CAM Computer Committee

Agenda/Notes from meeting 29th November 2002

Venue: BK0.09a

Present: Jim Briggs (Chair), Gary Bown, Mike McCabe (part), Robert Topp (most), Steve Broadbent, Ed Kopinski, Alison White

Apologies: Dean Ledger

Agenda Notes Action Status

Membership of the committee

The Committee consists of a member of the academic staff from each department in CAM, plus relevant technical support staff from the Faculty and ISO who are involved in delivering computing services to CAM students and staff.

It was agreed that it would be useful to invite Les Black from the Anglesea Site Support team to join the Committee and its Operations Sub-Committee

JSB to invite Les Black Les Black accepted

Terms of reference

The Chairman reported that he was not aware of any "Terms of Reference" for the Committee. It was agreed that the Committee should draw some up and have them approved by ECAM.

It was ageed that the Terms of Reference should cover:

  1. Finance - agreeing procedures for spending the budget allocated for equipment
  2. Policy/strategic aims of CAM with relation to the provision of computing facilities
  3. Liaison with and between the operational teams, the Faculty and the academic and administrative staff

The scope of the Committee is primarily the equipment and labs "owned" by CAM, with subsidiary focus on other computer equipment used by CAM students and staff.

 JSB to draft Terms of Reference  

Goals and mode of working

It was agreed that the Committee should meet normally once per term, with intervening discussions held online and the occasional emergency/special meeting to focus on a particular topic.

It was agreed to look into ways of effectively managing online discussions and decision making.

The Chairman has authority for the budget.

 All to suggest ways of managing online working  

CAM computing strategy

It was agreed that CAM needed a strategy to guide the decisions made by the Committee. For example, the decisions we make about equipment will depend on wider decisions within the University about use of students' own equipment, and distance learning requirements.

It was agreed that the Committee should draw up a strategy document over the next few months. A debate should be stimulated among all staff (and perhaps students) to inform this.

It was agreed that data is needed to effectively monitor any strategy. This includes information about:

  • lab usage (from the timetable)
  • computer usage (how many students are logged in?)
  • application usage (what software are they using?)

It was also agreed that it was important that information be easily available and kept up to date about what hardware and software is available in each location. Communication issues were discussed and it was agreed that more formal procedures were needed in many areas. Better liaison between the Lion Gate, Mercantile House and Anglesea support teams was needed.

EK to investigate whether information about logins per subnet per dept group could be made available to the Committee

SB to investigate ways of measuring application usage

  

Software upgrade policy

It was noted that version compatability issues were still common.

SB noted that ISO policy was, if necessary, to support two versions (the most recent and the previous one) of an application. It was noted that no one had ever been offered a choice of two NAL icons for any application!

    

Any other business

 It was noted that there may be outstanding issues concerning the provision of computing facilities for students on the Pearson's (and possibly other) distance learning courses. In particular, a decision had not yet been taken concerning what web server would be used by DL.WPRMP students.    

Date of next meeting

 Early next term (precise date to be fixed)