The communications networks at Glendale Community College have indeed become mission critical resources. It is now impossible to attend a class at the college without having contact with at least one of these networks.
Electronic Mail is the major communications medium on campus, and every employee has access to the system, from the President to the maintenance crew. The users of the E-Mail system (DEC All-In-1) not only have the capability to communicate with virtuall y every employee on campus, the system also provides direct access to E-Mail users District wide, as having world wide access via Bitnet and Internet connections.
There are many other network resources the staff of the college use to conduct daily business, both locally on campus as well as throughout the District. The Student Information System (SIS) support all student records. The Financial Records System (FRS ) and the Human Resources System (HRS) are accessed to support the financial and personnel business of the college. INFORM provides student grade management, and INSIGHT is a student tracking system. VAXNotes provides computer conferencing capability.
There are many other individual and departmental systems and servers for faculty and staff use, to numerous to mention. GCC also has 3 full time programmers to assist with specialty applications.
In 1987, GCC opened the High Tech Center (HTC). The HTC included 336 student stations in a open lab called "The Pit," as well as 5 fully equipped computer classrooms. The HTC was opened to students 101 hours a week, from 7 am to midnight Monday through Friday, as well as 8 am to 5 pm on weekends. This concept was used to such an extent, that in 1991, a second building (HT2) was opened to handle the overflow. HT2 added an additional 144 student workstations in a second Pit, as well as 10 new computer c lassrooms. An additional feature built into the new building was a multi-media classroom, equipped with multiple rear screen computer/video projectors, student computers with laser disk players, and enhanced video support, as well as an instructor's stat ion with full control of the room.
There are currently in excess of 700 student workstations on campus all connected via the campuses Ethernet backbone. These are all universal stations, in that a student can sit at a computer and do an English assignment, while the next student can sit a t the same computer and complete a chemistry experiment. Access to library based CD-ROMs is in the planning stages, and will be available next semester.
Access to these resources is all automated, and controlled through network connections to the SIS system. Each semester faculty submit the access their students will need. All the student needs to do is enter his or her social security number at a netwo rk workstation, and the resources requested by each of their instructors is made available. The resources are provided by 5 Novell servers, a dedicated Appletalk server, the main campus VAX, as well as several specialty Unix servers.
Another exiting resource for student use has been the addition of a computer conferencing system known as the Electronic Forum (EF). Developed at Glendale in collaboration with the English department, EF allows faculty to have an area where the discussio n can continue outside the classroom electronically. The system is very flexible, and was designed with academic requirements in mind. As an example, each class may have a forum or "journal," where only the that class has access. That forum can be fu rther divided into sub-forums, breaking the class into workgroups for a projcet. Also, the system allows for writing in pen names so that students can experiment with writing in different "voices."
The Electronic Forum has taken on a social aspect as well, becoming an electronic commons where students meet, "talk.," and make friends. The public forums have topics ranging from Altscene to Zymurgy. The public discussion topics include fun discussion s, (Games, Humor, Funnies) to very serious (AIDS, Election92, Environmental). There are also Chat forums for real-time discussions, as well as mail access, for one on one communication.
Spring semester of '93 saw better than 10,000 students with access to EF, and over 2,000 of them are active, writing more than once a week. An average day will see usage peak at 90 simultaneous users between 11 am and 1 pm. With Modem access, there is s omeone in the system virtually 24 hours a day.
As part of the project, the entire campus was rewired, with enough spare capacity for in excess of 10 year's growth. An NEC NEAX 2400 digital PBX was installed, and the trunking in and out of campus was greatly increased. Each employee workstation was p rovided a digital telephone instrument, capable of supporting 16 lines/ features, as well as the capability for simultaneous voice and data transmission. The system was also linked via microwave to the digital PBXs at the other Maricopa Community Colleg es.
This system currently supports 500 digital and 150 analog lines on campus, as well as 30 inbound and 30 outbound trunks to the local telephone company. An additional 30 trunks are installed twice a year at the start of each semester to support the additi onal traffic of students registering for classes via telephone.
The NEAX 2400 also supports 3 separate modem pools, with 12 student and 6 faculty/staff modems for dial in access to the network, as well as 4 modems reserved for dialing off campus. These modems currently provide access at up to 2400 baud, however these pools are scheduled to be upgraded this summer to 14, 400 baud, as well as increase in numbers. The PBX also provides for 40 digital dial up ports internally to campus resources.
These channels support a variety of uses, including a bulletin board for student information, broadcasting recorded material to individual classrooms,and distribution of material received via the college's satellite downlink. It is also possible to do a "live" broadcast on the system, where any broadband drop can become an input point. This allows the activity in one classroom to be sent to others.
In 1991, GCC installed an NEC 5000 video codec which allows for full motion video to be sent and received via the district's microwave system to the other Maricopa Community Colleges. This system allows for the colleges to share classes, especially crit ical for upper division classes that have low enrollment. With the instructor at one site, students can be scattered at any of the colleges county wide, and receive the same live interactive instruction that the local students get. Glendale currently ho sts 3 of these classes, where the GCC faculty member teaches remotely to other campuses. There are many others where GCC students receive instruction via the system with the faculty being at another college.
The video conferencing system is also used administratively for meetings, which greatly reduces the need for travel for faculty and staff to and from the various district sites. Special events are also popular on the network, allowing one campus to share guest speakers and workshops with the rest of the colleges.