First year undergraduate survey 2009
IT Services again invited all first year undergraduates to complete an online survey to give us feedback on their first experiences of using IT at Sussex and 640 responded. Some of the comments are shown below along with details of the action we are taking.
"Have IT induction earlier than Friday in Freshers Week as we already have to be using the IT by then."
We reviewed IT induction for Autumn 2010 and were able to timetable all undergraduate School IT induction presentations, with 3 short film clips, for the Monday, Tuesday or Wednesday of Freshers Week.
At the presentation we gave out the Using IT@Sussex booklet to each student, containing useful introductory information including: connecting to ResNet, using IT Services PCs, SussexMobile and a campus map showing IT facilities.
We updated our ITS web pages to include a student section with online information, making it easier for new students to find out what services are on offer and how they can make use of them.
"I feel that calls to IT Services from your room on campus should be free, as it is with inbound calls to other rooms within your building."
We have been working on this with colleagues in Residential Services and Estates.
As a direct result of the survey, students can now ring IT Services Enquiries (ext 8090) free of charge. ITS Enquiries is open Monday - Friday from 9am to 7pm in termtime (9am to 5.30pm in vacations).
"Tell us more about where to find PCs and printers - perhaps with leaflets given out at the beginning of term or available in IT Services. Also, leaflets for how to top up printing credits."
We are going to produce a separate leaflet showing the map of IT Services on campus.
Although the map is already distributed at the start of term, we need to make it easier for students to find available PCs and printers and we will also improve the way this information is displayed on our website.
We have updated the postcard paying for printing on ITS computers which is now available at ITS Enquiries in Shawcross.
"common Microsoft Office on ALL computers...and double-sided printing"
Office 2007 and double-sided printing is now available in all of the general access ITS computer rooms.
Some of the computers in the restricted access rooms, such as those for Arts postgrads are to be updated shortly.
"simplify the process for connecting to eduroam and ResNet"
We have now introduced software called Xpress Connect that automatically configures the network settings and should make the process much easier, especially when there are a lot of new users at the start of the year.
We will also review the green sheet instructions for eduroam (wifi network) and pink sheet for ResNet (wired access in residences) to make them easier to follow.
"instructions for connecting Ubuntu to the network would be nice as well as support for Linux"
Xpress Connect, the software that automatically configures the right settings, now works for Ubuntu and we will update the online information.
We are also making plans to support Linux systems in the future. Initially the team will be fairly small and will only be able to support one type of Linux but this should help a minority of users who prefer an open source operating system.
There were many more comments and questions from the survey - for full details, see:
Summary report (PDF, 134k)
Follow up actions (PDF, 477k)
There is also a full spreadsheet (Excel, 751k) of all 640 replies (not available from off campus).
Please note that some of the links in these documents are no longer current
2008 survey
The results and actions of the December 2008 survey are also available:
Summary report
Follow up actions
Updated on 7 January 2011