for several kinds of software in 2006 fiscal year to improve the research and education environment, maintain the appropriate compliance, and reduce the budget for computer software in our university. We first focused on the anti-virus software of Trend Micro and Symantec. It was possible for us to get a cheaper software price in bulk rather than purchasing individual packages. We introduced Virus Buster in October 2006 and Symantec Client Security in March 2007. The price became several hundred yen to buy and update anti-virus software. The number of anti-virus software is now over 16000 in total. We then challenged the Microsoft Campus Agreement. As a result, all staff members and students of our university can install Microsoft Office 2003/2007 (Windows), Office 2004/2008 (Macintosh), and Windows XP/Vista without extra charge except the initial charge since April 2007. We paid much attention to realize the compliance for software license perfectly. We applied many ideas for that purpose. We finally challenged the Adobe Contractual License Program (CLP) for staff members and students in our university. We could begin the program in Level 2 of over 20,000 points after many efforts to gather orders and now in Level 3 of over 100,000 points. Our activity reduced the budgets for software dramatically and improved the research and education environments effectively. This is the report of our activities and problems in our university

Introduction of New Kyushu University Primary Mail Service for Staff Members and Students

In the end of fiscal year 2013 (March 2014), Kyushu University Information Infrastructure Initiative introduced new Primary Mail Service for Staff Members and Students. The previous service for staff members had been built using proprietary mail and LDAP appliance, but tight user license and the nature of proprietary system caused several troubles. The previous service for students had been built using open source software (Postfix and Dovecot), but there were some issues with the old implementation of LDAP authentication. With these experiences, we decided to design a new system by merging both system using open source software including Postfix, Dovecot, OpenLDAP, and Squirrelmail. We also extended alias address setting service (previously available for students only) to all the members including staff members. In this paper, we explain the design and implementation, user migration, current status and future works of our new mail service.

Gulliver's toss: Google's chronic big load to university mail server and its sudden resolution

Traditionally, Kyushu University has been providing email service internally using its own domain name for staff members and students of the university. Around January 2012, we noticed that the high load of the university authentication server, and we realized that one of causes was the access from the mail server for students (called Student Primary Mail Service). Detailed analysis showed that there was chronic big load produced by Gmails Mail Fetcher, especially toward nonexistent accounts removed due to graduation. In this paper, we explain the situation and reasons of the big load induced by Google, its possible countermeasures, and its sudden resolution by Googles silent change.

Experience with individual receipt confirmation system and the university primary mail service

Before experiencing last years H1N1 pandemic, we had happened to realize the need for a reliable communication method to provide all staff members and students with information about disease and emergency situations. Our legacy mail system was good for sending information, but it was difficult for the sender to get receipt confirmation. In July 2009, we introduced a new mail delivery system providing an official mail address to all the staff members in our university. In addition, we implemented a new system to send e-mails to all staff members and students and to receive the confirmation that the e-mail had been read. Now it is possible for us to send e-mail according to a specified campus or position code such as professor, part time staff, and students. The e-mail recipients are expected to respond to it by clicking the URL in the message text. The system records the user responses by the ID number, event code, time, etc. into the database. Students are expected to answer the questionnaire followed by the confirmation page. The questionnaire asks the whether a student has become infected with the influenza, about recovery, if they belong to clubs, their class schedule, etc. if so. It makes it possible for us to grasp the individuals situation and to get the information to contact them.

A comparison of the usage and experience of a file sharing system with different operation policies

There are many kinds of file sharing systems used for various pur-poses in the world. At our University, we use a commercial product called Proself as our file sharing system. Proself has been set up under two different operation policies in our university. One is to provide an alternative to the practice of attaching files to e-mail messages in the e-mail system for our whole university. The other is to promote file sharing between specific groups such as laboratories, departments, and so on in one small campus. We have been operating two separate systems for about one year, and analyzed the usage to understand the differences between how these file-sharing systems are used. We found that there are similar and different characteristics of usage in the two file sharing systems. The ratios of users against the potential users, the months actively used, file types uploaded and downloaded, and login time pattern over the course of a week are different between two systems. The login time pattern for a day is similar between two systems. JPG and PDF files are frequently transferred in the systems, but the order is different. Our analysis illustrates the difference of practical usage and gives us useful information to operate them in the future.

A Web-Based Approach for Automatic Composition of an Insightful Slideshow for Personal Photographs

Recently, the number of digital content objects is increasing rapidly with the progress of information technology. It has become important how we manage enormous digital content objects effectively and utilize them efficiently. Up to now, a lot of researches on digital content management have been reported. One of the important objectives of conventional management techniques is to search digital content objects that satisfy an information request of a user. This is based on the assumption that a user has one or more information requests. However, a user may have no information request explicitly when the user uses some kinds of devices for presenting digital content such as a digital photoframe. Such devices are expected to provide a presentation of digital content that rouses users interest. In this paper, we introduce an approach for composing photo slideshow that attracts users interest automatically.