Anna Crooks, SIT IT Operations and Projects Manager (third left) and Nick Elder, SIT Chief Information Officer (fourth left) receiving the award for Excellence in Technology for Learning, Research or Students, at the New Zealand Tertiary ICT Conference.
SIT’s Information Technology Services (ITS) Department has again scooped a national award - Excellence in Technology for Learning Award in the Research or Student category - at the recent Tertiary ICT conference held in Auckland.
The winning project began as a response to the first nationwide Covid-19 lockdown, to give students access to high-end computing and specialist software to continue studying from home, and provide loan computers to students who didn’t have a suitable computer for study. The ITS department under took building ground-breaking ‘desktops in the cloud’, as well as purchasing an initial fleet of 100 loan laptops.
Due to the strong uptake of the programme, it has been continued and expanded to include specialist desktops for selected subjects, as well as more laptops and graphics tablets added to the loan device pool.
Having previously won the Innovation Award in 2019, CIO Nick Elder said SIT’s strong record in IT is a result of ITS management’s strategic plan to recruit, develop and retain skilled staff in Southland.