The Office of Information Technology is the University of Alabama’s office of all things technology related at the University and caters to students, faculty and staff through the IT Service Desk.
The OIT intends to “facilitate research, enhance instruction, and support administrative operations by providing quality leadership, services, and resources in information technology,” according to their mission statement on their website. Vice Provost and Chief Information Officer John McGowan explained how the OIT helps students.
“The Office of Information Technology is a support organization that serves the University’s campus in many ways such as security, networking and helping with computer systems,” McGowan said. “The main way students interact with the OIT is through the IT Service Desk where they can receive help with their technology issues.”
Additional services of the OIT include fee-based departmental hardware and software support, software licensing, helping with emerging technologies such as Blackboard Learn, project management, consulting with instructional technologies and managing the UA campus’s wireless Internet.
“The main reason why the wireless has so many issues is because the OIT is working to slowly change the wireless from a public wireless to a private one,” McGowan said. “This means we’re gradually transitioning from just people just being able to access the wireless to them having to sign into the wireless through their myBama identifications.”
Directly assisting those on campus, the IT Service Desk provides services geared toward helping students with viruses, connectivity and software issues. The desk also supplies students with basic anti-virus tools and shops in Tuscaloosa that can assist with hardware problems the desk is not allowed to operate on, IT service desk coordinator, Felita Winn said.
“With these services, the IT Service Desk has charges based computer complications. We take a look to see what the issue is. For example, if a virus needs to be removed, we don’t charge,” Winn said. “We charge $70, but if we can’t fix the issue due to hardware problems, we backup the student’s computer, and we only charge $35.”
The service desk can also help faculty and staff members, but only with mobile devices such as iPhones and iPads and helping with Bama and Crimson email accounts. The service desk is not responsible for working on UA computers, Winn said.
The service desk provides invaluable resources to students, and also hires students to work for them. Aramis Harmon, a sophomore majoring in fashion retail, explained the requirements for students who work at the service desk.
“You do need to have common computer skills like having good background knowledge of things like Microsoft Word and the Internet,” Harmon said. “Anything else regarding the network you get trained on, but you do need to have good customer service skills and you need to learn to deal with frustrated customers with attitudes.”
The OIT also helps the University with IT governance by creating open lines of communication throughout the community regarding technology initiatives and hosts a CIO blog as a way to simplify issues for those not aware of technological issues and terms according to the OIT website.
For more information on the IT Service Desk and the OIT itself, visit oit.ua.edu.
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