Blue shirts get students online
Even before their bags and boxes are unpacked, UD students are anxious to go online.
Over 1,200 new students asked for help
setting up their computers, printers,
televisions, and other devices on Saturday
and Sunday, August 29 and 30. A group of 40
IT staff members and 20 IT student employees
walked, biked, and drove around campus during
Move-in Days, helping students join our
campus network--UDelNet.
This year, we used a consistent color scheme
(blue 'Tech Help' t-shirts and signs) to make
sure students could find the computing sites
our staff were using as headquarters and
could easily identify someone in their
residence hall who could provide Tech Help.
Among the questions we heard during Move-in Days 2009 were ones like these:
- "Can you help me get the Internet?"
- "There are three of us in our room, but we only have two network jacks. How do we get another?"
- "What does this blue screen mean?"
- "How do I set up my Xbox on the network?"
- "What do I have to do before I install my anti-virus software?"
- "How do I set up this new
printer?"
Our special challenges this year included issues raised by the number of Internet-capable devices each individual student might bring (computer, iPod, game console, etc.), the number of personal wireless routers students brought but did not set up correctly (directions for setting up a wireless router), and conflicts between two vendor's equipment or software (e.g., a printer driver and an operating system; an operating system patch and a specific brand of computer).
Many students and families expressed their gratitude for our staff's help. Kristin Cole (A&S 13) ran into trouble when she tried to set up her computer printer. "The printer CD screwed everything up," she said.
When she came into the Harrington computing site, her computer wasn't booting up: "All I saw was a blue screen. They fixed that problem, but then my Web browser kept crashing and I couldn't get on the Internet."
She left her computer with us Saturday to reinstall the operating system. The next day, one of our student staff members went to her room, downloaded a clean copy of the printer software, and helped her set up her printer.
"I had to call one more time because iTunes quit working, but they told me over the phone how to fix that," she said. "Without their help, I never would have figured out all the things that were messed up by the printer CD."
Most student's computing problems were less complicated than Ms. Cole's. The bottom line? By the morning of August 31, nearly all our resident students were online, ready for the fall semester.
