Brief survey: Institutions offering scripting on FrontPage or LAMP for students

["Faigle, Chris" <cfaigle () RICHMOND EDU>]

Hi.

        We currently offer our students some limited ability to create
their personal web-pages.  This is limited to images and text without
scripting, either on a LAMP system or on a Front Page system.

        We might like to offer the students more abilities to create
their own pages and some have pushed for Front Page w/extensions, or
share-point services.

        Our issues here concern the security of these platforms once you
enable scripting (PHP/PERL) on the LAMP system or allowing scripting of
the Front Page server, and the support issues that this would generate.

Survey:
=======

        1. Are institutions offering scriptable/programmable web-page
development for students?  If so, what flavors?  How many students?  For
all students or only when they are in a particular course?  How many
students per server?

        2. Are institutions offering full Front Page for their students?
Which version?  If not, do you use versions that have increased
security/decreased functionality?  Are you using share point services?

        3. Have you had incidents of students clobbering each other or
bringing down these platforms?   Have there been data security
incidents, or only CPU/conflict of resource incidents?

        4. How difficult are you finding it to support these platforms?
Are you supporting the OS and programming environment, or are you also
supporting the students?  How many people are dedicated to supporting
this environment?  Who trains the students in this environment?

        5. Are these environments being used by the students to satisfy
requirements in courses?  i.e. do the faculty mandate the use of this in
any of their classes or otherwise rely on this service to the students?

        6. Do you offer this same level of support for faculty?  For
administrative departments?  Do you use the same models?

        7. Are there any other pitfalls or lessons learned in this area?

Thank you in advance.  If you will please respond off-list, I will
summarize all the answers anonymously.

Regards,
Chris Faigle
IS Security
University of Richmond
cfaigle () richmond edu

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