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Faculty of Information Technology

Academic Support​

An authority will receive a timetable from the Central Office. The authority will store the data in Microsoft Outlook and Google Calendar to further make a public timetable.

For the timetables of the maids, the authority will need to re-input the same data in Microsoft Excel so that all data can fit tightly on a single page.

M03M04203204207303304AUDI
9:00
10:00
11:00
12:00
13:00

Based on this timetable, if there is an immediate reservation cancellation, the maids will not acknowledge the timetable change. This means academic-support resources will be left unused and not available for use in other rooms.

Moreover, many authorities do not have the same schedule; they might overbook the room and the conflicts will be dealt with difficulties.

Additionally, there are repair forms present in all rooms for the lecturers to fill in, so they can report to the repair authorities with ease. But based on history, most of them were not acknowledged. So, the lecturers or the users that used the room would still use broken equipment, resulting in a non-learning-friendly environment, and the lec-turers might need to buy a replacement upfront on their own.

IT Support​

IT Support maintains the faculty’s computers and laboratories. Information reported to IT Support is mostly repair tickets, which are organized by the Academic Support team.

Another type of requests made by lecturers is software installation. For example, an English lecturer wants to install teaching material software. He cannot do it by him-self, so he has to call IT Support and teaching time is then wasted by the delay of the support request.

Many times, IT Support does not get any information about how and why a computer is broken, because they don’t directly talk with the lecturers that encounter the prob-lem. Instead, Academic Support will contact IT Support, so many issues are left un-known and may not be resolved.

We asked them how we could enhance the service with our system, and they came up with these ideas:

  • An ability to contact IT Support directly and give a precise detail about an issue.
  • An ability to contact IT Support for software installation before a usage period.
  • An ability to note what an actual issue is and what equipment is currently broken.

They hoped that the system had reporting features to let users contact them directly and understand what was happening.

The Maids​

We were told that the maids were having an issue with cancellation. First, a cancella-tion occurred at Educational Support and after the reservation was canceled within a day, they did not get any notification on the schedule change.

The maids normally have their own schedules (which are Educational Support’s print-ed schedules). They will unlock a room and switch on the air conditioners before the scheduled time. So, if they are notified of a reservation cancellation before the scheduled time, energy can be saved, and they will not have to unlock the room or re-check the room.

Sometimes, lecturers that are trustworthy to the maids can tell them to open a room before they get their reservation confirmed. This is a violation of the policy as the res-ervation is not yet confirmed.

The Request Form​

Faculty of Information Technology’s request form is not derived from other faculties’ form. The form asks for:

  • a requester’s name, surname, and student or staff identification number
  • a reservation purpose
  • a space name, time to reserve, date to reserve, recurrences
  • a contact number

The faculty will approve the reservation when these conditions are met:

  • It has a signature of an assistant lecturer (or a lecturer can self-sign this block).
  • It has a signature of Academic Support staff.
  • It has a signature of the Vice President of Faculty of Information Technology (for students and lecturers who will use a space multiple times).

For lecturers and students not from Faculty of Information Technology or its tenants, a formal form is required, and a reservation must be placed in advance. All instanta-neous requests are mostly rejected.

The problem of using a form is that students need to walk through the process manu-ally and get staff’s signatures physically. The one who submits the form first is the one that gets the space. This process can cause schedule overlaps.