By Christina Smith
The Information Technology (IT) department sought students’ opinions about possible ways to improve the University’s computing options at their fall semi-annual Design Your IT student panel on Oct. 29.
According to Robert Juckiewicz, vice president for IT, the point of the panel was to get student feedback about the possibility of amending, or completely removing, campus computer labs. The 10-student panel, nine of whom were Student Computing Services (SCS) employees, almost unanimously decided against removing or closing the labs altogether, he said.
Mike DiNicola, a junior who is an employee of SCS sat on the student panel. “Like any student, I’m opposed to getting rid of the labs,” he said. “I have my own personal interests because I could lose my job, but the fact that so many students will be affected is a greater issue overall.”
Juckiewicz said that addressing the issue of the labs is based heavily on statistics from Information Technology department: The University first opened computer labs in the late 1980s, and have since been successful. There are more than 1,600 computers on campus, all placed in the 48 smaller classroom labs and the two open access labs, the Hammer lab and the Calkins Hall lab. Every two years, the computers in the labs are all renewed and moved to administrative offices, where they are used for another two years. Each computer purchased by the University also requires dozens of software applications, ranging anywhere from word processing to accounting.
“1,600 is an awful lot of computers,” he said. “If we continue funding the labs as they are, we won’t have money to do new things.”
According to Juckiewicz, the average student does not actually have a significant demand for computer labs. Ninety percent of students who frequent the labs do not use any specialized software, meaning they only access browser and word processing programs; 51 percent of students who enter the lab only go in to use the printers. IT statistics showed that more University students use the labs for social networking, like the 99 percent of first-year students who use the lab computers to access Facebook.
“When 92 percent of [students in] the incoming classes have laptops,” Juckiewicz said, “you have to ask yourself, ‘Why are they even using the labs?'”
The answer, Juckiewicz said, lies in the examination of the mobile environment. Inventions like the iPhone show us the future of computing: People are accessing the Internet through mobile devices. “We have to position ourselves so we don’t think of past successes [with computing],” he said. “We need to enhance future learning instead.”
In order to “enhance future learning,” Jukiewicz said, the University has plans to implement several new technologies on campus. The goals of these new technologies include improving the University’s portal, encouraging students to use the storage and document applications in their portal, implementing “print kiosks” to solve the printing problem and improving the wireless and WiFi connectivity on campus.
Juckiewicz also touched on the idea of a col-laboratory lab, which he defined as a “combination of virtual and physical space.” The University’s implemented col-laboratory would feature technological developments including a section dedicated to PC’s, a secluded area with private individual study carrels and a special space where groups can talk and work without interfering with the individuals who are working.
The IT department asked the student panel to help them test three different approaches to the program from now until March 2009, and it contacted the Student Government Association (SGA), in an attempt to expand the group.
“We are in the very early stages of the process, and I cannot emphasize that enough,” said Peter DiSilvio, president of the SGA. The SGA is considering putting two students on an administrative committee to deal with the IT department, and Laurie Harvey, director for Student Computing Services and Help Desk, will be speaking to the senate on Nov. 11 to discuss using the SGA as a focus group to test the new technologies.
“The SGA focus group is a good idea,” DiNicola said. “I think as many students should be involved as possible.”
There is no definite plan or timetable for the project, but Juckiewicz is “hoping to put in place some of these technologies by the Spring 2009 semester.