Spring 2011 Student Survey

VCU Technology Services conducted a satisfaction survey of VCU students, spring 2011, using the TechQual+ survey instrument. TechQual+ is a 5-year-old survey based on the same methodology used successfully for many years by the Association of Research Libraries’ LibQUAL+ survey. While the relative immaturity of the TechQual+ project means that the results are unlikely to be as reliable as LibQUAL+, the study does provide us with insights into where we need to concentrate on improving services.

Conclusions

VCU Technology Services greatly appreciates the time and effort that many of you put in to complete the Spring 2011 Student Satisfaction Survey.

This same survey instrument was used to survey VCU students in the previous two years. The most striking change in this year’s survey results from last year’s results is the rising expectations demonstrated. For all 17 of 18 questions, the “Minimum Service Level Expectation” rose.

Two additions to this year’s survey were open-ended questions asking what VCU Technology Services is doing well and what we most need to improve on. We are pleased that customer service, in general, was identified as something that we do well over seven times for each one time identified as something that we need to improve on. The helpIT Center was frequently mentioned as something that we do well by over a 4 to 1 margin. The technologies most commonly cited as being done well include email, Canvas, eServices, and VCUCard. Based on the survey findings and analysis of the open-ended questions and suggestions, we identified the following three items as the areas students would most like to see improvement:

1. Wireless - There were numerous comments about wireless access and performance.

Actions

At the time of this survey, there were 1,050 wireless access points, 170 of which were ‘N’ standard (up from last year’s 894 wireless access points, 10 of which were the ‘N’ standard) across both campuses. Central funding has not been provided for wireless. Funding to implement wireless access points comes from individual schools, departments, and student technology fees. The current budget climate will severely limit our ability to expand wireless coverage significantly.

Upgrade all residence halls to the ‘N’ standard and upgrade the connection to each residence hall ten fold from 100 Mb/sec (megabit per second) to 1 Gb/sec (gigabit per second).
- Update October 2011:
  - All nine month residence halls upgraded wireless access points to ‘N’ standard and connection upgraded to 1 Gb/sec.
  - All 12-month residence halls are on schedule to have upgrades completed by December 23.
- Update May 2012:
  - All residence hall upgrades completed December 23.
Modest expansion implementing the wireless ‘N’ standard in targeted areas will be done as funding permits.
- Update October 2011:
  - Expanded and upgraded wireless access to provide better building coverage and reliability in Snead Hall/Engineering East, Engineering West, Shafer Court Dining, Oliver Hall Science Wing, Perkinson Building, Lyons, Woods, and Sanger 1,044. With this upgrade and with the completed residence hall upgrades, there are now 1,270 wireless access points, 821 of which are the ‘N’ standard.
- Update May 2012:
  - Expanded and upgraded wireless access to provide better building coverage and reliability in Pollak, Sports Medicine, Hibbs, Fine Arts, Medical Sciences Builds 1& 2, and Temple.
  - 1,461 access points are installed with 1,140 (approx. 78%) at the ‘N’ standard.

2. Network reliability and performance – The need for a more reliable, high performing network had the highest expectations of all the survey questions.

Actions

Begin implementing improvements to network devices to increase the network capacity ten fold from (in some buildings) 100 Mb/sec (megabit per second) to 1 Gb/sec (gigabit per second) from the backbone to all buildings on campus.
- Update October 2011:
  - Funding approved and Gig to building project initiated May 2011 with planned completion May 2013.
  - Initial “quick turnaround buildings” in progress.
- Update May 2012:
  - Sixty-eight buildings completed and documented. Eleven additional buildings upgraded but waiting on documentation for close-out. Further information can be found at http://www.ts.vcu.edu/askit/4286.html .
Implement redundancy for Internet connectivity and network traffic within the VCU network.
- Update October 2011: Implemented a complete network redundant path using identical devices in secondary Harris Hall location for failover purposes should the primary network path in the VCU Computer Center fail. Each site has a 1-gigabit connection to the Internet supplied by different Internet service providers. Each website can also independently all internal VCU network traffic.

3. Timely resolution to problems – While expectations for this issue increased this year over last, the perceived service performance decreased.

Actions

Measure problem resolution time, then establish and publish a goal.
- Update October 2011: Established method to measure VCU TS problem resolution time.
- Update May 2012: Due to limitations of the current Remedy software, measurement of problem resolution time is unreliable.
Develop a plan to reduce problem resolution time.
- Update May 2012: Plan put on hold pending upgrade or replacement of Remedy software. However, the need to consistently respond to and resolve problems quickly is being emphasized in all VCU TS groups.

Again, thanks to the many of you who took your time to provide your feedback about how we are doing and make suggestions on how we can improve. This document will again be updated over the next year with our progress as we work to address the issues that were pointed out. It is always helpful to us for you to report problems that you have to the VCU helpIT Center (828-2227, help@vcu.edu) with as many specific details as possible.

Your comments on these plans are welcome. You will be asked to authenticate to ensure that comments are from VCU, but your comments will be stored anonymously. Please include your name and contact information if you would like a response.

Complete Survey Results

Spring 2011 Student Technology Satisfaction Survey

This article was updated: 02/9/2022