October 15, 1997 prepared by Walter Schneider

For Current Copy of the full report see Web site http://neurocog.lrdc.pitt.edu/schneider/dfitsc.htm

Committee: Mike Becich, Jeff Cepull, Norm Hummon, Estela S Llinas, Jinx Walton, chair: Walter Schneider

Perspective: The intellectual mission of the University is lead by the teaching faculty. If the faculty and teaching staff do not utilize current information technology tools they will deliver a seriously inferior educational a nd research product. We must provide current tools and the training to use them effectively. If our faculty are provided effective access to current technology, they can lead the institution in delivering effective instruction to our students and be in a position to better advance knowledge.

The University should focus its support resources to support teaching faculty with near leading edge computer access from their offices and homes, establish an extensive software library, and provide comprehensive training and consulting support. The University must provide reasonably current equipment (5 year life cycle) and software (2 year life cycle). The priority and estimated costs of support are estimated in the two-dimensional spreadsheet. We have listed items in 5 levels of priority. In th e spreadsheet several items span several priorities. This is due to some of the programs having a critical core that is of higher priority than servicing all the activities. Note, in addition to providing faculty computer equipment, programming resource s and training, we must also evaluate and reward effective use of computers and provide resources to assist in developing new computerized instructional innovations.

Substantial cost savings can potentially be provided if we centralize support and deal with the needs at an institutional level rather than an individual departmental level. However, for cost savings to be achieved, it is essential that the central se rvices be more efficient, current, and cost effective then what the units can provide. Those services must also have the confidence of the customer-base that is being served. This is a major challenge. We must provide training to effectively enable our faculty to utilize and teach with this new technology. If the central services are well run, state-of-the art and cost effective, providing these services can save the University millions of dollars annually and produce a substantially better academic p roject.

Provision of Desktop systems for Faculty. The provision of a desktop computer is a requirement. This is required for all full time faculty. In the past the University has recognized the need to provide a faculty member an office, desk, phone, a nd library access to support effective scholarly and educational efforts. In the 1990’s it has become essential to also provide current generation computing environments on the desktop and links to the world wide web. In the past University funding of d esktop computers has been very spotty with large differentials in the ability to departments to fund faculty machines (e.g., the early computer adopters such in hard sciences had budgets for such purchases where as later adopters such as humanities did no t). In many cases teaching faculty did not have current computer hardware available. In 1993 the Ubiquitous Network Access (UNA) program funded providing computers for nearly all full time academic faculty on main campus (though not at UPMC). The centr al administration allowed for more cost effective coverage, upgrading and standard administration than previous programs. We recommend as the highest priority continuing the UNA program to provide every faculty member current generation hardwar e and software from a central program. The capital costs for the main faculty are estimated to be $3350 for a 5 year period including installation, mid-life cycle upgrade, and repair costs. We recommend support for the full time non-medical school faculty (1800), medical faculty that are nearly full time teaching (i.e., receive less that 10% salary from clinical fees, 200 faculty), and a one computer per 5 graduate teaching assistants and part-time teaching faculty (400 stations) for a total of 240 0 stations. If funded on a five year replacement cycle that would require $1,608,000 annually, ($1,543,950 excluding maintenance). This represents roughly a doubling of the current UNA expenditures. With funding at the 60% of the required amount ($768,0 00) the program can function as an allocation to units, excluding the medical school faculty, and require units to cover the upgrade cost. We recommend priority 1 being the $768,000 to cover 60% of the faculty. We recommend an additional 10% be added for priorities, 2-5 each adding 10% of the faculty.

Serving Economics. Large economies of scale can be realized by centralizing University hardware, software, and support resources. If the services are of top quality, great benefits of cost savings and faculty productivity can be achieved. The co sts of providing server support is dealt with within the Network and Library group. We recommend supporting the main server development team and support team via CIS operating funds. Most of the support effort will be used by faculty, staff, and student s. It is a University support effort. The research community should be charged the marginal cost of providing the service. Estimates developed during the UNA program suggest a cost of $150/client excluding the cost of consulting (see below). For the t eaching staff this implies an operating budget of $360,000.

Software Library. It is important to have access to a large and substantial software library. A central component of universities are libraries that make shared reference material available to all members of the community. The specialty softwar e library is covered in this report and will require an annual budget of $97,500 to cover the cost of 150 applications per year ($45,000) and the operating cost of loading the applications ($47,500). We have included the first 100 applications as a prior ity 2 item. The next 50 applications as a priority 4 expenditure. We estimate the installation cost to be $300 to install and check the application and $50 to generate the web pages to make users aware of the application and basics of how to use it. < /P>

Training Faculty and staff. Without the training and support that these investments require, the University will never successfully leverage its information technology investments to change the nature of instruction. We propose that the Universi ty office provide an office of six full time trainers (estimated costs of $402,900 annually). We have divided this into three components basic support ($202,900) as a priority 2, then additional support ($50,000) priority 3, 4 and 5 adding 1 train er at each level. It is estimated that we will have about 2,400 faculty, 2000 teaching assistants and 600 part time faculty, plus 2000 staff and perhaps 2000 Research staff. This provides a very basic level of support of 2 hours of group instruction annu ally per client user and 0.1 hours of one on one instruction (note we assume the minimal one on one instruction is 1 hours but less than 10% of the staff get such instruction per year. The estimated operating cost is $202,900 annually ($25,600 hardware/s oftware, $157,300 personnel) as a priority 2 level project. This would involve covering primarily the very high use application packages (Word, Excel, Netscape, Telnet). At priority level 3 we add 2 instructor positions ($100,000) and at priority 4 an d 5 we add an additional position ($50,000 ) to enable instruction of more specialize packages (Access, SPSS, Frontpage) and some classes to be on site in departments and to include some students.

Support services. Faculty and staff need to have someone to turn for advise of the system and packages we have. The library has reference librarians and the phone services have operators. CIS has maintained a staff of 8 people supporting the hel p desk. We recommend continuing this level of support. We have divided it into priority 1 and 2 support. The priority 1 level (four FTEs and hardware/software, $237,720) involves very basic assistance on VMS, UNIX MAC, and Windows with most assistance primarily via Email. Priority 2 support (four additional FTEs, $184,920) enables providing phone support and occasional visits to faculty/staff offices to fix problems and support for a home configuration assistance.

Advanced Instructional Technology Group (AITG)/small grants program. The University of Pittsburgh has very few programs which cultivate innovative instructional uses of information technology. One such effort is the ECAC’s ITWG program, which provides seed funding for faculty information technology projects. The support is limited to capital purchases, with no source of funding for staffing or development cost. We propose an Information Resource Specialist (IRS) program extending the E CAC Instructional Software development program to assist faculty develop substantial course computerized materials to enhance instruction. The annual cost of the program office would be $200,000.

Multi-Media classrooms. The is a need to have multi-media classrooms to be able to train students and staff. This request may be more directly related to instructional requirements. We recommended funds to add two multimedia classrooms per ye ar.

Budget Levels. The following spreadsheet provides a listing of the cost and budget levels of the priorities proposed. The Priorities 1 & 2 represent the budget levels of the previous budgets for these services in the past. We are recommendi ng funding to Priority level 3.