Background

From September 17, 2018 through September 18, 2018, BYU-Idaho’s IT department held the TSC Booth at the Manwaring Center in front of the Crossroads. At the start of Fall semester, there were many students that were in need of tech help. Below are the notable trends.

  • There were considerably more Freshman students (1-2 Semesters) that requested TSC help compared to other students. Their issues were mostly in downloading software for class and Microsoft Office.

  • Tuesday and Wednesday for both weeks were the days with the most visits to the booth. People frequented the booth much less after Wednesday; Ticket issues dropped by more than half.

  • The most common tech issue dealt with “Software Setup / OS Install & Troubleshoot”.

Category by Academic Year

This visual shows which ticket issues were most common for each academic year. While “Software Setup / OS Install & Troubleshoot” was the dominant category for most students, the “Other / Tech Advice” category is the second most popular category. While in previous semesters “Printing” was a more prevalent issue, it appears to have decreased this year.

Academic Year

Of the 515 responses that occurred thorughout the two-week period, there were 186 (or 36% of the visitors) recorded occurrences of freshman students visiting the booth.

The “Unable to answer” category was created because in some cases, IT members running the booth were either unable to ask the subject their academic year or they were not students. In order to keep the data accurate, the “Unable to answer” category was created.

Weekday

Monday Tuesday Wednesday Thursday Friday Saturday
88 118 153 76 72 8

This data was taken by summing the number of booth visitors for each weekday throughout both weeks. For example, the combined number of visitors on Monday of Week 1 and Monday of Week 2 total 88 visitors.

This data reveals that there is a steady increasing trend at the start of the week, Monday, up till Wednesday, at which point the number of booth visitors dramatically dropped. Suggested action would be to decrease hours for booth availability on Thursday and Friday, while increasing booth availability on Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday.

Printing

As is consistent with previous semesters, “Wireless Printing”" was the most common printing issue, with a total of 30 recorded issues.

WiFi

With “DNS / Proxy / No IP” was the most popular Wi-Fi issue; in the future this should be a point of focus for Wi-Fi related issues.

Software Setup / OS Install & Troubleshoot

The two dominant issues in the “Software Setup / OS Install & Troubleshoot” category which are “Class Software Setup”" and “Microsoft Office Setup”. Although these ussues lead the pack, there is a great spread and variance of other issues. The two dominant issues should be considered as a point of focus for “Software Setup / OS Install & Troubleshoot” in the future

Pass-Along Cards

While pass-along cards were a focus in the past, they appear to not be such a focus this semester. They are significant in helping students solve their technology issues quickly on their own.