Smart Locker Success for Edinburgh University

Sally Jorjani, Head of Customer Services and Business Change at Edinburgh Napier University discusses the university's success in automating its learning devices through our Diplomat™ LMS Smart Locker.

Since this case study took place, Edinburgh Napier University has continued to expand its Smart Locker offerings, and now boasts a total of 96 Smart Locker bays.

Customer Profile

Edinburgh Napier University, the #1 modern university in Scotland (Times Higher Education World University Rankings 2023), the #1 university in Edinburgh for student satisfaction (NSS 2020, 2021, 2022 & 2023), a top 10 UK modern university (Times/Sunday Times Good University Guide 2023), and the top Scottish modern university for research power and impact (Research Excellence Framework 2021).

The university prides itself on being the home of difference makers—an enterprising and innovative community, renowned internationally, with an unrivalled student learning experience.

With more than 300 undergraduate and postgraduate courses and nearly 20,000 students from over 140 countries studying on campus in Edinburgh, online and at partner universities worldwide, the university delivers meaningful, difference-making education and research for a rapidly changing world.

Challenges

The university has three campuses across Edinburgh: Craiglockhart, Sighthill and Merchiston, each offering state-of-the-art facilities for learning and research.

Merchiston Campus boasts a 24-hour facility called the Jack Kilby Computing Centre, with 500+ desktop PCs available to students, JKCC is also the hub for the student central support desk which looks after all the queries regarding the campus and learning technology for staff and students. This department is managed and led by Sally Jorjani, Head of Customer Services and Business Change at Edinburgh Napier University.

Through her work with the students, Sally and her team had a vision for the JKCC and other resource areas within Edinburgh Napier University that would support the students learning. This included collaborative study areas for group learning, quiet study booths and easy access to IT facilities. These areas would also be open 24 hours a day and provide automated access to short-term laptop loans minimising staff interaction.

Over the last couple of years with the evolvement of social space, social learning and peer-to-peer learning we have looked at what we offer in our areas for study as students find it far easier to study on campus than go off campus. There is a lot of new technology available and we as a service need to look at that and ensure that our student experience equates to what is out there. Every student has a different learning style and being able to give our students a better social learning space, helps with that learning and after all that is what they are here for. More and more universities are offering the same courses and I feel that information services and information technology are a unique selling point for each university. What we are doing here at Edinburgh Napier gives us that uniqueness within our information technology department.

As well as looking at the space in which the students’ study and choosing to upgrade the furnishings to accommodate more collaborative and solo learning spaces, Sally is also keen on automating the device loaning service. Andrew McKendrick, Senior Consultant Academic and Business Liaison (ABL) Information Services at Edinburgh Napier University who worked with Sally on the project explained:

We offered a manual laptop loan service before, which was available at the JKCC, the Sighthill and Craiglockhart libraries but not the Merchiston library. The main advantage of looking at an automated system was that we could manage the laptops remotely wipe them clean and update them together in one place. With the manual service, it was very administratively heavy, because to wipe the laptops from a security perspective, we would need them back from the students, find space for them on the network, and then find a space to put the laptop safely. Sometimes it could take three or four hours to do the technical update we needed to do to the laptops, and of course, this delayed our ability to hand out the laptops back to other students. We also needed to look at assisting the help desk in letting them get on with other important work.

Sally agreed: We felt that having an automated self-service would free up staff which would enable them to give more face-to-face help to the students. So, this is why we chose to go down the self-automated route, we wanted to be able to offer our students a service with a quicker turnaround and have it available for them 24 x 7.

Solution

We are members of UCISA so we went out to other members to see what they were doing for this sort of service. We attended some of UCISA’s conferences and as LapSafe® is also a member, and was exhibiting at one of the conferences, we saw a demonstration of the Diplomat™ LMS Smart Lockers. After looking at other manufacturers and all the options available we chose the Diplomat™ LMS Smart Locker. The final decision was that it worked well and integrated with our LMS (Library Management System) which was key for us. The ease of use and the feedback that we got back from other universities was very positive and made the final decision easier for the team involved. Once we decided that we were going to go with LapSafe® the process ran very smoothly. The sales process was very straightforward and helpful, we found the staff responsive to our questions, and there were a lot, but LapSafe® had a lot of patience with us which we found very helpful.

Sally and her team decided to run a pilot scheme for three months at the Merchiston campus Library and the JKCC. The university initially ordered two 36-bay Diplomat™ LMS Smart Lockers, one for the JKCC and the other for the Merchiston Library.

Result

We were so pleased with how well and how quiet the installation process was, that we planned the next installation within normal term time. The delivery guys came on the day that we all agreed, and they managed to do both sites within one very quick day. They were very clean, we didn’t even need to tidy up after them which I felt was a good thing considering where they were installing it, they were live computer suites so lots of people were going backwards and forwards. After the installation, the LapSafe® guys then went on to demonstrate how to use the system to our central support desk and our library staff.

Staff can now spend more time doing face-to-face with students which adds more value, and not spend their time updating the laptops for hours on end.

The Diplomat™ LMS units we have installed are networked and this is one of the real benefits. If we have new programmes or security updates that we need to put on the laptops, we can put them on at a chosen time while they are all in the unit. The JKCC offers a 24-hour service to students so when we need to update the laptops it doesn’t now interfere with student time as we set the updates for around 2-3 am when the centre is at its quietest.

We plan to extend the service to all three campuses at Edinburgh Napier, primarily because of the results we received from our student survey. One of our questions was about the Diplomat™ LMS here at Merchiston and we found that students at the other campuses were not happy that they didn’t have the same service. Therefore, we have installed a new 36-bay Diplomat™ LMS Smart Locker together with BYOD (Bring Your Own Device) provision at Sighthill and this will be followed by the same at Craiglockhart, planned for the start of the new academic year, September 2017. We have also been asked to increase the amount we have in JKCC as they have been so successful. In fact, since automating our laptop loan service, the usage of the service has increased by 27%.

Advice

Sally’s advice to any universities or colleges looking to implement a Smart Locker:

do your research, and speak to other universities. We found it very beneficial and if anyone would like any help, assistance or advice they are very welcome to talk to us, or visit us here at Edinburgh Napier.

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