{"id":137,"date":"2009-03-24T09:00:08","date_gmt":"2009-03-24T13:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/?p=137"},"modified":"2009-03-24T13:55:47","modified_gmt":"2009-03-24T17:55:47","slug":"university-of-virginia-to-close-computer-labs","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/2009\/03\/24\/university-of-virginia-to-close-computer-labs\/","title":{"rendered":"University of Virginia to Close Computer Labs"},"content":{"rendered":"

Chris Faigle sent along an article from our local NBC station that UVA plans to close most of its public computing labs by the summer of 2011<\/a>.\u00a0 It’s a fiscal decision in a rough economy, with a stated rationale that with 99% of students bringing their own laptops to school, there isn’t a need for public computers.<\/p>\n

This reasoning seems contrary to the pervasive use of public machines I see here at Richmond.\u00a0 It also runs contrary to data from the MISO Survey<\/a>, a quantitative measure of faculty, student use and satisfaction with higher education IT and Library resources and services (disclaimer: I am a member of the MISO Survey team).<\/p>\n

This past year was the first year that institutions took the survey for a second time, giving us our first longitudinal look at students, faculty, and staff.\u00a0 Within a 3-year period, students reported a 9% increase in laptop ownership (from 84.4% to 93.6%).\u00a0 In that same period, use of public computing labs on campus rose at a statistically significant rate (Time 1 mean 3.59 on a 1-4 scale, n=2617, STD 1.25; Time 2 mean 3.66, n=1949, STD=1.21).<\/p>\n

It would be interesting to research the reason for an increase in public computing at the same time as a rise in laptop ownership.\u00a0 Is it specialty software?\u00a0 The social aspects of public labs?\u00a0 Insufficient power support for laptops on campuses?<\/p>\n

I agree with the cost concerns around public computing.\u00a0 At Richmond<\/a>, we’re concluding a Virtual Desktop Infrastructure proof-of-concept project, with the hope that we will be able to make software available to students on their own computers (similar to NCSU’s VCL<\/a>) or at least via a thin client solution.\u00a0 There will always be a need for fat clients in some spaces, but these alternatives will make our environment easier to manage and our resources more ubiquitous.\u00a0 But UVA’s move seems unsupported by the data, and I will be curious to see what the long-term impact is for their students.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Chris Faigle sent along an article from our local NBC station that UVA plans to close most of its public computing labs by the summer of 2011.\u00a0 It’s a fiscal decision in a rough economy, with a stated rationale that … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"nf_dc_page":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,6],"tags":[67,70,68,69,309],"class_list":["post-137","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-education","category-technology","tag-computer-labs","tag-learning-spaces","tag-miso-survey","tag-students","tag-university-of-richmond"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":145,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137\/revisions\/145"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kevincreamer.net\/panda\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}