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Newsletter 14, March 1997 |
The schedule of Computing Services courses for staff has recently been distributed with The News. Four new courses were introduced last session:
These have been very well received and are now an integral part of the 19 courses offered on our regular schedule.
This semester, the Further Access course has been extended from one to two days.
Courses are heavily booked and we have grown to match demand to some extent. There are some 530 places on courses scheduled this semester. This is some 20% more than the same period last year, but we are now near the capacity of what we can offer with courses in this format.
Useful training needs to come at the right time. Because of the substantial waiting lists for many courses, we clearly need to look at other and additional means of delivery. These are likely to include support for distance learning / self study.
Who has some practical suggestions?
We are also conscious of the need to be continuously developing our courses. Outstanding requests include work with Windows 95 and Office 97.
Again, this is a call for practical suggestions.
Currently there are nine tutors involved in the delivery of the courses. More than 1,000 places are on offer to staff over the year. Clearly this does generate some administration. Thanks to Jean McDermott for keeping on top of it!
Thanks also to Human Resources for their interest in and continued promise of support for these courses.
Please note the new booking number for courses: 3396
You will also find updated details of courses and current booking status on the Web.
After much consultation and consideration, in 1994 the University changed its standard software packages to the Windows-based Microsoft Office suite. These packages, and subsequently Windows versions of our statistics programs, were introduced into the IT Suites for the start of the 1994–95 academic year.
Because continuing students had learned to use the DOS-based packages, Computing Services of course continued to support these, whilst not keeping up to date with new releases. We have, on the other hand, continued to upgrade the Windows packages. The DOS-based packages are now looking very old-fashioned and obsolete.
Students who arrived here before the changeover have either departed or are now in their final year. In other words, next academic year we will not, by and large, have students at the University who pre-date the move to Microsoft Office and Windows in general.
It seems appropriate, therefore, to announce that from next academic year we shall be withdrawing the core DOS-based software for which we have provided an established Windows-based equivalent. There will be savings of space on the file-servers and a useful reduction in the range of documentation that we have had to carry thus far.
The packages to be retired are: WordPerfect, DrawPerfect, SuperCalc, dBASE IV, and the DOS versions of Minitab and SPSS — their Windows-based successors will, of course, continue.
The vast majority of our student users are working with the Windows software this year so there should be no problems with this final stage of the change-over that was set in motion four years ago.