Basic principles

The servers are intended for use in teaching at the University of California, Davis. The main principle is that access to assigned directories by faculty and students in their classes should be direct and unmoderated. The servers should be accessible over the Internet as well as from UCD locations.

Priorities

1. Course materials provided by Instructors
2. Student home pages required for courses
3. TRC materials
4. General pedagogical materials
5. Other academic materials

Policies

If the performance of the server begins to fall below acceptable levels due to the volume and/or type of material being served, an assessment of the reason(s) for the loss of performance will be made by the webmasters. If the reason(s) are under the control of the TRC, appropriate restrictions on the use of the server may be developed by the Advisory Committee. Such restrictions could include, when appropriate, elimination of low priority services with appropriate notice, restrictions on types and sizes of student home pages and deletion of course materials in quarters when the course is not being taught.

Advisory Committee

The following is a draft proposed policy. After discussion and modification, the following policy should be ratified by an advisory committee appointed by the Director of the TRC. The basic principles stated above should remain as the basis on which this project rests.The membership of the Advisory Committee should be as follows:-

• TRC Director, who serves as chair,
• the two webmasters,
• two or three additional faculty (as needed to achieve appropriate disciplinary breadth or technological expertise),
• one or two TRC staff members (serving ex-officio), and
• one TA.

The committee's responsibilities include setting policy for the use and administration of the Web servers, and advising the TRC Director regarding the application of these policies to particular cases. The Advisory Committee is charged with setting priorities for the various types of potential uses of the Web server and for allocation of space on the server. Decision-making authority on matters which involve costs to the TRC resides with the TRC Director.

Outline procedures to set up a class Web presence

A faculty member in charge of a class or part of a class (instructor) may request, from the TRC, space on the server for instructor's materials and/or student materials.

Instructor's materials

This refers to materials that the instructor will place on the Web. Students will be able to view them using a Web browser but will not be able to access them in any other way.

Student materials

This refers to materials that individual students place on the server. The instructor decides whether this is needed for each particular class. If it is needed, the TRC will assign a username, password and URL different from the Instructor's username, password and URL. All the students in the class will have the same username and password and the same root to the URL. (Each student will be able to create a unique URL by creating a folder.) The instructor will be given the student username, password and URL and will distribute it to the students in the class, together with information on the proper use of the facility (Campus guidelines plus additional information based on the Instructor handouts). Students will then have unrestricted access to the class space on the server and will be able to place their own materials on the Web. The instructor is responsible for answering students' questions about their web pages or referring them to other Campus services.

When the class has finished

The instructor will be asked if the instructor materials should remain on the Web. If the instructor wishes, the instructor access can remain active indefinitely, unless a performance problem with the server requires a more restrictive policy, as determined by the Advisory Committee.If possible, students will have an opportunity to request their pages be left on the server after the end of the course. Typically, pages will not be removed until after the fifth week of the subsequent normal quarter; after that time, there will have to be a form of student petition to keep their pages. Procedures for handling such requests need to be developed by the Advisory Committee taking into account the administrative costs and the load on the server. Student pages will be deleted after a specified time when the student is no longer registered.

TRC responsibility

• Announce availability of the service.
• Receive requests to use the service.
• Offer information and support to instructors and TAs (but not students!) seeking or having access to the servers.
• Refer technical questions to a webmaster.
• Copy usernames, passwords and URLs to webmasters.
• Collect data on who needs access after the class has finished. Pass it on to the webmasters.

• Maintain the web servers including the back-up capability.
• Provide the TRC Director with regular data on the server's space usage and on performance statistics which might be of interest to instructors
• Write the handout material.
• Answer appropriate questions from instructors.
• Add new usernames, passwords and URLs to the servers as notified by the TRC.
• Delete same when notified.