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RIP the Campus Computer Lab, 1960-2009
theodp writes "When every student has a laptop, why run computer labs? That's a question schools have been asking themselves as computer ownership rates among incoming freshmen routinely top 90%. After only four freshmen showed up at the University of Virginia in 2007 without a computer of their own, the school decided that it's no longer worth the expense of running campus computer labs. Student computer labs have been a staple of campus life since the '60s. So what are the benefits that will be missed as other schools follow UVa's lead?" The university's report notes understanding that "that students need collaborative space where they can bring their laptops and mobile devices to conduct group work, especially as the curriculum becomes increasingly team- and project-based." One of the spaces formerly occupied by computer labs "has been transformed into a technology-rich collaboration area."
I lack a printer, and thus I rely on the University's printing capabilities. I'm sure I'm not the only one; many students appear to have their own computers, but seem to rely on the University for printing off papers or projects.
As a present college student, I have to say that I still spend hours in computer labs. I use a SunRay lab as a controlled development environment for computer science, and I have math class in a computer lab loaded with Maple and Mathematica. There's an open-access computer lab near me that I also use frequently to access necessary software, to use as a meeting place for group projects, or to use as a printer when I can't use mine for whatever reason.
Mind you, it's not like I don't have a computer on campus, but I still find myself using computer labs very frequently. And I know other people do too, the labs are almost always full when I'm in them. If labs die in 2009, it's not students' laptops that did it.
When I ran one, it was a lab of Linux machines running Matlab and a bunch of other software that most student machines wouldn't have. The computer lab was extremely useful for the students. I expect that you'll continue to see labs being used for anything that isn't common on a student's computer. (Video editing, 3D animation, Matlab, anything with specialty software), or for computer skills courses. Teaching excel is a lot easier when everybody is looking at the same version.
Sure, if it's just being used for web browsing and checking email, a computer lab may be much less useful now than it was ten years ago. Still, I think the social aspect of a computer lab shouldn't be overlooked. I expect that you'll soon see a movement of "micro computer labs" the size of a conference room with something like 3-6 computers, a conference table, and a white board, maybe a projector. Extremely useful for group projects, and things like that, but also useful by a group of completely random individuals as a small computer lab.
[Troll]
A place where Business Major girls can go to find CompSci geeks to do their Programming for Non-majors assignments for them...
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"I don't know, therefore Aliens" Wafflebox1
When your laptop goes kablooey all of a sudden, it's darned handy to have a few machines around as a backup so you can type your Important Paper. You don't need hundreds, sure, but what's a couple dozen computers to a big fancy university?
The World Wide Web is dying. Soon, we shall have only the Internet.
Sure, this is fine for private schools, but at a lot of public universities a large amount of students are broke and trying to pay their own way through school. Getting rid of the computer lab would be a huge handicap for them, so I just don't think this would be feasible for other campuses
I completly disagree with the removing of computer labs and i would just point two issues:
a) Freshman can have a portable, but they don't have the array of servers that currently are needed for a complete CS courseware. How do they program in cluster computers, clustered database servers and so on? Yes, you may be able to skip on the ton of personal computers, but you will still need the IT infrastructure to support a proper learning experience;
b) It is not appropriate to ask every freshman to ditch hard coin for a program just to learn something. In that case, the usual setup is for the school to have a computer room with computers and all the programs required. Also bear in mind that many programs aren't exactly instalable on a portable computer...
So yup... you may be right that the "need" for perssonnal computers aren't currently that great, but nope, computer labs will always be needed on schools that relate to IT.
When a course requires a certain software package, a consistent install base is crucial for teaching and troubleshooting.
When a system problem can't be solved by having the student move to another workstation while IT is re-imaging a lab computer, weeks of course time and homework can be lost. It is a headache keeping track of excused late assignments.
Not to mention software licensing issues.. It forces the instructor into a legal and moral choice between running the "new & hot" version the students are running and last years license the school purchased. Isn't your highest obligation to teach the students? And don't even start me on instant messaging.
Sure, right now a lot of kids who just graduated from high school can convince their parents that they need their own computer in school (even if the school website says otherwise). Though as the economy continues to falter, parents should start taking a serious look at what their kids truly need for school (and realize that a computer of their own is not on that list).
Spend $1,000 on that new laptop, or instead use the same $1,000 to take out less in student loans? That should be a pretty easy choice.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
I'm a civil engineering student and throughout my course I had to do a bunch of projects that demanded all sorts of software and although a bunch of that software has a free counterpart (openoffice, latex, maxima, GCC, etc...), we are still forced to use software that not only doesn't have any free counterpart but also costs an arm and a leg to begin with (I'm looking at you, autocad). That alone makes the computer lab to be nothing short of invaluable. That and the fact that my school's computer lab also sells prints.
Then there's the safety aspect. Nowadays I'm able to go to class with nothing more than a pencil, A4 paper, an USB drive. That's about 15 euros worth of stuff. If suddenly I was forced to carry around a laptop then that value would easily surpass the 600 euros mark, all that concentrated on a neat, easily stealable toy.
At my university (specifically, at the Faculty of Electronics, which includes network and systems engineering), this would not work very well, if at all.
First, several absurdly expensive applications like Matlab (yeah, everyone here knows about Octave, but the industry wants students to learn to use Matlab) are available only on the lab servers, and while it's possible to forward the X connection from the server and have them appear on the laptop's desktop (in fact, that's how they work on the lab computers), most Windows-using students can't be bothered even to install and use PuTTY and Xming properly, and even then, using Matlab over a WiFi connection is not for the faint of heart and weak-tempered.
Second, some things are to be accessed only from university-owned computers, such as the IEEE Xplore database and several scientific journals, and there's nothing the university could do about this, it's just how academic licensing works.
There are probably some more cases such as those, so the labs are here to stay for some more time, I think.
This is Slashdot. Common sense is futile. You will be modded down.
Computer labs won't go away, they will just change their mission. Instead of labs for general computing needs (email, info searches, web browsing), they will become support for specialized computing needs.
They are still needed to provide access to specialized professional applications which would be too expensive for individual students to license. High end scientific, art, media and simulation applications are too expensive or require too much computing power for the average student with a laptop to realistically use.
One of my favorite professors, Arthur Lo, said of his course:
"Most of my students say that they get the most from this course from the lab exercises. I think that they get the most from their lab partners."
This was back when a computer "lab" really meant a "terminal room." But you could take a quick break, discuss assignments with other students, to make sure that you understood it correctly, ask older students which courses were good, tell younger courses which course sucked.
Computer folks tend to be introverted enough anyway; encourage them to get out a bit, instead of hacking alone in their dorm rooms.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
I can see the "computer lab" simply evolving to better meet the needs of the modern student.
You're probably going to want to provide some comfortable workspaces where a laptop can be placed, and possibly offer amenities like a USB docking station with full-size keyboard, mouse and 20" or 22" LCD display attached. Network printers should be available as well.
You'd also want to have a number of desktop systems in the lab, loaded with specialized software packages needed for courses - but too expensive to expect students to buy for individual use. (EG. My ex-g/f had to use the SPSS statistical software for several of her psychology courses.)
Computer labs are essential to any good engineering program. The smartest and easiest way to provide access to and support for an array of engineering software is through University run computer labs.
At the University of Michigan, where I attend, there is a huge amount of software that engineering students have access to on any of the CAEN (computer aided engineering network) computers. All my complaints aside, the engineering network is one of the most useful resources. I have a fair amount of University storage space, access to all my files on any CAEN computer, and generally a lot more computing power available than on most student's laptops.
Students will routinely run simulations and analyses on the computers, letting them run overnight, or even days. Above all, without an engineering computer network, student teams, such as Solar Car, FSAE, Baja, etc. would not be able to design, build, and compete on the same level.
A properly run computer network can be a great way to provide access to a huge resource with an array of software otherwise unavailable or too costly for students.
In my experience there's a lot of pressure from to get rid of labs in Universities and Colleges simply to reduce costs. At it's core, this is a process of shifting the cost of computing facilities from the institution to the students. And yes, I know that when the institution pays for labs the monies are ultimately coming, at least in part, from the paying students. However, a machine in a student lab is much more highly untilised that an individual's notebook, a cost of labs is spread across all students, rather than the individual, and the economies of scale mean that the cost per unit for the institution is utually much less than the cost per unit in the individual model.
Anyway, two reasons to retain labs:
- some students don't have notebooks. Should ownership of a computer be a prerequisite to obtaining a post-secondary education? I'm sure the vast majority of students have their own desktop or notebook, but the single parent working part-time and supporting two kids while trying to upgrade their credentials might not.
- speciality software (GIS, discipline-specific stuff for psychology courses, math courses, etc.) is pretty damned expensive, and typically has very restrictive licenses in terms of seat installations or concurrent users. Trying to get licensing that allows you to distribute to student PC is tough and expensive. And Microsoft is the biggest prick of them all; they hose you if you try to support virtual labs to give access even to Office applications, insisting that even if your virtual lab supports 50 concurrent users you must purchase a license for every student who could possibly use the service, which is typically in the 1000's.
We're starting to push users toward Open Office (we should have done it a long time ago I suppose, but version 3 is pretty sweet and a step up from previous version IMHO). But the FUD out there makes students hesitant - faculty telling them their work won't be accepted if it is created using anything other than Word, for example, with both the faculty and the student not realising that they are requiring a file format, not the use of a particular program.
Anyway, getting rid of student labs is a boon for Microsoft, and for hardware manufacturers, and hoses marginalised students, while adding yet another barrier to higher ed so that only snotty nosed kids whose parents are paying their way through school can afford to go to university.
Okay, that last part is a little over the top, but not so far - there's truth in there.
[17] Leary, T., White, C., Wood, P. R., Bhabha, W. D., and Wirth, N. Lambda calculus considered harmful. In Proceedings
So you got your undergrad degree when you were 28?
That means that at 28, you're making the average salary of a 23 year old. And when you're 40, you'll be at the average salary of a 35 year old. On top of that, when you're 65, you'll be running on 37 years of savings instead of 42. And if you get married and have children in your 30's, you'll have missed out out on the first 5 years - the most important ones - both because your savings have the longest time to grow AND you can save a lot more of your income when you're single than when supporting a family.
A college degree makes you more productive. Delaying that degree makes you more productive later. This makes no sense.
Plus, it's not like you knew how to live like an adult when you graduated high school either. You just didn't learn how to be an adult AND take classes at the same time - so while everyone else pounded that out in 4-5 years, it took you a decade.
Anyway you cut it, your way is just slow.
paintball