Athena at 10 - Subsection 3

# 4.203 AND AUTOCAD

Professor William Mitchell, the new Dean of Architecture and Planning, believes strongly that students must work with the technological tools of their trades while they are here. One of his faculty members, Dr. Earl Mark (now at the University of Virginia), wanted to incorporate very substantial use of AUTOCAD, a commercial drawing and design software package, and some ray-tracing software into 4.203 Computers and Architecture. The Dean asked us to help out. The School has substantial computing facilities of its own, and some that we have helped support, but they were insufficient for what Mark had in mind.

We were evaluating AUTOCAD against other CAD programs for possible inclusion in our software library when Mark approached us mid-summer in 1992. Since his needs were focused and pressing, and since we thought AUTOCAD would work well on Athena, we decided to buy a limited number of licenses and let his students use them for that fall. We negotiated a reasonable price with the vendor and moved forward.

But AUTOCAD really needs color workstations to work well. Our electronic classroom in 1- 115 only had monochrome workstations, and so we also did a quick (but costly) switch and put color workstations into 1-115 primarily for Mark's use. Then we moved customers around - especially the Lowell Institute - to give Mark the large number of recitation slots he needed.

As the fall got underway it became clear that AUTOCAD didn't work perfectly on Athena, and that the problems were difficult to identify. One of my professional staff ended up spending almost a quarter of her time debugging AUTOCAD and providing other assistance to 4.203 - a much larger level of support than we usually provide any single subject. Moreover, it turned out that students needed filespace allocations much larger than usual to use AUTOCAD effectively, and this consumed additional resources that we might have been distributed more broadly.

But Mark had transformed the way his subject was taught, helping students to use technology routinely and to understand their profession better. This is precisely the kind of educational outcome Athena seeks. Mark had gone beyond AUTOCAD to use numerous other services on Athena, such as ON LINE TEACHING ASSISTANT (OLTA) and online handouts and assignments (most of which included graphics). He had helped us to understand what it would mean to provide Athena-wide AUTOCAD, from both a service and a resource perspective. And in the end he had been extremely appreciative, letting both us and his Dean know that he valued the services we had provided.

# SCHOOL OF ARCHITECTURE & PLANNING

In the summer of 1993 the Provost, the Dean of Architecture and Planning, and the Dean of Humanities and Social Science arranged for almost every member of the faculty in these two Schools to receive a laptop computer with a modem. In the School of Architecture and Planning, faculty were offered a Macintosh PowerBook computer. About 50 faculty accepted the offer. Many faculty who accepted this offer already had computers of various sorts, but for some this provided a first opportunity for extensive personal computing and computer-based communication.

###

### Shared Facilities & Staff

The School of Architecture and Planning operates a shared computer facility called the Computer Resource Laboratory (CRL). The CRL has Athena workstations, other workstations, and an array of Macintosh and DOS/WINDOWS personal computers in two flexible spaces known as the Garden and the Workshop. CRL emphasizes experimentation and interpretability. Many of its machines have special peripherals and software to give them special data-processing and communications capability. In keeping with the School's curricular foci, much of CRL's work emphasizes the spatial representation of data, whether those data are structural or geographic.

Since CRL develops and tailors much of the hardware, software, and data it uses, it employs a highly specialized staff. A faculty member, Professor Joseph Ferreira, devotes much of his time to managing CRL, working closely with Robert Smyser and Philip Thompson.

## 4 ARCHITECTURE

###

### Subjects

In addition to educating Architecture faculty and Academic Computing Services staff, 4.203 Computers and Architecture I has spawned additional use of drawing and design software, some of which is highly intensive computationally. Another Architecture subject, 4.401 Introduction to Building Technology, uses Athena's sharing technology to enable students and instructors to comment on each other's work-in-progress. One obstacle to further Athena use in 4.401 has been the lack of a workstation for its instructor to use in his office, which illustrates the central and departmental complexity of faculty workstation allocations. Beyond these subjects, the only major use of Athena for instruction has been the use of LUCID LISP in two identically named artificial-intelligence subjects, 4.835 and 4.933 The Art of Artificial Intelligence Programming.

Dean Mitchell has argued strongly that computers, and especially computer-based drafting and design tools, are fundamental to the modern practice of architecture. Therefore, they must become a fundamental part of the Department's curriculum. To advance this end, Mitchell has proposed a STUDIO OF THE FUTURE based on a highly integrated, networked yet portable architectural work station. The Dean has begun efforts to secure resources and renovate space in accordance with his ideas, with some early success. We have begun to work with him on how the Department's undertakings should interact with ours.

## 11 URBAN STUDIES & PLANNING

### Subjects

Urban Studies has long emphasized the use of geographically-organized data as the foundation of good planning. Its faculty have used computers extensively to do data analysis for their research. Initially this work involved relatively standard statistical programs feeding relatively standard graphical-display programs. In recent years these two functions have been combined into new Geographic Information Systems (GIS). Two examples are

- MIT MAPPER, which the Department developed for Athena, and
- ARCINFO, a commercial program now available on Athena and on the Department's computers in CRL.

These geographic information systems both figure prominently in 11.502J A Workshop on Geographic Information Systems and in other GIS-related subjects in Course XI.

In addition to subjects involving GIS or statistical software, Professor Donald Schön teaches 11.101J Learning to Design and Designs for Learning with Professor Bamberger from the Humanities Music Section. This subject explores the interplay between, among other things, diverse technologies and the origins of design knowledge.

Professor Joseph Ferreira serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

## MEDIA ARTS AND SCIENCES

### Subjects

This rather new program does not have undergraduate majors per se. It draws heavily on the technical and intellectual resources of the Media Laboratory for its graduate program and undergraduate subjects. Given the Media Lab's facilities, which are unmatched pretty much anywhere in the world, the modest use of Athena and other central computer facilities in Media Arts subjects is no surprise. All but one of the approximately 20 undergraduate subjects in Media Arts use technology educationally to some degree.

Professor Edith Ackermann served on the faculty committee that evaluated MIT academic computing in 1989-90.

# MANAGEMENT FINANCE

This past spring a group of faculty in the Sloan School concluded that students in finance needed better exposure to the real world of financial transactions. Today this world - a world many of us know only from fictional renditions such as Bonfire of the Vanities - depends on time-critical electronic transactions following quick decisions based on intensely concentrated electronic news and information about markets, exchange rates, banking activity, and commerce. Exposing students to this world means either taking them to it, or bringing it here. The faculty group decided to try the latter: to build a simulated trading floor at MIT.

A trading floor requires

- a constant stream of information flowing in,
- computers to process, store, and retrieve that information,
- displays to make it readily accessible to traders, and
- worldwide communications to execute deals.

Much of the data and software involved is proprietary and expensive. The data flows - especially the inbound data flows - require dedicated, high-speed satellite and network connections. And the computers involved must be quite sophisticated, and extremely reliable.

Sloan is seeking hardware and software grants from vendors who equip "real" trading floors. Dr. Patricia McGinnis, who directs the International Financial Services Center in Sloan, approached us about possible connections between the proposed trading floor and Athena. After several discussions, it became clear that there were ways that MITnet, rather than Athena, might serve the trading floor, both for interconnecting machines and for bringing data in and out. In some cases more direct connections to data suppliers might require Telecommunications involvement. Some of the data collected for the trading floor might also be useful to others at MIT, and therefore the trading floor's file servers might be made more widely accessible than the trading floor itself.

We were able to provide McGinnis and Professor Robert McKersie some advice on these technological questions, and on the type and number of staff that an educational trading floor might require. Ultimately, however, it became clear to Sloan and to Academic Computing Services that the trading floor need have no integral connection to Athena. Rather, it should operate autonomously on MITnet, with special links to important data or communications where necessary.

MIT's flexible, entrepreneurial computing environment encourages educational interchanges like this: explorations of possible overlap between central and departmental efforts, with friendly autonomy a perfectly acceptable outcome.

# SCHOOL OF MANAGEMENT

At about the same time other Schools were planning Project Athena, the Sloan School of Management worked out an arrangement with IBM whereby the School would receive an IBM mainframe and an assortment of other equipment. This equipment would permit faculty to analyze the large transaction databases central to much management research, and to help students learn to do the same.

Over the succeeding decade DOS/WINDOWS and Macintosh personal computers and some UNIX workstations have joined the IBM mainframe, creating a more functional and complex computing environment in the School.

## 15 MANAGEMENT

### Subjects

Much research in the School of Management relies heavily on statistical analysis, especially econometrics and summary statistics based on enormous transaction databases. The School's curricula place a corresponding emphasis on quantitative analysis, leading to significant computer use in subjects. Since the School operates its own computer facility, historically very little of this work has used Athena and other central facilities.

One exception is Professor Thomas Allen's 15.310 Managerial Psychology Laboratory, which has a cluster of 6 Athena workstations and is developing courseware that allows students to analyze data collected by faculty and researchers in the field.

With the arrival of SAS on Athena and of SAS-capable workstations at the east end of campus, this has begun to change. For example, 15.075 Applied Statistics and 15.138J Seminar on Pharmaceutical and Biotechnology Industry Management (cited above) use SAS for instruction. We expect further use of Athena in other Sloan subjects as the School redirects and modernizes its computing facilities.

In addition to these Athena-using subjects, many Sloan subjects in managerial economics, operations research, statistics, finance, and accounting use computers instructionally. The School's Information Technology subjects do too, of course.

Professor Thomas Malone served on the faculty committee that evaluated MIT academic computing during 1989-90, and serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

### Facilities & Staff

Sloan has extensive computer facilities of its own. In 1984 it acquired an IBM 4341 mainframe. It upgraded this to a 4381 five years later, having meanwhile begun to complement the mainframe with DOS and Macintosh personal computers (now numbering about 32 and 24 respectively) and other equipment networked together. Except for network connections, Sloan computing facilities operate essentially independently of Athena and other central facilities. For example, Sloan operates its own mailhub.

There is one cluster of 6 Athena workstations in Sloan, in addition to the public Athena cluster in E51-007.

Since the IBM mainframe has reached the end of its useful life, the School is in the midst of reviewing its options and charting a new direction. This new direction promises to be more parallel to what is happening elsewhere on campus. The School will retain its independence, but gain some efficiency and service from a closer collaboration with central organizations.

As described above, the School recently proposed to build a simulated trading floor where its students in finance could experience the data-intensive, high-pressure atmosphere of high-stakes finance directly. This will present challenges and opportunities for integration into the larger MIT computing environment.

Because it runs a relatively autonomous computing environment, Sloan employs a substantial computing staff led by Anne Drazen, Director of Information Systems, and Ray Faith, Manager of the Sloan Computing Center, who in turn manage about 5 EFT of other staff.

# SAS

In this context SAS is not an airline, but rather the statistical software most widely used in businesses, public agencies, and universities around the world. SAS has been available on MIT's fee-for-service mainframe for many years. More recently, Information Systems negotiated attractive bulk-license terms for the PC version. There was no workstation-based UNIX version, unfortunately, which meant there was no professional-quality, general-purpose statistical software on Athena.

This changed last year. Under a new educational program offered by the SAS Institute, we acquired 200 licenses for UNIX SAS. We spoke to faculty around the Institute, and found interest in numerous departments, especially those involved in quantitative social science: Economics, Political Science, Management, and History, for example. We acquired and installed the software. We began to explore its idiosyncrasies (which were substantial, given the SAS Institute's inexperience with large, networked UNIX environments) and to prepare documentation.

Historically MIT social scientists haven't used Athena much, partly because they felt excluded from much of the early equipment and development-grant largesse, partly because social-science computing was largely based on mainframes and IBM-type personal computers then, and partly because Athena offered inadequate statistical software. As a result there was little demand for Athena at the east end of campus, where most MIT social scientists work. New facilities went elsewhere, and Athena facilities at the east end of campus did not evolve.

As SAS attracted faculty interest from social scientists, we worked on facilities. We converted an Athena cluster in E51 to new DECSTATIONS ahead of schedule, to help students. A few departments split the cost of additional DECSTATIONS with us, and placed the new machines in departmental clusters and faculty offices. We worked with several departments to upgrade or expand their departmental Athena facilities. We created large course lockers to hold datasets that the Libraries acquire and students use for subject assignments and theses. As a result, making SAS available on Athena prompted a dramatic increase in Athena use among MIT social scientists, broadening the Athena service to the School of Humanities and Social Science, the School of Management, and the Institute generally.

# SCHOOL OF HUMANITIES & SOCIAL SCIENCE

As noted above, in the summer of 1993 the Provost, the Dean of Architecture and Planning, and the Dean of Humanities and Social Science arranged for almost every member of the faculty in these two Schools to receive a laptop computer with a modem. In the School of Humanities and Social Science faculty were offered a Macintosh PowerBook computer or an IBM ThinkPad computer. About 90 faculty - most of those eligible - accepted the offer. As was the case in Architecture and Planning, many faculty who accepted this offer already had computers of various sorts, but for many this provided a first opportunity for extensive personal computing and computer-based communication.

Another School-wide activity of note is the Computing in the Humanities group of interested faculty, who congregate regularly to share experiences and advocate effective educational computing. This group lobbies their Dean on behalf of computing, and lobbies Academic Computing Services on behalf of Humanities. Dr. Edward Barrett, a Senior Lecturer in the Program on Writing and Humanistic Studies, convenes this group.

## 14 ECONOMICS

### Subjects

Economics is housed at the east end of campus, intermingled with Political Science and Sloan. Much research in Economics is highly quantitative, requiring sophisticated tools for analyzing data and estimating models. As has been true for the neighboring Political Science and Management departments, and with a few important exceptions, Economics subjects historically have eschewed Athena and other central facilities in favor of local computers with the requisite tools installed. With the advent of SAS on Athena, Economics immediately became a much more active user of central facilities, using them in 14.31 Econometrics and, effective this coming year, in the heavily-enrolled sequence 14.01 Principles of Microeconomics and 14.02 Principles of Macroeconomics.

Data analysis requires data. Much data for instruction comes from widely used standard surveys of social and economic behavior and compilations of political statistics. Many of these are collected by the Inter-University Consortium for Political and Social Research (ICPSR). The MIT Libraries acquire ICPSR data for use at MIT. We make data from these collections available on Athena for use in instruction. This was done ad hoc until 1992-93, and required tape transfers and other machinations. Beginning this fall, at the behest of Political Science faculty virtually all the widely-used ICPSR data will be available online without students or faculty having to request them. Economics makes substantial use of ICPSR data both for instruction and for undergraduate theses, as does Political Science.

Professor Jeffrey Wooldridge, who has since left the Institute, served on the faculty committee that reviewed MIT academic computing in 1989-90.

### Facilities & Staff

Economics operates a cluster of Athena workstations for its faculty and students. This facility also includes some non-Athena workstations and some DOS/WINDOWS personal computers with specialized software not currently available on Athena.

When the School of Humanities and Social Science arranged for its faculty to have new laptop computers, Economics faculty objected that the selected machines were not powerful enough for productive use by economists. After quick analysis and negotiation, we arranged for Economics to supplement the Provost's and the Dean's contributions to the laptop purchase and thereby to obtain somewhat more expensive and powerful computers. This illustrates both the mismatches that centralized computing decisions can cause, and the benefits possible when departmental and central organizations collaborate to balance efficiency and flexibility.

John Dippold, a systems programmer, manages computer facilities for Economics and provides direct support to its faculty.

## 17 POLITICAL SCIENCE

### Subjects

Faculty in Political Science used Athena early on. In Professor Heyward Alker's subject 17.803 Debates and Arguments, students built logical models of political processes such as the Lincoln-Douglas debates. Subjects requiring other computer tools, especially statistical software, relied on non-Athena computer facilities such as mainframes at Sloan or MIT's data center, personal computers, or, in some cases, dedicated workstations.

Like its neighbor departments, Political Science exploited the arrival of SAS and SAS-capable workstations by increasing its use of Athena. Thus, for example, 17.203 Political Science Laboratory and 17.842 Quantitative Research in Political Science and Public Policy both use SAS on Athena,

Political Science has been a prime mover in working with Academic Computing Services to make ICPSR data available on Athena.

### Facilities & Staff

Until recently Political Science relied on a few DOS personal computers for most of its departmental computing. This included some older Athena workstations providing access to basic communications and online services. In order for the department to exploit Athena's new statistical capabilities, we arranged for Political Science to have a cluster of 3 newer Athena workstations. In conjunction with other central and departmental clusters, these have brought substantial growth in Athena use by Political Science.

Professor Charles Stewart manages the computer facilities and computing activities within the department, and serves as its link with Academic Computing Services.

## 21F FOREIGN LANGUAGES & LITERATURES

### Subjects

During the years of Project Athena development, Dr. Gilberte Furstenberg and Dr. Janet Murray of FL&L's instructional staff developed À LA RENCONTRE DE PHILIPPE and DANS LE QUARTIER SAINT GERVAIS. These two multimedia computer programs immerse students in a French-speaking environment and thereby increase their mastery of the target language. Ultimately the development needs of this kind of courseware and Athena's capabilities diverged, leaving PHILIPPE and SAINT GERVAIS available only on departmental rather than central facilities. Before that, however, these two programs helped revolutionize thinking about educational computing in foreign-language instruction worldwide. They also made the Department an active participant in educational computing at MIT.

Today PHILIPPE is a commercial product, with continuing development under the auspices of Murray's Laboratory for Advanced Technology in the Humanities (LATH), and SAINT GERVAIS continues development under the auspices of Professor Lerman's Center for Educational Computing Initiatives (CECI). The two continue to be used in the Language Learning Resource Center (LLRC). LLRC was renovated recently to house both LATH and language-teaching technology for MIT subjects. In addition, LATH has helped Professor Shigeru Miyagawa to develop a Japanese analog to SAINT GERVAIS called TANABATA (THE STAR FESTIVAL).

When the two multimedia courseware projects in foreign languages separated from Athena, a hiatus ensued, but only for a while. During the past year foreign-language faculty began to seek tools on Athena for students to use routinely, especially tools to read and edit foreign-language texts. Two initiatives have evolved from this.

First, we identified and installed a Japanese-language EMACS editor on Athena. This permits users to display and to edit documents written with Japanese characters including texts for subjects, electronic mail, and other kinds of documents. We also updated a version of a Japanese language text formatting package based on LATEX. Tomoko Graham, Lecturer in Foreign Languages and Literatures, has learned to use these new editing tools and, with support from Academic Computing Services, has prepared a wide variety of class materials online. These include the syllabus, weekly schedules, reading assignments, and other handouts for 21F.501 Japanese I and 21F.503 Japanese III. Over the summer of 1993, a UROP student worked with Japanese faculty and Academic Computing Services to rewrite and improve an existing application for drilling Kanji character recognition. Professor Shigeru Miyagawa and his faculty colleagues will use this KANJI QUIZ software at all levels of the Japanese program.

Second, when we acquired FRAMEMAKER, a new document-preparation system for Athena, we also acquired several copies of INTERNATIONAL FRAMEMAKER, a special version that handles diacritics properly and provides foreign-language spellcheckers and thesauri. Several faculty members, including Professor Martin Roberts and his colleagues Shoggy Waryn, Gilberte Furstenberg, and Ellen Crocker, expect students to use INTERNATIONAL FRAMEMAKER in selected German and Romance language subjects that involve writing.

The faculty interest resulting from these two foreign-language initiatives has led Academic Computing Services to offer the affected departments new or upgraded workstations for use by faculty, and we hope to deploy this during the fall. It also has led us to arrange for students to have access to foreign-language USENET groups as a novel electronic window into other cultures.

These new facilities encourage students to use foreign languages routinely, as PHILIPPE and SAINT GERVAIS do, rather than confine themselves to textbook exercises.

In addition to these specific applications, other FL&L subjects, such as Professor Roberts's 21F.336 (née 21.218) Introduction to the French Short Story, use DISCUSS and other network communication tools to promote interaction among faculty and students.

Dr. Murray serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

### Facilities & Staff

The principal facilities for FL&L use of educational computing are in the LLRC in Building 20. This facility, which is used jointly for instruction and for the work of Janet Murray's LATH, comprises several traditional language-lab stations plus several specially configured Macintosh computers.

Ruth Trometer directs the LLRC, and is assisted by several other staff. LATH has several additional staff for educational software development.

## 21H HISTORY

### Subjects

The Head of the History Section in the Department of Humanities, Professor Peter Perdue, has had an Athena workstation on his desk for a few years. He uses it to communicate with students, to prepare documents, and to participate in communications among Humanities and other faculty interested in computing.

Two years ago Professor Anne McCants arrived to teach subjects in history and historiography. Her research involves statistical analysis of large historical data sets. She wanted to share her research approach with students. This was difficult without easy access to statistically-capable computers. When we brought SAS-capable computers to the east end of campus, Professor McCants was able to undertake research and teaching activities that had been difficult before. We also provided her an Athena workstation.

Except for Professor Perdue and Professor McCants, faculty in History rarely use computers educationally. Professor Perdue serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

## 21L LITERATURE

### Subjects

Professor Peter Donaldson teaches the popular HASS-D subject 21L.009 Shakespeare, which regularly attracts many more students than it can accommodate. Professor Donaldson is especially interested in the ways text, direction, and acting combine to produce diverse performances. Donaldson and a colleague at UC Berkeley exploited the rich set of Shakespeare performances available on videodisc to develop INTERACTIVE SHAKESPEARE, a computer program to study Shakespeare performance.

The INTERACTIVE SHAKESPEARE software, developed through LATH for multimedia Macintoshes, lets students view different performances of the same Shakespeare play scene by scene. As they view the performance, students have access to the full text of the plays annotated with literary, historical, cultural, thespian, and cinematographic notes. Students can also record their thoughts and observations in a notebook, and insert excerpts from text or video as illustrations. Professor Donaldson encourages his students to write their papers within the INTERACTIVE SHAKESPEARE notebook. Students therefore use the multiple media not only to formulate their arguments, but also to buttress them.

In addition to this specific application, other Literature subjects, such as Professor David Thorburn's 21L.432 (21.032) American Television: A Cultural History use DISCUSS and other network communication tools to promote interaction among faculty and students.

Professor Donaldson serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

## 21M MUSIC

### Subjects

Computers have affected music in extraordinarily diverse ways over the past few decades. They have broadened our conceptions of instrument, ensemble, composition, and sound itself. These changes have made their way gradually into Music subjects. For example, Professor Jeanne Bamberger's 21M.113 Developing Musical Structures has students use the LOGOMUSIC computer language to explore musical coherence. Professor Bamberger teaches another subject with Professor Schön of Urban Studies and Planning, 21M.150J Learning to Design and Designs for Learning, which explores the use of computers and other tools across diverse design processes.

### Facilities

Professor Bamberger's subjects rely on a small cluster of Macintoshes equipped with MUSICLOGO and other relevant software. The cluster also contains a piano.

## 21S SCIENCE, TECHNOLOGY, & SOCIETY

STS, which enrolls relatively few undergraduates, has made virtually no educational use of computers within the Department. However, several faculty in STS hold joint appointments in other Departments or participate in projects that involve educational computing, such as Mechanical Engineering and ECSEL in the School of Engineering.

Professor Sherry Turkle served on the faculty committee that reviewed MIT academic computing in 1989-90.

## 21Y ARCHæOLOGY & ANTHROPOLOGY

Except for electronic mail among faculty and students, the Archæology & Anthropology section of Humanities makes little educational use of computers. The department provides DOS/WINDOWS computers for its faculty and staff, primarily for writing and other scholarship.

## 21W WRITING & HUMANISTIC STUDIES

### Subjects

MIT students must communicate effectively in writing. Many arrive unable to do this. The Program in Writing and Humanistic Studies provides numerous subjects wherein students may learn to appreciate good writing and to write well themselves. It also offers various advanced and more specialized subjects.

A Project Athena curriculum-development grant and other support enabled the Writing Program faculty to work with Athena developers on the NETWORKED EDUCATIONAL ONLINE SYSTEM (NEOS). This suite of programs permits students to submit and retrieve papers (or other documents) online and provides tools for instructors to annotate papers and share them with students in seminars. NEOS was cited in an EDUCOM review of successful educational computing.[15] Several writing and non-writing subjects across the Institute use NEOS.[16]

In addition to developing NEOS itself, IS and Writing faculty have collaborated to design and implement a classroom for interactive, computer-based writing instruction. This room, 14-0637, has 17 Athena workstations, including one for the instructor, arranged around the walls, a large seminar table in the middle, and seats positioned so that students may swing back and forth between their workstations and the seminar table. A typical class session in this classroom moves back and forth between students working individually at their workstations and discussing whoever's paper the instructor projects up front. NEOS encourages collegiality and collaborative learning among students.

Recently a group of Writing Program and Engineering faculty proposed a new Writing Initiative. Selected Engineering (and perhaps Science) subjects would have extra session meetings taught by Writing Program instructors. These sections would be devoted to writing about the specific topics and technology under study. If it moves forward, the Writing Initiative will use NEOS and electronic classrooms extensively.

Professor James Paradis served on the faculty committee that reviewed MIT academic computing in 1989-90. Dr. Barrett serves on the faculty Academic Computing Council.

### Facilities

Except for its access to 14-0637 and a couple of Athena workstations on faculty desks, the Program on Writing and Humanistic Studies has no computer facilities of its own.

## 24 PHILOSOPHY & LINGUISTICS

### Subjects

The only substantial use of computers in Philosophy and Linguistics is for online class materials, faculty-student communication, and so on, for example in 24.172 Being and Time and 24.119 Minds and Machines. Philosophy and Linguistics students use Athena and other computers more individually for these purposes and to write programs for simulation and analysis.

### Facilities

Philosophy and Linguistics operates a small Athena cluster, which is used partly by its students and partly by other students in Building 20.

# ENHANCING COMPUTING AND EDUCATION AT MIT

Whither Athena's Adolescence?

Academic computing pervades MIT education for two reasons:

- because faculty and departments across the Institute have used Athena and other computing resources creatively to enhance instruction, and
- because networked computers have become the common tool and medium for scholarly work and interaction at MIT.

Project Athena's goals are amply met.

But new challenges require new goals. I'll conclude this report by suggesting what some of these goals are, and sketching how we plan to meet them.

## PLATFORM DIVERSITY AND LAYERED SERVICES

Athena currently supports four platforms:

- VAXSTATIONS running BSD UNIX (which date to 1990),
- DECSTATIONS running DEC ULTRIX (1991, 1992, and 1993),
- RISC SYSTEM/6000s running AIX (1992 and 1993), and
- Sun SPARCCLASSICS running SOLARIS (1993).

Bringing a new platform into the environment generally requires substantial effort, perhaps a person-year in all. Supporting a new platform requires substantial continuing effort, since a new platform increases complexity. We cannot afford such additional effort very often.

But departments regularly approach us requesting Athena support - or something like it - for new platforms. Today, for example, we have concrete requests or strong arguments from diverse quarters that we should support

- Silicon Graphics workstations,
- Hewlett-Packard workstations,
- DEC ALPHA workstations,
- Intel-based computers running LINUX, and
- any computers running WINDOWS NT.

We need to find a way to meet reasonable requests among these without exhausting our resources.

By next fall there will be suites of basic authenticated network services for Macintosh and DOS/WINDOWS personal computers: authentication, communication, access to help and online information, network navigation. In addition, we have developed a layered version of Athena for DECstations whereby a user can choose layers of service for an out-of-the-box workstation. We believe that this general direction - providing layers of network-based service to diverse private machines - will scale to more platforms and serve more faculty and educational needs than our current model.

But a layered model for "Athena" and network services will have costs. Most important, moving away from the vertically integrated Athena model will reduce our ability to manage and support academic-computing facilities with a few central staff. This, in turn, may mean a reduction in service levels (machines will be down more often, for longer times), increased support costs, or both.

## SOFTWARE LICENSING

As this report made clear, the last few years have brought a dramatic transition from ad hoc courseware to commercial tools and applications as the dominant medium for educational computing (except, of course, for programming instruction). Early on, MIT's prestige enabled us to secure attractive site licenses for much commercial software, but this is no longer the case. Today licensed software comes specifying who may use it, how many people may use it at once, and what mechanisms we must implement to enforce these restrictions. In extreme cases these specifications make software unworkable in our environment. More often, they simply make it much more awkward and difficult to provide some software for our users than it once was.

In addition, software is becoming more and more expensive. Even so it is a bargain: for example, Academic Computing Services currently spends about $200,000 on commercial software each year, whereas undergraduates probably spend more than $2-million on textbooks each year.

Some individuals argue that we should simply say "no" to software restrictions. However, most faculty and students demand that we provide the tools they need. Moreover, faculty members who ask us to purchase specific software generally expect us to provide ample access to that software, yet we often cannot afford the requisite number of licenses.

As other organizations begin to deploy computing environments as complicated as ours, software vendors will understand our needs better. They also will become more adept at pricing, and the bargains we once obtained because no one knew how to deal with us will become history.

We have begun work on mechanisms to enforce different software requirements without incurring unnecessary overhead. We will continue this work, but the software market shows no signs of manageable stability.

## OPERATIONAL EFFICIENCY

We in Academic Computing Services and Information Systems frequently compare experiences with other universities that have invested heavily in technology for education. We fare very well in these comparisons, providing more computing and more support to our faculty and students without spending commensurately more.

Like our peers, however, we are attempting to satisfy increasingly broad and complex demand with resources that are, at best, level. As an illustration, here is the essence of Figure 1 again, this time with central budgets for Project Athena (through the spring of 1991) and Academic Computing Services (thereafter) overlaid:

Trend juxtapositions like such as this present challenges. Maintaining an operational edge in the face of diversifying computer platforms, competing software, and expanding expectations will be difficult. It will require aggressive use of technology, adroit hiring and retention of staff, and flexible management. We are learning much about how to do this in Academic Computing Services and other Information Systems service areas by exploring quality-improvement and re-engineering techniques along with related organizational tools. We must remain open to new ways to organize our business for maximum quality and efficiency.

## EDUCATIONAL DEVELOPMENT

The Committee on Academic Computing for the 1990s and Beyond made three central recommendations:[17]

- that Project Athena merge with Information Systems, with reasonable funding;
- that the merged organization provide a layer of Basic Educational Services and Tools for virtually all networked faculty and student workstations and personal computers; and
- that central funds be made available to departments to support faculty and staff developing innovative educational applications of computers and networks.

With the completion of RESNET and the accompanying basic network services for Macintoshes and DOS/Windows machines, the first two recommendations have become reality. The third remains a problem.

As this report has illustrated, support for educational computing varies across departments. This is especially true for educational development - that is, the work necessary to realize the educational potential of computer hardware and software. If MIT is to realize the full potential of its sophisticated computing and network resources then we must work to make flexible, useful authoring tools available on our systems, and departments must work to provide encouragement and support for faculty to enhance instruction with networked computing and other technologies.

As the MacVicar report argued strongly, it is important that educational improvement involving computing be integrated with more general educational improvement; thus her Committee's recommendation that development of educational applications of computing proceed from a departmental base. Similarly, Athena and other academic computing will be able to improve education at MIT only if MIT devotes the necessary resources to educational improvement:

- faculty time and other tangible resources, of course, but also
- moral and organizational support for pioneers and experimenters,
- tolerance and even enthusiasm for change, and
- mechanisms for measuring and institutionalizing educational-quality improvement.

## ETHEREAL NETWORKS AND PORTABLE COMPUTING

Project Athena's 1983 planning documents[18] began with speculations about technological trends, and it seems appropriate to conclude this report on the same note. As I write this, the MIT Computer Connection is reminding me that I am supposed to pick up my Apple Message Pad ("Newton"), a lightweight pen-based "personal digital assistant" (PDA) that is to decipher my handwriting and replace my assorted calendars and reminder cards. Airline magazines offer me modems for my portable computer that will connect to the cellular phone I don't yet have. Pagers can deliver long messages, not just beeps. Already it is difficult for me to move about professionally without a computer in my briefcase (LL Bean, of all places, just sold me a padded computer briefcase!), and I routinely connect my computer back to my office to stay in touch.

Readers of these tea leaves say that we must assume two important things about the future:

- everyone will carry around some form of digital computing device, be it PDA or laptop (and laptops already exist with the power of today's Athena workstations), and
- networks will connect these machines to one another and to servers without requiring physical connections.

Thinking about MIT academic computing from this perspective is both rewarding and unsettling. On the one hand, the client/server architecture and security features of our systems are well suited to a world with moving computers and wireless networks. On the other hand, portable computers will fundamentally change the nature of classroom interactions, requiring faculty and students to learn new ways of interaction beyond any Athena has suggested.

And so we move toward the future.

November 23, 1993