Experience with the educational ICT environment in Kyushu University

Abstract

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.