Discovering unknown capabilities of labstats

Abstract

With strains on budgets throughout higher education, departments aim to identify and distinguish between areas in which money is needed or where funds can be reduced. In computer lab management, tracking usage of software and hardware is always a challenging obstacle. At Lewis & Clark College, we have struggled to establish and provide for the correct lab usage quickly and efficiently. This obstacle involving lab usage has become especially critical, as we have seen an increase in the use of computer labs over the past couple of years. Until recently we were unable to provide clear evidence and accurate data of the increased usage to our decision makers. The recent deployment of LabStats solved this problem for us.LabStats, a Computer Lab Solutions product, has given us a chance to seek the information we want, whenever we want. In this paper, I discuss how we continue to utilize the information provided from LabStats in order to become more efficient and effective in customer service and managing lab resources. I also illustrate how LabStats features can assist lab managers in their daily responsibilities of: application usage, offline lab computers, tracking student users, lab inventory, live usage display, managing lab hours, and a slew of other uses to maximize lab capabilities