Ravi Blogs about IT Topics

I received an email a few weeks ago from Brittany Mitchell who is the Vice President of WSA saying that she is eager to renew the dialog between WSA and ITS. She felt that once or twice a year meeting between ITS and WSA was not sufficient and that there are many technology issues about which WSA has been hearing from students and mroe frequent meetings will help clear this. I readily agreed to meet first with her and we had a very good meeting. There, we agreed to set up an ongoing meeting between her, Joanne and me.

In that meeting I was talking to Brittany about a couple of initiatives that we would like to talk to the students about. One of them is moving the students to Google Apps for Education. As a Gmail user, she was excited about the whole idea. I told her that I feel the same way, but there are some real privacy concerns that the students should be aware of before we do anything. She agreed and I requested that this be discussed in the appropriate setting so we can get a feel for how students feel about moving to Google for email and calendaring.

One other topic that Mike and I have been talking about is reserving some space in public computing labs for student laptops and removing the existing desktops. Students will be encouraged to bring their own laptops and we will make sure there are enough power outlets and strong wireless coverage and provide ways for them to access discipline-specific applications that they may not have installed on their laptop (using Citrix like programs). We see a lot of students with their laptops at the Pi Cafe and other common spaces, so we felt that this may be a welcome change for those who want to work with their own laptop, but want to get away from their dorm rooms.
Brittany brought both of these topics up for discussion at one of the WSA meetings and reported back. To quote her: “Regarding the google packet: I got somewhat mixed reviews on this. It seems that students are either very enthusiastic about it or very against it.” and “The arguments against it primarily consisted of not doing “official” business with Google because some perceive google to be unethical.” In a straw poll taken, 9 favored, 13 opposed the official move to Google and 6 abstained.

I wrote in my blog on moving the students to the Google Apps for Education: “I also believe that this is a decision that needs to come from the students who will be affected by this decision.” Based on this straw poll, the message is not to do anything at this point. However, Brittany has also told me that WSA will be conducting a campus-wide survey in December and we can add a question on this subject so we get feedback from a larger audience. I think it is a good idea and I will consult the Directors and see how best to do this.

In terms of making the labs laptop friendly, again, the reviews were mixed and that students would prefer us to continue to provide the desktops. However, they would like us to help install more power outlets in common areas where there is already considerable wireless coverage. We are actually working with the library on this specific issue in both Olin and the Science libraries.

Brittany also mentioned that the students complained about lack of wireless coverage in many locations on campus. Though we have heard this complaint before, we were unable to get any feedback from students on specifics. So, Joanne sent an email to students living in the dorms asking them to tell us about lack of wireless coverage. We received about 200 emails, many of them from Butterfield dorms. Ken and Dave are working on a proposal to expand wireless coverage in these and other areas that we received complaints about and we plan to work on it as soon as possible and possibly increase the wireless coverage in many of these locations by early Spring semester. I don’t want to raise the expectations too high though. Many locations pose logistical problems when it comes to wiring and several others have walls that prevent wireless signal penetration. The message here is, we understand that wireless coverage is an important issue that we are committing both financial and personnel resources to try to solve it as soon as possible in the best possible way.

The good news is that “As far as woodframes go, I’ve generally heard positive things, no one I’ve asked has had anything to complain about with the internet connection in their woodframe.”…

Overall, I feel pretty good that we will be meeting with Brittany or her successors from WSA on a regular basis, which will potentially increase the communication between the students and ITS…