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City
College of San Francisco
I. INTRODUCTION TO THE PLAN
IV. IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE 22
IV. GLOSSARY
City College of San Francisco is increasingly aware of the benefits to be obtained from using education technology*. As information technology grows, there will be increasing opportunities to adopt these new capabilities into the curriculum in both pedagogically sound and innovative ways. To the extent that CCSF is able to take advantage of these technologies, we will better serve our campus constituencies and, therefore, the public at large. To this end, these technologies must be available for use at the college and accompanied by the necessary training and support.
B. Scope
Currently at City College of San Francisco, a number of resources for education technology exist, and some faculty are able to take advantage of these resources. However, CCSF lacks a college-wide vision for systematically integrating education technology into the curriculum and Student Services. This plan documents the steps necessary to foster the appropriate use of current and emerging information technologies in both these areas. The plan considers the facilities, equipment, technical support and staff development needed to accomplish our technology goals for Teaching & Learning and Student Services. Appendix 1 lists other needs for information technology at CCSF not directly addressed in this plan including on-line access to CCSF data reports, travel forms, and grade forms. Although not directly discussed, implementation of this plan will provide a general physical foundation and organizational structure for these and other uses of information technology.
C. Premise
This plan proceeds under the premise that we should support and foster a wide array of individual faculty initiatives, while developing coherent school- and department-based plans for the use of education technology collegewide. Faculty will have the opportunity to become familiar with how education technology can benefit students. Emerging faculty and student interest and skills will influence these school- and department-based plans. A series of strategies for using education technology to improve Student Services is also presented in this plan. Appendix 2 lists some basic assumptions made in developing this plan.
D. Goals
Three major goals for this plan are:
E. Student Outcomes
As a result of implementing this plan we expect our students will:
In requesting this plan be written, the Master Plan Committee acknowledged that CCSF does not currently have organized resources to sufficiently support the use of education technology. This plan outlines the necessary structural supports and administrative processes needed for coherent and efficient incorporation of education technology throughout CCSF. Additionally, it examines facilities, equipment, technical support and staff development needs. The following is a list of some current limitations:
The cost of providing computer access to faculty and students underscores the need for both open computer facilities on all campuses and any discounted personal computer purchases the college can facilitate. The socio-economic profile of our student body makes it impossible to require that students own a personal computer. Even without a requirement, though, the number of students who own a computer will probably increase with the continuously increasing business and personal use of computers for word processing, Internet access, and other computer functions.
Currently the number and quality of college-owned workstations available to students are insufficient. In open student labs currently we staff 21,773 open seat hours per week for computing use at 34 labs collegewide. (Additionally, there are a small number of department-specific efforts to provide access to computers.) Compared to the 460,000 weekly student contact hours CCSF supports, this amounts approximately .048 hours lab time per student class hour. On average, if all students used computers for all of their classes, a student could use a computer for 2.8 minutes per class hour. More realistically, if only one-quarter of courses required regular computer use, a student could use a computer for approximately 11 minutes per class hour. Only 34% of lab computers are capable of running a Windows operating system. Even fewer of these workstations could reasonably support multimedia software or provide effective Internet access, if the college had a network through which to access the Internet.
Two FTE personnel in ITS specifically support academic uses of technology. Officially, one FTE is focused in staff development, the other on programming for special projects. In reality, these two individuals also support many administrative functions. Education technology needs require total concentration of more than two FTE. Some faculty and staff pay to receive staff development from providers such as U.C. Extension. Currently CCSF offers one introductory course in multimedia. (Recently an interdepartmental committee presented the Curriculum Committee with a proposal to establish a certificate program in multimedia studies.) However, faculty and staff cannot yet take such courses for free.
This section reveals our current computing inadequacies. However, if we are guided only by these needs, we will fall short of our mission statement. The increasing interest of faculty, students, and staff indicate a widespread belief that education technology can and should be used to enhance education.
B. The Purpose of Education Technology
Education technology can be used to:
In Spring 1994, two surveys distributed at CCSF collected information about faculty interest in education technology. Below are some general observations made according to the survey responses. Appendix 4 contains more details about the surveys and the responses.
Results from the CCSF-developed “Professional Development Needs Assessment Survey” indicate that while almost 75% of faculty consider their level of computer expertise to be beginner or intermediate. 11% consider themselves to be advanced users. 14% do not use computers. Computer skills do not vary with years of employment (a proxy for age). Computer skill-level and platform (IBM-clone or Macintosh) do vary by school.
Faculty indicated their interest in each of 42 separate topics ranging from student discipline, to department budgets, to education technology. Overall, faculty indicate relatively high interest in topics involving technology or implying that classroom and curriculum structure may be changing. (Faculty with more computer expertise express even higher interest in technology-related topics.) One area of exception is distance learning which garnered the least interest of the 42 topics presented.
The nationally distributed “Technology, Teaching and Scholarship Project Faculty Survey” posed 70 questions about available computer resources, institutional support and uses of education technology. CCSF faculty cite enjoyment of teaching and creativity as the most important reasons why they use education technology. Most faculty believe that “by the year 2000,” education technology will change they way they teach their classes. Immediate interests include the Internet and word processing.
In terms of college resources, most faculty believe that expanding the campus network should be a college priority. Hardware and software purchases and upgrades and access to CD-ROMs and multimedia are also cited as major institutional problems. Although faculty are overwhelmingly happy with the current level of computer courses offered, most believe there should be more of them. Few faculty believe that CCSF currently rewards innovative teaching, although this was not cited as the most pressing problem.
Student Interest.
Students will benefit directly and indirectly from the increased use of education technology. With today’s demands of work and family, students need improved access to student services information and reduced lines for services. We are unable to provide additional staff to meet this demand so students will have to take a greater role in their educational planning and decision-making through education technology.
Most CCSF students expect to have access to computers to complete their course assignments. Many students are either already computer literate or are specifically interested in becoming computer literate. CIS faculty indicate that their courses have waiting lists; students know that computer literacy is a valuable commodity in the job market, as well as a useful, if not necessary, skill in higher education. CCSF recently adopted a Computer Literacy requirement for students receiving Associate degrees. In the future, vocational programs may want to adopt analogous requirements determined according to industry and labor expectations. Although not all students come to CCSF expecting to use computers, students enrolled in courses which utilize computers have responded positively.
An increasing number of alternative providers of education are incorporating information technology into their curriculum. If students find that these alternate providers can better meet their needs, we will experience enrollment decline. CCSF must strengthen its services to better meet our students’ academic needs.
The physical infrastructure includes three main areas: the equipment, the connections between equipment, and technical support personnel to install and maintain both the equipment and the connections. The physical infrastructure enables access. “User-friendly,” centralized and decentralized, campus and home, individual and classroom access to education technology must be available. Access to stand-alone computers is no longer sufficient for our information needs. A network supports many things including communication via electronic mail (e-mail), access to information repositories from the local CCSF library to the global World Wide Web (WWW), reduction in software costs and increase in software compatibility by using network-licensed software, shared hard disk space and peripheral hardware such as printers.
All Phelan campus buildings must be connected to a fiber-optic backbone. (Given current technology, local technicians do not consider a wireless network to be preferable.) Once the backbone is completed, faculty offices, computing labs and smart classrooms can be connected to the network. Microwave transmitters or some comparable technology can connect Phelan and the other nine campuses. Workstations connected to this backbone will provide students, faculty and staff with Internet and e-mail access, as well as on-line access to databases in the new Library and Learning Resource Center.
A network requires both server and client computers. Server computers must be large enough to handle e-mail accounts for students, faculty, staff and administrators. These machines also house the CCSF databases which contain information relevant to Student Services. For ease of use, the client computers must be capable of supporting GUI network access.
As an interim step prior to connecting all faculty offices to an integrated campus network (which requires wiring inside the building), a branch faculty computing lab will be established in each building. These labs will meet the computing needs of part-time faculty and faculty without office space for a computer. The labs will also support the specialized computing needs of departments in that building. Eventually, the branch faculty computing labs will house a local server(s) connecting individual offices to the collegewide network. Any other equipment, such as routers and hubs, may eventually be stored in secured portions of the labs, where the primary connection to each building will be located.
Faculty and student computing labs will be accessible to individuals with mobility limitations and specialized equipment will serve the needs of people with visual and/or hearing impairments. We should also support home access to computers for students by facilitating the purchase of low-cost computers. (Some colleges have developed a computer loan program for this purpose. Given the size of our institution, such an arrangement may be unrealistic for CCSF.)
Basic staff development will offset some technical support needs by providing users with “trouble-shooting” skills. However, users should not be expected to become experts; individuals will abandon technology in frustration without sufficient technical support. An appropriate level of staffing is essential for the optimal usage and maintenance of technical equipment. Both the ratio of staff to equipment and kind of support offered are important. A regularly-staffed help desk is necessary to meet the needs of many faculty, along with assistance provided in each of the labs. A traveling technical support person is necessary particularly for classroom situations in cases of “emergency”.
Student assistants, in addition to technical support staff, need to be utilized to meet current and increasing needs. Technical support is expensive, so many colleges train students to provide additional technical assistance in computing labs which is advantageous both for the college and for the students. (See Appendix 5 for a description of how this has worked at another college.) The college acquires more staff and the students acquire “free” training and excellent job experience. Training and oversight costs must be budgeted for the student assistants. The training could be done in the newly constructed smart classrooms.
ITS staff will need additional training or retraining to meet the new demands of education technology. When appropriate, additional personnel must be hired. In some instances, personnel not in ITS may be expected to assume new roles, such as network administrator, in support of information technology. These personnel need an appropriate level of training and support. New job classifications or reinterpretation of existing classifications will be required to formalize these arrangements.
Objectives for Goal 1:
01. Complete installation of a secure, college-wide communications network infrastructure to support shared computing resources. This requires the following:
Faculty use of education technology depends on comfort- and skill-levels as well as access to the necessary equipment. Faculty must feel comfortable with not only their own technology skills and knowledge, but also those of their students. Further, they must feel confident that any gaps in their skills and knowledge can be filled through access to technical support (See Goal 1, Objective 3) and training.
Physical access to a computer is meaningless without training. To avoid a situation where computers become “expensive paperweights,” a wide-ranging, timely, systematic Staff Development Program is critical to the successful implementation of this plan. Training must meet the variety of individual interest-, expertise- and comfort-levels of faculty. Various methods of delivery can be used including computer-based tutorials (CBTs), video, expert and peer training. Delivery can be one-on-one or in a group, in the privacy of an office, in an open lab or in a classroom setting. CB training can be particularly useful for someone just starting; a computer (client or stand-alone) can be used at any time with limited oversight in a lab situation.
Training must begin immediately upon the installation of equipment to avoid a number of problems. Equipment can become outdated before it can be used. Untrained users can become easily frustrated. Untrained users can also create technical problems through their lack of knowledge by, for example, accidental erasure of a critical system file. Computers may also sustain unnecessary wear-and-tear due to misuse. In this scenario, the technical support workload has increased in two ways: there are more technical problems and technical support personnel end up performing the function of staff development on an ad hoc basis when they fix the problem.
Realistically, not all faculty will be interested in, capable of and/or comfortable using education technology; participation must be voluntary. We should not expend all our energy trying to “get everyone on board.” We should avoid a situation where beginners get all the attention and faculty already using education technology are overlooked. For those faculty who lack basic computing skills, a successful experience in learning about one aspect of technology can increase interest in learning more about education technology. Various delivery methods, sites, and times (including nights and weekends) for staff development should be used since comfort with methods will vary. Some faculty may prefer to learn privately while others may find it useful to learn with their peers.
Ongoing and higher-level training and technical support will be critical to the appropriate use of education technology and development of classroom materials. This requires both the proper equipment and personnel. Currently, individual personnel are often informally considered the ‘resident expert’ on a particular technology, but the College does not draw on this expertise in a systematic or effective way. Training needs will evolve and increase over time as technology advances and applications to education become more widespread. Some staff development should be done by school or department, since the need for and uses of education technology varies. (This may require a needs assessment.) Department-specific training could take place in the TLC or in department-specific labs. Desired levels of technological use and literacy may vary by school and department (See Goal 3, Objective 8). Eventually, the Staff Development Program should develop a series of training sessions for systematically achieving school- and department-level targets for technological literacy.
For training (and technical support) to be up-to-date, CCSF must support its in-house personnel in continually upgrading their information technology skills. Even with this support, CCSF may not be able to meet all faculty staff development and student training needs, especially in the newest and most highly specialized technology areas. When necessary, strategic partnerships with industry and other institutions may be an economical way to provide site-based, hands-on training using state-of the art equipment which cannot be obtained through standard acquisition. Additionally, when appropriate, CCSF may continue to create new courses and programs specifically to teach information technology to our students. Our partnerships with business and industry may assist in determining the needed courses and programs.
Students enrolled in courses using education technology must possess a basic level of computer literacy. For courses which require computer use, faculty may consider putting an advisory on the course. Traditional courses should be available for students who do not want to use education technology. At CCSF, the main student lab (ICL1) makes a mini course available at the beginning of each semester and also on video tape. A multimedia presentation created by CCSF could be developed for future use.
Objectives for Goal 2:
01. Create the physical infrastructure as provided in Goal 1. In particular, the TLC will provide a location for and maintenance of:
4a. Improve administrative decision-making for Student Services
We propose that an Education Technology Office (ETO) be established to be responsible for actively supporting the use of information technology for Teaching and Learning, and Student Services, beginning with the implementation and oversight of this plan. Responsibilities of this administrative office would include coordinating college-wide decision-making regarding education technology. To this end, the ETO will work with existing groups such as ITS, the Computer Policy Committee (CPC), Internet Users Group (IUG), Intech Users Group (ITUG), Master Plan committee, and Staff Development, as well as the following departments: Audio Visual, Broadcast Media Services, CIS, Learning Assistance, and the Media Center. Initially, the office would be part of ITS, but after a year of funding and implementation, the costs and benefits of becoming a separate department should be examined.
A Teaching and Learning Technology Round Table (TLTRT) has been established with representation from faculty, administration, staff and students to advise the ETO. Some of the groups named above, specifically the IUG, ITUG, and the academic portion of CPC will be folded into the TLTRT as working groups in order to better coordinate education technology activities at CCSF.
Located in or near the TLC, the ETO will be the ultimate place in the college to go with a question about technology for educational purposes. To function, the ETO must be staffed and receive an annual budget. Staffing the ETO may require some restructuring of the existing Information Technology Services (ITS) department. Education technology personnel should be differentiated from personnel responsible for administrative aspects of information technology at CCSF.
Some specific implementation issues follow. The ETO would either be directly responsible for these or oversee them. Through the annual and ongoing planning process, other issues may be identified in the future.
Establishing and maintaining funding is the most basic element of supporting education technology. Without funding we will not have the physical infrastructure to proceed. Many funding routes are open and probably all of them should be pursued. Providing direct services to students such as in a lab setting may be funded differently than wiring classrooms or providing faculty with equipment. For the former, perhaps the most controversial solution is instituting a student fee. Many colleges nationally have begun imposing such fees, usually an Internet account fee. Current state regulations would have to be changed to permit user fees. Another option is to use an ISP such as Sprint to provide Internet services to our students. In this case, some costs to the college for Internet services can be reduced or eliminated.
For all education technology uses, leasing equipment should be considered. (Note: Leasing requires a line item in the budget.) For purchased equipment, three-year, on-site, warrantees may also cut down on costs, particularly staffing costs, over time. Requiring a 10-20% addition to the cost of any hardware item may be one way to approximate institutional costs for support services for that item. Downstreaming, a practice that redistributes existing equipment when newer equipment is purchased, can be an effective means of maintaining direct equipment costs; however, it is important to remember that older equipment is harder to maintain and requires more technical support. External funding and sponsoring should also be pursued.
CCSF must evaluate the uses and effects of education technology, including evaluation of any changes in student outcomes resulting from the use of education technology, assessment of individual faculty and departmental needs for and uses of education technology, and assessment of student satisfaction with courses using education technology. The Decision Support System currently being developed should aid this process by providing on-line student data. Evaluation-- in addition to an ongoing equipment and facilities inventory indicating the location, usage, age and capacity of workstations at CCSF-- will be helpful for annual and ongoing planning efforts. Some other information useful for planning could be collected through surveys. College surveys should include questions on faculty and student campus-based and home computer use. Surveys could help document progress toward achieving faculty training goals and highlight outstanding training needs.
Guidelines and standards for education technology should be developed, including usage guidelines and, when beneficial, basic standards for hardware and software purchases. (Instructional software standards apply primarily at the school- or department-level.) Standards for hardware (both Macintosh and IBM-compatible) and software purchases will allow for more efficient staff development and technical support since staff will be able to maintain extensive knowledge of a modest number of products rather than trying to maintain some minimum expertise for every product on the market. The college’s capacity to rely on internal expertise will be increased which, in turn, will increase each user’s efficiency and facilitate the sharing of information and documents.
Hardware and software acquisition plans and renewal schedules will also help keep CCSF current and further minimize the need for technical support by reducing the proportion of old and failing equipment. Consideration should be given to purchasing laptops wherever appropriate to allow for more versatile use. These standards will allow for affordable, bulk upgrades in the short-term and help promote longer-term technology planning. Ideally, standard machines would also be available at reduced costs to students through educational discounts and bulk purchases.
Networks must also be maintained and periodically upgraded or replaced. Policies for system management must recognize any physical limitations of the network; these may include restrictions on the range of uses and access prioritization.
Many other policy issues will arise as education technology becomes more widely used. Equipment needs to be secured from theft. In addition, the regular operation of the equipment-- the software, any data or other files on the hard drive-- needs to be secured from both unintentional and intentional destructive activity. When the latter, commonly referred to as “hacking”, does occur, the college should have established procedures for dealing with the individual(s) responsible. See Goal 3, Objective 4 for some other policy issues.
Each school and department should determine its education technology needs and expectations, particularly when they are different from or in addition to the overall standards described above. Most instructional software in discipline-specific; some hardware and networking needs may also differ from the standards. These needs and expectations, as well as current uses must be documented to provide a factual basis for allocation decisions. One possible, initial venue for this planning is Program Review. Facilitated and coordinated school- and department-planning should begin with the next two years. School- and department-based plans should address specific education technology applications, their uses and desired student outcomes. Staff Development for each school or department will be determined by the faculty competency level required for its specific education technology applications. (For longer term planning, departments should consider whether to include these competencies in their hiring, promotion and/or tenure criteria.) These plans should be within established CCSF guidelines and minimum standards for education technology, and they should fit within the overall college plan framework.
CCSF must determine its long-term goals regarding distance education. To date most CCSF faculty have not expressed much interest in distance education; however, recently the Internet has altered the nature of distance education dramatically. (See Sections II.B., V., and Appendix 6) Given these new possibilities, we must ask again: Should distance education offerings be increased? Are faculty interested in teaching distance education courses? Are students interested in taking distance education courses? How many students are we “missing” because we do not have sufficient distance education offerings?
In addition to providing a forum for individual communication (e.g., office hours), whole courses can be offered on-line through the Internet and e-mail. On-line courses can easily be modified into distance education courses. Some faculty and students will feel more comfortable participating through written means; others will prefer the verbal discussions of a traditional classroom setting. Courses offered on-line can benefit from the variety of perspectives available globally. The best means of presenting a course will depend on the material, the course objectives, and the participants.
The need for distance education may increase as CCSF services more students for whom jobs and/or families compete for their time. Students who are seeking short-term retraining may also prefer the convenience of distance education. These students may find distance education an acceptable alternative to a traditional classroom setting.
Objectives for Goal 3:
01. Develop and strengthen education technology
08. Make standardized computer and software packages available at discount to students and disseminate purchasing information to students
09. Examine distance education options and determine long-term goals
IV. IMPLEMENTATION TIMELINE The timeline on the following page was developed by the Technology Strategy Development Team. For the purposes of this document, Goal and Objective numbers correspond with the preceding pages. (The original timeline is located in the 1996 CCSF Strategic Planning Process: Draft Plan Framework, pp. 12-13.) This timeline and the preceding plan were developed during 1996. Changes in technology, educational theory and practice, student expectations, and funding, as well as other unforeseen changes, may alter the direction(s) CCSF chooses to take with regard to education technology. Continuous effort will be required to keep our technology and its uses current, efficient and effective to best meet the needs of our students.
CD-ROM disk (compact disk-read only memory): Holds more data than standard floppy diskettes and is therefore a better storage medium for complex multimedia programs and large collections of information such as encyclopedias and other reference materials.
Client: 1) In a network, a computer that requests services or data from other computers known as servers. Also known as a workstation. 2) As software, a program that makes requests to and presents data from another program that acts as an information server.
Computer-Based Tutorial (CBT): An application that leads a user through a series of graduated exercises. Often diagnoses user’s skill-level, prescribes exercise(s) appropriate to skill-level, then analyzes the exercise results.
CPU (Central Processing Unit or “chip”): The most fundamental piece of computer hardware; the computer’s “brain”.
Dynix: A popular OPAC (Online Public Access Catalog) system, which the CCSF library utilizes. Education technology: Information technology used for educational purposes.
Electronic mail (e-mail): Mail that is transferred electronically.
GUI (Graphical User Interface): The capacity to represent information graphically, as well as in “text-only” format. Hardware: The physical equipment of a computer.
Homepage (or Web Page): A virtual site on the Internet, usually referring specifically to a site accessible through the World Wide Web. Contains basic information about an individual, institution or product. Created using hypertext language.
Hypertext: Enables rapid access to various pieces of information stored separately from the main document, but cross-referenced.
Information technology: Any or all of a number of digitally-based technologies ranging from fax machines to computers.
Instructional designer: A technical expert who develops or assists in developing “courseware” and multimedia products for educational use.
Internet: A world-wide network of computer networks. A “router” connects the network to the Internet. Many resources and means for sharing information are available through the Internet, including e-mail, data repositories, bulletin board services and user groups for sharing information.
ISP (Internet Service Providers): Third-party providers of Internet services.
ITS (Information Technology Services): An administrative department at CCSF providing hardware and programming support to the college’s administrative, faculty and student users.
ITUG (Intech usersgroup): Faculty-based group formed to support “Innovations in Information Technology for Teaching & Learning.”
IUG (Internet usersgroup): A group of faculty and staff interested in the use of the Internet for instructional and educational purposes.
Lan administrator: A member of the technical staff responsible for the functioning of a single or small number of local area networks.
Laptop computer (or laptop): A portable, personal computer.
LCD: A device which allows output to a computer monitor to be displayed on a large screen for group viewing.
MIS (Management Information Services): A standard phrase usually referring to a data management and/or reporting system. The State Chancellor’s Office for the California Community Colleges requires all its colleges each semester to submit tapes with student, course, and student services data.
Modem: A device which allows “dial-up” access to a single computer or computer network.
Multimedia (also Multi media, Multi-media or Multiple media): A single collection of both audio and video in one storage medium, usually a CD-ROM disk. Can include graphics such as still photographs as well as video clips, in addition to basic text.
Network (Computer Network): An interconnection of workstations and servers with physical links (e.g., hard-wired together or to a hub) and logical links (i.e. use the same protocols to communicate). May be referred to as a LAN (Local Area Network) or WAN (Wide Area Network).
Network administrator: A member of the technical staff responsible for oversight of all aspects relating to the interconnection of computer systems throughout the enterprise and to the larger Internet, including, but not limited to 1) coordination the LAN administrators, 2) the planning, design, and implementation of network architecture to acheive enterprise goals, 3) the management of installation, configuration, and maintenance of network equipment, such as routers, switches and hubs.
OMR (Optical Mark Reader): Used to process “bubble” forms such as those produced by Scantron Corporation.
On-line: A phrase which refers to being “on” (also “logged onto”). Frequently used in reference to the Internet or the World Wide Web.
PPP (Point-Point Protocol): Standardized internet protocol for modems. Supersedes SLIP.
Scanner: A machine that “reads” text and/or graphics from a printed page into a computer file.
Server: 1) A computer which services requests from client machines in a computer network 2) A program that services requests from client programs, e.g. Web server, Oracle server.
SLIP (Serial Line Internet Protocol): Software that makes it possible to use the same Internet facilities over a phone (“dialup”) connection that are available over a direct network connection. Superseded by PPP.
Smart classroom (or computer classroom): A classroom which contains multiple, networked computers for students use and a large screen display. This classroom may or may not be wired for Internet connectivity.
Software: The programs, such as word processing, database, spreadsheet, that “run” on computer hardware.
System administrator: A member of the technical staff responsible for various duties on a computer system with multiple concurrent users, including by not limited to: 1) addition and removal of user accounts, 2) addition and removal of hardware on the machine, 3) scheduling and execution of file system backups, 4) the installation of new software, patches, and software upgrades, 5) analysis of problems occurring within the system, 6) maintenance of system documentation.
Technical support: Any of various services provided to computer users, from installing a computer to helping produce “courseware.”
User: A computer user.
Web administrator: A technical support person responsible for maintaining World Wide Web access and supporting the creation of homepages. (See homepage.)
Wired classroom: A classroom which contains an Internet connection.
Workstation: Roughly equivalent to “personal computer,” the basic building block of an integrated campus technology system. Either in a fixed location or portable; connected to a network or used as a standalone machine. Most simple form includes a central processing unit (see CPU), a hard disk (central memory repository), keyboard, monitor (“screen”), floppy drive(s). Permits entry of text and/or data by keystroke or transfer from a floppy diskette. Software can be used to manipulate and format the presentation of this text/data, displayed on the monitor, printed in “hardcopy” format, stored on the hard drive or on a floppy diskette. Software ranges from basic word processing to complex scientific simulations. Depends on the capacity of the machine (e.g., speed of the chip) and the software.
World Wide Web (WWW or the Web): A world-wide network which provides
graphics as well as the text provided by the text-only lynx. See GUI.
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