A symposium on feedbacks after trying the new teaching support platform jointly sponsored by the Office of Academic Affairs (OAA) and the Information Processing Center (IPC) was held on Jan. 19, 2003. Assist. Prof. Su Shwu-yann of Department of Russian and Prof. Chang Sheng-hsiung of Department of Transportation Management have shared their experiences on using the teaching support platform with attendants in the symposium.

OAA and IPC will sponsor the second symposium on Feb. 26, 2003 and the prototype of the platform will be completed in March for use.

The installation of teaching support platform has been implementing and OAA and IPC are planning to put all available courses for the 2004 academic year on the network so as to expand the interaction between teachers and students from classrooms to a bigger space, the Net.

The teaching support platform promoting committee was set up last semester. Dean of OAA Fu Hsi-jen and IPC Director Huang Ming-dar served as co-conveners. Under the committee, two ad hoc sections--the content- design section and executing section--were also set up. IPC took charge of contents designing and sponsored a series of meetings at the end of last semester.

The IPC has sought out more than 20 volunteer seeded teachers to use the platform on trials during the winter vacation. Each teacher keyed in his own teaching syllabus, teaching materials, assignment and report, student information, course discussion and the inquiry of academic results to the network. Teachers and students can also communicate through this teaching support platform.

Prof. Su Shwu-yann said that she called on her students to jointly build the Web page. All the courses and teaching materials have clearly showed on the homepage to students, she noted. Students no longer need to carry tremendous teaching materials and data, she said. The platform would become an information exchange station between teachers and students with many advantages, she added.

Prof. Chang Sheng-hsiung owns his own home page using the function of CGI. Due to the fact that the server of our school could not support his CGI function, he could not but build his own server. The newly built server of our school has saved a lot of time for him and he is also pleased with the speed of uploading and downloading. But he suggested that the function of changing password should be offered.

The exchange between teachers and students through the teaching support platform began just three weeks ago. In addition, many technical problems have to be overcome because some teachers are not experts on computer. However, all teachers confirmed highly the function of that software.

IPC Director Huang Ming-dar said that now the focus point has been put on the teaching demonstration of the seeded volunteer teachers. At the end of this semester, every department has to choose one teacher to conduct a large-scaled test after uploading his course on the platform, he said. Huang said that the software being used is the “quick place” of IBM and a prototype platform designed by the content- design section of the ad hoc committee will be completed in mid March for teachers to use.