Meeting Minutes
February 15, 2007
Attendees:
Students:
Eric Barndollar, CFA/SCS
Allison Gallant, HSS
Brad Hess, HSS
Viraj Narayanan, HSS
George Schaeffer, MCS
Dan Schultz, HSS
Rexy Tseng, CFA
Matthew Wright, SCS
Guests:
None
Computing Services:
Gretchen Beck, Help Center
Connie Deighan Eaton, Clusters
Corrine Harkins, Education & Outreach Mgr
Kimberly Hennessey, Education & Outreach
Laura Valentine, Education & Outreach
Pomona Valero, Media Technology Mgr
Connie Deighan Eaton - Linux Cluster Updates
Connie:
- We're moving forward with the West Wing Linux collaborative workspace for Fall 2007 (we hope).
- We're putting as many whiteboards as we can in the room to help with group projects.
- We're putting in a small conference table with no computer on it if there is room.
- Lots of power for laptops
- Grouped furniture arrrangements
- Dan: What is going on with Win/Mac in WW space?
- Connie: They won't be there. We are leaving the printer there.
- Dan: Can we consider leaving a Mac & a PC in the room as print stations?
- George: And can we maybe get a console by the UC printer, too?
- Donner printer/print station?
- Connie: We can look into that.
- 2 smaller rooms in Wean - 05 & 07 - will stay Linux, set up for individual work. They'll be reservable by TAs & faculty for office hours/classes.
- Best way to communicate these changes to students?
- Matthew: Posters in Clusters, starting in Spring (announcing change for Fall).
- Other Clusters problems?
- Dan: Still having PDFs crash browser in Wean.
- Connie: Sometimes saving to the desktop helps. Also, email these docs to Clusters so we can troubleshoot (clusters@andrew.cmu.edu)
Pomona Valero - UC Auditorium Upgrades
- Rangos
- projection screen is broken, which is a safety hazard. We'll replace it during Spring Break with a screen that's 4x3 and expandable to 16x9.
- staging co. will install curtains to frame & hide the screen
- Should make Rangos better for speakers
- McConomy
- there's a lot that always breaks; there's A/V equipment but no one committed to dealing with it.
- Most of the use has been abTech & VIP stuff.
- Just the equipment to do surround sound is $60K, plus a new screen and a new control system & installation costs. Total system would be $400K.
- Met with student groups - lots of groups have voted to give money to the project. There is still one group that needs to vote.
- Allison: When are these upgrades planned for?
- Pomona: We're guessing Winter Break 07/08
- Dan: would this involve a new projector?
- Pomona: Yes, 2 new ones.
- Dan: I just know the one there now has been catching fire.
- George: equipment is different in different rooms!
- Pomona: We're standardizing. By 2008, they should all be the same.
- About 26 classrooms still need to be done.
- We're retiring VCRs and overhead projectors.
Gretchen Beck - RCC Program
- The RCC program is our desktop consulting program in the dorms. How many of you know about the program? [almost all]
- How did you find out about it?
- Allison: signs in the dorms
- Dan: email
- How many used it? [None] Why?
- Dan: would someone be able to diagnose my problems? I don't have confidence that someone could figure out why my computer freezes for no reason.
- How can we make people more aware?
- Eric: Have RAs mention it in floor meetings
- Viraj: Is it like going to the Help Center? Give examples of how to use it.
- Dan: Mention it in CSW. Let people know what kind of problems they can ask the RCCs about.
- The hours are 6pm-9pm. Are those hours good? [Agreement that those hours are good]
- How does scheduling work? What if you miss a callback? Fixed appointments might be better.
- Allison: Maybe IM access would be good, for quick answers
- Brad: What started up this services?
- Gretchen: Housing asked for it, plus it's hard to bring desktops in to the Help Center!
- What sort of computer problems do you see in the dorms?
- Where else can we publicize the service? Where do you look for campus services?
- Eric: it would be nice if on the portal, there was a portlet that had a cycle of campus services, like "did you know about..."
Laura Valentine - Questions about Student Systems
- Gathering questions to submit to Administrative Computing. They might not have the answers - answers might need to come from Enrollment or someone else, but we'll see what we get!
- Why does OLR have hours?????!!!!!
- There's a big overlap of services between different applications.
- Can’t they be one application?
- List what they can do, see where they relate
- Consolidation
- "We're willing to help!"
- Information systems senior course & HCI course - ask them about designing prototypes
- Current design is "Kafkaesque"
- "There are so many features I think we could have, but they wouldn't work in this framework."
- Do we really have to answer if we’ve talked to our advisor every single time?
- SIO – can we get a digital copy of our unofficial transcript online?
- “Upcoming Features” on SIO have been “upcoming” for a long time
- Print unofficial transcript – have a box where you can pick how many printouts. You have to print multiple times if you want more than one copy.
- Why does SIO go down when it is computing grades?
- You can't get an account statement or anything when grades are being computed - those shouldn't be tied together like that
- During registration times, OLR gets soooooo sloooooow, can anything be done about that?
- Staggered registration doesn't really help
- Schedule of Classes
- you can only look up by individual things, not multiple. So you can look up by start times, OR days of the week, OR department, but you might want to look up by all of those things.
- Would like to see filtering - only see classes that fit into schedule, only see classes you have pre-reqs for
- Academic Audit
- Can Academic Audit can be more up to date?
- Permanent setting for courses counting as a requisite for electives.
- You can have it temporarily, but it resets
- Can an advisor make it count permanently?
- Convenient way of auditing your major together with your minor, or multiple majors, etc.
- Why can’t we see how many seats are available in a class?
- Total class size would also be nice
Send us a list of feature requests!
