Zentrum für Informations- und Kommunikationstechnik (ZIK) - Centre for Information and Communication Technology
Study programmes in engineering, in the area of design or economics are closely linked with acquiring knowledge and skills in information technology (IT) applications in the respective field of work.
For this purpose, two focal points have emerged in providing guidance for the students and their needs at the University of Applied Sciences:
The centre for information and communication technology (ZIK), a facility of the University of Applied Sciences, is responsible for the planning, functioning and operation of a suitable infrastructure for technological information.
This involves on the one hand providing and maintaining suitable classrooms with networked workplace systems (IT pools), the required peripheral devices (printer, scanner, plotter and suchlike) as well as the corresponding operating system and application software. On the other hand, this comprises networking the computers operated at the University of Applied Sciences with local networks (LAN) and the LAN connection to the locations of the University of Applied Sciences via Landesbildungsnetz (national education network) to external public networks such as scientific networks and the internet. The ZIK plans, implements, operates, updates and maintains the local communication networks and network-based services, e.g. electronic mail, WWW, FTP, forums and chat rooms, the provision of highly available memory space, central data backups etc., as well as responsibility for the security of systems and networks (for instance by setting up firewalls and access lists, providing up-to-date virus and spam filter systems). In order for this general infrastructure to meet the professional requirements of the University of Applied Sciences to the best possible degree, the teachers of the individual faculties, the students and the ZIK staff meet for coordination purposes several times a year in a joint steering committee, the senate committee for information and communication technology (IK Committee).
Training for the use of concrete application software in individual disciplines, however, is carried out by the faculties, or rather the respective teachers of the faculties. Due to the diverse training contents of the engineering, design and economics study programmes at the University of Applied Sciences, various hardware and software equipment is available to suit the respective requirements in order to provide the best possible information technological support for the respective training focal points of the individual faculties. Training in individual disciplines of the University of Applied Sciences Mainz is on the one hand supported by subject-specific IT classrooms with special computer systems and peripheral devices, which were set up in particular for the CAD, geoinformatics and multimedia training of the faculties engineering and design and are directly allocated to the study programmes, and on the other hand by IT pools provided and maintained by the ZIK for all faculties (see overview at the end of this article).
Therefore, computer-aided training in five classrooms with about 100 student workplaces is offered in engineering, call for tenders, contract award and invoicing for architects and interior designers, calculation and CAD programmes for civil engineers and GIS application programmes, (satellite) image processing and geo databases in geoinformatics and surveying. Scanners, printers and large format plotters are available for input and output.
In design and media design in particular programmes for web-design, information design, interactive design, image editing, layout, font compilation and video editing are used for teaching in five pools with a total of more than 50 workplaces at two locations.
In three classrooms with 75 workplaces, IT application systems are used in economics to prepare students for classic work procedures in an office environment (word processing, spreadsheet processing, databases, presentation techniques etc.) and new electronic business transactions or specific business management problems (for instance in organisation, controlling or statistics).
Furthermore, certified ECDL (European Computer Driving Licence) courses, language learning systems and computer-aided corporate strategic planning simulations are offered.
Video projectors are installed in the IT classrooms so that the monitor contents of the teacher’s workplace can be projected onto a screen or videos presented to the class. Most computer pools are equipped with a so-called pedagogical network, which enables the teacher, among other things, to have direct access to each participating screen, transmit the monitor contents from one workplace to the other and project them onto the screen at the click of a button.
In addition to this, Wireless LAN (WLAN) access points are installed in the buildings of the University of Applied Sciences and, via these, radio-based, location-independent access to the university networks and the internet is possible (mobile IT infrastructure). This enables students, teachers and staff of the University of Applied Sciences to access the network via notebooks equipped with WLAN in nearly all parts of the premises as well as outside the building of the University of Applied Sciences.
