Meeting Minutes

December 1, 2005

Laura - SAC Business

We want to revamp our incentives. 

Currently: color plotter cards and thumbdrives. 

We thought of:

• an extra $10/semester print quota, but don't know if you guys want that.
  • Q - didn't you just say not so many people had used their quota?
    • Laura - I don't know how exciting it is just for the mental boost of getting $50 instead of $40. It might interest some members, depending on their major, more than others.
• Custom-designed t-shirt - what would you want on it?  Should we make some designs and let you pick? 
• Other ideas?  Let us know!

Open slots on the SAC - I've been interviewing people for the open CFA slots - we have a new CFA member as of today, but he wasn't able to join us; he will be here in January.

We don't have anyone from Tepper.

• Mercy is now in Tepper

The Information Security Office wants to know what good ways are to raise security awareness among the students. They want to be able to communicate more with students and get good feedback from them. 

Some of the ideas they've come up with are:

•   the scavenger hunt that's ongoing right now
• a poster design contest
• a public service announcement script or idea contest, where the winning design would be filmed or produced by ISO, and shown on CMUTv, etc. 

Are those interesting to somebody?  Is that something that you, or someone you know would enjoy doing?

• Q - what does security mean in this context?
  • KVD - Understanding the computing guidelines; understanding the risks and liabilities that you encounter as a community member; peer-to-peer, risks from sharing password, etc.

It used to be that the biggest problem we had was people leaving themselves logged in on cluster machines.  Now, there's spam, viruses, denial-of-service attacks, we've got people sharing passwords and swapping files.

A lot more students come to campus with computers now - 99% have them in the first month.  Many of them just have computers for writing papers and reading email and web browsing, and don't realize the risks associated with having the computer (and having it on a network). 

We need to reach out to these students!  We also want to get students who DO know this stuff involved in reaching out to others, and to come up with ways to get people who aren't interested in computers but are interested in other things to participate (like poster design).

Suggestions/questions:

• This might be way off base; have you considered contacting graphic design instructors in CFA to make it part of the curriculum; that's what they do in the real world.  How do you convey this info to this audience. 
  •   we've done this kind of academic collaboration before, but not in this context
• Can't you incorporate this in CSW?
  • Susan - we do incorporate it, and we do a lot of this in orientations and before classes even begin. The problem is the rest of the students  and also keeping the info in front of them on a regular basis.
• Would the poster be an info provider or a link to awareness?
  • could be either or both - we recently saw a "movie poster" but held info about security incidents on campus and some problems they were facing, with a "for more info see"
• seems like even the website itself would be a candidate for design folks (current site is pretty plain and informational)
• students talk about this being like the whole STDs thing (condoms etc)

Scavenger Hunt reminder

• everyone knew about it already they knew about it from the last meeting, but not otherwise (didn't see it on misc.market or from other student sources)

Susan Alexander - CSW Student Modules

The last time I was here to talk about some of the changes that were planned for this fall's CSW.  One of the things that was recommended by students in that meeting was that we offer non-credit modules to students who want to learn things that are not within the scope of CSW.  Examples included Access, Dreamweaver, InDesign, PowerPoint--all kinds of different software that we just don't have time to touch on within the class. 

We want to focus on students who need it to do classwork.  Some instructors have us come in & do a short module within their class, but that's not used very much.  I have a survey, which you can forward to anyone who might be interested in voicing their opinion before the end of the semester, about requesting modules.  If there is sufficient interest, we may be able to get something together for Spring semester.

If you have other ideas for content, please feel free to contact me directly.

Sachal Lakhavani - Video Conferencing Update

Video Conferencing Presentation

We're looking at what the needs are for video conferencing on campus.  Based on those needs we'll make some recommendations as to what we should do moving forward.

Laura - How many have used vc in a class context or on their own?

• NO ONE using it in class, a couple are using it for one-to-one chat.

Sachal - I'll be looking for your thoughts on where it could be used in the future.

What's discovery?  It's a project that lets us learn more about an issue before we decide what to do.

By video conferencing we mean, real-time, two-way audio and video communication over a computer network.

• The needs at CMU vary by department, but overall the need is growing.
• Computing Services isn't (yet) doing anything centrally.  We are considering offering central vc service, support, and/or guidelines to improve the service being offered to the community as a whole.  But we still need to learn more!
• What are the main needs on campus? Mostly we've heard about student needs from faculty, but we'd like to hear about them from students.
• We're also benchmarking with other universities are doing, and looking at what technologies are available.

So here's questions for you:

1. have you used VC at CMU?  I guess the answer to that is no
2. have you heard of VC being used at other schools, or anywhere else?

• Ryan - I know here it's being used for that class at history, or maybe it's Tepper, but it's taught simultaneously in Qatar and here; I know that there's only one offering; I know they use that every class.
• Bum - I can think of once instance where something like vc was used by electronics arts by fine arts students - a video project where a student was in Spain ; part of the image was coming from Spain and part was developed here.  That kind of collaboration with students abroad and here was really successful, and I think part of the success was the innovation of coming up with a way to do the live imaging.  They were projecting it on the walls, I think they they were doing it mostly through the computers.
• Ryan - the Global Studies house did some videoconferencing with Qatar.  It was just a social, hi how are you thing.

How would VC be useful to you?

• Ryan - it could have been helpful to me in research in Tepper, because the process of communicating with professors that are collaborating from other universities.  Email communication can be really cumbersome. If it were easy, I think it would happen all the time.
• Laura - one thing that Suzanne had brought up back in January was employers using it instead of in-person interviews or phone screening.
  • Definitely expected it- thought the Career Center already had it
  • Sachal - actually we talked to Career Centers centrally, at Tepper, and at Heinz, and it seems that they see a lot of values in bringing employers to campus; the same with guest speakers; faculty want to bring their colleagues onto campus so they can interact more and hang out later, etc. The only employer that felt strongly about it was GAO.
• Doug - it would be interesting to collaborate more external to campus. There's the barrier of interfacing with other schools, and meeting individuals.  How we set up the environment here to help those relationships develop could make that easier.  Secondly, things like higher profile lectures that can't come here, having that live so we could do Q&A, or collaborating with other universities to get a lecture and doing that live through VC would be interesting
  • Bum - I don't think it would even have to be just high profile stuff, or in other places.  Like, if there was a lecture in McConomy that there's not enough room for everyone, doing that through videoconferencing for overflow would be good.
• Nathan - well, in any case where a professor has to leave the campus for an extended period of time, like a couple weeks, videoconferencing that professor in would be good because canceling classes or having them taught by someone else can be a problem.
  • Doug - that would be really beneficial to me right now, because one of my professors just took off for the rest of the semester.
    • Other students affirm that this happens "often"

Desktop VC -

• Doug - yes, just with friends, iChat or whatever.
• Ryan - next year, I'm going abroad for the year, and being able to talk to my family, or interview for positions here, I want to be able to do over VC from China.
  • Sachal - do you think a lot of students go abroad and would have this need?
    • Ryan - not as many as other universities, but especially in places with big satellite delays, or problems with phone calls, it would be really handy. [would it eliminate these delays - not necessarily]
      • Bum - in the art school, we really encourage people to go abroad.  About half my class went abroad last year.  I think it would be neat to see what kinds of collaborative projects people come up with through videoconferencing.

Dot Foote: Documentation

How do you find documentation?  What do you wish we documented?

• We'd search.  Starting at google.
• Usually go online; but I'd search at the CMU site. 
• No one calls the HC.
• I look at the main Computing Services site; most people don't even know the documentation site exists. 
  • How can we make them more aware?
    • It's not on their radar because they're not going to go there unless they have a problem.
    • It would be best to have prominent links in places where people DO hang out; like the Clusters homepage and the Computing Services homepage.  Be where they are when they first have a problem, and then they'll realize there's a better place.
    • More and more students are using the portal; what about a portlet search for "solve my computing problem?" 
    • Don't make them navigate.

If there was a horrible virus, how could we get to you? 

• Email to us directly.
  • KVD - Last mtg there had been some security advisory and EVERY SAC member knew about it.  We asked why and Claire said, "it was in my inbox, and it was three lines long." And don't do it often.

Before you arrived on campus, did you know your email address?

• yes, from reading the Freshman Cursor

Upcoming graduates; what do you want to know about your account changes?

• I want to know exactly when it expires
• I know very little about what will happen, and I'm starting to wonder about it now.  If you offered the info to me I'd love it now.
  • would you like us to massmail that stuff to you?
    • Yes
•   When do people start to talk to you about graduation? 
  • Enrollment hasn't started talking to us yet
  • do it after finals but not too far into spring semester.
  • or even over winter break;
• Alumni office will offer forwarding forever (to wherever you specify) from an alumni.cmu.edu address. 
• Your Andrew and CMU names may eventually be recycled.

Thanks for your feedback!

Mike Kelleher: Printing Statistics

As you can see, the vast majority of users haven't used much of their quota.  1153 undergrads with $40 in their quota

KVD - this isn't far off the %age of students who printed in Fall 03.

Basic data from survey of students; pretty close to our data, 78% said they've printed to a cluster printer.  We were kind of surprised that those who used cluster printers didn't use departmental printers; but those who use dept printers still use cluster printers.

KVD - Do people know the UC kiosk is there?

• it's in a terrible location - I know people who've printed, looked all over the UC, gave up and printed elsewhere.
• I wish it was in a convenient location; you can't pick it up on your way to class.  It's a pain.  If it was on the first floor, it would be the most-used printer.
  • We only got the test site on the first-floor because we promised to remove it. 
    • what about the green room? 
      • Don't go there!

We haven't finished our analysis on the "did you know" questions.  We'll probably do a FAQ based on what we learn.  There was at least one person who thought we were CHARGING them $40 for printing each semester.  We've been pretty pleased with how few students are low on quota; our goal was not to deprive students of printing; we're interested to see what happens in the next month.

We bet the CFA color printers are STACKED in the last week.  We've only changed toners once. 

• Any stats on what size paper is in use? 
  • Mike - We haven't compiled it yet, but we could later.  Tabloid doesn't seem to be in heavy use.

Services prioritization exercise

[We wanted to find out what services SAC members use, and how important they are, and how dissatisfied the members are with the services. Students were given colored dots - red for importance, blue for dissatisfaction - to "spend" on services posted on the wall.   They could spend multiple dots on a service, but did not have to spend all of them (many of the dissatisfaction dots were unspent!) This exercise was NOT to give us a formal understanding of student satisfaction, but instead to help us find out areas to focus on for next semester's SAC.  Higher numbers mean greater importance and greater dissatisfaction.]

Most important services (rated 7 or above): Clusters (23), Online Registration (17), Printing (16), Student Info Online (15), Email (12), Bboards (8), Software downloads (8).

Highest dissatisfaction (rated 7 or above): Clusters (11), Online Registration (10), CSW (7), Student Info Online (7), Spam filter (7).

(Full table)

Clusters - What is the source of the dissatisfaction?

•  Doug & Bum -  the CFA cluster is usually full of Architecture students, making it hard for students from other majors to get time in there.  There were changes in the Architecture curriculum that involve using computers much earlier and the environment hasn't kept pace.

Spam filter - (this was just after the fuzzy matching turnoff) - have you seen an improvement since Friday?

• Some students yes, some no
  • Mercy - mine's gotten a lot worse since Friday!

Bboards - you use bboards?  What for?

• Mostly for student organizations
  • Nathan - on a lot of bboards there is socializing that goes on as well as actual planning and important stuff, so it is nice not to have that all in my inbox.