Myneu.edu received 2,000 hits two Fridays ago. No, it wasn’t wearing a tube top at Our House East. Northeastern University’s e-mailing, campus announcements and student technology hub tallied the hits at 3 p.m. on Oct. 10, Vice President for Information Services Robert Weir said. The tally marked the highest peak for one extended time up to date, breaking late year’s record of 1,000 hits.
“Today, a vast majority of undergraduate, graduate, continuing adult education students use myneu,” Weir said. He said the 2,000 hits is encouraging because students are finding value in the service NU offers.
Rick Michool, of the Enterprise Application and Management Services Department, said the hits are a sign that students are using myneu for more than just checking their schedules and grades. He said students “use the e-mail and log on for longer periods.”
Weir said the IS team “plans for peaks, and also watches (the numbers) extra close.” The most anticipated peaks are when students check their grades at the conclusion of the semesters and schedules at the beginning.
Mickool said myneu’s system comes down to a lot of “infrastructure planning.” They take guesses as to how many students will sing on and for how long they will use the program during one session. This planning helps them form a “pattern of fine tuning the infrastructure” and to “add more to technology.”
Part of the planning involves staying within reasonable costs, as well. Mickool said IS can’t always afford to purchase for the highest of peaks.
NU’s e-mail service is catching on to new students because myneu offers more disk apce than most free e-mail accounts such as Hotmail and Yahoo mail, Weir and Mickool said.
“When we got rid of NU announcements (in e-mails) it cut down on the spam students received, compared to free accounts,” Mickool said of the extra space. “It serves as a better e-mail account.”
Weir said “improvements” such as re-routing spam will be controlled by the customer. In other words, information services will never delete a students’ e-mail without his or her permission. He said “improvements” like these will continue with myneu.
Another improvement the information services team is working on is continuing service for graduates who want to maintain their neu accounts. Currently, graduates can use their NU e-mail address for a year, but because of the commonalty of names on campus, some e-mail addresses need to be recycled. Weir said even his daughter, a sophomore at NU, does not have an original e-mail address, there is another e-mail on campus she could have used, she had to work out another combinations for her e-mail use.
The IS team says they will continue to push ahead with improvements.
“Our job is to give (students) good service at a reasonable price,” Weir said.
