LITC software to navigate group study

Finding your study group in the library during midterm and finals week can often be a daunting task for many students around campus.

Using our student technology fees, the Library Instructional Technology Center has taken the initiative to develop a central kiosk for students to go to when they want to find available study space within the library for their study groups to meet.

The LITC will be using a software program named GroupFinder, which was developed by North Carolina State University. It is specifically designed to help students post where they are studying within the library, thus making it easier for other students in the group to locate where their group members are studying. Furthermore, it will display a picture of the room they are located in, along with the room number.

Josh Kitchens, an LITC Technology Committee chair and archivist, says the GroupFinder software is free of cost.

“It’s an open source piece of software that they (North Carolina State University) developed and they basically just released to everybody,” Kitchens said. “So we basically took their code and tweaked it to work for us a little bit.”

The LITC was awarded $1,900 in student fees by the Student Technology Fee Advisory Committee to finance the project that will be completed by early January 2012. The money will be going towards a 42-inch plasma television, a Mac mini, a mouse and keyboard, Apple Care, a HDMI cable and a standing cart, which are all components of the kiosk.

Kell Carpenter, coordinator for Access Services, says the kiosk will be clearly marked and placed in a visible location on the second floor of the library.

“You go up to it, you look at it, you see if your groups are listed,” Carpenter said. He went on to say that if students do not see their group on the list they can type in their group information into the computer located at the kiosk so that additional group members can find them.

Carpenter went on to say that they plan to have this program available for students to access virtually using any computer on or off campus.

“You should be able to do this kind of stuff from any of these computers. You can do it from your home computer,” Carpenter said. “Theoretically, as long as you’ve got an account and as long as you’re an actual legitimate student, faculty member (or) staff member, you should be able to log in and create a group appointment time and say, ‘hey we’re here come meet us.’”

In the Oct. 21 issue of The Colonnade, cartoonist Zach Keepers’ editorial cartoon, which used Pac Man for its inspiration, illustrated the problem students have finding their student groups in the library. Carpenter said this caught the library staff’s attention and gave them even more incentive to back the plan they had been working on since last spring.

Student Government Association President Evan Karanovich was one of four students on the Student Technology Fee Advisory Committee to sit down and review the LITC’s request for these funds. He expressed that this was a student concern and that he is happy to see that this system, paid for using student fees, will benefit all the students here at Georgia College.

“…The library is such a complex organism in (and) of itself so by addressing this, and other concerns, you’re able to kind of bundle everything to have just a library network, and you can come to the library, it’s a one stop shop,” Karanovich said.

Posted by Lauren Davidson on Nov 17 2011. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.