Drinko Library held its final Tech-Up Open House for all students and faculty members this semester.

The open house took place Wednesday from 5 to 7 p.m. in Room 138 and offered free refreshments and giveaways to those in attendance. This event allowed students, staff and faculty to get accustomed to everything technical that Marshall University has and ask questions along the way.

Tiffany Bowes is a mental health specialist in the Counseling Center that also takes part in the tech-up group.

“Students come in with counseling needs and there was a student that came in to talk to me about feeling very behind in her classes because of not being familiar with the technology that we use, like Blackboard and researching the internet,” Bowes said. “I talked to my colleagues about it, and we decided to set up this class. We hold it one time before classes start and another time when the semester is a couple weeks in.”

Monica Brooks, associate vice president for libraries and online learning, also takes part in the tech-up group and was one of the instructors who presented during the open house.

“The Tech-Up Open House has evolved and in addition to nontraditional students, we have traditional students, staff, and faculty attend our training,” Brooks said. “We like it because even though staff and faculty work here, many times they don’t know some of the new resources we added or how to get to resources on the library site, IT site, MUOnline or myMU.”

The training included laptops in the room for everyone to work with and a PowerPoint presentation showing how to use all of the available resources.

Senior Becky Stewart is working towards her Regents Bachelor of Arts degree, and attended the open house.

“I went to the open house in order to learn more about the technology, computers and everything that I can access through Marshall’s website to make things easier,” Stewart said. “I had no idea that they had so many different options available for students. This open house helped me through so much and I am glad that I attended.”

This is Drinko Library’s fifth year holding Tech-Up Open House. The next open house will take place in Fall 2018.

Alison Baldridge can be contacted at [email protected].