At Sacramento State, students and faculty use personal computing devices on campus every day. Most faculty, however, are issued university devices in order to access the school’s software.

One main issue discussed on Friday by a panel of four faculty members and administrators at the Academic Information Technology Forum was how to separate these devices to be limited to either school or personal use.

“I have a university issued laptop, personal laptop, university issued iPad, personal iPhone and desktop computer in my office,” said faculty member and Communication Studies Professor Ray Koegel. “It’s almost impossible to separate (personal and work devices).”

The forum was initiated by the Information Resources and Technology division to discuss IT issues affecting teaching and learning. More than 25 faculty members listened as the panel answered questions to develop a common understanding of the problems and issues around the use of personally owned devices for university work.

Located in the Academic Information Resource Center, the IRT division is a customer service organization on campus to help and respond to information technology needs, including issues regarding these university issued computers.

Personally owned computing devices have become common on campuses and universities have to adapt and constitute new ways of thinking about utilizing these technologies.

University owned device distribution is done on a department basis. About two-thirds of faculty members surveyed last year said they were issued a university laptop or desktop, said Vice President and Chief Information Officer of Information Resources and Technology Larry Gilbert.

“It looked like it was mostly part-time faculty members that weren’t permanently issued university devices,” Gilbert said.

One of the biggest issues for part-time faculty who were not issued a device is when they try to use university software or are looking for support.

“We have part-time faculty members on campus who weren’t provided university computers and bring in their own laptop,” Gilbert said. “They expect that the university will provide them the software, but our hands are often tied by vendor software licensing agreements.”

Faculty members who use university-issued computers from their department or who connect a personal computer to the university network are required to have up-to-date anti-virus and other security protections. This requirement is based on California State University-wide information security policies, Gilbert said.

“It’s to ensure that everybody has network protection and up-to-date security on their operating system and their main software,” Gilbert said. “But the policies also mandated that there has to be a university controlled system that has to be able to monitor security of computer devices.”

The forum was meant to bring together faculty to discuss issues and ask questions to review the complex aspects of increasing faculty ownership of computing devices.

“Because of rapid changes in technology use in higher education, everything is changing and sometimes we don’t communicate as well as we could about those changes,” said Associate Vice President for Academic Computing Doug Jackson. “Forums like these help to bridge that communication gap.”

Faculty members are not the only ones being affected by these issues. Gilbert said in many ways it is affecting students in the same way as faculty who were not issued a device from the university.

“We do support students’ use of computing devices to the extent that we can. However, it’s probably only realistic for us to support the main devices like the iPad because there are so many devices out there,” Gilbert said.

For example, IRT took a snapshot of our wireless network and found more than 120 different types of portable devices and 12 different operating systems attached, Gilbert said.

“So, it’s literally impossible for us to be able to support every device,” Gilbert said. “We’re a little bit fortunate in that the Android and iPhone devices at least predominate so that can help most students.”

Students are also affected by the software licensing issues. Because of these licenses, students may only use university software in campus computer labs which can be conflicting with their already stressful schedules, Gilbert said.

“We have the ability to virtualize that software so that you can use it anytime and anyplace,” Gilbert said. “Unfortunately, the vendors won’t allow us to use our university license to do so.”

Reasons vendors such as Microsoft will not allow this kind of off-campus use is because it could make more money off of selling separate virtual licenses, Gilbert said.

“If I had my choice, we would give all software licensing to all faculty and students at anytime and anyplace, but the reality is the major software vendors are extremely resistant,” Gilbert said. “They’re scared to death that they’re going to lose revenue.”

Alyssa Sanguinetti can be reached at [email protected].