Campus Computing News

By Dr. Maurice Leatherbury, Senior Director of Academic Computing

Educational Testing Service Computer-based Testing Facility Coming

The University has been selected as an Educational Testing Service computer-based testing facility and renovations are under way in the Counseling and Testing Service offices to house the new facility. Eight testing machines will be available in the facility, which will administer tests as many as six days of the week during peak testing periods starting in October. Dr. Neal Tate, Dean of the Graduate School, has been directing the establishment of the ETS facility which will be run by the Counseling and Testing Service.  Abraham John, the network support person in student services, will be supporting the computers in the facility.

Faster Configurations of Laptop Computers Now Available

New, faster configurations of the Dell Latitude laptop computers that Microcomputer Maintenance Shop has been selling and supporting for six months are now available from Dell Computers. The high-end machine now comes with 128MB of memory and sports a Pentium II processor running at 266 MHz. The lower-end machine has been upgraded to a Pentium II processor running at 233 MHz. Information about purchasing the laptops can be found at Micromaintenance's Web site: http://www.mms.unt.edu/prenotebook.htm.

WebCT Being Adopted in a Big Way

The Web course management system that the Computing Center purchased after consulting with an advisory group of faculty members, WebCT, is now "officially" up and running. A trainer from WebCT, Michelle Lamberson, trained 20 support persons from the newly-established Center for Distributed Learning, from Academic Computing, and from several of the colleges during the last week of August. At the start of the fall semester, 31 classes were being developed for delivery through WebCT, with an additional dozen or more awaiting the lifting of the moratorium on new classes until the support staff could get ready for full support. Questions or requests for new WebCT classes should be addressed to the Center for Distributed Learning at extension 2708.

3,000 New Internet Service Accounts Already Established this Fall

By the second week of classes in the fall semester, approximately 3,000 new "Internet service" accounts had been given out by Academic Computing for the new school year. Computing Center personnel staffed a booth during Freshman orientation at which they distributed pre-assigned User-ID's and passwords for the central computer system that provides student E-mail and student Web hosting services. The Helpdesk area of Academic Computing has also been crowded with people who didn't pick up their accounts at Freshman orientation or who are transfer students. 

All students, faculty members, and staff members are eligible for free Internet service accounts (which are required in order to subscribe to UNT's Premium Remote Access Service.) New accounts can be obtained in a matter of minutes by applying on-line from a remote location or at the Helpdesk in ISB119 (where your User-ID must be picked up). You must show a photo ID card to be given your User-ID and password.n