Northwest Missouri State University's electronic campus after four years

Abstract

Since 1984 Northwest Missouri State University has taken several dramatic steps to prepare its 6,200 students for the emerging information-driven, technology-based society. These have included equipping every faculty office and student dormitory room with a computer terminal, a dedicated television channel and a telephone line. All three of these components are networked through the university's VAX timesharing computers. The result is an Campus made up of 2,300 terminals and telephones plus over 400 microcomputers. Prior Considerations Early in the planning stages for our Electronic Campus, two critial commitments were made that guided development of the entire project. First, the needs of students take precedence over administrative needs; and second, the system is structured around a centralized cluster of mainframes. Within the context of those commitments the university adopted three goals: * To ensure students have a working knowledge of the computer, particularly skill in accessing databases; * To improve writing skills through convenient access to word processing and reference programs; and * To improve communications through the use of electronic mail (e-mail) between and among dormitory rooms, faculty offices and administrative services. System Hardware Our campuswide system is supported by a highspeed, fiber-optic Ethernet backbone in a star configuration that connects the various Pathwork LAN servers and personal computers to seven VAX computers with a channel capacity of 10 million bits-per-second. In total, Northwest provides over 11 billion characters of online storage for its students and faculty. Specialized applications are also run on any one of several university and departmental computer stations, which include color graphics terminals, seven MicroVAXes, DOS-compatible Zenith PCs, plus Rainbows and Macintoshes. In addition, the university's network supports interactive terminals in 23 high schools in northwest Missouri. Included in the available services are touchscreen-driven color graphics directories in the library and administration building, plus a TouchTone Talker, which uses a computer-generated voice to share information, such as available class openings and an events calendar, by phone. A tutorial system comprising a computer, videodisc player and interactive voice synthesizer is also accessible from students' rooms for instruction on how to use the library and timesharing computing services. Available Software & Services Among the 200 software applications provided on campus are: word processing, e-mail, calculator, spreadsheet with graphics, personal address directory, and a university directory and calendar. Online database services include a library search system, encyclopedia, dictionary, thesaurus, campus news, career guidance system and listings of university student jobs and assistantships. Students may enroll, plus review their class schedule, transcripts and bill, all from their dorm room terminal. A comprehensive set of programming languages is available, as are a statistical analysis and graphing system. The library's traditional card catalog and reader's guide have been replaced by an online, integrated electronic catalog and circulation system. Through a system called RECAL (Regional Electronic Catalog Accessed Library), students and faculty can access the university's library catalog of nearly 400,000 volumes. Users can quickly determine what resources are present, when they will be available, in which collection they are stored, and the appropriate call number of the item. Electronic searches can also be done by author, title, topic and/or descriptors. In addition, the university has made RECAL services available to regional public libraries, high school libraries and other college libraries. The result is that network members can quickly and easily borrow resources from Northwest to enrich educational opportunities for their students and other constituencies. …