Case Study: Johns Hopkins University achieves reliable, cost-effective classroom support with Ubuntu

Ubuntu supports technology-enabled teaching at The Johns Hopkins University

The Johns Hopkins University Instructional Technology Facilities group supports more than 60 technology-enabled classrooms, labs and kiosks across campus, providing real-time troubleshooting for faculty and students. With support staff spread out and help requests sent by email and pager, the team struggled to track and prioritize incoming requests, risking delays during critical class sessions.

To solve this, JHU built BigBoard — a lightweight support system developed with open source tools and deployed on Ubuntu — that captures help requests, displays campus-wide technical status, and generates trend reports. Running on an Ubuntu server, BigBoard eliminated missed tickets, improved faculty satisfaction, identified training needs and costly device failures, saved thousands of dollars, and is now expanding to other campuses.

Johns Hopkins University

Sean Stanley

Support Staff