Thanks to all of you who took the time to fill out the MISO survey of technology and library services at MIIS.  Overall, approximately 70% of you responded and, as promised, we want to share the results with you.

A full report on the technology portions of the survey can be accessed here. A similar report on the library portions of the survey will be forthcoming during the summer.

Here are some highlights of things we learned:

(1) Overall, MIIS faculty, staff and students report a moderate level of satisfaction with most aspects of technology.  Those areas that received the lowest ratings (slightly below the 3.0 threshold of satisfaction) from faculty were (a) input into computing decisions and (b) Moodle. Staff also expressed a lower level of satisfaction with input into computing decisions. Student satisfaction was above the 3.0 threshold for all areas.

As a result of this survey, we know that we need to work on involving more members of the campus community in computing decisions.  We also need to work harder on communicating information about technology, the one area where both MIIS and Middlebury fell consistently below the threshold of satisfaction.  These will be priorities for the coming year.

The issues around Moodle are a little more complex.  It is not clear from the survey results whether the reported dissatisfaction has to do with the design or functionality of the application itself, or the underlying performance of the network.  We will be doing further research to try to arrive at a better diagnosis of the problem.

(2) Network speed and stability are of paramount importance to all constituencies. As many of you know, we are in the midst of a project led by Middlebury staff to improve these services, and hope to complete the project this summer. Other services of critical importance (Banner, email, SPAM filtering) are also centralized at Middlebury; survey responses concerning these services have been made available to our Middlebury colleagues, and will be the subject of joint discussions this summer.

(3) It was no surprise that the survey showed MIIS faculty, staff and students to be intrepid early adopters of technology.  All constituencies at MIIS reported use of a larger overall number of technologies for academic purposes than their counterparts at Middlebury, as well as a greater interest in learning digital and social media tools. This is both good and bad:  it points to the important role of innovation in our academic culture, but it also creates challenges for a small staff to support an increasing and ever-changing constellation of technological tools.

(4) Last but not least, those who made use of various technology service-providers on campus reported a high level of satisfaction with the quality of our front-line staff (consistently above the 3.0 threshold). Thanks to all of those staff for their dedication and efforts to “be the solution,” sometimes in the face of very limited resources.

In summary: We learned that we need to continue to work with Middlebury colleagues on the performance of our network and core technology services; that we have issues with Moodle requiring further exploration; that we need to become increasingly nimble and versatile to keep up with the evolving needs of a dynamic group of constituents; and that we need to place much greater emphasis on communication in both directions — providing information to members of the community, and offering opportunities for input into technology decisions.

We will be working over the summer on strategies for addressing these priorities, and  hope that we can count on you all for your continued feedback.  I invite all of you to respond with your input, either by commenting on this post or by emailing Amy McGill directly.