Last updated: 25 May 2004

Overview

The Student-Administered Labs address the needs of:

• students to understand how to install and configure complex software, and to use that configuration to deepen their knowledge of a topic

• instructors to demonstrate the use of software

• development staff to encourage and promote potential students to pursue studies in Institute programs or related areas

• lab staff to quickly reconfigure the mix of software needed for special events

Allowing students to administer a computer for coursework is very powerful and educational. However, it is not desirable to do this in a general-development lab, as the state of the workstation's computer would be unknown after each student used it.

Lab Administration

Institute lab staff, under faculty advisement concerning academic needs, are responsible for equipping, securing, configuring and maintaining these labs and the infrastructure supporting them.

• Rooms

  Rooms can be reserved by faculty and staff for special purposes, such as exams, special presentations, computer camps, and monitored programming labs.

• Workstation computers

  Our goal is inexpensive, fast, configurable computers with limited network connectivity, regular monitors, removable media support, and a removable local hard disk.

  The use of removable hard drives with pre-installed software allows each student or team of students to be responsible for the "personality" of the computer by controlling what software is installed and configured on it.

  Each computer has an empty drive bay. Students insert a pre-assigned disk drive cartridge into the empty drive bay and may either:

  • use the pre-installed software as-is and optionally configure it differently,

  • install new software, or

  • overwrite the entire disk with a new operating system installation.

  When the student is finished with the computer session, the drive cartridge is removed from the computer and secured in an assigned lab locker. This allows the next student to reuse that computer workstation with their own removable hard drive, thereby changing the computer's "personality" or, more accurately, its functionality.

  Basically, for the courses that require this control, the students have complete control over the operating system and applications for the duration of the course.

• Network

  The network normally provides connectivity to Institute servers, including login and file storage servers, as well as to other computers worldwide via the Internet. However, since students are not expert system or network administrators, often the network outside of the room is off-limits to the students. That is, the students could misconfigure, forget to apply security patches, or otherwise allow other network users to compromise their system. Our goal is to provide a network environment where their exposure is minimized.

• Software

  The workstations typically support the elective curricula; consequently, the software is fairly specialized, and general-purpose software is not desired. For example, office-type software may not be included in the pre-installed software.

  The special software (beyond the operating system and useful utilities) is generally recommended by the faculty. All pre-installed software is licensed, installed, configured and maintained by Institute lab staff.

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