COMPUTER facilities at the University of Chester are now fully operational after problems earlier this year caused a headache for students.
More than 100 students, including Chester Students’ Union president Dechlan Jarrett, signed an on-line petition, which expressed “anger and exasperation” at IT issues.
They claim problems with the university’s intranet has affected their work over the last two years with students unable to submit assignments on time during a recent incident.
But now a University of Chester spokesperson says: “The university’s IT systems are now fully operational, following a hardware failure over the weekend of January 8 and 9.
“The supplier was contacted as soon as it was evident there may have been issues with the network server. Staff from the Directorate of Learning and Information Services (LIS) worked around the clock to restore the system as quickly as possible. Contingency measures were put in place in the meantime, such as creating temporary mailboxes for those using Outlook for their email.
“As in every large organisation, the university is heavily reliant on IT and therefore understands the frustration felt by students and staff when the system is not working normally. Some 90% of functionality was restored by lunchtime on January 10.
“As the system returned to full service, users were kept updated on progress via Facebook and a temporary intranet page. The latter could be accessed by all students and staff, whether on campus or working from home.
“The University acknowledged that students would be trying to access learning resources over the weekend to complete work so, by arrangement with academic staff, those who were due to submit assignments during the week commencing January 10 were given a one week extension from their original deadline.
“Since the beginning of the academic year, £1.5 million has been invested in the IT infrastructure at the university and a further £50,000 is being spent on a new server upgrade. Although every effort will be made to seek assurances that the new equipment will be as reliable as possible, no system is 100% failure-proof.”