ITS support for Macintosh computers has never been very impressive in the 15 years I've worked at NDSU.
More Mac support. - I am an Apple Mac fan and find it really frustrating when I go to either the Help Desk or even online to the ITS webpage. There are never any good applications or software that ITS supplies for the Mac platform and I can't even connect my computer to the NDSU Secure WiFi (because I'm using a different OS, they say) I understand that as it currently stands, the majority of users are Windows based. However, I read a recent article on the web conducted by Morgan Stanley that said that after surveying students in colleges across the country, 40% would purchase a Mac for their next computer. (See the article at www.appleinsider.com) I think this school should consider staying ahead of the game and offer more support for the various types of platforms out there. I don't like getting turned down every time I go to ITS. Thank You!
ITS does support the Macintosh platform. However, it's sometimes difficult to train all of our Help Desk staff on all platforms -- especially students, who are not typically employed long term. If you have problems in the future, you may wish to call during the day when more of our full-time staff are available.
QUESTION: Everyday, there are many announcements sent to my email box that do not interest me. I think ITS should provide a checklist, such that we can choose those announcements we preferred, and save some time on browsing the emails.
At this time, we do not have a system that will allow you to control certain types of messages and reject others. There are, however, two student e-mail lists:
The Official Student E-mail List - includes only official announcements from the administration. All students are automatically on this list, since it includes official university messages. Students cannot be removed from this list.
The Student Announcement List - is managed by student government. Students may be completely removed from this list, be then they will not receive any announcements about events and activities. To be removed from this list...
- Use your NDSU.edu e-mail account to send a message to listserv@listserv.nodak.edu
- In the "body" of the e-mail message (not the subject line) put this: unsub NDSU-STUDENT-ANNOUNCE
- You will receive an automatic reply notifying you that you have been removed from the list.
- Each semester, you will be added to the list again automatically, so you will need to send this message again if you wish to be removed from the list.
Another option might be to set up your e-mail program (Outlook, Thunderbird, Mac Mail) to automatically e-mail announcements to a special folder where you can review them at your convenience.
Why do NDSU printers not have a default setting to print double-sided? With all the reasons to start "living green," NDSU should be a role model to its students in this one small example. It may be a small change, but the impact would certainly be felt - less money for the university spent on paper and less trees cut down in the rainforest. It's a win-win situation!
In ITS we are working to be more green.The GoPrint stations in the clusters are part of that effort. Once implemented, they significantly reduced the amount of wasted paper. Additionally, we ensure that potentially hazardous materials like old CRT computer monitors are properly recycled.
Currently, about 15% of our printers have duplexers, mostly in high-traffic clusters, since these require more support and repair.
Your suggestion is certainly something we will consider going forward. Cost may be a factor; unfortunately, add-on "duplexers" (which allow front and back printing) tend to be expensive.
Additionally, many professors want assignments turned in single-sided. If we set the default to double-sided printing, I suspect we would find that papers would frequently be reprinted as single-sided documents.
Finally, duplexers do tend to jam. Not only does this require more on-site staff support (and potential to have printers unavailable), but it means we end up throwing away the paper that's jammed up in the rollers. Consequently, the cost savings are sometimes not as great as expected.
This is a good idea, and we will keep this suggestion in mind as we move forward.
I was unable to attend the recent Open Forums. Will future events like this be held?
Thanks for your interest. Another event has not been scheduled at this time, but the IT Division will continue to dialog with the campus community as we evaluate how we can best provide services at NDSU.
You can still submit questions or comments - and also see video from the event - at the following address:
www.ndsu.edu/vpit/defining_it_at_ndsu/
Thanks again for your response. We look forward to hearing your comments.
I am not dissatisfied with the service, but I know our on-campus students are i.e. telephone services and Internet service (bandwidth)
We are currently working with Residence Life on how to most effectively provide voice and data services, and to determine appropriate costs for this important connectivity. Although dial tone and data services come through separate jacks in each room, the infrastructure providing these services is closely linked. Lower demand for telephone services in the past few years has been offset by greater demand for resources on the data network. We will do our best to provide robust, stable services in both of these areas.
Telecom model needs to change.
With the establishment of the Office of the Vice President for Information Technology, the telecommunications model has already begun to change. Currently dial tone rates are set to provide revenue to fund annual operations and planned capital expenditures, including infrastructure. In addition, this model provides funds for technology enhancements. With the converging of technologies and staff, the Division of Information Technology is now responsible for all communication services and in the future may combine data, voice and video services into a single charge.
Please initiate a committee for emergency technologies.
Ray Boyer, director of University Police and the Safety Office has lead institutional responsibility of safety and security to include emergency communications.
QUESTION (A single comment below has been divided into several parts for easier response):
• The forum I attended had a very negative tone. Bonnie mentioned that there were a lot of negatives mentioned and she was correct. It was mostly negatives and few positives. The first negative was the presentation by Jean Ostrom-Blonigen. The graphs presented seemed skewed to make it look like they never have had an increase in funding and that any money NDSU has received in recent years has gone elsewhere. There was no mention that the division of appropriated dollars is done by the President's Cabinet and that it is up to each VP to then divide their dollars accordingly.
We agree that without our local fund dollars, the graphs do present a somewhat skewed picture of campus IT. However, as mentioned at the open forum, we believe it is important to note that the general fund portion of our budget has not increased much since 1999. The Division of IT also recognizes that other departments across campus are also operating with limited growth. The open forum has certainly sparked conversation and it is our hope that as we continue to gather more information, the outcome will be to move IT in a positive manner.
• I think the slides needed to also have lines representing the local dollars IT has received. If there has been an increase in students there should have also been an increase in the amount of student technology fee money collected and that was not mentioned. All of that money may not go to IT but the portion that does should have been noted.
As mentioned, the next phase of the project is to gather information regarding our local fund dollars; including those received via the student technology fee which are used to fund new student technology initiatives such as: computer cluster replacement, student printing, instrumented classrooms, networking (including wireless), and Blackboard. The Division of IT has begun to analyze its cost recovery models in preparation for its 2009-11 budget request and once finalized, those numbers will be included in our slides. In addition, to present an even more accurate picture, the Division of IT intends to work with the campus to gather information about the distributed IT funds contained in the various department budgets across campus.
• I think the slides needed to also have lines representing the grant dollars IT has received. And if total research dollars were going to be mentioned then any increase in IT research dollars should have also been mentioned.
The IT Division receives very little in grant dollars. The exception is our K-12 EduTech program. Grant funds for this service come directly from state and are used for IT initiatives in elementary and secondary education throughout North Dakota.
• The next negative was talking about 1 help desk staff member to every 28 computers. IT is not the only dept that is understaffed. I realize the help desk is busy but when it takes a week for someone to respond to a help ticket about a security warning I think there are bigger issues than being understaffed. I have also been told by a help desk member that they couldn't help me because I didn't have an error message on the printer so they couldn't tell me what was wrong or how to fix it.
The support ratio that the questioner is commenting about is the ratio computer desktops to desktop support staff. The ratio is actually approximately 280 desktops to 1 desktop staff member. This support ratio is very high even by accepted business standards. Our university environment is much less restrictive than the business environment.
Businesses can require that all of their computers be configured and imaged alike, one supported operating system and suite of software. Our university environment requires greater freedom of choice. Information Technology Services supports three operating systems (Windows, Macintosh and Linux) and a variety of software applications. We are most often able to accommodate requests from students, staff and faculty to support new software applications either in individual offices or in computer clusters. Desktop staff members are responsible for this support.
The questioner mentioned "...it takes a week for someone to respond to a help ticket about a security warning…" This level of service is unacceptable. Unfortunately, the 280-to-1 staffing ratio may contribute to this unacceptable quality of service. The measure best measure of the quality of our service is the effortlessness with which students, staff and faculty perform their daily activities. Our goal is to facilitate, not to impede. Our ability to do so hindered the high support ratio.
• I think there were good intentions behind the forum but it did not turn out as advertised. It was more of an informative session with info I already knew rather than an open forum with people able to ask questions about the future and current challenges. It seemed more like "we can't help you any better unless we get more money and staff."
Thank you for your comments. Our intent was to introduce Vice President Neas to the campus and review with you the challenges our Division faces related to limited funding and rapid technology turnover. As a result, we hope everyone has a better understanding of the complexities our Division faces as we work to staff a centralized unit within an ever-changing environment.
• I do think Dr. Bastow-Shoop did a good job on her portion. That is probably the only info I did not know before the forum
Thank you, we also believe Dr. Bastow-Shoop did an excellent job presenting the makeup of the IT Council. For updated IT Council information see: www.ndsu.edu/its/campuswide_it_resources/it_committee_system/it_council