Slashdot Mirror
Re-purposing a Student Tech Service Group?
discards writes "I help run a student group at a Canadian University. For almost 15 years we've provided students with services such as web space, email, wireless internet on campus, cvs/svn, database access, mailing lists, etc., all using Linux and FOSS. In recent years, however, we have faced becoming obsolete. The university now provides wireless access, people get their email from other places such as Google, which also provides free svn access, web space, and so forth. Since we have a large amount of decent, usable hardware, as well as space, funding and a very fast internet connection, we are looking to possibly reform instead of just withering away and dying. We would like to ask Slashdot for ideas as to what we could do; preferably something that cultivates student research or provides an otherwise useful service to students, though all ideas are welcome."
I have just joined a similar group, the Harvard Computing Society (http://www.hcs.harvard.edu/). We try to provide more up to date web services to student organizations. We provide web hosting for student groups that is capable of running all the latest web goodies like Drupal, Mediawiki, sql, and the like. We also maintain mailing lists for student organizations, and advocate for better tech practices at Harvard. There are also lots of other cool projects in the pipeline that may or may not go anywhere but are fun to work on: IPtv, content aggregation from student org websites, internet phone, and other off the wall ideas. I am still new to the organization, but everything seems to work very well.
Taking this successful example, I would suggest taking advantage of the fact that you can be less bureaucratic than the school's general IT staff to provide more modern web tools to student organizations.
How about offering a back-up service for students work? Sure, you currently offer services that could be used as such but your average student has no idea how to do it. Offer a nice simple web interface that allows them to upload files that they really wouldn't want to lose.
As other posters have pointed out, you could also move into entertainment services and help for recent graduates.
I wouldn't ditch things like the svn/cvs, webspace and database access though. My CS department used to run their own services and having them on campus was great since I could go ask our helpdesk people if something went wrong or I needed extra space etc.
Silly rabbit
Branch into offering telecom services such as LD, voicemail boxes, VoIP, etc... If you already have the hardware and internet connectivity, it's only a small step to branch into providing voice services. Canadian DIDs are cheap and with a couple of DIDs you can provide extension-based vm boxes. Outbound calls within Canada are cheap as well... Help people connect and keep in touch with their families and friends.
There are 10 kinds of people in the world > > Those who understand binary and those who don't
Maybe change the focus to having your students do a little more research on what students and faculty are actually doing. As an example have the students look at various websites posted by students and faculty and see what can be changed to make the site more interactive or figure out where a database could be used to help gather and sort data. Students could also look around campus at the various publications and forms and change them into online forms or databases. And as always good fall backs are cleaning & restoring computers and performing upgrades. Hope it helps. Good luck.
Keep offering email services. GMail is not an acceptable alternative in many situations. In the Canadian University where I'm a faculty member some groups refuse to send mail to gmail addresses because Google scans all mail (this violates privacy contracts on some research material). This will affect final year undergrads and grad students mostly and already occurs. In addition things like the US "patriot" act mean that provincial privacy laws in many cases make Universities very uneasy to send any private information to gmail addresses due to the server location in the US - our University has not yet refused gmail addresses but they are working up to some sort of policy which will probably do so.
I've been to a university and college, both in the same city as Carleton, and their IT services were mostly lackluster. So my suggestion is: Compete! Keep maintaining your wireless internet, or even improve on it. Make a really good bulletin board/forum for trading, advice, anything a student might need. Even with all the free offerings floating around the 'net, I would have still preferred one specifically for my campus.
You can probably drop email, but for everything else, have a look at the services Carleton offers. If you think you can do better, then do it! Even if the services are equal, it's an incentive for Carleton not to let their own offerings turn obsolete. My experience is that as long as they can advertise it to prospective students, your typical post-secondary institution doesn't care how useful their services are.
Except that high compatibility with MATLAB is a major part of Octave's design. So if this is an introductory course then you're probably just covering syntax that's common to both of them. In which case, sure, bill it as a MATLAB course or perhaps as a MATLAB/Octave course, but you might as well mention Octave's existence and perhaps give a very brief summary of advantages/disadvantages to using one or the other.