January 30, 1996
Objectives:
Inform them of our ideas, specifically the web-based approach.
The meeting began with a brief presentation of the background and current
status of the ODU Online project. It basically said where we are, where we have come
from, and where we would LIKE to go.
Find out what is being done currently and what they have planned
for the future
Currently in progress, is a new ODU Web Lion. Alot of time and energy have
have been devoted to this and to many other projects, such as taking part in
the statewide ATM machine program. Also, coming soon within the next ninety
days are 144 more modems with sprintlink connections. Sorry CS guys, but this
one's not free. ODU will become an Internet Provider. For a proposed price
of $13/month you can get 50 hours online. .50 cents every hour after that...
Find out if and how much they are willing to work with us
As far as our scheduler is concerned, getting access to student records and
financial aid information has MAJOR security risks. In addition, all
of the information is currently stored in VSAM files or in the Adabase
database. The company who makes this software has a unix platform for
which it can run, but to date this has not been bought by ODU.
Processes on this system have been known to take VERY large periods of time.
For instance, one example sited was a process that once took 24 hours has
now been "reduced" to 12 hours. Given this time lag, doing even a nightly
update of class information becomes difficult.
As far as working with us is concerned, Rowland and Nancy claim that they
are not the people to help us. They believe that support should be there,
however, if we present the project *NOT* from the standpoint of "convienient"
and "a neat idea", but more along the lines of bringing ODU to the cutting
edge of technology.
Find out their thoughts on the student club to manage these pages
"Everything you are doing is where we want to go. But we lack the manpower
to do it." - Rowland Harrison. This idea really appealed to them. It took the
pressure out of the hands of the administration and let students with a
working knowledge of cgi/html programming run the show. The student
group we envision would help with the hand holding and help other students
get access to the net. According to Rowland, it only takes 10 students
to say "yeah, I'm interested" to form a student organization and be
appropriated funds. The biggest problem is security.
There are also some large social issues that must be considered when
dealing with a project of this nature. Rowland warned that we must make
sure not to create a severe lack between the have's and the have-not's.
In other words, there WILL be some fraction of the school that will not
have access to a computer at home. We have to make sure that there is
some way for them to access the system also.
We had already come to the same conclusion that Rowland had and we even
came up with the same answer... That is, placing kiosks around campus
to use the system. Now, the system he was referring to was the Internet
Provider service, but it's the same basic concept.
How can we interface with the student records and what problems are there in doing so?
As stated before, Rowland and Nancy were not the people who could answer
these kinds of questions save in general terms. They were however, able
to point us in the right direction. Our next target is to meet with
Mike Little - The Director of Applications in OCCS.
[Back to Team Project Area]
Last updated by:
3/14/96 16:37