A group of University of Tampa students sat in class on their phones, tablets and laptops, responding to an interactive poll that would serve as their quiz grade when all of a sudden everything stopped. The wireless Internet completely dropped. In fact, computers did not even show the network name in their system. For both the students and their professor, Scott Paine, this was not the first time experiencing Internet issues.
“We were about six or eight questions into the interactive quizzing dialogue about the reading, when the internet failed completely. For the students and for me. So we were no longer able to use the web-based polling service for a quiz,” said Scott Paine, Associate Professor of Communications and Government/World Affairs at the University of Tampa.
Though this lapse in service was due to a network equipment failure, which the Department of Information Technology estimates occurred for only twenty minutes, it was not the first occurrence of sporadic Internet service the University has seen in recently. During the first two days of the 2013 fall semester, students and faculty received an email about a system downgrade that resulted in a large-scale slowdown in service.
Chloe Messer, a senior education major who commutes from her off-campus residence, feels that spotty wireless service has impacted her academics. Not only does Messer use the web in class to work on interactive lesson plans, but she also is dependent on campus network services to work on assignments when waiting between classes.
“I cannot count the number of times the Internet has gone down when I was doing a project or homework on campus,” Messer said . “As commuters, we generally don’t have time to go home and use our Internet there. This forces us to rely on the school Wi-Fi, and when we have connection issues it puts a big kink in our ability to work on our studies.”
Donna Alexander, the Vice President for Information Technology, said that the University continuously monitors the wireless bandwidth in order to purchase additional coverage to meet the university’s needs. The University of Tampa has acknowledged the need for a stronger wireless service as the campus continues expansion, and has already moved towards becoming a better service provider for students.
“This past summer, the UT wireless network in the residence halls was upgraded with new high-capacity 802.11n wireless access points and core router,” Alexander said. “Additional wireless access points were installed in the residence halls, totaling 487, nearly tripling the wireless bandwidth from 54 megabytes to 135 megabytes and expanding the five gigahertz wireless coverage.”
Bandwidth is essentially the downloading and uploading speed capability an Internet service has, and access points are router points in which this service can be accessed. By adding bandwidth speed and access points, the Department of Information Technology is preventing any one access point from being flooded with users. Overloading the system with users tends to be the main cause of slow internet service on a campus. In addition to these already developed upgrades, the University of Tampa plans to upgrade once more by Oct. 31 to a two-gigabyte bandwidth speed.
Paine finds these upgrades a necessity in designing courses around a 21st century reality. He recently discovered a positive influence of web-based technology in a classroom setting, and he has begun to include more web-based programs into his classrooms. Though fairly new, he noticed that these interactive activities helps assess students understanding, and allows for opportunities to clarify difficult concepts.
“If the university is unable to maintain appropriate levels of reliable Internet service, that definitely both undermines our claim to be very orientated towards experiential learning for the twenty first century and our position vis-a-vis other institutions that our students might be choosing between,” Paine said. “We either are going to be a university that makes full use of the available technology in intelligent ways, or we’re not because those technologies are actually not reliably provided.”
The Department of Information Technology encourages students to report connection issues and to view information about how to connect with the network via Spartanweb, under Campus Life.
Doha Madani can be reached at doha.madani@spartans.ut.edu