The Center for Academic Technology Support is conducting a survey to better understand what works and what needs to be updated in terms of current campus technological services.

Recently, a survey was sent out to all Eastern students for their input on the current status of campus technology.

Clinton Brown, a graduate assistant, is the project administrator and helps run the survey.

“The nature of the survey isn’t just to address Wi-Fi,” Brown said. “It’s about how all students use technology, how many devices are connected.”

The survey is not just run by Eastern, but it is partnered with a separate sponsor called Educause, a non-profit organization.

“They are the ones who do this,” Brown said. “It’s been done for 14 years, this is the second year (Eastern) has done it.”

Brown said over 115,00 undergraduate students participated in this survey nationwide.

“We can compare how our undergraduates experience technology at Eastern compared to other institutions,” Brown said. “Since we’re a masters-granting public institution, that’s one of our groups that we’re going to compare ourselves with and we’re also going to compare ourselves nationwide.”

The survey asks students to talk about their experiences with technology on campus, and where some of the better and worse locations are.

Brian Anzures, a freshman psychology and pre-medicine major, said he finds most of the current campus technology to be quite helpful.

“The computer labs are really good, like the computer lab at the library is really good, the Gregg Technology Center as well,” Anzures said. “The only thing that is a little bit bad is the Wi-Fi.”

Anzures said unless you have an Ethernet cord, the Wi-Fi is hard to rely on.

He also said in places like Booth Library or academic buildings, the Wi-Fi connection is better since these are areas Wi-Fi is mostly used.

Brown said the survey is not about the number of people that take it; it is about making sure that the results represent the undergraduate student body.“Conducting it from this year to last year, you want to see that we’re improving,” Brown said. “Whether it’s people’s experience with D2L, with our email systems, with our technical support, we really want to see that people’s experiences are getting better.”

Last year, students were having some issues with having to go from Desire2Learn to go to the library’s website. Students would have to log out of D2L in order to access the library database.

“We resolved that issue, we put a link within D2L to the library,” Brown said. “The new email platform, we wanted to make sure that integrated into D2L, we wanted to make all these things integrate because that was one of the concerns that students had.”

Brown said the survey results are taken and then look at the issues that are shown, and then decisions are made how to address these issues based on funding.

These results are not just based on student results, but faculty members as well.

Anzures said the Wi-Fi connectivity needs to be improved in the residence halls on campus.

“I know that Eastern is campus-wide Internet, but there are certain areas when you walk outside, the Internet just goes,” Anzures said. “I definitely think for the Wi-Fi, if they can put in new routers in the dorms that would greatly help with everything that’s going on in the dorms and the complaints that people have about Eastern’s Wi-Fi.”

The survey is currently ongoing and will be available until the week before Spring Break.

Luis Martinez can be reached at 581-2812 or [email protected].