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Opinion
To Each His Own ... Laptop
3/22/2007
At the next university, all faculty get laptops, and laptops are included in tuition costs for each student. This school has a two-year refresh period, but permits faculty to keep their machines for a third year if they wish. (Sometimes the pain and agony of a new machine's learning curve just isn't worth it!) Faculty choices are PC-only, except for in creative arts departments, and one-third choose a tablet PC. This school also recommends letting faculty keep their old mouse, keyboard, monitor, printer, etc. When upgrading faculty computers, it provides each faculty member with a large-capacity external storage device that has their entire "old" machine's contents imaged on it. (Wow!)
Another CIO chimed in on the security issue: That school's policies do not allow sensitive data to reside on any portable device. Instead, they provide a substantial virtual drive presence and access via the LAN and the Internet.
A Canadian institution notes that they've been providing a laptop/desktop choice for several years and have found docking stations to be a waste of resources.
Another university moved to providing laptops for all faculty the year before they instituted a "required laptop" policy for students. It tries to accommodate faculty peripherals requests.
A Midwestern university representative noted that they had just started a small laptop initiative with 20 faculty receiving laptops, mice, and security cables. Given that the laptops have 17-inch screens, they felt no need to have docking stations and rely on wireless.
Finally, another large university noted that they had been providing faculty with laptops since 1999, including docking stations when requested. The IT department encourages wired connections with faculty, especially when faculty members are working with sensitive information, such as grading.
Now, all of this, of course, is great information for campus IT staff starting to consider the laptop option. Resources like the Educause CIO list will be crucial as universities continue to make the shift as the power of laptops continues to increase--with multi-core processors and an ever-increasing array of standard connectivity and multimedia feature--while costs decrease.
The discussion cited above also speaks to the astounding global resources available out there through professional discussion lists--available to you just about anywhere, anytime, if you happen to be on a laptop yourself. The entire conversation above took place between 11:06 am and 2:59 in the same day, and the information was quietly and painlessly downloaded into the inbox of everyone on the list. Members of the list can choose not to even look inside this discussion, if it's not pertinent to them, due to the single, shared subject line. I still can get a sense of wonder out of this stuff.
The discussion provided not only a lot of useful information in response to the initial query, but the person requesting the information also knows the full contact information for people who took the time to respond and can call any one of them to find out more; especially if the response indicated a similar situation and a similar school.
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