[net.general] Teaching Computing Science with UNIX

neil@sfucmpt (Neil Mackenzie) (07/29/83)

We are a Computing Science Dept of a Simon Fraser University(11000 students) 
located in Vancouver Canada. Our department is 7 years old, and  growing
rapidly. Most of our own computing equipment is used for research or 
upper levels computing courses.We depend on the universities COMPUTING
CENTRE to provide the facilities for our lower level courses. Our introductory
computing course has typically 700 students enrolled in it. The centre handles
this course by providing a Widjet System(combined Editor and RJE system) and
access to an IBM OS system. 

	The bottom line is, we are no longer satisfied with the services
our Computing Centre(not unusual in Universities) provides for our students.
We are now looking into running our own show. 

	We are currently gathering information on any hardware and software
used by other CMPT SCIENCE DEPT  to teach introductory computing courses.
The faculty member in charge of our lower level courses put together the
following questionaire and mailed it out to a number of universities thru
out Canada and the U.S.


1. Please name or describe the hardware, operating system, and any
   special software you are using. Is the hardware locked into using only one
   type of operating system?

2. What was the approximate cost of this system excluding the cost of the
   terminals?

3. Are you satisfied with this system? Please describe your frustrations and
   complaints if any.

4. Which programming languages can be taught on this system; can programs
   be executed in both batch and interactive modes?

5. How many concurrent signons does your system allow? Does performance
   (response time) suffer greatly when under the full complement of signons?

6. Can the system be expanded? What cost?

7. Not withstanding monetary considerations, what system would you choose to
   replace the one you are currently using?

8. How many hours a week is your facility available to students?

9. What are your support and maintenance costs, i.e., operators, software
   license fees, monthly maintenance contracts, system programmers, etc?

10. What type of student controls and information does your system provide,
    i.e., signon time and CPU time limits, prevention of file copying, jobs
    statistics - length of job, number of jobs per assignment, etc?


   Please keep in mind that the above questionaire was not intended for just
the UNIX community. We would appreciate any form of feed back regarding the 
above questions. Please skip over any questions which either do not pertain to
your organization, or for which information is not readily available. We would
also be interested in comments from the general community regarding the use
of UNIX in teaching large introductory computing science courses. What changes
or additions if any would be required(i.e. different shell etc).


PLEASE NO FLAMES. We have to ask the following question(not my choice).

Does anybody know of a PL/1 compiler(god help me) for unix?


We thank you for taking the time to read this. If anybody is interested, We 
will post the results of this survey on the net.