Fri Oct 28 1994 --------------- IMPORTANT MATERIAL ABOUT THE COURSE - PLEASE READ CAREFULLY Present Status -------------- The launch of VSNS-PPS has worked out extremely well and I am very optimistic about the development of the course. During the 7 days after it was advertised on BIONET there have been about 1000 accesses per day, corresponding to about 100 diferent sites per day. The server has held up well and I've had no technical complaints - most errors now seem to be due to mistypes and bad URL pointers *to* VSNS-PPS rather than within it. Consultants and Students ------------------------ We have had about 10-12 offers of help and asked invited all but one to join us (I felt that offer was based too much on computation). Students were asked not to enquire at this stage and have been extremely cooperative. (We have had about 5 (whom I have routed to Alan to give polite replies). One or two people have asked about running RL courses in parallel. Our first consulting student has joined us! I'm really appreciative to those who have joined us and are continuing to do so. I see no reason (at this stage) to limit the number of consultants as long as we solve the admin. problem (below). The more that there are, the fewer gaps there are likely to be in the course. I have no doubt that we shall be oversubscribed with student applications and that we have to be selective. (It might seem that numbers were irrelevant on the Internet, but active students put pressure on: - administration - volume of e-mail and listserv traffic - (possibly) BioMOO resources - (possibly) bandwidth - bug-fixing and other problems.) We cannot be 'fair' in selection and my aim is to select so as to generate diversity in the course - in terms of: - disciplines (physics to pharmacology and beyond). - geography and culture (i.e. truly global). - experience ('age' is an irrelevant word on the 'Net!) and, of course, there will be a strong emphasis on willingness to contribute. Administration of VSNS-PPS -------------------------- This is a considerable challenge - but although there is little experience on the 'net as to how to do this, I am sure we can overcome problems We HAVE to have an agreed way of working and try to operate within it. The GNA has set up such a mechanism, but it has been mainly used for running their own organisation rather than courses. It's based on the use of WWW technology to keep track of all the administrative parts of the course: - list of consultants and their interests - list of projects (i.e. jobs) - list of students and others. It's very clear from this week that we MUST build such registers and that these will be maintained through WWW technology (CGI-forms). This may seem inhuman, but it isn't! There will be ample scope for people to 'meet' electronically. What Alan and I *don't* want is 10 mail messages a day about course matters which *we* then have to format into the database! Marcus and Laura are the main developers of this technology which will be simple for you (and the students) to use. Register of Consultants ----------------------- We would like all consultants to have an entry in our database along the following lines: - name - institution - e-mail - ID for the course/ BioMOO id (see below) - a URL for the course (we can one if required) - scientific interests (where relevant) - the parts of the course they are prepared to help with - technology they can support - any RL relevant activity (e.g. teaching courses using VSNS-PPS) This information is then (publicly) available for any course member to look up in case they want collaboration on part of the course. (We shall provide a WWW tool for querying the database. No other information will be stored on it). We would like all consultants to register with BioMOO. Don't be afraid - it's fun and it's part of the future - not a toy. All players have an id (e.g. PeterMR, Gustavo, Marcus) and I'd suggest (GUSTAVO??) that consultants used my convention (firstname+intial letter(s) of surname, or whatever equivalent they feel happy with). This code will also allow them to be unquely identified in the course (I have already confused AlanM and AlanB!). Gustavo has set up a classroom for us in BioMOO and we'd like to have a 'party' there soon! Comments? Development of Course Material ------------------------------ I have described this as 'simulated annealing' and this is working very well at present. Many people have offered to contribute bits and it's Alan's/my job to try to coordinate these. I emphasise that *I* have no overall preconception of how the course *will* turn out - only some ideas. No one has commented adversely on the overall course structure (Principles, Technology, Families), and Alan's backbone for principles also is viable (it will evolve). It is impossible (and I do not want) to give the course a 'homogeneous look-and-feel' throughout. We shall primarily be helping to organise the contributions into appropriate clusters where smaller groups of people can work out what should be in and how it should be presented. I'm extremely receptive to new ways of doing things if they can be fitted into this general approach. I expect (and hope) that there will be more material contributed than an 'average' student can work through, so that this offers different styles of learning. However there may be some less 'glamorous' areas which are essential to the course which would leave gaps if they weren't serviced. In that case only we may have to ask for directed contributions. We will therefore try to catalogue all your offers under a list of keywords and keep a list of who has offered what (and any gaps that need filling). I'd like to get this started quickly and put in place before students start registering. AlanM and I will discuss this and let you know succinctly what is required. Management of Course Material ----------------------------- The course is going to be *very* distributed and we hope that many of you will produce clear 'chunks' of material under a single URL. Our job is then much easier and consists of linking to those URLs. It's a major effort to merge material into a single hyperdocument (it's not our intention that the course material maps onto a 'book' at present.) Communication ------------- We shall use multiple listservs to keep in touch. (We must avoid the syndrome where everyone mails everyone - with 200 people this would be a nightmare; and also the one where X mails Y and no-one else). At present we have (@tsun.desy.de): vsns-pps-consult vsns-pps-tech vsns-pps-admin vsns-pps-offers I'd see this expanding to something like (prefixes omitted): technology backbone families (might subdivide further) general (for any unstructured discussion) In this way some consultants might only subscribe to one or two of these and so limit their mail traffic. We'd also plan to HTMLise some of these and put them on the Web (rather like newsgroups). Registration of Students ------------------------ I think that the date of Nov 1 has slipped by a week or two. We HAVE to get the admin in place or we shall be overwhelmed. It would also be extremely valuable to have more material (!) mounted. Conclusion ---------- Please try to help make this work, and then it will! P.