CEASE: notes on course usage data Last mod: Nov. 9, 1999 ajfox ---------------------------- We compiled a list of courses/faculty/TAs who use SGIs from the following sources: - 4-035 and rolling SGI reservations - users of ACS remote-access SGIs - f_l logs - ACST collective memory - Dash courseware We devised a set of questions, and sent these to a list of 30 faculty/TAs/administrators (culled from the above information), requesting that they pass it along to other colleagues as relevant. A summary of the responses is available from Naomi Schmidt; major findings are interspersed throughout the report. Summary is available to sponsor and team at: https://web.mit.edu/cease/www/dontindex/faculty-responses.html Full text of the questionnaire: Subject: Request for information re your use of Athena SGI's Date: Wed, 13 Oct 1999 13:06:15 -0400 From: "Naomi B. Schmidt" We in Academic Computing are in the process of planning our strategy regarding the future of Silicon Graphics workstations in the Athena Computing Environment, and are gathering data on use of this platform for course use. We have already spoken with some of you, but in the interest of being as comprehensive as we can, we would appreciate it if you would reply to this set of questions and also circulate them to any of your colleagues to whom they might be relevant. In order to expedite our planning, we would appreciate having these answers returned to us by Friday, October 22. They can be either sent via email to nschmidt@mit.edu or via campus mail to Naomi Schmidt, N42-250C. (If for some reason you can't reply by Oct 22 but would like to do so after that date, we would still love to hear from you.) 1. During the past two years, have you taught an MIT for-credit course that required that students use Athena to run software that is available only on the SGI platform? 2. Which course? _________ How many students take this course each year? ________________ 3. Which software package(s)? ___________________ 4. Are there any alternative software packages that run on Sun or NT or Intel Linux that you might be able to use instead? 5. Do you anticipate teaching this course in the future? ______ Any additional courses?______ Please describe. 6. Are there any other features of the SGI workstations that are necessary for your teaching? Please describe __________________ 7. Do you use Athena SGI's for non-course related things?______ If yes, please describe. 8. How would your teaching/students be affected if we reduced the number of SGI machines in the clusters from their present level of 93 (out of 416 seats total)? For example if we were to reduce this number gradually over the next three years? 9. Does your department currently have any SGI machines that students use for classwork? Are they Athena machines? 10. Is there anything else regarding SGIs/Athena/teaching that you'd like to bring to our attention?