E-mail and the Internet, two reliable communication and research resources at ISU, sometimes can be as hindering as they are helpful.

For some students, e-mail and the Internet can be confusing, especially for freshmen who had no online training in high school.

Jane Jacobson, academic adviser for Student Academic Services in the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, said incoming freshmen can learn how to use Project Vincent when they visit campus for summer orientation.

Students are expected to get an e-mail account when they attend orientation, but accounts are available any time after students receive their ISUCards, she said.

“[At the time of summer orientation,] we have some who have their own Web pages and others who have done very little; we try to level the playing field at orientation,” Jacobson said.

Students usually learn e-mail through one of three ways, the first of which is summer orientation where students witness an hour-long Vincent demonstration.

Another option caters to certain majors, which have Vincent built into their curricula or course work.

Finally, students can go to the Computation Center, which offers courses at the beginning of the fall and spring semesters, said Frank Poduska, a consulting and publication manager at the Computation Center.

Poduska said 80 percent of the students get their accounts during orientation. He said by October 1997, 95 percent of freshmen had registered.

“There isn’t any one magical way that students get online,” Jacobson said. She said some talk to fellow students or English teachers, or take short courses at the Computation Center to get help.

Jim Noland, computer classroom facilitator, said some anxiety exists among incoming students about acquiring e-mail.

He said it helps that the Computation Center has the information necessary to set up accounts.

Lauren Flood, freshman in psychology, said her experience with Vincent was different and more complex at ISU than with programs she used at home.

But some e-mail and Internet users said Vincent was an easy program to learn.

Sara Flies, freshman in elementary education and Spanish, thought using Vincent was comparable to programs she had used in the past.

Jacobson said e-mail is valuable to classrooms.

“It’s becoming more and more a part of the education process,” she said.

Noland said he usually does e-mail lists for his class because it not only is useful, but more instructors depend upon it.

Flood and Flies both said they use e-mail to talk with friends and family or to ask professors questions about their classes.

Flood said she uses the Internet to look up ISU information such as sports schedules, and Flies said she has gone online for some classes.

Poduska said one problem e-mail users encounter at this time of year is an overload of mail in their mailboxes.

He said freshmen usually do not experience this problem, but that other users run out of disk space. More space can be rented if students still want to keep all of their mail, Poduska said.

Students can keep mail from freshman year through graduation.

For e-mail problems, users can call the Computation Solution Center at 296-6000 or visit 195 Durham.