Case Study: University of Kentucky and Connect2

Background

University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Media has relied on Connect2 for equipment checkout over the last year. Lorensbergs spoke with David Stephenson, Associate Professor and Ross Allen, Support Specialist, to hear about the positive changes they’ve seen since coming on board with Connect2.

“As soon as our service was of a reasonable size, we asked for budget to get a system to manage our equipment properly. We could see from a neighboring university’s system how well Connect2 would work for us.”

“Our professors are super happy with Connect2. Our Head of Department is pleased that the checkout related complaints we used to get previously have now completely stopped, so that’s definitely good news!”

Connect2 and attending NAB: new equipment investment

David and Ross are looking forward to attending this year’s NAB event. Not least, it provides opportunity to review the latest technology for journalists and potential new equipment for their department.

“An important thing to mention first is how difficult it can be to justify new equipment purchases. But with Connect2, we have an amazing success story where we use the reporting to see what is being used most by faculty and students and how well it’s been used in their classes and to prepare them for their careers.

“Now we can confidently state that items are used for thousands of hours each semester. This is great when you are seeing new items you would like to make available in your department at shows like NAB.”

More control for resource access

Connect2 includes controls that determine what assets students can see and reserve for checkout:

“In setting up the system it’s been very useful to partition out some students for allowing access to some new high-end equipment. It solves a lot of problems on the backend as we can prioritize or limit who gets access to certain items. It’s a great tool and we know that our student workers can stay in control and stop more expensive items going out in error to freshmen for example.”

The system’s inbuilt flexibility and reliable tracking features have also proved very popular:

“We always get everything back from students now with Connect2 before each semester ends. That’s been a big advantage of introducing the system and avoids having items missing with unclear locations. It still allows us to be flexible in how we enforce the borrowing rules though.

“Usually we have an automatic 3-day maximum duration for each loan. If a student needs to transport items back over the weekend, we can override the rule and give them that extra time. Or if a student needs items that their year or class wouldn’t usually have, we can work with the relevant faculty member to adjust their borrowing permissions, it’s easy to do this in the system backend.

“As always, punctuality of equipment returns can sometimes be an issue, so we’re assessing whether to introduce a late penalty. Connect2 can apply this automatically.”

Further new benefits for students and staff

Both students and staff are happy with how Connect2 supports resource access:

“In choosing Connect2, it was important to allow students to reserve equipment in advance instead of simply walking in with the hope that items would be available each time.”

The University utilises student workers to manage the day-to-day operations of their checkout room. Connect2 helps managers to monitor activity while attending to other duties:

“It’s much easier for managing inventory too. Now we have a smooth running operation which no longer requires constant supervision, but just to touch in a couple of times a week. The rest of the time we can see online what’s coming in and going out of the checkout room, and then see what items of equipment we might need more of.

“We have some great student workers, so this combined with Connect2 means the place is always well run. The workers are journalism students and they learn a lot about the cameras and other equipment that they are managing. So this arrangement works well for them too.”

In conclusion

Both David and Ross are happy to recommend Connect2 to other universities:

“Lastly, to add that Connect2 is so useful simply for being a database of everything we have. It’s a great tool for managing inventory – what we have and whether it’s in the checkout room or out at present. The cameras are expensive pieces of kit that we need to be able to track. Connect2 makes this possible and costs less than many of the single items it manages, plus you always know who had each piece last, so you can recover items much more easily.

“We’re very happy to share that Connect2 has been great for us. It gives timely and fair access to student equipment and we’ve had a great experience using it.”

 

With thanks to David Stephenson and Ross Allen at the University of Kentucky’s School of Journalism and Media