Teaching Centre Configuration for Academic Year 2011/2012

Why Must I Do This?

Every year, we receive panicked phone calls from lecturers who are trying to use an application in a class, only to find that the application is not working. It unfortunately seems to be quite common for lecturers never to test their applications before trying to use them for real in a class. It seems to be commonly assumed that if an application is working on one's own computer, or if it worked in Teaching Centres last year, that it will continue to work this year. These are not safe assumptions. Teaching Centre computers are very different from staff computers; also, even if your particular application is the same version as it was last year, many other things will have changed. Applications, and Windows itself, interact in unexpected ways.

That's why, each summer, we set up a test Teaching Centre with next academic year's proposed configuration and ask you to go there and test the applications you use. This testing period is a chance to discover any problems early, so that there is time to resolve them before the start of the academic year.

What Must I Do?

1. Check the lists. Look for each of your applications in the list of preinstalled applications below. If your application is in the table, you will learn important things like whether we think it is currently ready for testing (some applications aren't), and also which stations it is installed on (not all applications are installed everywhere). If your applications are installed only on limited stations, make a note of this, so that when you go to the test centre, you will know which stations to use.

   Also check the list of reported issues. Someone else may already have reported a problem with one of the applications you are interested in.

2. Go to HCC4. As early as possible during July, go to HCC4 (room F27 on the first floor of Harold Cohen Library) to do your testing. Don't leave it until the end of July. If your testing reveals problems with your applications, you will want time to test them again.
    
   
3. Test. In HCC4, test your applications. In your testing, please:
    
   
• Log on as yourself. If you want to test something where you know roaming profiles have caused a problem in the past, contact Lisa Nelson for a test undergraduate account.

  Please note that booting and logon will be very slow. General performance will also be sluggish. This is expected, because of the vast number of additional applications installed. (Which is, incidentally, why we don't preinstall everything everywhere.)

• If your application is preinstalled, it's important that you use the preinstalled version. Otherwise, simply use Install University Apps to install your application as normal.
   
  
• Make your testing as thorough as possible. If, in your classes, you will be performing a known series of steps, try performing exactly those steps.
   
  
• Verify that you can run the application more than once (i.e. close the program, then run it again); some applications behave differently on first run.
   
  
• Verify that the application works correctly on more than one computer in HCC4.
   
  
4. Report problems to Lisa Nelson. We will note them in the list of reported issues.
    
   
5. Test again. We will contact you when we think we have resolved any problems, and ask you to go back to HCC4 to test again.

Status of Reported Issues:

Preinstalled Applications:

Important: Some applications are only installed on some computers. Applications with license limitations, and those which break other applications, are only installed on a few of the computers in HCC4. In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.