Academic Computing Newsletter - Summer 2001

Our Challenge in Business Education

Most undergraduate business students embark upon their college studies without any comprehension of the enormous complexity that modern business entails. Their primary experiences have been as end consumers or as low-level summer employees. Those who have held brief internships usually have had just narrow experiences with a few of these business activities. Upon assuming professional positions in a large-scale business environment after graduation, they soon become immersed in a plethora of complex business processes. How can we best equip them to cope with this 21st century business environment?

The business arena today is very complex, global in scope, and relentless in its quest to achieve competitive advantage over business adversaries. The marketing, manufacturing, and distribution of goods and services in a large corporation today depend upon a tightly orchestrated interplay of thousands of company processes. Cooperation between business partners is ever-tightening in an effort to make the exchange of goods and services relationships more efficient, and business processes must be engineered to be as responsive and error-free as is possible. A challenge in business education is helping the student to learn how to comprehend and to manage the complexity of massively integrated business processes.

This is especially important to those students who plan on careers involving information systems development and operation, as do the majority of our MSIS and OISM majors and MIS minors. Understanding business information systems goes beyond skills and comprehension of computers and software. It requires a deeper understanding of how such information technology can be applied to the design and operation of business processes, where "the rubber hits the road." To understand what information must be maintained in the corporation, and how it must be "captured" by certain processes, securely stored and then made available to other processes requires a level of business knowledge that the typical student hasn't had the opportunity to acquire.

For example, a student may learn how to create a database "table" used to store information, or to write a computer program or operate a software package to manipulate that data to produce reports. These are skills that are relatively easy to learn without prior business experience. However, if the same student is asked to describe how such techniques can be applied to the engineering of processes to support a purchasing system, a keen understanding of many business processes is necessary. Receiving, inventory, production planning, and accounts payable all involve activities that are interdependent on such purchasing information and processes. The typical business student enters with little more than a very rudimentary understanding of why or how such systems are interrelated.

Awareness of this educational challenge led, in the early nineties, to a search for ways in which emerging educational technologies might be used to overcome it. A grant was provided by the Center for Educational Technology Services [CETS] (then known as CBEL) to assist in creating a multidimensional business case. Instead of a dry, narrowly focused approach used in the typical business case study, the goal was to provide a wide perspective and graphically vivid portrayal of a company's operations. It would depict real people doing real jobs that required such information to drive essential processes. Students could see with their own eyes how a modern business enterprise's operations are integrated through business information processing technology. University Testing Services assisted CETS in the design of techniques to evaluate individual student progress.

Over the past decade, several companies have at various times permitted themselves to be the focus case. The first was Frito-Lay, a subsidiary of Pepsi-Cola, well known in the snack food industry for their innovative use of information technology to achieve tight integration and control over all areas of their business. Its product line, unlike the boring "widgets" of traditional business education, was something to which every college student could relate. Later, in support of the business "core" courses, a case was developed involving a small, locally owned and operated business, a spring water bottling company called AquaPenn. Another was developed to showcase the global business reengineering efforts of the AMP Corporation, an international manufacturer of electronic components headquartered near Harrisburg.

Today, almost a decade after the first attempts, a new generation of this business case study is being developed. As always, the continuing goal is to provide the student with an understanding of the importance of the seamless integration of data and processes across the entire business enterprise. Students gain appreciation of the intricate requirements demanded of the enterprise-wide information architectures designed to achieve enterprise integration. However, unlike the "passive" cases of earlier attempts, the newer case design is aimed at dynamically involving the students in semester-long team-oriented projects that provide active, collaborative learning strategies.

In 1999, the Smeal College of Business Administration, in cooperation with the College of Engineering and assisted by the Office of Corporate Endowments, was successful in acquiring rights to use the world's leading enterprise-integration software. The SAP Corporation, whose U.S. headquarters is located near Philadelphia, donated a license to use its R/3 software and its process engineering methodology called ASAP with the intent of helping students understand the requirements and techniques of enterprise-wide systems integration. Although few outside of industry are aware, SAP is one of the world's largest software companies. SAP's R/3 systems integrate the essential operations in many major Fortune 500 corporations. Led by the efforts of Ravi Ravindran of the College of Engineering and John Krumrine of the Office of Corporate Endowments, SAP has provided Penn State a grant to install and use its R/3 software. Additional software was provided by Intellicorp, a leading developer of modeling and development software used in enterprise-wide systems integration. The hardware servers were provided by a generous equipment grant from the UNISYS Corporation of Pennsylvania.

In conjunction with this alliance between Penn State and SAP, a partnership has been developed between Penn State and some of the major corporations who use SAP and similar software systems to integrate their business processes. Leading industry experts from major corporations such as Kodak, General Electric, TRW, PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Lockheed-Martin and Owens-Corning have joined together to form the Enterprise Integration Industry Advisory Board [IAB]. The members of the Board, many former Penn State graduates, well-understand both the necessity of such an educational goal and the challenges involved. Members meet twice yearly and provide assistance in designing curriculum involving such concepts. From their advice an understanding emerged concerning what were the essential goals of such education as it related to our business students. Their recommendations were of crucial importance in designing the case study.

Managing the Case Project

A focus case was developed with Owens-Corning, a company involved in the manufacture of construction and home improvement products that are familiar to the students, and whose business processes are typical of large manufacturers. The Owens Corning case is designed so it may be used in both lower and upper division courses. In introductory courses it provides a basic backdrop for the introduction of concepts concerning the integration of business processes through information technology. In the upper division courses in Management Science and Information Systems and the Operations and Information Systems Management, the case study requires much greater student involvement and is used throughout the semester. Concepts concerning enterprise-wide systems integration are introduced in parallel with hands-on project activities. At the beginning of the semester students in each section are divided into eight teams. The students are provided background information about Owens Corning's business and strategic plans. Then each team is assigned to one of four major areas of operational interest; Accounting, Sales and Distribution, Procurement and Manufacturing.

Each team first writes a "business case" detailing the business drivers that would favor the adoption of a fully integrated software system such as SAP R/3. The students create a project plan using SAP's ASAP implementation methodology, which provides computer-based project planning and management tools used to implement R/3. During the second phase of the project each team is provided with process flow diagrams of Owens Corning's operations pertaining to the team's assigned operational area. Diagrams, as well as "FAQ" pages that provide details concerning those processes, are provided to the teams through a password-protected web site. Teams are required to use the diagrams and other written documentation and information gleaned from video presentations and live Q&A sessions to elicit Owens Corning's requirements for the team's assigned area of operations.

During the third phase, the teams must compare the company requirements with the capabilities of R/3. Using Intellicorp's LiveModel software, teams can examine the details of business processes that are graphically depicted in the R/3 process "reference model." If, as is frequently the situation in real-world implementations, a business requirement of the company does not precisely match the capabilities of the software, the teams are required to document the problem. They must also provide a solution that either requires modification of company practices or enhancements to the R/3 software itself through either custom programming or the integration of other third-party software. Each team provides this process analysis report as the second deliverable for their semester project.

The greatest challenge the student teams face, as it is in the real world, is in the fourth phase of the project involving the full-scale integration of their individual process team findings. The teams are grouped into two integration teams, each consisting of four process teams, so that each integration team has process "expertise" from each of the four business areas. Because business processes frequently cut across such functional areas, the students must carefully review their prior work to identify discrepancies and challenges in providing a fully integrated solution to meet Owens Corning's requirements. Among these requirements is the ability to interact with Owens Corning's retail customers and suppliers; in this way the students are also encouraged to examine processes that involve the flow of information between companies. In this way, students learn to confront the wider issues of enterprise integration both within the company and with its business partners. Finally, each of the integration teams must prepare a final implementation plan detailing the "roll-out" strategy and all required activities that are necessary to complete installation and cut over from current systems and processes to the new integrated R/3 system.

Technology + Cooperation = Success

Technological support is critical to the successful "delivery" of the case. Video presentations have been prepared by Owens Corning to inform students about the company and the kinds of processes and information required to support its essential business processes. Using video conferencing technologies supplied by the Office of Telecommunications, students can engage in a live, remote question and answer session with Owens Corning to uncover additional facts that can be used to bolster their case. Lotus ScreenCam presentations are also available at the web site, where students can actually see running simulations of how processes using SAP R/3 were implemented at Owens Corning. These narrated presentations show actual business operations being carried out right before the student's eyes by Owens Corning employees using R/3 software. The business case, as well as all other deliverables by the teams during the course, are provided in digital format so that they can be shared with Owens Corning.

This real-world business case provides students the opportunity to experience the complexity of complete enterprise-wide systems integration and to grasp its vital importance to all essential business operations. To achieve such an ambitious semester-long case project requires the involvement of many computer and communication technologies and the cooperation of many academic departments and operational units throughout Penn State. The SAP R/3 and ASAP software is maintained by Mike Errigo of OAS , who had previously worked in supporting SAP's own training division.

To provide students with an interface to SAP R/3 and ASAP, software clients must be maintained in lab PCs and on classroom computers by Eric Umberhocker of CETS. Classroom support services in Thomas building provided by Ken Boonie of AVS are also essential to the success of multimedia case presentations. High-resolution computer projection equipment to display graphic models, telephone connections to permit teleconferencing with Owens Corning and a variety of other equipment must operate reliably. SAP's R/3, ASAP, and Intellicorp's LiveModel software are all designed to interoperate, so all software must interface smoothly within Penn State's complex infrastructure. The LiveModel software, used to graphically depict R/3 enabled processes, requires very special lab set-ups, and is installed and administered by Dan Foster of the Smeal College of Business RIIT group. The Smeal College also provides the web server used to provide the extensive documentation the students must access to complete their analysis.

Of all of the enormous help and resources that have been provided, the most important resource is that provided by the companies that have partnered with Penn State. They have devoted great time and corporate involvement, and continue to send their own experts to Penn State to provide guidance in the development of this case. Patient and time-consuming efforts have been made by of Bob Heineman, the SAP project manager from Owens Corning, in preparing the company case materials and then in interacting with the students to provide as much of a real-world flavor as is feasibly possible. Each semester Lockheed-Martin sends its own business process integration expert, Mark Gasper, to describe process modeling techniques using LiveModel. Students have formed their own club, called the SAP Student Interest Group, and bring in speakers from the major Fortune 500 corporations to describe their own experiences with systems integration using R/3. The club has access to the Owens Corning case materials, and provides tutorial sessions to other students who cannot fit the full course in their schedule. Many corporations such as Kodak, PWC, Hershey Foods, AMP, Deloitte/Touche, ExxonMobile and Unisys have sent guest speakers.

The success of this case study is an example of what is possible when many academic departments and operational units at Penn State can team up together to provide an environment of cooperation. The list may sound like alphabet soup, CAC, RIIT, OAS, UTS, CETS, OTC, IAB, but really represents the hard work and dedication of many individuals. It also underscores the great achievements that can be attained with the help and generous support of Penn State partnerships with business. The case is designed to help students learn about the importance of the integration and coordination of business units within the enterprise and between business partners. It seems fitting that its successful delivery is achieved by the integration of technologies that requires the coordination and cooperation of many within Penn State and among its business partners. What began as a small seed sown by a Faculty Technology Grant almost a decade ago has, with the patient efforts of all, grown into a wonderful teaching and learning experience.

Dr. Rick Gilmore, assistant professor of Psychology and Dr. Sam Slobounov, associate professor of Kinesiology, have been working with Elena Slobounov, lead applications programmer, CAC Visualization Group, and George Otto, manager, CAC Visualization Group, on utilizing pilot research into virtual reality techniques to study the relationship between visual perception of motion and postural response in special populations. The project has been funded by a seed grant from the Children, Youth and Families Consortium, and in-kind facilities and staff support from the CAC and the Department of Kineseology and the Department of Psychology.

Dr. Slobounov describes the research tradition from which this work derives as follows. There is ongoing debate in neuroscience literature regarding the role of various sources of information used in regulation of upright postural stances. It was traditionally thought that the vestibular and neuro-muscular systems play unique and exclusive role in postural control (Sherrington, 1906). This notion has been challenged by a number of research groups who claim a dramatic contribution of vision to posture and postural control. In 1976, David Lee proposed a "moving room" experimental design, examining the effect of physical manipulations of front and/or side walls on human postural sway. The moving room experiments involved the construction and manipulation of a physical structure, the moving room, to surround and fill a subject's visual field with motion stimuli. Perception of wall motion induced postural movement in the subjects. Such motion has been called "ego-motion" which is considered a direct indication of effect of vision on postural control.

Continuing lines of research using Lee's design have varied the properties of wall motion and rigorously studied any accompanying postural movement. Virtual reality technologies, coupled with electronic instrumentation for the accurate measurement of subject motion, offers tremendous advantages over existing "moving room" designs. By substituting computer graphics for physical visual stimuli, various scenes can be created that otherwise may be extremely difficult, if not impossible, to reproduce in the physical environment.

The frequency and range of motion of the virtual room can be variously and accurately programmed and displayed on the VR display, in this case, the CAC's Immersadesk virtual reality display system. Subject postural sway can be accurately measured using a force platform, a device on which subjects stand and which measures changes in their center of pressure over time, and Flock of Birds motion sensors that are attached to key body positions on the subject for directly recording relative changes in those positions for the duration of the trial. All devices are computer controlled. The multiple data streams representing scene position, subject center of mass, and subject body positions are synchronized and time stamped for off-line statistical analyses to determine correlations between apparent motion of the scene and subject postural response.

The virtual reality approach requires multidisciplinary expertise in subject areas including psychology, motion control, neuroscience and computer programming. In addition to Dr. Gilmore, Dr. Slobounov, Ms. Slobounov, and Mr. Otto, our team includes Tim Benner, computer and technology specialist, Department of Kineseology; Alejandro Lleras, graduate student in Psychology; and Huai-Hsiao "Hudson" Chiang, graduate student in Kinesiology.

Pilot studies have begun using the combined system and apparatus. The partnership has been beneficial for the researchers, in that they have gained an extremely adaptable methodology for current and future work, as well as for the CAC Visualization Group, in that the project has provided a test case for working out issues of ongoing utility including the correspondence of measurement between virtual space and physical space, integration and synchronization of multiple systems and data streams, and dealing comfortably with human subjects within the VR facility.

According to Dr. Gilmore, "The CAC Immersadesk Environment provides us with an incredibly flexible and powerful tool for studying how children use visual information to control posture. Thanks to the expertise and hard work of the Visualization Group, we are beginning studies that will answer fundamental questions about the development of visual perception and action planning in the first years of life. These studies would be impossible without access to the Immersadesk and the expertise of the Visualization Group."

Adds Dr. Slobounov, "Personally, I was extremely pleased to work with highly professional individuals from the CAC and the Psychology Department. I really believe that this is just a start for future productive work."

The CAC's Visualization Group explores current developments in visual computing technologies in order to facilitate their integration into research and instructional programs of Penn State. The group provides computational resources and consulting expertise in the areas of scientific or data visualization; interactive graphics and VR development; 3-D modeling and animation; and web based, videotape or hardcopy production. Full-time staff collaborate with faculty and researchers on the innovative application of these and related advanced technologies to unique challenges in computational research.

Executive education and corporate communications are moving to an exciting new level in the digital world-complete with state-of-the-art graphics and digitized sound, through a CD-ROM developed by the Center for Global Business Studies at Penn State's Smeal College of Business.

"There is nothing similar to this in the marketplace," said Fariborz Ghadar, William A. Schreyer Professor of Global Management, Policies and Planning, and director of the Center for Global Business Studies in Smeal College. "It has the potential to revolutionize executive education. We plan to give it to each participant in our Executive Education programs, which are internationally ranked and are designed for managers who have been in business 10 to 15 years and need to be refreshed in terms of what is happening now.

"It is not just a repeat of what was presented in the classroom, but offers thoughts on the topic in an entertaining fashion from top CEOs in the country. It can be put on a company's Web site and any employee can access it. We are using it this way at Penn State. Several companies, asking how it can be customized in terms of how globalization applies to specific industries, have also approached us. We see it as a very robust, powerful tool."

The CD-ROM, titled Global Strategic Management in the New Millennium, opens with a colorful map of the world distorted to reflect the impact of the global economy. With a background of up-tempo music, it features five phases or chapters, each introduced by Ghadar, with links to related articles, and a videotaped presentation by a CEO of a major corporation. Chapter Five, for example, is presented against a chessboard background and explores how global strategy is evolving. CEOs featured include William A. Schreyer, chairman emeritus of Merrill Lynch & Co.; Robert E. Svensk, president of Exports Insurance Co. Ltd.; John K. Leonard, former president of Cigna Group Insurance; Earnest W. Davenport Jr., chairman of the board and CEO, Eastman Chemical Co., and Linda S. Strumpf, chief investment officer of the Ford Foundation.

Interspersed throughout the learning module are vignettes on global strategies in the insurance, hospitality and manufacturing industries. In one on Sony cellular phone marketing, the user can connect to the Sony Web site, view the product and see how Sony is marketing it. At the conclusion, a panel of four CEOs provides advice on dealing with globalization in the future.

Ghadar, who has more than 20 years experience working with corporations around the world, said the CD-ROM has been distributed to members of the Center's Advisory Board and to a group of human resources and executive education managers in a number of large corporations. "The reaction is that it's terrific and can be a valuable communications tool in a company," he said. "It is more effective, more interesting, and a lot more fun. I believe we need to make learning exciting and entertaining. It is the reality of the game in education. You need to get interest and attention before you can communicate effectively. We can do so much more with the new technology. If we don't use it, we are doing a disservice to our students and our Executive Education programs."

The Global Strategic Management CD was produced by the Center for Global Studies. Center faculty and staff wrote the accompanying articles, identified the participating CEOs and made the videotapes. An outside firm provided the technology.

While the CD is designed for use in Executive Education programs, Ghadar said the tool lends itself to playing a major role in corporate communications. "In some companies, 25 managers from around the world get together for a weeklong conference, where they sit in a classroom and listen to a presenter," he noted "It is difficult for managers located throughout the world to come to one location. Using this technique, they could view one presenter complemented by six experts without having to travel to company headquarters."

"It also would be an important method of communicating within a company on any issue such as corporate values, brand management or matrix management. It provides an effective means of articulating the pros and cons of any major change to all employees."

The Center for Global Business Studies specializes in researching emerging multifunctional business issues that shape the global environment. Its mission is to construct a coherent global perspective in business management, research, and education.

"We are designed to look at cross-business, cross-functional and cross-regional issues in global corporations," Ghadar said. "Distance education and executive education are important at Penn State." The Center is deeply concerned about global executive development and distance education and its impact on large corporations. "Our Advisory Board, which is made up of senior managers from large multi-national firms, has identified a set of issues important to multinational corporations. We are planning to develop additional CDs addressing those issues, including 'The Impact of New Technology on Global Firms' and 'Mega Mergers and the Dubious Logic of Mega Mergers.' That is the direction the Center currently is taking."

Can't figure it out? We can help.

In the new millennium, universities are depending on electronic resources as never before. At Penn State, students frequently use services like LIAS on the Web to search for books, journals, maps and special collection items. Many also connect daily to the University's on-line academic counseling service, e-Lion, to access academic records, add/drop capabilities, and interactive advising sessions. Still others send e-mail, use a microcomputer lab, or dial into the University's network via a telephone line. Faculty members also increasingly use Web-based instructional technologies to manage course assignments, reading lists, and syllabi distribution. These services, many scholars agree, along with electronic directories and the World Wide Web, are becoming indispensable to the Penn State community.

None of the above would be possible, however, according to Russell Vaught, associate vice provost for information technology, without a system known as the Penn State Access Account.

The Penn State Access Account is a "userid" and password that enables University students, faculty, and staff to use the full range of Internet services on or off campus (at computer labs or on personal computers). Begun originally as a means for a handful of students to communicate with one another in early 1990s, the Access Account is now used today by 95% of all students, faculty, and staff University-wide.

"Many people don't realize what a unique resource the Penn State Access Account is, and how much it can benefit them," explained Vaught. "The system is extremely powerful because it enables so very many different services. Very few institutions have as comprehensive and extensive account services as this University."

Because Penn State's Access Account system uses a technology called the Distributed Computing Environment (DCE) to bundle all of its services and make access secure, it is extremely easy for individuals to use and cost-effective for the University, he added. "At many other universities, students, faculty, and staff need to use different accounts to access various services such as the library, email, dial-up and so on. At Penn State, this all occurs through one common account, so it's much less complicated."

Aside from the fact that it makes services like e-mail, LIAS on the Web, and eLion accessible, many organizations throughout the University depend on the Penn State Access Account system to provide a secure environment for Web-based collaborations and to protect the distribution of sensitive material.

For example, an application designed by the Office of the University Registrar uses the system to make it possible for faculty and staff to compare drafts of the Penn State Schedule of Courses, according to David Stucky, a network analyst in Enrollment Management and Administration. The application enables specific individuals to review and contribute to a working draft of the Schedule simultaneously via the Web while it's being compiled. Stucky says that an Internet-accessible index of enrollment counts, similarly managed by the Registrar's Office, is also made available through the access account system ­ enabling staff members to securely retrieve enrollment numbers as needed.

There are numerous other divisions that use the Penn State Access Account system. At the Smeal College of Business Administration, instructors use password and userid authentication to issue Web-based tests to their students; and the Office of Human Resources provides personal benefit statements via the Web, by using the Access Account to verify staff and faculty identities.

This August the Center for Academic Computing (CAC) will begin a year-long process to eliminate all "clear text" passwords on our networks. As a first step, on August 6, the CAC will discontinue telnet service to all interactive CAC UNIX systems.

Clear text passwords are defined as passwords which go between client computer and server computer without any encryption over the network. The problem with such passwords is that malicious programmers (hereafter crackers) on the Internet have devised ways to eavesdrop on some networks and intercept these passwords. The trusting nature of early network computing make these attacks possible today.

As more services come to rely on the Penn State Access Account userid and password for authentication (who you are) and authorization (what you can do after it is known who you are), it becomes increasingly important for you to safeguard them. It is also imperative that Computer and Information Systems (C&IS) and other campus IT organizations provide the means and tools for you to safeguard them. Armed with your Penn State Access Account userid and password, a cracker could effectively impersonate you, gaining access to those pieces of information which your Access Account userid specifically authorizes only you to have. In addition to telnet, File Transfer Protocol (FTP), e-mail pick-up, also known as the Post Office Protocol (POP), and USENET are sources of clear text passwords.

Fortunately, there are several ways for us to help you protect your Penn State Access Account userid and password. Implementing these measures requires us to discontinue some services which by their nature can not be fixed and add some replacement services (e.g. Kerberized telnet or encrypted POP) which have been designed to be more secure. There are many procedures which will make you less vulnerable to network sniffing, but most employ one of two methods, Kerberos or session data encryption (though some employ a combination of the two).

As a bit of a background, data encryption or cryptography is the process of transforming a message (called plain text) into another message (called ciphertext) using a mathematical formula and a special password called a key [Garfinkle and Spafford]. The reverse process is called decryption. The simplest password mechanisms take your password, encrypt it with a known mathematical formula or cipher, and compare that encrypted set of characters to one that the server has in a file or database. The userid tells the server what set of characters to retrieve and then compares it against what you have presented. Designers of these services have to make a decision: does one encrypt the password before it is sent to the server or let the server do both the encryption and the match? In the past, many services have chosen the latter, which means that in the networked world, the password travels across the network "in the clear" to the server. It is at this point that a userid/password pair is vulnerable to network eavesdropping.

The Kerberos system was developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology to solve the "password in the clear" problem and optionally encrypt the entire message or session. The Penn State Access Account userid is in fact a Kerberos version 5 (K5) userid. Kerberos uses the concept of network services rather than network servers because a server can provide more than one service. Examples of services are file service, e-mail service, login service, and print service. In the Kerberos system, a user proves his identity to the Kerberos server granting him a ticket granting ticket (TGT). The user then uses the TGT to get service tickets. It may be useful to think of tickets as a key which grants you the right to use that service just as a theater ticket provides access to a particular show but not any other shows. Using the theater ticket analogy, the ticket granting ticket could be a limited season pass which would allow the theater patron to obtain tickets to any show during the season. In this scenario, the theater patron still needs to obtain the correct ticket for the correct show.

Kerberos solves the "password in the clear" problem in that a user passes his userid to the Kerberos server which has an encrypted database of passwords. If that userid is valid for that Kerberos "realm," the Kerberos server returns a message (the encrypted TGT) back to the user's machine, encrypted with that userid's password as the key. On the client machine, the message can be decrypted only if the password is correct. Once this message is decrypted, the user on the client machine has a TGT and a session key, valid for the length of a session, to encrypt other communications and requests for services. Modifying a program to use Kerberos rather than clear text passwords is called "Kerberizing" a program. "Kerberized" versions of telnet, POP, rlogin, and FTP can be used to replace non-secure versions of the same clients and servers.

While this all sounds wonderful, Kerberos has its down side. To do the required decryption on the client machine, programs on the client machine must be modified (which is why so many services send passwords in the clear). The Fall 2001 CACPAC CD-ROM will include some "Kerberized" client programs with instructions on how to install them. In particular, Eudora has the ability to do Kerberized POP or KPOP. The CACPAC CD-ROM will provide instructions on how to set-up Eudora for KPOP.

The second major tool for preventing passwords in the clear is session encryption. Anyone who has visited and used a secure Web site using HTTPs (the secure Hypertext Transfer Protocol) to buy something or give confidential information on-line has already used session encryption. Web site session encryption uses the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) to encrypt all of the information between the Web server and Web browser. As information such as your password or credit card number is entered into a Web form, the browser encrypts this information before sending it to the server where it is decrypted. Likewise, when the server returns information to your browser, this information is first encrypted on the server and decrypted on the browser. By using session encryption via SSL, all of your information, not just your password, is safe as it transits the network path between your browser and the server.

Because of the success of SSL encryption for the Web, the use of SSL has migrated to other services. The Netscape mail client can use SSL connections to encrypt transfer of e-mail from a mail server to the Netscape client. The SSL mail tunnel in this case serves the same function as KPOP does with Eudora, proving once again that on the Internet, there is often more than one way to solve the same problem.

Introduction

The Center for Education Technology Services (CETS) is a support unit whose staff assist faculty and teaching assistants to integrate technology into the teaching and learning process.

Since 1990, the Faculty Technology Initiative Program has assisted faculty to integrate technology to solve instructional challenges. Proposals are solicited, evaluated and selected annually by a panel of faculty, administrators, and learning support staff. The successful proposal results in a partnership between faculty and appropriate CETS staff.

Program Focus

This call for proposals solicits curricular projects that are consistent with current directions from University-wide committees and initiatives. These include the Teaching and Learning Consortium (TLC), the University e-Education Council, First-Year Seminars, the Student Computing Initiative, and recent changes to General Education requirements (more active learning, information technology, team projects, problem-based and service learning). We frequently collaborate with such units as the Schreyer Institute and the Royer Center on teaching and learning initiatives and projects. We give special consideration to proposals that:

• are integral to a college/campus or departmental curricular initiative (e.g., major revision of a curriculum or program)
• require faculty teams both for the development and implementation phases
• involve courses with multiple sections or campus locations, but contain common teaching resources (e.g., all sections of English 15 or Psychology 2)
• address an identified instructional or delivery challenge (e.g., improving the speed and quality of feedback to students or helping student teams function more effectively)
• cross departmental, college or campus boundaries where appropriate (e.g., helping students who begin at one campus but who need courses not available at their campus)

The following current initiatives are excellent examples of the type of project that will be selected for CETS development support:

University Park Campus offers computer and multimedia technologies in many of its classrooms. Some classrooms have permanently installed technology; mobile technology carts that include computers, peripherals, and LCD projectors are used regularly in non-technology classrooms. All technology classrooms are connected to the University Network and provide Internet access.

Both Windows and Macintosh operating systems are available on computers in most large auditoriums and classrooms with permanently installed equipment. Some technology classrooms are equipped only with computers using Windows. Although most machines operating Windows have UNIX access via Exceed software, there are several classrooms equipped with computers running under UNIX available for scheduling.

A typical technology classroom is supplied with multimedia computers equipped with internal CD-ROM and ZIP drives. Such a classroom also has VHS VCR players, sound systems, and "HELP" telephones. Furthermore, both video and computer displays are connected to high resolution, ceiling-mounted, projectors.

Technology classrooms have additional features that make them highly desirable instructional settings. These classroom/labs include hardware and software for use as complete multimedia- production studio-labs. Some classrooms provide video conferencing; however, users might incur charges for video transmission. Seating in some classrooms is movable or clustered, which facilitates collaborative learning. Finally, network ports and power are provided for students to use their own laptops.

Have you had any notable successes using technology classrooms? Have you overcome any obstacles that limited your use of technology in classrooms? If so, we want to help you share these experiences with your colleagues.

The Center for Academic Computing and the Center for Education Technology Services are offering free computer workshops to faculty, staff and teaching assistants from July 16 to 20. Most workshops are hands-on and focus on general computing, technology in the classroom and Internet topics. All workshops will be held at University Park.