For Faculty and Instructors E-mail
ibm equipment
The Lab has numerous servers, several of which are IBM
Lab resources are available to all faculty, instructors, and staff within the Eller College of Management. Although the Management Information Systems department is the largest constituent group for the lab, other departments utilize the lab, including Accounting, Marketing, Economics, Business Communication, and the School of Public Administration and Policy. We are also happy to accommodate other departments and colleges across the University.

The lab is actively looking for additional ways to work with faculty within the College as an educational and research resource, and welcomes inquiries about new initiatives. If you haven't worked with the lab before, and are wondering about how the Hoffman E-Commerce Lab can make your course or research project more successful, please feel free to send an email, call us, or schedule a meeting. We will always make the time to meet with faculty and instructors and see what we can do. Below are just a few of the services we provide for faculty members and instructors.

Research Projects

The Hoffman E-Commerce Lab currently provides hosting for various research projects of faculty members within Eller College. Most research projects simply need dedicated web space for a forward-facing (public) informational content or for use as a document repository for project members. In addition to providing web hosting space, the lab can host and install applications, such as wikis, blogs, or calendar systems. Dedicated server hosting is also available, giving researchers the benefit of managed data backup, a firewalled network, and backup power, amongst other things.

Video Conference Room
The video conference room seats eight people.
For video conferencing needs with other project partners, the lab has a video conferencing room equipped with two LCD televisions and Polycom PVX, supporting various video conferencing standards such as H.264, H.263+, H.323, SIP, and T.120. We also have a Polycom Soundstation unit that can connect to a computer (used with Polycom PVX, Skype, Yahoo, Google Talk, Live Messenger, and other VOIP-enabled clients) or to a cell phone. This unit can be used in the Lab's video conference room or can be checked-out for use in your office or off-site.

Instructional Support

The Lab has a technical classroom with 31 student workstations and a presentation system, equipped with an AV system and an Elmo/document camera for hard-copy materials and transparencies. The student workstations can all be observed, controlled, managed by the presentation computer, using SynchronEyes software by Smart Technologies. This software makes the room ideal for an interactive classroom session or to facilitate a test by allowing instructors to see all the student activities simultaneously from one computer.

Adjacent to the technical classroom, there are also 16 workstations in a separate area for out-of-class activities.

The Hoffman E-Commerce Lab supports custom software installations in both the technical classroom and the general workstation area. The staff also supports software that requires a server installation, and individual client installations. Depending on the complexity of the software, please give 2-week notice or more for custom software installation. This timeframe also allows you or your TAs to test the software prior to the final deployment to student workstations, which is highly recommended for the classroom computers.

Microsoft Software Access/MSDN AA Subscriptions

msdnaa logoCurrently, the Hoffman E-Commerce Lab administers and manages the Microsoft Developer Network Academic Alliance (MSDN AA) subscriptions for the MIS department and MBA program within the Eller College of Management. The MSDN AA subscription entitles faculty, instructors, staff, and students of the MIS department and MBA program to download a significant set of Microsoft software, including Windows Vista, MS Project, MS Visio, Expression Web, SQL Server 2005, and much more! If you are a faculty, instructor, or staff member either the MIS department or MBA program and do not have access to MSDN AA, please contact us immediately!

If you are a department or program that is interested in starting your own subscription to MSDN AA, the lab can help you apply to the Microsoft program and if accepted, can help reduce participation costs by being the hosting provider for your department or program.

Last Updated ( Tuesday, 07 August 2007 )