By: Kyle Chmielowski
On the City Colleges of Chicago website, it states that they “Recognize the importance of technology as a means of increasing both student engagement and access to instructional resources.” However, students and staff at Wilbur Wright College share negative experiences regarding the WiFi which has affected their ability to do work.
Student Diego Merino Vazquez experiences WiFi issues often while studying. He finds it difficult for websites to load, or is unable to login. Student Basil Snodgrass says it is good enough to do her work but it could be faster. It affects her learning when she is in a Zoom class. “It starts buffering and I can’t hear every word my teacher is saying.”
Faculty have voiced concern about the grueling WiFi. English Professor Phillip Virgen says, “It’s been usually pretty good until this year. This year had a lot of problems. I don’t have trouble with my own computer, but with a City Colleges computer I have trouble.”
Economics Professor Antonio Vasquez describes the internet’s performance in his class as “super frustrating.” When his class conducts polling questions with an application called BAND it should take only two minutes. Yet for some students it can take up to five to six minutes because of slow connection. He has voiced his concern to IT, but he says “nothing has changed."
This is an access point, located all around the campus, to use wireless connection. Photo Credit: Kyle Chmielowski
Wright’s Director of Information Technology Jeff Jirout explained why people experienced issues and what has been done to address the problem. Jirout shared recent improvements made to the internet “over the last couple months we’ve increased the bandwidth to the internet. Some of the switches are 10G so they are kind of future proof.”
Jirout explained some students were using the internet capacity to download large files, which caused other students to have slower connections. To ensure that most of the internet capacity was not used by a few students, policy changes were made, which were approved by the CCC district office.
The policy changes include, “put a cap of 15 mbps on all the connections so then it was equal among all the students. Which still allows you to stream Youtube in HD. For most applications students use, 15 mbps is pretty good.”
Jirout suggested, when dealing with a connection issue he says, “the best way to help us help you guys is to notate what time of day, day of the week, and what area of the building it occurred in.” Send that in an email to WrightIT@ccc.edu about technological issues is beneficial.
Jirout advised that moving to a different area to connect to a different access point or turning the WiFi off and back on, can help. Students can come to IT in L112 if they are experiencing any technical issues. “We rely on the fact that if there is an issue students, faculty, and staff alert us and we immediately go there and check it out.”
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