Information Technology News Archive

1996 - 2017

You are here: Home / Archives for Computer Labs

Computer Labs

OIT Does That? Classrooms and Labs

by

OIT manages smart classrooms and computer labs to enrich the educational environment for our students and to provide resources to instructors.

Classroom technology is assembled and maintained by the OIT Classroom Technology Support (CTS) team.  They are responsible for 130 general-assignment smart classrooms. CTS also provides a will-call equipment rental service to the campus.

OIT Instructional Lab Support (ILS) supports 6 instructional lab classrooms, 5 drop-in computer labs, 2 staff training labs, and the virtual computing lab.  They also manage the printing management software and printing release stations in the computer labs and mobile printing.

Together, CTS and ILS ensure that hundreds of computers and other devices are functional, updated, regularly replaced, and ready for a range of instructional and training needs.

CTS and ILS work on behalf of instructors, departments, schools, clubs, and off-campus groups, and collaborate with a variety of teams on classroom, lab, or learning-space related projects.  Examples include:

Have questions about what we do, or what we can do for you? Feel free to contact our management team directly, or contact the CTS smartclassroom help desk (smartclassrooms@uci.edu, x48833) or the OIT help desk (oit@uci.edu, x42222).

Virtual Computer Lab

by

VCL
UCI students, especially in the sciences and engineering, need to learn and use very high-end and often expensive software.  Buying a copy of each package for every lab computer at UCI is not feasible, so how can UCI offer this essential learning aid?

In collaboration with CSU Fullerton, UCI has made a virtual computing lab available.  Using a student’s own computer as the gateway, she or he can run packages such as ArcGIS, Matlab, and SPSS remotely.  These packages are fully licensed, and full-featured, but by fluidly sharing licensing and computing capacity, this service is provided at the fraction of the cost of a local, equally well equipped computer lab.  Additionally, this solution offers freedom of location and 24/7 service.

New Instructional Computing Labs

by

Last fall, NACS brought three new instructional computing labs up, and we want to be sure faculty, staff, and students are aware of them.

The first lab, dedicated to faculty and staff training, is in the Anteater Instruction & Research Building (AIRB). Priority is given to NACS and the Division of Undergraduate Education (DUE) events, but it is available free of charge for other faculty and staff training on campus. Equipped with 16 Windows workstations in addition to an instructor’s station, this room also features the same console and other equipment found in UCI Smart Classrooms.

You can view the availability of the training lab in Oracle Calendar, or request reservations online (login with your UCInetID).

NACS@Student Center Lab

NACS@Student Center Lab

Two drop-in labs opened as part of the upgraded Student Center and Cross-Cultural Center. The NACS@StudentCenter lab has approximately 44 Windows and Macintosh workstations and a print station. The NACS@CCC lab has another 6 Windows workstations. Additional seats are available for students with their own laptops, with access to UCI’s wireless network.  Hours of operation, as well as hardware and software details can be found on the NACS Drop-in Labs web page.

Computer Labs Aid Instruction

by

You might think, in these days of ubiquitous laptops and wireless Internet, that the traditional instructional computer lab has had its day, but labs remain an essential resource for instruction at UCI.

Distributed through 9 rooms in six buildings, NACS manages over 300 computers dedicated to instructional use. NACS continuously invests in the lab computers to keep them current, and systems in any of our labs have a consistent, predictable configuration.

All lab computers have an array of academic and productivity software, and all labs have printing facilities (most through NACS’s Payprint system, and Gateway Study Center computers through the Library.)

Instructional labs fill two principal roles: allocation to faculty while teaching regularly scheduled courses, and “drop in” use. Some labs are always available for drop-in use, and all labs are available for drop-in use when not being used for a course.

Faculty interested in having a computing lab allocated to a course may make their request online.

In addition to course use and drop-in use, some of our computers are available at night as a computational resource. From 10pm to 7am, systems in the MST and SST buildings reconfigure themselves as a computational cluster. If you’re interested in access to this cluster, please contact NACS.

Instructional labs:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/labs/index.html#instruct

Request a lab for your course:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/labs/schedule.html

Drop-in labs:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/labs/index.html#drop

NACS Labs Updated

by

NACS has implemented a number of new features and services related to the public PC and Macintosh computer labs NACS supports, including some labs managed in cooperation with other UCI departments.

The ArtsTEC Mac Lab in the Claire Trevor School of the Arts has been upgraded with 23 new dual-CPU Apple G5s with 1GB of memory and 160GB disk drives running OS X. Video Art students will once again have access to high-speed external (portable) Western Digital hard drives for spring quarter.

The MSTB Lab A (MSTB 210) 46-workstation lab has been upgraded to all-in-one computers with integrated 19″ LCD displays, 3 GHz Pentium-4 CPUs, 1GB of memory, and 160GB disk drives. Both MST Labs (A and B) are available for any UCI courses or for drop-in use when not scheduled for classes. 21 computers in the NACS Engineering Gateway Lab B were upgraded to Compaq 1.7 GHz Pentium-4 systems.

The Instructional Technology Center (ITC) Lab A and Lab B have been upgraded with all-in-one computers with 1Ghz Pentium-3 systems. The Library – Gateway Study Center 25-workstation Lab has been expanded to 50 workstations.

25 more SmartClassrooms have been installed, bringing the total to around 60. In addition to the SmartClassroom media equipment, the newest rooms feature new Dell GX270 2.8GHz Pentium-4 systems with 512MB of memory and 17-inch LCD monitors. Smartclassroom systems are configured according to campus lab standards.

For a list of SmartClassroom installations, see:
http://www.irc.uci.edu/ClassroomSupportMain.html

For a description of SmartClassroom software, see:
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/smartclass/

For more info on NACS-supported labs, please see: 
http://www.nacs.uci.edu/computing/labs/