OUCC 2009

I attended the OUCC (Ontario Universities Computing Conference) earlier this week at Ryerson. One of the more interesting sessions was a student panel on student technology expectations. The panel consisted of students from a variety of institutions – Wilfrid Laurier, McMaster, Queens, Waterloo, Western, but it became apparent that while a variety of institutions was represented, the students were all from a particular  tech-savvy demographic as they knew one another from playing World of Warcraft.   That said, there were many interesting points revealed during the hour:

• online access to a personal calendar at all times was important (This was something that rated quite high on the mobile device survey we did last November, so it was good to have it confirmed)
• workspace is as important as computer labs (a couple of students mentioned that they would push keyboards aside to give themselves space to work)
• shared disk space is important; currently this only works with desktops not laptops
• shared disk space at the university was seen to be better than space on the cloud
• they want to learn through practice and not in a “training session”
• killer app for them is the internet
• wifi is important outside buildings for smartphone usage