UITS 2004 User Satisfaction Survey

Indiana University Northwest

Open and Miscellaneous Text Responses

Indiana University Center for Survey Research

This text file is arranged by item name, according to the order contained in the questionnaire.

We provide the text exactly as the respondent typed in the survey instrument. No corrections are made for spelling or punctuation.

To adhere to its confidentiality policy, under some conditions, the CSR may delete any identifying information about a respondent. The term "[IRD]" for “identifying reference deleted” is used when this occurs.

Faculty

Better administrative communications between NWCME and IUN campus.need chancellor to work together with med school and IUB to break down real and imagined barriers

1). This past year I needed access to a scanner for my Mac computer and the only one available was locked in [IRD] office. Because [IRD] was on sick leave for the summer, I ended up having to use the old cut and paste (with scissors and scotch tape) to complete my lecture manual. The student computer labs do not have any scanner available for use with a Mac computer. I am located off main campus in the Dental Education building. Here the staff has Mac computers but no scanner for use with the Macs. It would be most helpful to have at least one scanner in the building to be used with staff computers. 2). The IT desk doesn't really have anyone who knows much about Mac computers. I ran into several issues this past year and ended up having to have my husband come in a help me solve the problems.

I am most appreciative for the help provided by the Computer Services staff throughout the year. Their constant and dedicated service is of the essence for running everything smoothly, and when I teach, I feel reassured knowing that I can count on all of them on any given minute. Many thanks,[IRD]

The Outlook access from home computers is TERRIBLE! I am not sure why I can do things at work and I cannot do the same things at home. I use e-mail from home extensively. However since the switch using Outlook, I have been able to do less and consequently do not do as much as I would like. It has limited my ability and raised my frustration level with the system.

On the whole, IUN has excellent UITS. Administrators and staff are on top of their jobs. My only problem is the impossibility to do my own video editing and copying on the instructional media VCRs.

updating technology in Raintree classrooms. Currently, only overheads exist.

Very happy with information technology services - I couldn't do my job without it!

The scanner in raintree computer lab did not have enough memory available to scan the high quality map I wanted.

Like the classes offered but the times do not fit into my schedule

After reading the questions from this survey, it seems to me that there needs to be more proactive approach in informing the students and faculty community at IUN of the vast resources and services that are available. One meeting or introduction at the orientation is not enough to inform the faculty of the enormous potential of services that exists at IUN. A few smaller sessions at beginning of a year or through or through the semester would be helpful. Some informal meetings, lunch time sessions would help. I am sure students would benefit greatly if there is more effective communication about the services from ITS. A lot of the time students do not even know what all they should learn. I hope that you will devote some resources towards this in future. Thank you.

Using the exchange server for email off-campus from a dialup modem is very frustrating. Can anything be done to speed this up? Is there a way to just access the email information and send email?

The services maybe available but are complicated to coordinate. We requested two types of software this year and we were told it would take a committee vote for it to be loaded for a 1 day class. It is difficult to get a hold of staff when you need assistance. When you do get them [IRD] is very helpful. We have requested equipment several times that has not shown up on time, thus programs are delayed. The operator sends us several calls that are not for us.I believe this is a training issue. We have never received a laminated phone listing??

I am amazed at how well the IUN computer/IT staff does its tasks given the miserable financial support they receive. They are to commended for the excellent job that they do in face of a increasingly ridiculous situation. Long-term, the poor IT support structure will negatively impact my laboratory and its research. In the short-term, the poor IT support structure has no impact on my teaching - I simply don't use it because the services and availability of resources is so poor that I develop my own resources. If this situation continues, it will encourage me to move my laboratory to another university and another state. I look with pure green envy at the resources that my collaborators have at the University of Michigan and Notre Dame University.

None at this time, I am new at IUN so l am just getting my feet wet, so to speak.

Need new slide projectors for instructional media. I can't teach without them and use them for every class. They are in disrepair, I can't even get good focus as it is broken on one projector and no replacement projector exists. Can you help?

I have used teleconferencing in the past and was quite pleased. This year when I tried to schedule a teleconference I was directed to a person in Bloomington and it was much more difficult to schedule the teleconference. They wanted a letter from the organization that was giving the teleconference and I thought that was asking a bit much. Also a fee was included and in the past I did not have to pay for this service. You have made this service a lot more complicated and difficult to hold a teleconference on this campus.

- Standardize equipment (PC) in multimedia classrooms and stream friendly for videos - Build wireless capability in the campus - Portable labs - lack of number labs needed is putting a strain - Help desk could be improved, but needs resources to have more people

I have comments for every single question; major ones are that the HELP desk people are rude and unhelpful, and I have never seen a tech for the last three work tickets I asked for; Instructional media is even worse; half the time my equipment is not delivered for special events; we have had several conferences attended by guests from other campuses that were disrupted by failure, missing equipment, dead jacks, and lack of service. And even permanently installed systems fail to work half the time, or are horribly out of whack. Only reliable service is regular semester order stuff, they check it when they deliver it.

The IUN Library has a frustrating online catalog in the reference area. It is most inconvenient. There should be computers set aside for catalog-use only which do not require one to go through all sorts of transactions in order to get to the catalog itself. (The library staff can go to any branch of the Lake County Public Library to see a good model.) The IUN telephones leave much to be desired. Caller ID would be useful. A different message for busy lines from unanswered lines is essential. At least when you call someone and get a busy signal you know that the line is being used. Our phones give the impression that no one is ever around.

Not sure why Internet 2 (or Internet 3?) capabilities at IUB and IUPUI have not also been extended to the IUN campus.

I think the phone service is archaic, predating the 1700'. The computer support staff is ok- however they have never been able to satisfactorily answer any of my questions.

I am a medical school faculty member on the IUN campus. We do not get the level of service equal to the IUN faculty. This should be rectified.

Staff

Go to Purdue Calumet and duplicate their services. It is much better. The people are great; it is the system that is not.

The event scheduler is the worst thing that hit this campus. What took me a friendly phone call to reserve a room now takes so much time, effort, emails, and frustration. When you reserve rooms for about 50 classes that meet on the average of 8 times each there are 400 reservations and return emails. 800 hundred items using a number system that makes it insane to track. Not to mention if one is canceled and needs to be re-scheduled. The person in charge of confirming this mess is going crazy and receives complaints from many users on the event scheduler. Instructional media will sound off about this program too! My co-worker, who does a program with many reservations, is at her wits end! Ha, get us all together and let us tell what it is really like. blast this program

campus telephone directory needs to be updated and sent out more frequently than is currently done.

I feel with a Spring 2004 enrollment of 5091 students that just two (2) open student computer labs with approximately 120 computers is ridiculous. The other computer labs at IUN are used for classes only.

We STILL need a toll-free calling area to Chicago and the suburbs (i.e., area codes like 312, 708, 847 and such.)

Is there a laminated quick phone list? We used to receive a very customer friendly IUN phone list but haven't seen an updated version since 2002. Would be very good to have. The campus calendars are very confusing. There are too many on the event scheduler! It is hard to find the calendar you need when posting an event or looking for an event. Can't this be simplified??

The modem for connection from home is very slow (21K). It would be nice if it could be 56K

We need an up to date quick telephone list that we can laminate for office use. We have the system wide telephone directory; however we need one just for the Northwest Campus. We had been getting them in the past but we haven’t received one in awhile. Is there Web Address where we can access this information.

I do not like the current calendar system. There are too many calendars to choose from and often they are late in updating my information to the calendar I've chosen. It is difficult to read the main calendar. It is slow in loading. I don't know why we don't have the same system as IUB and other campuses?????!!!!!

Student

I just started school in January and I have not had to use the computer very often

I think that the technology services are fine the way they are. I've never had a problem with any of them.

This survey was absolutely awful. First off, 90% of the information in the survey did not pertain to the average college student and should've been directed to faculty only. How many students dial in to campus? How on earth could we be expected to evaluate this? Secondly, from an IT perspective, the survey was long, drawn out, boring and asked the same question over and over in different ways. Lastly, and any first year IT person would know this, when you put together this type of survey, you need to put some sort of status indicator to let the user know where they are in the survey. If I wasn't so frustrated on how awful this was and felt the need to let you know I would've closed my browser half way through and not finished. Then what sort of information would you have? And as an additional side note, making this mandatory for students with the reminder update e-mails is ludicrous. Go back, figure out a survey that related to student needs, and try again.

computer labs are always way too busy. possibly another computer lab.

If the lab in Savannah is going to be closed for any reason, please post a sign at the beginning of the hallway or by the stairs and elevator so that we do not have to walk all the way back to the lab, only to find a note on the door saying, "Closed". It is frustrating when you have lots of books.

Searches could be improved. Results from searches often return obscure or out of date pages as the top results. The IUN Home page definitely needs work. Links to resources that I seem to need the most often have to be dug up, in most instances taking much longer than they should to find what I need. Above all, the IUN Campus should have a wireless network available to all, or at least to students and faculty. This would be a huge help to anyone with a portable device, e. g. Laptop, PDA etc, and should increase utilization of more areas of the Campus.

It would be great if the IUN Computer labs could be open to 11:00 p.m. on Fridays. Also, the nursing department utilizes Oncourse to give out assignments and lecture notes. As a result, the nursing students use the computer labs to print their notes and assignments, which ties up many of the printers. I truly believe that more printers are needed in the computer labs to alleviate a long wait to print out necessary material, especially during the peak times of usage.

none, everything is fine

People pay a technology fee. Yet when students print things out they still get charged.

The financial aid office should have more info accessible on INSITE. The Advising feature should allow you to see when a course will be offered in the future. It should be mandatory for Professors to keep the syllabus and student's grades current (at minimum) on ONCOURSE. The technology is there, why not use it? The email from ONCOURSE should automatically go to the iun.edu account, if there is one. I always forget to check the Oncourse email. Can it forward? Is it possible to create a directory for voicemail? If someone calls a department office and gets voice mail, there should be an option to listen to a directory to obtain a particular person's extension, so that a message can be left for a specific person. This allows the problem/question to be addressed much sooner.

The search engine on IUN's web page would be more useful, if it gave back the actual information you requested for the school you requested. But overall you all do a wonderful job!

Savannah Computer Lab should be made more accessible, especially during finals.

IUCare needs to be upgraded and the IUShareware downloads need to be advertised more. I didn't hear about the IUWare website being available until my senior year.

Last Spring I was forced to get a web-mail account in order to be able to print or use lab computers. Since then I have periodically checked my e-mail to see if I was being contacted for class reasons. Every time I check there are an enormous amount of "junk mail" messages from groups within the university. I have never volunatrily signed up to be on all of these mailing lists and it truly makes the web-mail experience quite hideous to weed through the messages in order to get to the ones I need to see. Thus, it really makes the original force to get the account even more of an issue than it originally was. My opinion of the UITS would be much higher had these events not occured in this way.

Many of the questions were stated "in the past year", this is my first semester at IUN!

Access to the library via home internet is/was hard to get. I could not get the VPN to work and really didn't know who to ask for help--we ended up buying a whole new system in order to accomodate my need for internet access for research papers.

I resent having to pay any technology fees to IUN. As a part of the Dental Hygiene program, we are required on a weekly basis to turn in typed documents. We have available the computers we need to complete our tasks, however we are severely neglected in the realm of maintaince. We don't even have a working printer available to students in our building!!! I despise having to go all the way across the street to print out my assignments, and the bleeping computer labs aren't even open early enough to stop in to use them before 8am classes. I remember the labs used to open at 6am. Why should it be such an inconvenience for Dental Hygiene students to get the same services that students on the main campus get?! I'm glad that I'm almost to graduation!!!

I think the current idea of adding wireless hubs across campus is an excellent idea. I also think it is important to make student s aware of all of the technology services which are available to them. There were several services that I didn't know were available till just recently.

Wireless internet to allow those of us who have laptops to logon to the internet from anywhere. Areas to plug into the internet. that would be nice to be able to access the net on my own computer instead of having to transfer data on disks.

My only real issue is with the switchboard. When I call in I do not ever seem to be directed to the correct area the first time, usually resulting in a call back.

A lot of the items I could not answer, due to the fact I do not take advantage of the computer centers. I am to busy with work and school, so I mostly do all of my work from home.