Technology Resources on Campus - Handbook

The MTSU Information Technology Division (ITD) supports computing and information technology resources on campus. ITD manages the campus network and MTSU's primary academic and administrative computing systems; provides telecommunication services for the campus; promotes and supports instructional technology, including faculty consultation and training and maintenance support for all campus technology-based classrooms; provides technical support and training for the use of microcomputer hardware and software; provides a 24/7 help desk when school is in session; supports MTSU's primary administrative applications such as student information, human resources, and PipelineMT; and administers the Student Technology Assistant (STA) training program, the campus ID system, and the MTSU Web site.

Student Computing Accounts

Any MTSU student or faculty or staff member may have an account on the central server for accessing on-campus resources as well as state, regional, national, and international networks including the Internet. Students may activate that account by accessing www.mtsu.edu/changepw from any Internet-accessible computer and following the onscreen instructions. The account will be ready to use within 10 minutes.

Faculty and staff accounts are created upon completion of an application. The application forms are available online at www.mtsu.edu/itd/forms_itd.shtml and at the Information Technology Division Office, Cope Administration Building, Room 3.

Student Information Services
MTSU ID Card: The MTSU ID card identifies students and faculty and staff members for access to campus services and privileges. Use the MTSU ID card to check out books at the library; be admitted to the Campus Recreation Center, campus computer labs, and residence halls; cash checks; attend campus events and purchase extra tickets to campus events; receive health services; and pay for food through student meal and budget plans. Your MTSU ID card is required to pick up any refund or payroll check at the Business Office.

You can also use the MTSU ID card as a debit card. Just deposit money into a RAIDER FUND$ account. Then use your ID card rather than cash to pay registration fees, purchase meals at any of the food service locations on campus, do your laundry, buy soft drinks or snacks, and make purchases at the campus bookstore.

The ID office is located in the James Union Building, Room 306. Hours at the ID office are Monday through Friday, 8 a.m.-4:30 p.m. (For evening students, ID cards are made in Kirksey Old Main, Room 126. Call 898-5611 for office hours.)

There is a $10 fee for replacement of lost or stolen ID cards. If your card breaks, bring the damaged card to the ID office and a replacement will be made at no charge. For more information: ID Office, 898-5523

PipelineMT/RaiderNet: PipelineMT is a portal that gives students, faculty, and employees single sign-on, secure access to personal data on RaiderNet, course resources, calendars, and e-mail. Students can receive e-mail directly from their instructors and use virtual chat rooms and message boards for their courses. Authorized MTSU personnel can send announcements targeted specifically to students. Minimum browser requirements and additional information can be found on the login page of PipelineMT.

PipelineMT is the only avenue by which students can access RaiderNet services. Once logged into PipelineMT, click on the RaiderNet tab and then Student and Financial Aid. Students can then access the following kinds of services:

registration/drop/add/withdrawal	lottery scholarship info
course offerings	degree audit
extensive course search options	grades
class schedule	grade/transcript holds
address view and changes	registration holds
online account balance payment	unofficial transcript
registration confirmation	financial aid
assigned registration time

PipelineMT is generally available 24 hours a day. Check the login page under "Planned Down Time" to find out when the system will be unavailable.

Course Management System: Your instructor(s) may choose to use our online course management system to support coursework. These Web pages may be used to provide course materials, allow you to communicate with your instructor and classmates, complete assignments, and check grades. To access your course page

1. Click on the PipelineMT on the main MTSU homepage and log in using our PipelineMT username and password.
2. Click on My Courses.
3. Follow the onscreen directions for accessing your online course material.

ITD Student Publications

• Information Technology Handbook for MTSU Students. This handbook provides information to help students get started with their computing accounts and to introduce them to campus resources. This handbook is available at ITD in Cope, Room 003.
• The Technology and You brochure outlines the various technology-related services available to students at MTSU. These brochures are given to new students every summer during CUSTOMS Orientation. They are also available at ITD in Cope Room 003 or online at www.mtsu.edu/itdcommunications/techyou_comm.shtml .
• Technology Xpress is an online student newsletter featuring technology-related items of particular interest to students; it is available online at www.mtsu.edu/techexpress/index.shtml .

Other ITD Student Services

• ITD Help Desk: The Help Desk is staffed 24 hours a day when school is in session by experienced personnel who can answer hardware and software questions. Contact the Help Desk at 898-5345 or help@mtsu.edu .
• Handouts and reference materials from some of the workshops presented by ITD staff are available for individual use. See www.mtsu.edu/itd/services/shoppubs_itd.shtml for links to selected handouts.
• Telephone operator service is available Monday through Friday from 8:00 a.m. until 4:30 p.m. by dialing 898-2300 or pressing 0 from an on-campus telephone. A speech recognition directory is available 24 hours a day by dialing 898-5000 off campus or 5000 on campus. Information available includes driving directions to MTSU and directory information for faculty, staff, students, and departments.

Campus Computer Labs/Classrooms
University Labs: Students with current MTSU IDs may use computers in University Computer Labs located in the Business and Aerospace Building S137; Kirksey Old Main 350/351; the Instructional Technology Support Center (ITSC) in the McWherter Learning Resources Center, Rooms 101, 101A, and 101B; Alumni Memorial Gym, Room 204; second and third floors of James Walker Library; and at the Adaptive Technology Center in Room 174 of the James E. Walker Library. For more information visit www.mtsu.edu/itd/students_home_itd.shtml#labs . Computer labs are also provided in Corlew, Lyon, Smith, and Wood-Felder residence halls and Womack Lane Apartments for those who live in student housing.

Departmental Labs: Many departments have computer facilities dedicated to students taking courses in their departments.

Master Classrooms: Over half of the classrooms on campus are fully equipped with multimedia equipment to display computer and video sources on large projection screens. These Master Classrooms provide the instructor with the tools needed to present the wealth of information available from the Internet and to use videotape, DVD, and visual presentation devices to deliver content often produced here on campus. All of the Master Classrooms have a dedicated instructor station, and many of these classrooms also offer student computers. Each year, newer technologies are added to make these classrooms a more exciting and flexible learning environment that accommodates different teaching and learning styles.

James E. Walker Library

Walker Library provides access to an online catalog, numerous electronic databases, and Internet resources. These and other services are offered at the library's Web site (http://library.mtsu.edu/). For more information, call the library at 898-2817. Via the library's catalog, you may also access collections in the Center for Popular Music, titles in Instructional Media Resources, and materials placed on reserve by your professors. To check out materials from Walker Library, you must present your MTSU ID card.

Online Catalog: The Walker Library provides a computer-based catalog online. Connect using workstations in the library, any computer on campus that is connected to the campus network, by modem from off-campus, and also through frank. The Web-based catalog, Voyager, is accessible in the following ways:

• from a link on the library's Web page, library.mtsu.edu/ , which can be accessed from any Web browser;
• dial 898-5908 or 898-5350 for modem access and at the Local> prompt, type telnet voyager.mtsu.edu . Then at the Username: prompt, type library;
• and by frank account by logging in to frank and at the frank $ prompt type libmenu.

Electronic Information Center: The library makes a number of other electronic resources available to the University community from computers at scholar workstations in the library or computers connected to the campus network as well as from remote computers off-campus through frank. Over 40 electronic databases are currently available and more will be added. All the databases are available at workstations in the library. Some are accessible from other campus computers by connecting to the library's Web page, library.mtsu.edu/ . Some of the databases are also accessible from frank. To access these, log in to your account on frank and at the frank $ prompt type libmenu.

The following full-text databases are among those that may be used in the library, at campus network computers, and remotely through a frank account:

• Encyclopedia Britannica Online--contains the complete text of the encyclopedia, a dictionary, and more.
• Expanded Academic Index from InfoTrac--indexes more than 2,000 scholarly and popular periodical titles and includes the full text of more than 1,000 titles.
• Academic Universe from Lexis-Nexis--contains the full text of thousands of newspaper, newswire, and magazine articles plus many legal, government, and business and industry sources.
• Gale Ready Reference Shelf--provides a directory of associations, research centers, publishers, publications (including newspapers), television and radio stations, databases, and more.
• Gradsearch and Undergradsearch--provides information on colleges and universities.
• Matter of Fact-includes statistics from many sources.
• CQ-Research (on-campus only)--contains excellent articles dealing with current issues.
• Among the additional full-text sources available only from scholar workstations in the Library are Oxford English Dictionary, College Catalogs Online, Census-CD, Biography Plus, Contemporary Authors, Newsbank, and others.

Also available are numerous databases that index and abstract the literature of specific subject areas such as business, computer science, education, history, literature, art, music, nursing and medicine, psychology, sciences, sociology, social work, and women's studies.

Computing Resources: There are over 300 public access workstations in the library providing full access to the library's broad collection of electronic information resources, word processing, spreadsheet, and presentation software, and access to the Internet. In addition, the library offers laptop computers for use in the library. These computers can be connected to any of the 700 additional data connections in the library building. Students who own laptop computers and ethernet adapters may connect to the Internet via these data connections. The campus wireless network is also accessible from within the library.

Learning Resources Center/Instruction Technology Support Center
The ITSC, located in the Ned McWherter Learning Resources Center, was established to provide training and support for the use of instructional technology by pre-service teachers in the teacher preparation programs at MTSU, in-service teachers in Tennessee's public school system, and MTSU faculty members. The center consists of several related units, including Instructional Media Resources (houses a large collection of videotapes, computer software, CD-ROMs, and laser discs available for faculty checkout), Engineering and Technical Services (offers professional video production services for faculty members and administrators at MTSU), a videoconferencing center, and educational department classrooms.

MTSU Videoconferencing Center: This center provides educational programming for rural counties in middle Tennessee. The center was funded by a USDA Distance Learning and Telemedicine Grant. A satellite uplink and desktop videoconferencing equipment has been installed at MTSU, and satellite downlinks have been installed at schools in Bedford, Coffee, Franklin, Lincoln, Marshall, and Moore counties.

Instructional Media Resources (IMR): This resource center provides equipment and facilities for the use of materials in the collection and on reserve. It contains a Teleconferencing/Master Classroom; a single-campus, closed-circuit cable system that feeds most classrooms, study rooms, and viewing stations for videocassettes and other media; electric typewriters with correction ribbons and spell check; and both Macintosh and Pentium computers with laser printers. The center houses a collection of video/audio cassettes, CDs, 16mm films, 35mm films, 35mm slides, laser discs, computer software, and CD-ROMs available for faculty on-campus loan and student in-house use. For software applications available on these computers, consult the Instructional Media Resources Computer Center. All equipment needed to use the materials housed in IMR is available on site.

Classrooms: The Instructional Technology Support Center (ITSC) houses classrooms for education technology classes. Both classrooms are Pentium format, have Internet access, and are available to all students for open lab use as posted when classes are not scheduled. The list of software available on both MTSU's computers and ITSC's computers is available at the front desk.

Continuing Education and Distance Learning: Academic Outreach and Distance Learning
MTSU's College of Continuing Education and Distance Learning coordinates academic outreach and distance learning courses. These courses include those offered via compressed videoconferencing, correspondence courses, online courses, and those offered off-campus. The college also coordinates the Evening School, Regents Online Degree Program (RODP), and the Bachelor of University Studies degree programs. For more information about distance learning courses, see www.mtsu.edu/learn .