By Curtis Gibby
Students are increasingly using university computers to access chatting programs such as AOL Instant Messenger, Yahoo Messenger and MSN Messenger.
The chat programs are available on all computers in Access Point laboratories, said Ben Felt of Open Access Labs.
Lab employees estimate that almost half of students in on-campus labs use chat programs.
“If you walk around up and down the aisles, you”ll see a ton of people using it,” lab technician Andrea Candrian said.
Candrian, who works in the lab at the Harold B. Lee Library, said MSN Messenger is the most popular program used in the labs.
“More people have Hotmail than anything else, so they use it to talk to their friends,” Candrian said.
Lab administrators said chat programs were made available in the labs because they can have educational value and because they provide a convenient solution for students to communicate with family and friends.
“There are many students who can”t afford to call long-distance, especially international students,” said Open Access Lab Manager Scott Hunt.
Chat programs have been included in the Access Point system since Fall Semester 2001 because of student demand, Hunt said.
“We”re always striving to hear and respond to student comments,” he said.
Despite high demand for lab computers, especially during finals week, Candrian said she hasn”t seen too many problems with overuse of chat programs on computers.
Access Point labs are located in the Lee Library, the Wilkinson Student Center, the Kimball Tower and the Smith Fieldhouse during Summer Term.
Other on-campus labs, such as those in the Computer Science and Engineering Departments, have their own policies regarding chat programs.
Brandon Halliday, a part-time systems administrator for the Engineering CAEDM lab, said chat programs are not installed on computers and students are not allowed to install software on computers in the lab.
Chat programs have invaded classrooms in addition to public labs.
“I teach in a computer lab (where each student has a computer), and I”d guess that at least every other student has chat going while I teach,” said assistant professor Conan Albrecht of the Information Systems Department.
Albrecht said online chatting and web surfing during class negatively affect students.
“I do think it is detrimental to their learning. It distracts them and they often have questions later that have already been answered,” Albrecht said.
