The School of Computer and Information Science (SCIS) is well-known as a leader in world-class learning environments and is committed to providing its students with easy access to the latest and greatest hardware and technologies. With over 20 laboratories on 2 campuses SCIS provides facilities for education in Linux, Microsoft and Cisco certifications, network and hardware maintenance, internet and computer security, and wireless computing. General purpose facilities are available 24 hours a day, every day, along with teaching laboratories that have the latest multimedia projection systems. All facilities are upgraded every three years to ensure that a third of the laboratories always have the latest technologies. In fact there are over 400 machines available to our students on at Mt Lawley and Joondalup campuses.
Supporting the new games programming major and digital media degree we have invested in two laboratories of IBM IntelliStation M Pro 6225 workstations. Using the unique ECU-IBM relationship SCIS was the first customers in Australia to receive the high-end workstations. To complement these high-end graphic workstations we have added Sound Blaster Audigy 2 ZS cards, DVI video connectivity and dual layer DVD writers.
The latest Cisco equipment is used in our networking streams. This million dollar facility is the best cisco training academy in Australia. Students are able to learn and interact with Cisco equipment that is used in the industry, and Cisco materials are made available online.
SCIS has it own helpdesks at both Mount Lawley and Joondalup with a highly motivated IT support team. SCIS Support prides itself in achieving near 100% service availability with all its services.
SCIS is subscribed to the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDNAA). This enables SCIS students to have access to a whole range of expensive commercial software at no cost. As mentioned previously, SCIS also has a laboratory devoted to Microsoft certification. Any workstation in this facility can be changed to a Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server or Windows XP where any real world Active Directory environment can be planned, configured, tested and deployed.
ECU and SCIS are trialing the use of notebooks in a wireless environment to enhance the teaching programme. For more information refer to http://getalaptop.it.ecu.edu.au/
SCIS provides home drives for all students which is backed up regularly. The amount of home drive space available to students is increasing as storage is upgraded. To complement the home drives, cd or dvd writers and usb ports are available in all facilities.
Other online systems that SCIS provide are the Gartner Portal. Gartner provide an invaluable source of news, research, trends, forecasting and industry knowledge. SCIS also uses NetG materials within its courses. These are online self learning and testing modules that students can use to supplement the units that they are enrolled in.