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School Computing Environment

Technology Mediated Educational Delivery and Distance Learning

The School operates on the San José State University and California State University Fullerton campuses. Although based at these two hub locations, the school has expanded to serve students all over the State of California via online course delivery technologies. The School offers many online courses that are delivered partially or completely via the Internet.

Students work collaboratively on course assignments using e-mail, electronic discussion lists, synchronous real-time virtual communication tools (such as chat environments), and asynchronous tools such as threaded discussion boards. Web-based course delivery is additionally supplemented through streaming audio which delivers course content over the Internet to the student's home desktop computer.

A limited selection of on-site video courses are delivered each semester between the two main hub locations (San Jose State University and CSU Fullerton) using fully interactive, two-way, site-to-site video.

The School's Computing Environment

The local area networks of the two campuses are linked by an ATM WAN operating at OC-3 speeds of 155 Mbps that is capable of supporting multiple sessions of fully interactive video with simultaneous access to multimedia located on School servers in Northern and Southern California.

The LAN/WAN network is fully TCP/IP compliant. Network services, such as email and web-serving, are provided primarily by mid-range Sun E250, Netra X1, SunFire V120, and SunFire 280R servers running Sun Microsystem's distribution of SVR4 UNIX, known as Solaris.

The School understands the bandwidth constraints impacting the majority of dial-up Internet users, and is dedicated towards optimizing Web-based course delivery for students still utilizing low-speed Internet connections.

The School is dedicated to expanding its infrastructure to include any student within the State of California and beyond. Towards this end, SLIS instructors participate in the testing of various Web-based course delivery technologies such as the Blackboard course management software. The School currently offers a great number of partially or completely Web-based classes and plans on expanding such offerings in the future.

The on-site student computing environment includes a wireless instructional computing laboratory composed of mid-range pentium laptops running Windows XP Professional, and equipped with 802.11b wireless network adapters. The wireless lab may be dynamically set up in any classroom location based on faculty need. This lab is utilized by course instructors to supplement class lectures with hands-on computing experience.

It is anticipated that the School of Library and Information Science will move to Clark Hall in 2006. If all goes according to plan, students will have wireless access for their personal computers in that building.

For more information about computing resources at San José State University, see the Computing and Media Resources page on the SJSU Web site.

Silicon Valley Signature

The San Jose State University home campus is geographically located at the lower end of the Santa Clara Valley, more familiarly known as the "Silicon Valley", a worldwide synonym for high technology research and development and that spirit informs this program.

Access to Personal Internet-Connected Computers Due to the fusion of computing and telecommunication technologies in the practice of all of the information professions, students are required to either have their own computers or ready access to one, as well as a 56Kbps or higher Internet connection. Computer-mediated communication is used extensively within most SLIS courses for access to instructional resources, peer communications, and the completion of a substantial portion of the coursework.

Students are required to have an email acccount for use during their program. If students do not already have an existing commercial or private email account elsewhere, or if they would prefer to use an email account on our SLIS email server, then one will be created for them.

Students are required to own or have access to a personal computer that meets a set of minimum requirements.

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