The pandemic situation banned the presence of teachers and students in the classrooms disrupting the typical teaching process. Videoconferencing services have been used successfully for lectures, but they are insufficient for hands-on laboratories where the physical presence is a requirement (i.e. to access specific hardware). Enabling remote…

In this paper, we argue that, where we measure student attendance, this creates an extrinsic motivator in the form of a reward for (apparent) engagement and can thus lead to undesirable behaviour and outcomes. We go on to consider a number of other mechanisms to assess or encourage student engagement -- such as interactions with a learning…

This paper reports the results of a survey conducted to assess students' usage and perceptions of a finance lab. Finance labs differ from simple computer labs as they typically contain data boards, streaming market quotes, terminals and software that allow for real-time financial analyses. Despite the fact that such labs represent significant and…

Student computing is now mobile. For college students across the nation, convenient access to information--anytime, anywhere, on demand--has become not only a priority, but a necessity. To successfully serve the needs of this current generation of students, colleges and universities must recognize the trend and align services accordingly.…

North Carolina State University may never build another computer lab. Instead the university has installed racks of equipment in windowless rooms where students and professors never go. This article describes a project called the Virtual Computing Lab. Users enter it remotely from their own computers in dormitory rooms or libraries. They get all…

The authors describe a collaborative study at two universities, one in Australia and the other in the UK. The main objectives of the study were to gain an understanding of the factors that influence a student's choice of location when using computing facilities, what applications they use, and how adequate various services and facilities provided…

This case study describes the use of a synchronous communication application (MSN Messenger) in a large academic computing environment. It draws on data from interviews, questionnaires and student marks to examine the link between use of the application and success measured through module marks. The relationship is not simple. Total abstainers and…