Teaching Centre Configuration for Academic Year 2013/2014

Notes to Lecturers:

Please provide us with your materials as soon as you have them, to give us the maximum amount of time to work on them. Don't wait until August.

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 centres, you will know which stations to use.

   There are also separate application lists for test stations set up in other centers; see EEE, Environmental Sciences, Leahurst, LMS, Physics, STM.

   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 A2C1. As early as possible during the testing period, go to A2C1 (on the second floor of the Abercromby wing in Sydney Jones library) to do your testing.
    
   
• Don't go to the centre where you normally use your applications. Only A2C1 is configured with next academic year's configuration. Testing anywhere else would be meaningless.
   
  
• Don't leave it until the end of the testing period. If your testing reveals problems with your applications, you will want time to test them again after we think we have fixed them.
   
  
3. Test. In A2C1, 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.
   
  
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 A2C1 to test again.

Status of Reported Issues:

This section will contain updates on problems and resolutions once the testing period begins.

Changes to Windows:

CSD intend that next academic year, all CSD Teaching Centres will run Windows 7 64-bit. This means that 16-bit applications will not be supported. If you use any 16-bit applications, you probably already ran into this problem during this academic year and had to hold your classes in one of our remaining 32-bit Teaching Centres. We would have warned you to use the time this academic year to find a non-16-bit replacement.

Departmental centers can continue to run 32-bit Windows if they wish, but as this would imply that the hardware is at least five years old, we would strongly recommend upgrading the hardware in such centers to be capable of supporting 64-bit Windows.

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 A2C1. In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

EEE Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

Environmental Sciences Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

Leahurst Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

LMS Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

Physics Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.

STM Applications:

Important: In the list of applications below, check the "Installed on stations" column for details of where each application is installed.