Although we’re usually looking to the future of the Learning Commons it seemed appropriate to start things off with a quick review of what has happened over the past few months.  A lot of improvements have been made recently and I think they deserve to be discussed.

The biggest improvement is undoubtedly the replacement of the workstations and monitors in the South and North Learning Commons.  The new Lenovo desktops and Toshiba widescreen monitors are far superior to what we had before and these machines have understandably been very well received.   Not long after that 9 new, cool looking iMacs were deployed, replacing the three we had before.  All the Mac fans seem very happy with those.  Black and white printing is now also available for the Macs, a feature which wasn’t before.

The Upper Learning Commons has benefited from the installation of new tables and chairs.  Sure, it’s less exciting than new PC’s and Macs but I think the layout is nice and has helped make a great study space.

Another big step forward for us was the switch to double-sided printing by default for all PC’s.  It goes without saying why we took that step and most people are very happy with the change.  It was interesting to see that even though some people were unaware of the change when it happened, and as a result printouts were not what they expected,  many appreciated the importance of such a move and blamed themselves for not reading the notices!

I am always looking for new ideas to reduce our footprint – another step forward was that after closing all the PCs in the South and North Commons now automatically turn themselves off.  A simple change that collectively over a year will result in a considerable power saving.  If you have any ideas then don’t hesitate to let me know.

I’m very happy with our recent upgrades and with the services that we offer here at the Learning Commons.  Let me know what you think.  If you have an idea about something we’re missing then come on, lets talk about it!