How to Find Underutilized Faculty Computers

September 7, 2021 |  Budget, Data
2 min

With LabStats, you can monitor the usage of staff laptops and desktops to determine which is used the most by each professor.

Has LabStats been used successfully on staff computers to find underutilized resources?

Yes, dozens of colleges and universities have used LabStats to find underutilized staff and faculty computers. In many schools, faculty are issued both a desktop and a laptop. Professors tend to use one or the other, but seldom use both. 

With LabStats, you can monitor the usage of each staff machine to determine which is used the most by each professor. Then, with data in hand, you can offer an upgrade on one machine while sunsetting the other.

We’ve had quite a few schools have success by offering a single machine to each staff member, and letting them choose what type of machine they receive. This results in cost savings as schools don’t have to purchase both machines.

Related Video: Ask Me Anything Webinar Recap

Faculty Computer Usage Data

Knowing how faculty use school-issued machines can open up doors to a significant amount of benefits. Consider the following:

  • Right-size resources, ensuring there aren’t too many or too few computers assigned to faculty
  • Provide wish-list tech by strategically maximizing your budget
  • Verify appropriate usage on staff machines
  • Find out if faculty prefer a particular hardware setup over another, such as desktop vs. laptop PCs and possibly reduce hardware they don’t use
  • Adjust the refresh schedule according to usage to keep heavy users happy and save money on rarely used equipment
  • Provide a teacher-viewer login to run reports on specific classroom activity
Related: Tracking Usage Beyond Student Computers 

How to Find Underutilized Staff Computers

Once LabStats has collected usage data on faculty and staff machines, you can start running reports to better understand how the resources are being used. 

We recommend running the following reports for faculty and staff computers:

Recommended ReportsStep-by-step Instructions
Login Summary by Station Report – displays an aggregated list of login sessions grouped by station, station tag, or tag group.How do I Identify Underutilized Computers?
Login Summary by User – A list of users with the number of times they’ve logged in, number of stations they’ve used, total and average hours they’ve used those stations and the last time they logged in.

These reports will include the least used computers, but if you’re looking for computers that have never been used (in the selected timeframe) follow this video tutorial:

Staff User Tags

You can also set up user tags for staff and faculty, to run reports more efficiently. 

Follow these guides to get started:

*A note on privacy: LabStats will capture usernames when a user logs into a tracked computer. You can change how users show up in LabStats by importing a list of users and assigning report-friendly or obfuscated names for additional privacy.

With the help of LabStats, you can move beyond blanket solutions for faculty and staff tech resources. You can tailor specific solutions to ensure every professor, TA and faculty member has the hardware and software they need most.
To see what insights you could gain through usage data, schedule a walkthrough. If you already have LabStats and would like to see how you can start tracking additional computers on campus, schedule a tutorial.


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