Research IT Services. UCD IT Services

Transcription

1 Research IT Services Survey Final Results - Brief Breakdown During October 2007, Research IT Services conducted a survey of the UCD Research Community in an effort to establish their requirements with regards to their IT needs as they relate to the research enterprise. As a precursor to this, a short survey was designed over the summer in order to allow us to conduct quantitative research into this area of concern. An initial survey was piloted with a small group of 31 individual members of the research community, selected at random, of whom 15 completed the survey to give us an exceptional response rate of just over 48%. The feedback gathered from this pilot, coupled with direct feedback from members of the Research IT Steering group enabled us to further customise the survey itself before surveying the whole of the UCD Research Community. The information gathered from the final survey is intended to be used to feed into the Research IT Services strategy for the coming one to three year period. The undertaking of such a survey of the Research Community would also allow us to establish not only current and future IT requirements but also the level of awareness amongst the community of currently available services on offer through IT Services, specifically Research IT Services. The final survey was distributed through the UCD Communications Office in the form of a direct e- mail to all staff and research students and as an announcement in UCD Connect. Although the survey was circulated to all staff, it was intended that only staff with an involvement in research would respond, and from the results, this appears to be the case. In total, there have been 211 responses to the survey split between staff and students as shown. Respondent Type Student 44% Staff 56% Figure 1 The survey consisted of a number of researcher identifier questions such as college and school, along with thirteen service specific questions.

2 General Respondent Information Of the survey respondents, distribution across the Colleges was as follows: Respondents by College College of Life Sciences College of Arts & Celtic Studies College of Engineering, Mathematical & Physical Sciences College of Human Sciences College of Business & Law Other Figure 2 With the percentage breakdown across the schools as follows: School / Institute % Of Respondents Centre for Synthesis and Chemical Biology 0.5% Clinton Institute for American Studies 0.5% Conway Institute of Biomolecular & Biomedical Research 0.5% Geary Institute 2.4% Urban Institute Ireland 0.9% School of Agriculture, Food Science & Veterinary Medicine 6.6% School of Archaeology 5.2% School of Architecture, Landscape & Civil Engineering 1.9% School of Art History & Cultural Policy 1.9% School of Bio molecular & Biomedical Science 5.2% School of Biology & Environmental Science 11.8% School of Business 7.1% School of Chemical & Bioprocess Engineering 1.9% School of Chemistry & Chemical Biology 1.9% School of Classics 0.5% School of Computer Science & Informatics 4.3%

3 School of Education & Lifelong Learning 1.9% School of Electrical, Electronic & Mechanical Engineering 5.7% School of English & Drama 1.9% School of Geography, Planning & Environmental Policy 2.4% School of Geological Sciences 0.9% School of History & Archives 2.4% School of Information & Library Studies 0.5% School of Irish, Celtic Studies, Irish Folklore & Linguistics 1.4% School of Languages, Literature & Film 0.9% School of Law 0.5% School of Mathematical Sciences 3.8% School of Medicine & Medical Science 7.6% School of Music 0.5% School of Nursing, Midwifery & Health Systems 0.9% School of Philosophy 1.4% School of Physics 1.4% School of Physiotherapy & Performance Science 0.9% School of Politics & International Relations 3.3% School of Psychology 3.8% School of Public Health & Population Science 1.9% School of Social Justice 1.4% School of Sociology 1.4% An area that we were keen to gather an insight into was the number of researchers within UCD who are involved in collaboration of some kind. This knowledge is crucial to Research IT Services in the provision of successful collaboration tools to the research community, enabling internal and external collaboration Researchers Involved in Collaboration 10% 3% 2% 28% 29% 7% Nationally Only No Nationally & Internationally Internally & Nationally Internally Only (within UCD) Internally, Nationally & Internationally Internally & Internationally Internationally Only 10% 11% Figure 3

4 Responses to Service Related Questions Owing to the nature of the survey and audience at which it is aimed the survey pilot requested that respondents indicate, on a semantic differential scale, from 1 to 6 with 1 being Very Likely and 6 being Not at All Likely, the likelihood of their using a service either currently provided or proposed by Research IT Services. This scale was altered after the pilot to allow for a Not Relevant option. Respondents were also given the option of selecting Don t know what this is as a response, and as suggested from the pilot survey feedback a glossary of the terms was provided for respondents in the Jargon Buster. Also based on feedback from the survey, an option to select the given service as being not relevant to the respondent was available. It should be noted however that respondents could choose not to answer some or all of the questions. Included here is a list of the services and the percentages of respondents occurring at each of the extremes of the scale. The percentage response for the don t know what this is, not relevant options are also included. Very likely Not at all likely Not Relevant Don't know what this is No. Service % % % % 1 Research Video Conferencing Facilities Research IT Training / Workshops / User Groups Research IT Security Services Research IT Technical Support & Consultancy Research Database provisioning tools Mass Research Data Storage Research Applications / Programming Tools Research Management Systems & Reports High Bandwidth Network Connectivity Collaborative Software Tools / Applications Flexible Research Collaboration Space Research Compute Clusters Equipment Hosting Service Research Collaborative Visualisation Services Research Grid Computing Short Term proof of concept test server provision These results are better seen as graphed in the following charts.

5 Research IT Technical Support & Consultancy Research Applications / Programming Tools High Bandwidth Network Connectivity Research IT Training / Workshops / User Groups Mass Research Data Storage Research IT Security Services Collaborative Software Tools / Applications Flexible Research Collaboration Space Research Management Systems & Reports Research Database provisioning tools Research Compute Clusters Research Videoconferencing Facilities Equipment Hosting Service Research Collaborative Visualisation Services Research Grid Computing Short Term proof of concept test server provision Very likely Likely Possibly Maybe Not very likely Not at all likely Not Relevant Don't know what this is No answer 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Figure 4 - Services ranked as being most required Short Term proof of concept test server provision Research Grid Computing Research Collaborative Visualisation Services Equipment Hosting Service Research Compute Clusters Flexible Research Collaboration Space Collaborative Software Tools / Applications High Bandwidth Network Connectivity Research Management Systems & Reports Research Applications / Programming Tools Mass Research Data Storage Research Database provisioning tools Research IT Technical Support & Consultancy Research IT Security Services Research IT Training / Workshops / User Groups Research Videoconferencing Facilities Very likely Likely Possibly Maybe Not very likely Not at all likely Not Relevant No answer Don't know what this is 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% 70% 80% 90% 100% Figure 5 - Services ranked in order of least recognised The survey presented the opportunity to identify the services on offer with which the research community were least familiar. Giving the option to choose Don t know what this is on all questions regardless of whether the service is currently available or not allows us to garner from the results whether the services we have assumed to be important now and in the future are in fact that. Figure 5 shows us that we still have some work to do in publicising existing services to the research community.

6 As part of the analysis of answers for the survey we can identify the most frequent answer to each question. Looking at the data from this perspective is useful in identifying the areas that customers are both least familiar with. Areas where respondents most frequent answer was Very Likely to be used are: Collaborative Software Tools / Applications High Bandwidth Network Connectivity Mass Research Data Storage Research Applications / Programming Tools Research IT Technical Support & Consultancy Research IT Security Services Research IT Training / Workshops / User Groups Research Management Systems & Reports Areas where respondent s most common response indicated them to be least familiar with were: Flexible Research Collaboration Space Research Collaborative Visualisation Services Research Compute Clusters Short Term proof of concept test server provision Equipment Hosting Service (Research IT Data Centre) Research Grid Computing Research Database provisioning tools And the area listed as the least likely to be used was: Research Videoconferencing Facilities Comments Analysis Respondents to the survey were given the opportunity to include comments in their response. Not all of the responses included comments. Of those that did, there is an underlying concern with three main area: Training Software Availability Coding / Programming Assistance Analysis of the comments requires some more considerable work. However, some of the responses are in actuality simply requests for access to the services already available and these will be dealt with separately.