This year, Swarthmore College ITS and the Libraries asked the campus community to provide feedback via the MISO Survey<\/a>, “a web-based quantitative survey designed to measure how faculty, students, and staff view library and computing services in higher education.”\u00a0 We appreciate the 867 community members who took the time to let us know how we are doing.\u00a0 This is the second time the survey has been administered, so we now have data to compare with our 2016 results.\u00a0 In this post, we’ll look at the biggest changes in the survey results over the past 3 years and offer some possible interpretations of the results.<\/p>\n Rankings were based on a 1-5 scale with 1 = very dissatisfied\/important and 5 = very satisfied\/important.\u00a0 We looked at the biggest changes in the average rating between 2016 and 2019 for each type of community member (student, staff, and faculty).<\/p>\nStudent Trends<\/h1>\n
| Question<\/th>\n | 2016<\/th>\n | 2019<\/th>\n | Difference<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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| How informed do you feel you are about the following? || Scheduled system downtime<\/td>\n | 2.67<\/td>\n | 2.34<\/td>\n | -0.34<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How dissatisfied or satisfied are you with the following resources and services? || E-mail services<\/td>\n | 3.40<\/td>\n | 3.69<\/td>\n | 0.29<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How dissatisfied or satisfied are you with the following resources and services? || Performance of wireless access on campus<\/td>\n | 2.61<\/td>\n | 2.33<\/td>\n | -0.27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How important are these services to you? || Online collaborative software (e.g. Google Drive)<\/td>\n | 3.48<\/td>\n | 3.71<\/td>\n | 0.23<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | ||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| How important are these services to you? || Support when you have a desktop\/laptop computing problem<\/td>\n | 3.25<\/td>\n | 3.04<\/td>\n | -0.21<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\nInterpretation<\/h2>\nA decrease in feeling informed about scheduled system downtime led to a recent increase in ITS email communications about changes to key systems.\u00a0 This feeling may be tied to several network outages in recent months, which likely led to dissatisfaction with wifi performance.\u00a0 ITS is working to improve the reliability of the wifi network by working closely with our vendor and expert technical consultants.<\/p>\n A switch to G Suite two years ago may have been the main cause for the increase in student satisfaction with email (Gmail) services which also tracks an increase in the importance of collaborative software such as Google Drive and Docs.\u00a0 The prevalence of web-based software and storage may also be related to why students thought support for their computer problems was less important than 3 years ago since online content is easily accessed from any computer.<\/p>\n Staff Trends\u00a0<\/span><\/h1>\nQuestion<\/th>\n | 2016<\/th>\n | 2019<\/th>\n | Difference<\/th>\n<\/tr>\n<\/thead>\n | How dissatisfied or satisfied are you with the following resources and services? || Departmental printers<\/td>\n | 3.39<\/td>\n | 3.71<\/td>\n | 0.32<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | How important are these services to you? || Borrowing laptops<\/td>\n | 2.44<\/td>\n | 2.75<\/td>\n | 0.3<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | How important are these services to you? || Borrowing technology equipment (e.g. chargers, adapters, cameras)<\/td>\n | 2.66<\/td>\n | 2.93<\/td>\n | 0.27<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | How important are these services to you? || Web conferencing (e.g. Skype, Adobe Connect, Zoom)<\/td>\n | 2.92<\/td>\n | 3.18<\/td>\n | 0.26<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n | How important are these services to you? ||\u00a0Administrative Systems (Banner)<\/td>\n | 3.64<\/td>\n | 3.39<\/td>\n | -0.25<\/td>\n<\/tr>\n<\/tbody>\n<\/table>\n | Interpretation<\/h2>\nThe largest trends for staff from 2016 to 2019 were generally positive with either improved satisfaction or feeling that services were more important than in the past.\u00a0 The staff was more satisfied with departmental printers.\u00a0 The ability to borrow laptops and other technology from Media Services was considered more important than in the past as was web conferencing.\u00a0 We aren’t sure why\u00a0Administrative Systems (Banner) decreased in importance unless we are hiring more people that have less direct connections to Banner.\u00a0 If you have a theory, please get in touch!<\/p>\n Faculty Trends<\/h1>\n
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