IT service desk sees high traffic as students engage in hybrid semester

Bradley’s IT service desk has handled students’ technical needs for years. However, with hybrid classes in place and a switch to remote learning within the two week quarantine period, the service desk had to adapt.

During the few weeks of this fall semester, there have been approximately 907 tickets submitted to the service desk this fall compared to only 528 tickets submitted last fall.

One of the most common problems the service desk deals with is device registrations. Any device a student brings to campus requiring an ethernet connection or streaming devices would be put on to the other secondary wireless outlet point, BUother.

The service desk also answers questions concerning password resets for Sakai and Canvas, and other issues concerning learning and education software and materials. However, these issues have to be dealt with remotely.

“Taking [in-person service] out of the equation has been a very difficult adjustment for us,” Bryan Gibson, interim service desk manager, said.

Gibson said that people may have a hard time explaining their specific technological problems over Zoom or Google Meet.

“We have to make sure that we are speaking in common terms with them and keeping all of the tech speak out of it, but that’s been our biggest challenge so far, just having the disconnect with the user not being able to see face to face, which we deal with on a regular basis but not to this level,” Gibson said.

Additionally, registered ethernet cords have also been on the rise this year. Roughly 700 device registrations have been accounted for this semester compared to 300 in the fall of 2019.

“People, in general, are bringing more devices to campus, and that’s understandable with everything that’s gone on,” Gibson said. “If you get locked down in your room for extended periods of time, you’re going to want to have some form of entertainment, so people are bringing streaming devices, game consoles, laptop and desktop computers.”

Barbra Kerns, executive director of learning design and technology, touched on how faculty have been able to adapt to the service desk’s help.

“We offered three institutes over the summer to help faculty prepare to teach in a hybrid environment or just a lot of different methods that depended on what happened with COVID-19 and what situations might change too, depending on how things progressed through the semester,” Kerns said.

The FOLD (Fundamentals and Online Learning and Design) was a two-week institute covering course design, using technology and building online modules. Kerns said 272 faculty members and staff participated in that training.

“In addition to adding a new LMS [Learning Management System] of Canvas we’ve also upgraded a number of classrooms to enable faculty members to more easily teach in the classroom as well as online simultaneously,” Kerns said. “It’s a methodology called hyflex teaching. About 60 rooms were upgraded or have had new technology added to enable that capability.”

The IT Service Desk is temporarily located at Morgan Hall Room 110. Students can receive help from IT Service Desk by visiting either https://support.bradley.edu., email at itservicedesk@bradley.edu or by phone at (309) 677-2964.