Students and University Technology Support Services

An interesting convergence of events during the past three weeks has resulted in this blog post. In the past year it has become evident that most research universities are struggling with student technology support, among the issues:

1. Is the university IT department relevant for today’s students? Most feel that if they are offering the minimal number of services, they must be relevant. Time to ask the students what is relevant in 2010; is the campus meeting the requirements of the present day student?
2. Is the library relevant to today’s students? Does today’s investment in information resources (the library staff) need to be reexamined? Never thought I would ask this question so directly.
3. Does today’s university have the appropriate relationship between campus departments to remain relevant in a technology and information rich environment?

Several weeks ago, the campus IT group spent time with students in two focus sessions. The first glimpse of student impressions was in a senior level marketing class, and the second was a focus group between IT and interested student government leaders. Both groups resulted in similar student perspectives. First, the students did not know who offered technology support on campus and did not feel it was relevant to know the source of services. Second, the focus group had seven seniors/graduate students, and of the seven, only 3 had ever attempted to contact the campus IT department and only one had ever visited the customer support center during their tenure at the university. Third, students all agreed that anything online was preferred to going to a campus department, including the library. It does not take a genius to recognize today’s IT organizations are using yesterday’s methods to meet today’s students requirements, and it does not appear to be working.

The second event was the release of the latest Project Information Literacy Progress Report from the Information School at the University of Washington. The report recognized that students and university professionals are not in alignment. The student is focused on efficiency, and the university departments are focused on thoroughness. Two outcomes were evident in the report: 1) students want to acquire information online and 2) students rely on instructors first, not the library staff or IT staff. As universities focus on retention and graduation rates, Chief Academic Officers must ask several hard questions:

1. What must be done with the university research library to make it relevant to students in a search-oriented, information rich world? It is clear that students are not going to use the traditional methods encouraged by the library staff, so what is next?
2. Today’s IT departments are offering support services the students are not using. Why? Are the services relevant? Are the methods of offering the services relevant?
3. Students are using online library resources and are using the services offered by IT, but the student is not connecting the online resources with the available human resources. Should the CAO consider future organizational alignments that address the students use of technology and library resources? If yes, what would the organization's mission and goals state?
4. Is today’s information resource staff relevant? If it is, why are today’s students not connecting with the professionals? What can be done to bridge the gap between services and professionals in the minds of the students?

Throughout the year, we will address these issues on this blog and will suggest directions the CAO follow to ensure the university is meeting student needs.