How Lewis and Clark College Uses LabStats

July 4, 2021 |  Case Studies, Data
1 min

LabStats helped the IT team determine which labs to maintain, licenses to update, and how to deliver accurate reports on campus computer usage.

Lewis & Clark College is a private liberal arts college in Portland, Oregon. It enrolls over 3,000 students in three schools: the College of Arts and Sciences, the Law School, and the Graduate School of Education and Counseling.

The IT team at Lewis & Clark College decided to implement LabStats after struggling with questions of which labs to maintain, licenses to update, and how to deliver accurate reports on campus computer usage. 

Starting with limited resources

Prior to implementing LabStats, the team purchased licenses based on assumptions, and didn’t have the time or resources to get accurate information. They would set up statistics in an Excel spreadsheet manually. This labor-intensive approach took their staff about a week to get all the necessary numbers together. 

Quick results through a LabStats trial

They launched LabStats with a one month trial in a single Mac lab. This enabled them to assess many needs in a short period of time. The team was able to quickly get usage data to see why they needed certain resources and what those resources were being used for.

“LabStats allowed us to track application launches, login statistics, usage statistics—it gave us what we wanted when we wanted it. The interface was easy to use, and the statistics reports were easy to understand.” 

David Dean, Lab Manager, Lewis & Clark College

Seeing application usage clearly

They also tracked application launches, which helped them understand where programs were most utilized by students, and thus which licenses to renew when necessary. 

When professors requested new software, the IT team would simply install test software and monitor how frequently students were using it, and whether or not to consider purchasing licenses for that software.

Solving rogue lab issues

To the IT team’s surprise, LabStats also helped identify rogue printing issues and security violations. They had a client sending print commands over and over again to their printers. Before LabStats, they’d have to reboot a whole lab to get rid of it. With LabStats, however, they were able to narrow down the problem. They found the username that had sent the command, which machine they’d recently been on, and found the exact client that was sending the command. With this detailed usage data, they simply rebooted the one problem machine, rather than the whole lab.

LabStats was also able to track security violations and inappropriate lab conduct. The IT team was able to pinpoint users who were conducting illegal downloads and surfing websites not approved for viewing in a public lab. 

Proactive tech support

LabMaps was another product the team at Lewis & Clark College were able to utilize. LabMaps can be displayed on a large screen at the entrance to a computer lab or building to show which computers are currently occupied and which are open. 

The team also learned that LabMaps can be helpful in showing which computers are experiencing technical issues. By keeping an eye on live computer statuses, the team could see which computers needed help right away, rather than waiting for a student or staff member to bring up the issue.

“Right away, we saw positive changes in our labs through LabStats.” 

David Dean, Lab Manager, Lewis & Clark College

After starting small with limited resources, Lewis & Clark College was able to gain significant value from usage data provided by LabStats. Schedule a walkthrough to learn how you can try out LabStats on your college campus.


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