Information for Instructors and Teaching Assistants

SEASnet provides support for undergraduate courses within the Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science. Instructors and TA's can expect assistance with the use of SEASnet lab facilities, class websites at CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu, access to restricted software, on-line assignment submissions and additional disk quotas for classes (only if needed beyond the 25MB default per undergraduate class).

Class Websites

CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu offers instructors, TA's and students one location in which to access all their HSSEAS courses. Instructors and TAs can easily post class materials, email their classes, obtain their class rosters, make class announcements and calendar entries, manage assignment submissions, manage class forums, and link to other relevant URLs. The class forums feature private groups and instructor-reply-only groups where only the instructors and TAs may reply to student postings. There is also a direct link to the class gradebook and Turnitin at MyUCLA.

Additional Class Resources

CourseWeb.seas.ucla.edu offers detailed instructions for requesting additional SEASnet resources such as TA accounts and access to restricted software. Matlab and Femlab are restricted software packages that can only be used for coursework. In order to ensure compliance, SEASnet requires the instructor or TA authorize that their class needs the software in order to complete their coursework. Software may also be restricted because it has been purchased by the department for use with their classes. SEASnet reserves the right to deny requests for access to software paid for by SEASnet funds to graduate classes.

Software purchased by SEASnet and used by multiple departments is updated either during the winter intersession or during the summer. Please contact help@seas.ucla.edu if you would like upgrade information on a specific piece of software.

Classes requiring the use of software not currently installed on SEASnet machines need to follow the procedures outlined below under "Software Installation Requests."

SEASnet Labs

SEASnet maintains four open computer labs and one instructional media lab. Lab location and hours are posted, with any modification listed on the SEASnet Message of the Day. Information on using the instructional media lab (3760 BH) can be found here http://www.seas.ucla.edu/seasnet/classes/resources/3760.html; and information on the SEASnet linux lab (4405 BH) are located here http://www.seas.ucla.edu/seasnet/classes/resources/4405.html.

The lab infrastructure consists of Sun servers for specific services, applications and home directory access. Students login the labs using either Windows XP (200+ machines) or linux (16 machines). When users logon to either system their home directory on SEASnet gets automatically mounted. Users may only save files to their home directory. Each Windows machine has X-windows in order to run graphical software installed on the Sun servers. You can view currently available software here.

Software Installation Requests

Instructors should not assume that software installed and working on their local desktop will install and run smoothly in a PC server environment such as that used to support SEASnet labs. The process for installing software is very different and may require significant effort. Therefore SEASnet has the following recommendations and requirements pertaining to software installation requests.

Recommendations:

  1. Instructors should thoroughly test all assignments in the SEASnet labs prior to being assigned.

Requirements:

  1. Instructors should speak with SEASnet prior to purchasing software for installation in the labs.
  2. SEASnet requires at least one quarter advance notice for all software installations.
  3. Software will be installed on all lab machines.
  4. Only SEASnet staff will have access to install software.
  5. Although we will do our best to accommodate those not meeting the requirements listed in numbers 1) and 2), no exceptions will be made with regards to the requirements listed in numbers 3) and 4).

SEASnet Remote Server

The SEASnet terminal server is designed to provide access to our lab resources from any Windows or Macintosh OS X computer with a high speed internet connection. All that is needed on the users end is a terminal server client application. Detailed information can be found on the remote server at http://www.seas.ucla.edu/seasnet/remote. No software installation requests are taken for the remote server.


last updated 05/31/2005