Universities maintain scores
of technical engineers to handle the complexities of networks
spanning many thousands of nodes and multiple campuses, but
residential colleges are private enterprises and generally have to
make their own arrangements.
The University of Melbourne's Whitley College found a rather
unconventional solution to its IT cost problems in 1998; it replaced
its high-priced technical consultant with a small group of students
who proposed to do a better job for free.
The students began administering the college servers in the
mid-1990s. In 1997, the college's IT committee was formed under the
leadership of Bachelor of Computer Science student Ben Fon. The
students inherited responsibility for the administration of the
college's FreeBSD and Windows NT servers and the maintenance of its
eight-system computer lab. The committee was already the de facto
technical support group for dozens of Whitley residents, so the
transition was smooth.
The committee members argued that the college should put the
money it saved on a technical consultant into upgrading its IT
infrastructure to help position Whitley as a technical leader among
the university's colleges. Fon and his peers eventually won over
Whitley's then dean, Dr Philip Mosely, who convinced the college
council to shell out $100,000 to wire its buildings with fibre-optic
cable.
As a result, IT became a part of everyday life at Whitley. Last
year, about 90 of the college's 135 students connected their PCs to
the college's intranet. This gave them constant, unlimited, 10Mbps
Internet access through the university's link to the high-speed
academic AARNET backbone. So many students have been keen to work
free in exchange for the experience that Whitley's intranet has
rapidly become a social and administrative centre for the college.
Tedious paperwork has now been moved online. This saves on
administrative costs and is convenient for students, who can fill
out forms whenever and wherever they want. Even seemingly simple
uses have saved money for the college. For example, student access
to the online White Pages and Yellow Pages means that the college no
longer pays someone to shift new phone books in and out of each room
every year.
Students have come up with some far more interesting uses for the
intranet. Last year, the college replaced the front door security
camera with a Webcam. Footage is broadcast continually over the
intranet and the video is archived on to an 80G drive. The buzzer
has also been set up to send a signal across the intranet to the
on-duty tutor, so the residents aren't bothered in the middle of the
night by errant buzzers.
In another project, students programmed database links to the
local tram operator. Students can check the intranet to find out
when the next tram will pass the college. One student is even
working on how to link the washing machines up to the intranet so
that waiting times can be displayed online.
These applications may seem quaint, but they've contributed to a
massive change in the culture of the college. However, it hasn't
been easy. The IT committee has had to deal with broadband overuse,
the need to document information regularly, high staff turnover due
to graduation, and many other challenges that face more conventional
IT organisations. A formal help desk was set up last year to assist
students with technical problems, and committee members spend
several weeks before each semester preparing for incoming students.
APC spoke with Fon and Mosely to find out more about Whitley's
long-running experiment in IT and social engineering.
APC: What was the IT situation when you started working
at the college?
Mosely: I came on board at the end of 1994 and inherited
an old Macintosh system for the staff and some very old Macs and PCs
for the students. It was so bad that we decided we had to do
something. We could have gone the whole hog and gotten fibre-optic,
or chosen something more modest. We preferred the more modest
option, but student expectations started to rise very quickly as
fast links and modems became common in school leavers' homes.
APC: How did this change?
Mosely: In 1996/97 it was a major thing to get the council
to spend $100,000 on cabling, but it was eventually happy to provide
the means because it was determined to become a college of
excellence.
I did have worries that I'd have a college of students just
looking at their flickering screens, and that nobody would
communicate unless they sent an email. But we found that the
computer lab got more use. Even though students had computers and
the Internet in their rooms, they liked to socialise. They would sit
down with noise all around them and it didn't worry them. The
students were intelligent and discerning, and they knew what they
needed.
APC: How did you end up ditching your outside IT
consultant?
Fon: When I came in 1997 there was a loose IT committee,
but I organised that into a formal IT group consisting of four to
five students interested in IT. At the time, very few of us knew
much about running a full network and servers, so we spent 1997
learning everything. We basically taught ourselves to the point
where we could take over from the external contractor, then in 1998
we went to the college administration and said, "We're looking after
it all ourselves and we don't need him."
Mosely: IT officers were expensive, but colleges had grown
used to them. We saw the IT committee as a marvellous way of
catching up, and it was certainly what the students needed. It was
very much about giving students the chance to put into practice what
they were learning, and it became an excellent tool for the students
which they used to the full.
APC: How does the committee's structure compare with a
conventional IT organisation?
Fon: One of the things we always joke about is that we
have all the major problems of an ISP or corporation, without the
resources or manpower. The IT Committee comprises a very dedicated
student body, and they're willing to teach themselves until they can
overcome problems.
The committee tends to be pretty free-flowing
-- it's pretty much a case of "if you think of something cool, go
ahead and do it". The top four people would make decisions on the
fly, not because they're trying to be autocratic, but because
they've got to get things done faster. The work that's done in the
college is very close to a lot of the stuff that's done in the real
workplace; for instance, we had a problem with the amount of
downloading.
APC: People with unlimited access to broadband can get
a bit carried away. Did you have any problems with students abusing
the resources you provided?
Mosely: Our IT expenditure went up enormously,
corresponding with usage, and it didn't seem to be levelling off. It
wasn't because students were downloading music videos or other
unnecessary stuff. There was just an all-round increase in usage.
However, we are governed by the university's rule that Internet
usage must be for educational purposes. We found that because we
knew where people were going and were vetting it, we had discreet
control over it and could make sure that it was being used
legitimately for education.
If someone was accessing a site we didn't want them to, we would
prod them gently, but the number of times this happened were very
few. There are social standards and we had filters; the IT committee
was vigilant in establishing standards and the students responded
magnificently. My impression is that it has worked very well around
the colleges, and we've built on what schools have been doing in
terms of self-discipline for students. There's nothing like saying
"you won't have an account if you abuse it."
Fon: One of the guys in the IT committee created a
packet-counting script that logged how much each person was
downloading and uploading. If it went over 150M per day we told
them, "If it's educational we don't care, but if it stays over that
we might have to cut back." We have a firewall set up to block
Napster's ports, but to make it fair we've got a common server where
people can store files. That way, only MP3s made from students' CDs
are on the internal network, which is the same as if they were
trading them.
APC: How do residents react to the fact that students
are running the show?
Mosely: The student point of view was essential to the way
we directed the project. I was always conscious that I should not
presume what students want to know; you've got to refer to them
continually. But the IT committee was able to give our Web site a
spin where members knew from their own recent experience what
students wanted.
Fon: Every year, the college gets feedback on what
students think is great about the college, and for the past three
years the support and IT facilities have been at the top of the
list. Students are getting more computer literate as the years go
by, and generally, IT committee members are able to provide them
with the support they need. They've never experienced permanent,
free broadband connections, and students talk among themselves and
teach each other new things. Probably the most difficult thing is
getting them to dream big enough.
APC: How do you
ever get time to study?
Fon: It's actually quite challenging at the start of the
year. In 1998 and 1999 another IT committee member and I put in
10-hour days to get it going -- installing servers, configuring
accounts and so on. But we found it interesting because we were
getting experience in the same area as we were studying.
These days, the number of students available to assist us has
increased dramatically. Now there are about 15 students in the IT
committee, four of whom are senior members running the servers. The
others are learning the skills necessary to support the systems.
APC: Has all this fiddling about had any practical side
effects?
Fon: I finished my degree in 1998, stayed another two
years as a tutor and de facto IT officer, then got a job at IBM
Global Services Australia. The key people that have been heavily
involved in the IT committee have all gone out and gotten jobs in
big corporations; one has gone to work for GE Information Services,
and others with the ANZ and Bendigo Bank, as well as Melbourne
University. These jobs were a direct result of the work we've been
doing at Whitley.