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> Office of Information Technologies
Office of Information Technologies
www.oit.umass.edu/
The Office of Information
Technologies (OIT) provides telecommunications and general computing and
networking services to University students, faculty, and staff. The University
does not require its students to own a computer.
Computing facilities include 14 personal computer labs
and classrooms located across campus and central host computers running
the UNIX operating system. Most of the approximately 550 computers in
the classrooms and labs are no more than two years old; about 70 percent
are Windows-based, and 30 percent are Macintosh-based. Terminals and e-mail
kiosks are also available for accessing the UNIX host computers. All the
facilities support access to e-mail, the Internet, and the Web. A wide
range of applications provide word processing, desktop publishing, statistical
analysis, spreadsheets, graphics, scanning of images or text, and creation
of personal Web pages.
Most administrative and academic buildings and 75 percent
of the rooms in student residence halls have direct high-speed Ethernet
connections to the campus network backbone. During the fall of 1999, approximately
40 percent of the students living in the residence halls had connected
their computers to the network; others used dial-in connections to the
campus network. OIT supplies software for making these connections at
little or no expense to the students. OIT also distributes software that
has been site-licensed for the University community's
use and supports an on-line directory of all campus-assigned e-mail addresses
(students, faculty, and staff).
A $20 per semester student fee covers access to most
of these facilities and services. Each student
has 15 megs of disk space for storing e-mail messages and 50 megs
of disk space on the UNIX host computers for Web and other files.
OIT provides extensive assistance, consulting, and
training services to members of the University community. During semesters,
the Help Desk is open 64 hours a week, reinforced by Software Support,
which can consult on more difficult questions. PC Hardware Support can
diagnose problems and repair most computer equipment on a fee-for-service
basis. The On-line Help Desk at http://www.oit.umass.edu/help/ provides
a search by keywords of one of the most extensive and varied collections
of on-line documentation of any university.
OIT offers workshops on a wide range of subjects each
semester and during January and summer breaks. There is a modest fee for
the workshops, and sometimes an additional charge
for course materials. In addition, OIT supports computer-based training
on many Windows systems and applications.
Before coming to campus, students may contact the Help
Desk for further information about OIT services, tel. (413) 545-9400.
The Help Desk Web site is http://www.oit.umass.edu/hds/hd/, and the e-mail
address is help@oit. umass.edu.
Many University courses include Web pages, on-line
discussions, and e-mail as integral aspects. The University Library catalog
and book availability information are accessible through the Web. Academic
departments conduct major research on computer-related subjects, and the
University is a full participant in Internet 2.
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