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On 05-Mar-2002 at 12:46:26 Simon Waters wrote:
MATTHEW BROWNING wrote:I have spoken to some `key personnel' around here about these policies and the general answer seems to be that it is the responsibility of a University to provide experience of a real world computing environment to its students.Funny I thought it was the responsibility of Universities to educate, and foster discussion, and development of new ideas, but then I was at Uni a long time ago ;)
The problem was found, a long time ago now, that as more and more students did a 4 year course, with 3 years academic work and 1 year working for a company, what they 'used' at Uni, in terms of IT software, was not relevant. The Uni (polytechnic then) was not keeping up with the software being used in the real world. Since it is somewhat the de facto for students to do these types of courses nowadays, espcially I gather in IT, so the Uni, as Matthew said, has to provide a more realistic real world scenario. That is what the 'central' services should be doing. What each faculty/department does, to a large extent, is up to them. For that reason the faculty/depts around the Uni may well run Unix/linux PC's, labs etc, but the central services do not. As linux pervades into the dektop area, so things may well change here. I think it will *have* to change - it's no good the geography dept (for example) saying that they want to give their students linux experience but they have to use the SoC labs to do this. It will be either for the geog dept to provide it, or for a more central provision (from us) of linux open-access areas for all staff and students. As more departments request this so it will become more of an issue for the central services.
The real issue here is psychology. People are comfortable with Windows, even though it may give them some pain, they think they understand it as they have used it. People don't make decisions rationally, they do what they feel comfortable doing.
Even within an 'IT literate' area of the Uni? I agree that this seems to be what is happening here, but it seems to be more like ignorance or brain-washing when IT people themselves don't consider a problem to any extent other than 'how does Windows solve this' rather than 'how do I solve this problem'!
At the UK Meteorological Office, some of the most successful and radical IT ideas were those that could evolve. The Intranet was deployed early and became very functional, because free webserver software made it possible to do without spending tax payers money, and thus without senior management committing themselves to something they didn't understand.
As a tax payer I'm very glad to hear it :-) As an IT person (professional?) I'm glad to hear you have management that seem to have some sense!
Similarly the way to break barriers in other organisations is to solve real problems. The web proxy is a good example, it solved the problem cheaply and quickly, management like that, and they won't worry about the HOW, if it is executed efficiently, and doesn't become an issue.
Agreed. We have 2 linux web caches because it would take too long to setup Windows servers to do this (I was told). I was also told, on the quiet, that they didn't know *how* to set up Windows proxy caches (ah, the 'real' reason)! However, here, in the long term, if we keep caches, they will no doubt be replaced by Windows servers once they find out how to do it :-(
Of course the cynical might say Universities should teach students to use the technology they will encounter in business, not the technology business is using today.
Nope, lost me with that one :-) Okay, call me ignorant! Time for coffee and lunch :-) John. ------------------------------------------------------------------------ John Horne, University of Plymouth, UK Tel: +44 (0)1752 233914 E-mail: jhorne@xxxxxxxxxxxxxx PGP key available from public key servers -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.