IIT Newsletter -- January 2004
2003-04 Student Survey

The annual IIT student survey on student ownership and use of computers took place during registration in November. Most students participate in the survey and provide us with valuable data and feedback.

Last fall IIT completed our 15th year of surveying the students about their ownership and use of computing. Student ownership is now up to 92% compared to 87% last year. Ownership is up 10% from the 2001-02 academic year! Ninety-four percent of the incoming first-year students brought a computer with them to campus. One of the continued areas of concern is the disparity between the "haves" and the "have nots” among student owners of computers. IIT is watchful to ensure that the college-provided computing resources are adequate to support the students who can't afford to own a computer, as well as support the needs of those that do. This year, for the first time, IIT gathered data from those students enrolled in the SSS program. The SSS program serves low income, first generation and/or students with disabilities. Although only 43% of the SSS students responded, of those that did respond we found computer ownership to be only 75%. This is a concern and something that IIT will work with other offices on campus to address.

Desktop computers continue to dominate on campus, although laptop ownership is rising rapidly. Forty-one percent of the students reported bringing a laptop computer to campus. This is up from 37% last year. It's clear that laptop ownership will soon move into the top spot, as 52% of the first-year students own a laptop.

Students continue to come to campus well equipped with a vast array of technology. The number of students owning two or more computers remained steady at 3%. A little over 2% of our students own both a Mac and a PC. Eight percent indicated that they have a digital movie camera with them on campus.

One very interesting piece of information is that student ownership of printers is down to 48%. This is the first year the number has declined since we began gathering this information in the 2000-2001 academic year. We could speculate that the high cost of printing supplies (in some cases the cost of a replacement ink cartridge is almost as much as a new printer) and the convenience of the St. Olaf printers is impacting this trend. It will be interesting to watch this area since we instituted a charge for excessive public printer use this year. A total of 69% of the students report that they use the St. Olaf provided public printers.

For the past three years we have tracked the number of students who own a Personal Digital Assistant (PDA). Over the course of the three years PDA ownership rose from 8% to 11% and is now back down to 7%. PDA's, and now cell phones, are becoming more fully featured and are a technology that we will need to keep watch on.

Use of St. Olaf Computing and Network Resources

Use of the St. Olaf provided computing facilities continues to be high. Eighty-six percent of the students use some area of the public computing facilities. The residential hall computing labs are the most popular resource with 71% of the students responding that they use the labs. The academic buildings rank second with 57%, followed by the department labs at 40%. The second table to the right (labelled Resource Use) shows the percentages of students reporting that they use the campus computing resources.

HelpDesk Fall Service Trends

One interesting trend we have been watching over the past couple of years is the change in the number of individuals who call our HelpDesk seeking assistance that require a follow up call or visit. We rely on the software package Clientele for managing our HelpDesk and staff work order system, as well as use it for our asset management system. The following chart shows the changes in the number of work orders generated during the first semester over the past five years. Please note that this does NOT include all telephone calls to the Helpdesk. This chart only includes those calls that couldn't be resolved over the phone during the first conversation with the user.

We haven't fully analyzed this data but we suspect that the drop in the number of calls is directly related to the major releases of Microsoft's operating systems and the changes we made in scheduling the HelpDesk professional and student staff. Windows 95 and XP Home added to our workload, while Windows98 and 2000 made our lives much easier! This year we modified our schedule for residential hall connection assistance and have been extremely pleased with the results. We added an additional September weekend shift to our student residential hall network connection service and found that this dramatically decreased the workload, frustration, and stress among the students and the HelpDesk staff.

Student Comment

IIT's annual student survey is an important vehicle to gathering important statistics and information about student ownership and use of technology. The survey also serves as one of the primary means to gather student comments and suggestions about our services. This year 772 students took a moment to write down their ideas and suggestions. This was 33% of the students who completed our survey.

For the second year in a year, the most widely provided comment was a form of a compliment or thanks to the IIT for our services. 158 students contributed some form of a positive statement. The comments ranged from a simple thanks, to a smiley face, to a comment about a particular aspect of our help. Some of the comments included:

IIT has really improved in the last 2 years from email to internet speed.

IIT really is helpful and offers friendly, prompt service, thanks a ton!

I really like that representatives come around at the beginning of the school year to help students connect to Sven. Can they do the same when students come 2nd semester?

All these great comments about our services, however, need to be tempered by the constructive criticisms the students provided. Twenty-two students indicated that they would like expanded staff hours or quicker response time to calls. Forty-four students provided some type of comment on the quality of our service. Some were as simple as “smile” while others pointed out a specific instance where our service process failed or needs to be improved. IIT takes these comments seriously and will work to make changes to improve our services.

The survey results clearly reflect the problems we have had with our Novell network servers. This fall we experienced a number of system crashes that impacted the students' ability to use public printers, access their data on the servers, etc. This is an area that we are actively working on and hope to make some changes during Interim and the early part of second semester that will dramaticly improve the stability of the servers.

New to the Top Ten list is the request for wireless networks. Although the number is small, we expect that the demand for wireless network access will increase as the number of students who bring a wireless-equipped laptop to campus grows. Requests for wireless network access were in direct proportion to the number of students within each class that owned a laptop.

Another new Top Ten item is the complaints about printing charges. This year IIT instituted a charge for excessive paper usage and it's no surprise that some students are complaining. It's interesting to note, however, that only 51 students complained about this! We did have some students who requested that we do even more to reduce paper use.

It's always helpful to track the issues from year to year. The following chart provides a comparison of this year's issues against the student comments from the previous two years.

From this viewpoint, it's easy to see the hot topics for the year and those that are perennial issues. Server complaints, request for more technology, repair and maintenance issues, the Internet connection, and requests for more staff assistance have stayed in the Top Ten list the past 3 years. Other issues come and go as specific events occur. Last year, students complained about the demise of the UNIX-based e-mail reader Pine. This year only 1 senior complained that Pine was no longer available.

The staff will be working to develop strategies to address the student issues and concerns over the next few months. While we can never expect to get a 100% satisfaction rating, we do work to provide the best student services we possibly can.

Information and Instructional Technologies • St. Olaf College

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