On the 4 March I held another Student-ICT Forum, which gave all academic reps the chance to raise any ICT related issues or ideas to senior members of ICT staff, while ICT could use our views as a soundboard on any upcoming projects they have planned.

The summary of the main issues were:

ICT's issues

- In response to student pressure ICT have bid for funds to speed up the implementation of Panopto.

- Bandwidth is going to be increased to 10GB per 24 hours and a “smarter” firewall is going to be introduced, so students don’t get blocked when you are downloading legal files e.g. using Netflix or Steam.

- A solution to the faulty print drivers still hasn’t been found but they are planning on fixing this.

- ICT are looking into a way of showing how busy Ethos is by swipe card information and want to display this information through the Imperial Mobile app.

- ICT are planning on developing a personal tutor logging system to improve student support and making the personal tutor role easier for staff. Doug Hunt and Becky Lane have been working with ICT on this issue.

Students’ issues

- If students feel that their home directories are too small or would like computer towers stored under the desk, then they need to bring it to the attention of their department via their academic reps and their departments can deal with this issue.

- An ICT support sheet should exist in every lecture theatre and a new start guide has been created. ICT already provides training for lecturers on ICT in lecture theatres.

- It was raised that the need to change your password every year was too frequent. ICT explained that this was a recommendation by auditors and that the cost implications of alternative identity management system were too high.

You can find the minutes from the forum here