Science teacher Susan Speirs spends a lot of time in the computer labs. Her Hybrid Biology class spends about 50 percent of their class time working on computers, and her other classes also frequent the labs. Lately when she has brought her classes to the computer labs, she has noticed the waiting period for users to log in to their account is longer than usual, cutting into work time.

“Long login times impact student workflow and impede learning experiences  that require technology use,” Speirs said. “When a specific lesson requiring computer login by all students is impacted by long login times, the learning experience is impacted, losing critical time for students to practice data analysis.”

This isn’t the first instance of this problem. The district technology department has been made aware of the login wait at other schools. But, it seems to be more common in the high schools according to Director of Instructional Technology Christopher Stanley.

Computers throughout the district have roaming profiles, meaning that staff and students can log in to any computer and their profile will be rebuilt exactly how it was created. However, this contributes to the lengthy wait time for logging in to the system’s computers.

“The Technology Department has found the reasons for these issues to be various depending on the user,” Stanley said. “One reason could be the amount of files saved on the computer, another reason could be certain data files that had been saved onto the Chrome Web Browser.”

This means that the more cluttered the account’s storage is, the longer it will take one to log in to their account, since each file has to be individually restored. This makes the wait time especially prolonged for staff who tend to have years of files built up on their drive. Speirs has notified the technology department of the issue, but in the meantime she has had to adapt to the circumstances.

“The school district has a technology help desk for teachers to submit the tech scenarios for needs. So I submit these needs,” she said. “(I’ve had to) modify lessons and due dates on major projects that require tech integration.”
Stanley and the rest of the tech team are currently exploring different solutions to the problem, and expect the login times to improve in the coming weeks.

“The Technology Department has been looking up ways to clear up certain spaces such as the computer labs to remove any unused profiles that hadn’t been logged in for 30 days. This will speed up wait time. We continue to look at various ways moving forward to help resolve these issues as they come up.”