The IT Environment
The University promotes electronic publication, electronic information access and student participation in IT-based developments. To this end, the University has thousands of workstations and hundreds of servers distributed in departments and connected by an extensive network.
No single part of the University is responsible for the whole IT environment. Centrally, the Information Division takes care of University-wide infrastructure and programs. In academic departments, Local IT Experts (LITEs) and Local Area Network administrators (Lanads) manage local facilities, including many computer labs. These people all work together to keep the computers and networks running.
The student labs have several thousand workstations (mostly Macintosh and PC systems). A lot of these laboratories are timetabled for class use, so you will need to check with the faculty or department who runs the lab as to its availability.
There are three labs run by the Information Division which have no scheduled classes in them: the Percy Baxter Collaborative Learning Centre on the first floor of the Baillieu library; the CSHE building on Monash Road (the "Monash Road" lab); and in the Information Technology Centre at 800 Swanston Street (the "ITC" lab). Many postgraduates have access to a computer in their own department. Practically all computers in the University are part of the University Network, which is a part of the internet. There's more information on computer labs in Chapter 3.
Most of the time, most students use Wintel computers (also known as PCs or IBM-compatibles) or Macintosh computers, and the applications software is typically Microsoft Office (a word processor, spreadsheet and presentation package) and Netscape (a program for access to the World Wide Web). Depending on your course or research program, you will probably use other computer programs (or software) of a more subject-specific nature. In areas like Engineering and especially Computer Science, Unix computers are often used.
Practically all of the University's computers are on local area networks, which are in turn part of the University Network which is part of the internet. The internet is used for many purposes with many different software applications, but the two applications in most common use are electronic mail (Chapter 5) and the world wide web (Chapter 6). You can, and should, get a University email account, and you have access to the web from student computing laboratories. Most departments use the web to provide course notes and other information; the library has an extensive collection of electronic material available through the web; andthe University administration and some of your lecturers will use email to keep in touch with you.
Most of the University's online resources are provided through the internet, and so it is possible to use those resources from nearly any internet-connected computer, including from your home or, if you have the internet at work, your office.
There are University rules about your use of University computers and networks. These are summarised in the Student Diary, and the most important rules are in University Regulation 8.1.R7, which is available online at: < http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ExecServ/Statutes/r81r7.htm>.
The rules are not difficult or unreasonable. In essence, they say that you should use the University's IT facilities only for work directly associated with your studies, obey instructions from those who manage the facilities you use, and not do anything which interferes with other people's use of the facilities. You should not use the facilities in any way that breaches other University rules and policies, such as those on sexual harassment and racial discrimination.
